Author's Note: Confession: I've been putting off writing these last few chapters. What can I say? It's a fun story. But then I started Someone Like You, and I started to feel lame about not even having the prequel done. So, here it comes. Last 2-3 chapters (not sure which yet...).

Disclaimer: The characters of The Mummy are the property of Universal Studios. The characters of Lord Carnahan, Delphine Bertrand (loosely based on the character of Desdemona created by William Shakespeare), Mara, and Jemima Willoughby are my own inventions. The term "amour fou" is French for "insane love," and means a kind of obsessive passion. I like that it's by nature a juxtapositional term, so it works for this story.

AMOUR FOU

The Base: Cairo, 1925

"Are you...quite alright, mon cher?"

Ardeth sucked in a breath, and slowly nodded his head. She sat on the edge of the desk, dangling her pretty legs over the edge and kicking her heel anxiously. But he wasn't looking at her legs. He stared hard at his hands folded on the desk. She chewed on her bottom lip, eyeing his hands in contemplation.

At last he looked up, and her eyes darted readily to meet his. "He was a good man. He had a family."

She nodded her head.

His brow furrowed, and he shook his head in something like shock. He stared up at her with dark, pained eyes. "I do not think I have told you I was previously married."

Delphine flinched, and she couldn't help the frown on her face. It took her several moments to collect herself - to quiet her balking expression and stammer, "N-no. You did not tell me that."

He could tell by the suspicious way her eyes narrowed that she wasn't pleased. He took a breath, and continued to stare up at her in his earnest, melancholy way.

"I was a very young man," he let out something like a scoff, or a humorless chuckle. "She was a very young girl. She was a member of my tribe, and we had been betrothed from birth."

Delphine's body was very stiff as she listened; she was barely able to nod her head from the tension that had suddenly grabbed hold of her.

"We were married less than a year," he told her. "She was very weak. She died giving birth to a child who was already dead."

She sucked back a gasp, and her eyes softened. She reached a hand to take his, but couldn't quite do it. Her fingertips hovered over the dark tattoos across his knuckles, trembling just there in the space between them.

"That's terrible," she whispered.

Ardeth let out a sigh. "I did not want to remarry after that. I did not love her, exactly..." He stared back at her, his throat jerking with something like nervousness. She felt a flinching pain within her to see the tears welling in his eyes. "But I could not bear for such a thing to happen to a woman I loved..." He cleared his throat gruffly, and looked away. "I suppose I felt I had done it to her."

Delphine shook her head, and her hand clasped about his at last. "You did nothing."

He looked up. "Yes. I know. But knowing and feeling are different things."

She pressed her lips together, gazing back at him with an overwhelming kind of sympathy that felt like pity to him. He pulled his hand out from under hers and put it over top. His fingers flexed around her hand and gave them an emphatic squeeze. He shook his head sadly.

"I am so frightened for you, Delphine," he admitted sadly. His eyes beseeched her, but she could only stare back in confusion. "You feel like a ghost to me sometimes. Like her ghost. And I find myself terrified that one day you too will slip away from me..."

Delphine shook her head and leaned closer. "Ardeth, I will never leave you."

He looked up at her with a dark gaze brimming full of things she couldn't know; of things that made her worry for him. He looked up at her and reached a hand to her face, and she leaned down to kiss him. She was desperate to comfort him in the midst of these ghosts and demons, to do what little she could do to assure him that she was here. She wasn't a ghost and she wouldn't be. She was -

A heavy knock on the door startled them both away before their lips could meet. She gazed at him frantically, and opened her mouth to say something. But a voice from the other side of the door stopped her breath in her throat:

"General Bay. A word, if you might."

Her stomach dropped at the sound of her uncle's voice. She met Ardeth's eyes, wide and hopeless as her own, and followed his gesture to a closet behind them. She nodded her head, and slipped off of the desk as quickly and quietly as she could. She didn't make a sound as she stole across the floor and into the safety of the dark little room.

Ardeth took a deep breath, and forced himself to seem nonchalant as he strode across the room and opened the door. If Lord Carnahan saw his hands shaking, he never let on. Nigel pushed past him with the sort of impatience that was never characteristic of him, and Ardeth frowned as he closed the door behind him. Nigel walked straight to the chair situated across from Ardeth's desk, but never sat in it. He whirled around suddenly, meeting Ardeth's gaze with a startling urgency.

"General Bay, I'm afraid I need to be very frank for a moment."

Ardeth's body tensed, but he nodded his head. He tried to swallow his nervousness. He was sure, from the gray severity of Nigel's stare, that his secret with Delphine had been uncovered. So he tried to stand tall and braced himself for confrontation like a man.

"As we're both aware, the untimely death of your Lt. Rashid has opened up the position to your majors. I don't suppose you've settled on whom you intend to promote?"

Ardeth was too surprised by his question to be relieved. He frowned in confusion. "Major Gabor is the most qualified..." he started to say.

Nigel's eyes widened emergently. His voice was tight and demanding, "You'll not be promoting him."

Ardeth blinked. "Forgive me, Lord Carnahan, but I thought we had agreed that I would run this squadron as I saw fit."

Nigel nodded his head, but his expression was unmoved.

"So we had," he said carefully. "But I'm afraid recent events have forced me to stick my nose where, under normal circumstances, it wouldn't belong." He gestured at Ardeth's chair and told him, "Have a seat."

Ardeth didn't appreciate being offered a seat in his own office, but he could tell this was a matter of importance, and he did as he was told. He sat down and folded his hands on his desk, and for a fleeting moment he was reminded of Delphine still crouching in his broom closet before Nigel's urgent and commanding eyes took his attention back. He sat and looked up at Lord Carnahan as he paced about the room, all the while telling him about the rebel situation in Alexandria, and how he and his men were being commissioned to police the city indefinitely.

"But sir, my men have families - their whole lives are here in Cairo - "

Nigel gazed back at him in half-lidded irritation. "The pay is good. They'll see it's worth the inconvenience."

Ardeth met his eyes evenly. "And what about my men?"

Nigel snorted. "Forgive me, but aren't the Med-Jai a nomadic people?"

Ardeth let out a heavy sigh. He was desperate to explain that the Med-Jai were arranged in a complex patchwork of tribes around various sites of ancient importance; that his tribe had been stationed near Hamunaptra for thousands of years, and that he couldn't possibly expect them all to pick up and move hundreds of miles north to Alexandria. But that matter was apparently already settled for Lord Nigel Carnahan, and he dismissed the topic with a characteristically British flick of his hand. Ardeth grumbled a sigh, crossing his arms over his chest as Nigel moved briskly on to the matter with Beni and the promotion. He blathered on for a while about politics and some meaningless, supposedly delicate situation with Alexandria's government.

The discomfort of a few British politicians monumental. But uprooting his entire tribe was a trifle, barely worthy of a footnote.

"Sir, I cannot move my tribe to Alexandria," he said all of the sudden, only vaguely aware that he'd interrupted Lord Carnahan mid-sentence.

Nigel stopped abruptly, shaking his head in something like bewilderment. "I'm sorry?"

Ardeth stared back into his vexed eyes steadily. "You are asking me to upset thousands of years of my people's traditional migratory routes..."

Nigel's gaze hardened, cold and metallic. "Nobody one is asking you anything, Ardeth."

Ardeth blinked. He stared back at Lord Carnahan, too shocked and angry to speak. His mouth hung open, perplexed and irritated by the Englishman's imperious expression. They watched one another for a moment, and then Nigel glanced down, folding his hands in front of him in a manner he must have thought was gracious.

"It appears I've upset you," Nigel said in an unreadable tone. "How might I make amends?"

Ardeth let out a sigh, and straightened his shoulders. "My tribe cannot move all the way to Alexandria. It interferes with other branches of our tribe. But we can spare some men, for a finite amount of time."

Nigel shrugged. "If you are willing to periodically trade out men, I am more than willing to fund their journeys."

Ardeth's brow furrowed, and he thought this over. "Every three months."

Nigel raised an eyebrow. "Every six months."

Ardeth pursed his lips, and Nigel held up his hands. "Every four months. I can't afford anything more frequent."

Ardeth knew that was a lie, but he nodded his head anyway. Asking his men to do four-month stints in Alexandria wasn't so unreasonable. And besides, the less frequently troops were refreshed, the less he'd have to deal with keeping everyone up to task.

He nodded his head, and held out his hand. Nigel gave it a shake, but his face was set in an expectant frown.

"Now. Concerning Major Gabor...?"

Ardeth let out a sigh, glancing down at his desk for a moment. He gave Lord Carnahan a stiff shrug. "As I said, he is the most qualified," Ardeth started slowly. He glanced up at Nigel. "And I believe it is no secret that I am personally in his debt..."

Lord Carnahan raised his eyebrows, and waited.

Ardeth sighed again. "But I agree that it is in the best interests of our purpose that he remain in his station."

Nigel smiled his tight-lipped smile.

"But he will be expecting it," Ardeth added regrettably.

Lord Carnahan scoffed, twisting his wrist in a dismissive wave of his hand. "He'll get over it."

Ardeth nodded his head slowly in the short but uncomfortable silence that followed. After a moment, he asked, "How soon will we be leaving?"

Nigel raised his eyebrows. "How soon might you be ready, my good son?"

Ardeth let out a sigh, and sat up a little in his chair. "We can be ready whenever it is convenient. But if I have any say in the manner, I would like to give my men a month to make the proper arrangements."

Lord Carnahan shrugged, a thoughtful frown on his face. "I'll see what I can do."

He bid Ardeth good afternoon with a little nod of his head, and went briskly on his way. When the door clicked shut behind him, Ardeth breathed a sigh of relief and turned quickly back to the closet door behind him. He watched it creak open, and heard Delphine whisper breathlessly:

"Is he gone?"

"Yes."

She slipped out, running a trembling hand through her hair. "I held my breath the entire time," she said quietly. "I thought for sure he would hear me..."

Ardeth shook his head. "I think he was too focused on his task."

She nodded, glancing at the door her uncle had just left through. "You are going to Alexandria at the end of the month?"

He nodded his head slowly, a tired sigh slipping through his lips. "At the latest."

Her mouth jerked with a disappointed frown. "But I just got back."

He reached over and took her hand. He stared up at her until she looked him in the eye with a curious and hopeful smile.

"I want you to go with me," he told her.

Delphine's throat jerked with an anxious swallow. "There is no reason for me to go, unless I am..."

"Unless you are my wife," he said. She nodded. He glanced down at their hands, lifting hers to his lips. He pressed a kiss between her knuckles, and then looked up into her eyes with an amused and thoughtful smile. "Then you will have to be my wife, won't you?"