Chapter Three: Who Was That Man I Saw You With?

'Evelyn! I don't believe you're listening to a word I'm saying.'

Petulant was the word to best describe Selina's demeanour at present, Evelyn felt. But while petulant may be vaguely attractive on a pretty girl of sixteen, it palled on a woman who had been owning to twenty-five for about the past six years.

'I'm sorry, Selina, I'm just...' She waved a hand airily, narrowly missing a waiter bearing a large tray of drinks. He glared at her balefully, muttering under his breath.

'I haven't been to one of these for a while, ' she continued, oblivious. 'It's a little ... overwhelming.'

'Rather like your perfume,' she added mentally.

'Oh, of course it is. Still, it is nice to see that you've finally done something with your hair - just because you are a librarian, it doesn't mean you have to look like one.'

Evelyn narrowed her eyes slightly. 'Selina, I happen to be very proud of what I am.'

She smiled slightly: a vague recollection, touching the edges of her memory, of a night under the stars that Rick took every opportunity to tease her about. Despite his repeated assertions to the contrary, Evelyn still maintained that she had not been intoxicated. At least, not very. Exhaustion, lack of proper food and the aftershock of the attack on their camp had been the main contributors to her loss of consciousness. Her little reverie was broken by Selina plucking at her arm.

'I've been looking forward to this! There's someone who is simply dying to say hello to you!'

Selina beamed proudly, gesturing towards a young man who had appeared a few steps from them. He smiled in Selina's direction, but his eyes were fixed on Evelyn.

She returned his gaze blankly for a moment before comprehension, swift and sudden, dawned.

'David!'

Her surprise faded. Of course there was no reason why he shouldn't be there - he had always talked about coming to Egypt. They had both talked about it.

He was fiddling nervously with a cufflink, but beamed at her. 'Hello, Evelyn! It's so good to see you again, it really is! I couldn't believe my luck when I heard you were in Cairo. Been on a dig near Luxor.'

He took a few steps forward and Evelyn stiffened, unnerved by the thought that he may try to embrace her. Whether that had been his original intention or not, he hesitated in front of her and then took hold of her hand awkwardly.

'Well, you two probably have so much to catch up on.' Selina smiled at them benevolently. 'I'll leave you two alone, shall I?'

'Oh no, Selina, there's no need-'

'But I still want to hear all of your gossip, Evelyn,' Selina continued blithely, already walking away from them. 'Do make sure you find me before you leave!'

Evelyn gazed after her helplessly - Selina's company was infinitely preferable to the torture of being left alone with David Barton.

It wasn't there was anything particularly awful or intimidating about him, but Evelyn simply felt extremely uncomfortable in his company. They had both been at Oxford and Evelyn had admired her quiet, hardworking fellow student. They had become close and, yes, well, she had allowed him to kiss her. One night, after the Spring Ball, with the heady scent of early roses in the cool air, he had kissed her. A relatively pleasant, yet oddly unmoving experience.

Not the way Rick kissed her.

They had talked about travelling to Egypt, about excavating - the unspoken implication being that they would go together.

When Jonathan had visited her, unexpectedly, one weekend, he had informed Evelyn that he neither liked nor trusted David Barton. As Jonathan had never been the most trustworthy man alive, she may have been tempted to ignore his opinion. However, perhaps as a result of his own dissolution, Jonathan had an unerring instinct for what he termed 'bad eggs'. And, if Evelyn were entirely honest with herself, there was something indefinable about David that was unsettling. After graduation, they had lost touch - mainly because Evelyn successfully managed to avoid him. She had not given him another thought, until now.

His eyes, she realised, had focused on her engagement ring and he was staring at it with a strange intensity. Evelyn cleared her throat and his gaze moved back to her face. She longed for a convenient excuse to walk away, but, unable to think of one, she forced herself to smile. Perhaps, after all, she owed it to him to be civil for a few minutes.

'So, David, how have you been?'

On the other side of the ballroom, Rick was having an equally bad time of it, but for different reasons. Evelyn had seemingly vanished into the throng and Jonathan, brandishing his Champagne bottle like an offensive weapon, had wandered off in search of Selina.

Or any other vapid blonde who would give him the time of day.

Rick, however, had been hijacked by someone he vaguely knew from the Fort and was trapped between a pillar, a palm tree and a group of semi-inebriated semi-aristocrats. Their conversation washed over him, but the odd phrases still filtered through.

'Eclipse ... dashed odd business ... Locusts as big as a cat, old boy! ... Walking about like zombies, the lot of 'em...'

He didn't contribute to the assortment of increasingly bizarre theories they offered as explanations for what had happened in Cairo, only a few weeks ago. The truth was far more bizarre and they seemed far happier in hearing their own braying voices than the truth.

The stiff winged collar was driving him crazy. His head was forced into an unnatural and, he felt, unnecessary position. His current garbing in formal evening attire had been overseen by Jonathan and he had only gone along with it to please Evelyn. The collar and tie, however, were slowly choking him, bringing back unpleasant memories of Cairo Prison. Although, at that particular moment, Rick O'Connell felt that another visit to the scaffold was preferable to his present situation. He inserted a finger under the collar, pulling at it until he was able to take a proper breath, when a few words caught his attention.

'... crashed the damn thing, I'm sure.'

'What was that?'

A face, bloated with alcohol, heat and assorted vices turned to him.

'Winston. You knew him, didn't you? Was just saying - heard he took that bloody crate of his up and vanished.'

'Drunk, probably,' another of them put in.

Rick felt a sharp jolt of white-hot anger. He had frequently tried to avoid Winston, but he had had more time for the old pilot than most. Possibly because, despite their enormous differences in age, background and everything else, they'd had one thing in common. They had both seen all their friends and colleagues die around them and yet, somehow, they had survived. The only difference being that Rick was eternally grateful his life had been spared.

He remembered the faint smile on the dead man's lips when his plane had been sucked into the sand; and while it may have been the end that Winston would have wanted, Rick was still haunted by the image. There was nothing in that desert to even mark the spot of his grave.

Despite the long, rambling stories that no-one had really listened to, the eager consumption of alcohol and his lady-friends of dubious reputation, Winston had been a brave man. He had helped them: not because he had any reason to, or because he had to, but just because they had asked.

'He was a good man.'

'Sorry, old boy, didn't quite hear...'

'I said, he was a good man,' Rick repeated loudly.

They stared at him, slack-jawed. One of them - who apparently went by the name of "Pongo" emitted a high-pitched, braying laugh.

'He was a drunk.'

Pongo had a long, chinless face that was highly reminiscent of a camel (which is probably an insult to camels everywhere). Rick had a longing to pummel it for quite a long time.

'Yeah, maybe he was. But y'know what? Maybe he had a right to be. Maybe he had a right for someone to listen to him once in a while.'

'What, for how he won the war single-handed?'

Another small group of partygoers had started to edge away nervously. Their eyes fixed on the sight of the spindly, obviously inebriated Englishman squaring up to the American with the blazing eyes. It would have been comical, except for the palpable hostility between the two men.

'He'd actually done something in his life. Maybe he told the same stories over and over again because that was all he had left. But he still had enough courage and decency to put his life on the line to save someone else. What the hell have you done lately?'

Faces blurred before his eyes. He felt a vague satisfaction when his shoulder bumped violently against the offending Pongo and heard the Englishman give a load grunt. People moved hastily out of his way, but he barely noticed them.

Sand and blood. Flies settling on corpses lying under the scorching African sun. A noose tightening around his own neck.

Not a noose, he told himself, just the stupid tie he had been forced into. His skin was burning, but he felt himself shivering with cold.

He needed some air and a drink, not necessarily in that order.

He also needed to find Evelyn and, hopefully, persuade her that they had spent enough time in these civilised surroundings.

Evelyn wasn't certain how they had ended up on the balcony. The night air held a hint of coolness and it felt wonderful after the stultifying heat of the reception rooms. David was talking on and she made occasional, polite noises at what appeared to be the requisite moments, but she wasn't really listening. She wished that Jonathan or Rick, or even Selina, would come and retrieve her.

Rick and Selina.

A cold knot settled in the pit of her stomach.

Rick loved her, she knew that. He wouldn't have asked her to marry him if he didn't. They had fallen in love under the most trying circumstances, in the middle of the desert and Rick certainly had not had another girl on hand to compare her to at the time. But now, surrounded by so many beautiful, glamorous women - some of whom had reputations as adventurers... What if he suddenly realised that she, Evelyn Carnahan, wasn't the right girl for him? What if he realised that he needed, or wanted, someone with more ... experience ... of the world? Someone more like himself. She remembered the way Selina's eyes had lit up when she had seen the handsome American and had a sudden, horrible vision of Selina and Rick riding off into the sunset together.

The rational side of her began a long chastisement of these ridiculous thoughts. However, she was determined to find her fiancé and rescue him from any amorous clutches he may have fallen into during her absence.

A movement close to her face brought her back to reality. David's hand was resting over hers, his face so close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. 'It's you, Evelyn, It's always been you...' his voice was hoarse. In the moonlight, his eyes glinted weirdly.

She recoiled slightly, but he had grabbed hold of her shoulders, pulling her towards him. Evelyn raised her hands to push him away, looking him determinedly in the eye...

'What the hell's going on?'

Barton released her hastily, stepping back as six-foot-odd of angry American approached. Evelyn felt a rush of relief.

'I wasn't... I'm sorry.' Barton didn't wait for the impending attack, but made his escape back into the reception rooms, via the French window.

Evelyn took a few steps closer to Rick - she could see the tension in his stance and his blue yes, usually so expressive, were unreadable. His face looked strained and unnaturally pale in the silver light.

'He kissed you.'

'No! He tried to, but-'

'But you didn't exactly fight him off.'

She stared at him, not quite able to believe what she was hearing.

'He grabbed hold of me, Rick! I didn't have time to - You saw him!'

He shook his head. 'I've had about as much of this as I can take. I'm getting the hell outta here - you can come with me or stay here. I don't care.'

She looked tiny standing there. Her lovely face, turned upwards to him, was full of confusion and hurt and anger. He was behaving like an idiot and he knew it. Yet, somehow, he didn't seem able to stop himself. The anger he had been holding in - at the people with too much money and too little sense who though they were better than everyone else, at the man who had dared touch Evelyn and at himself for hurting her now - had found a convenient and undeserving recipient. Memories of past horrors were still crashing into his mind until he felt delirious under the onslaught. It was as though a terrible fever was running through his body. On nights like this, he would usually go out, find a bar and drink steadily until the alcohol obliterated all thoughts. It had been a night like that, which had led to his brief stay in Cairo Prison. And Evelyn. She was probably the only person who could cure the fever within him, but how could he put into words the things he didn't even want to think about? The years of being on his own had taught him to develop a thick skin, to bury his feelings and to look after other people when necessary. A few months with Evelyn threatened to undo all of that; and he wasn't certain that either of them were prepared for the possibility that he might, for the first time in his life, need to be taken care of. He turned away, and heard her footsteps following him a few seconds later. Rick cursed himself inwardly and turned to face her.

'We'd better find Jonathan,' she informed him, icily. 'He's got the car keys.'

She held her head high, sweeping past him the way she had when he had been her guide and she had been his employer.

He gritted his teeth and followed.

They found Jonathan sitting on the last step of the staircase, apparently in conversation with his now-empty Champagne bottle. He looked up at them and smiled amiably.

'There is nothing like a good night out. And this,' he informed them sadly, 'is nothing like a good night out. Damn boring party, isn't it?'

'We're leaving,' Rick stated.

Jonathan brightened noticeably. 'Ah! Going on somewhere else, are we?'

Rick breathed heavily down his nose. 'You, get up. You,' he turned to Evelyn, 'come on.'

'Don't think you can start ordering me around as though I were-'

'Look, you can stay here if you want. I'm leaving.'

He started up the stairs.

Jonathan - leaning heavily against the bannister - looked, bemusedly, from his sister to O'Connell and back again. An expression of sympathetic understanding crept into his face and he put an arm around Evy's shoulders, drawing her closer to him.

'Cheer up, old mum, it'll blow over - whatever it is.'

'David Barton's here,' she said softly.

Jonathan mused over the name for a moment. 'Oh... Oh! Never did like that chap. What the devil's he doing here? Making a nuisance of himself, was he?'

'Something like that.'

'Get O'Connell to hit him. Or I could hit him.' He took another look at his sister's expression. Typical bloody O'Connell - trust him to put two and two together and come up with something completely erroneous. 'Or maybe I should hit O'Connell? Although, if I had a choice between hitting David Barton and hitting O'Connell, I'd rather hit Barton. After all, I do know my limitations...'

Evelyn giggled, in spite of herself. 'Idiot.'

Jonathan started up the staircase, taking Evelyn with him. He still had his arm firmly around her, although how much was simply to support his own slightly unsteady step was anyone's guess.

'By tomorrow, you two will be sickeningly happy again. And if not, I really will hit him.' He paused. 'Or I could pay someone to hit him...'

Evelyn rolled her eyes. 'Come on, you. Up the stairs.'

'You know, I don't know what you're worried about, Evy - you're sounding more like O'Connell every day. Ow! There was no need for that...'