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Slowly, after the attack on the camp, everyone drifted back to their respective tents. The diggers collected their dead and took them away from the ruins for burial, Rick assumed.

Jonathan, still clutching the bottle of Scotch, appeared at his side. "Well, I think we handled that nicely."

Considering that Rick's last glimpse of him had been running away from a phalanx of black-robed men, "we" seemed to be putting that strongly. Still … "Sure we did," Rick agreed genially. He accepted the bottle when Jonathan offered it and took a swallow. A small one—in situations like this Rick much preferred to keep his wits about him—but enough for the gesture.

Evelyn joined them, and after a moment's hesitation, he passed her the bottle. She looked at it as though it were a snake about to bite her, but then took a healthy swallow, coughing and spluttering with the burn of the whiskey.

"You might want to go easy there," Rick told her, recognizing the signs of someone who didn't drink very often.

"Don't be ridiculous. That just … went down the wrong way." To prove it, she took another long swallow, managing to hold the coughing to a minimum this time.

"All right, old mum." Jonathan took the bottle from his sister and drank deeply from it.

"You okay?" Rick asked Evelyn quietly.

"Yes." She took the bottle back and took another drink before admitting, "Just embarrassed, really."

"Why?"

"I felt so … helpless." Evelyn hesitated. "Will you … teach me?"

"Teach you what?" Everything. He wanted to teach her everything he knew, and then learn more so he could teach her that, too.

"How to fight."

Rick nodded. That, he could do. And he should. He should have made sure she could protect herself long before he brought her out here to this cursed place. "Yes."

"Now?"

"Now."

"Good." She took another long drink, the whiskey going down easier this time. "Let's start with guns."

Watching the way the bottle was emptying, Rick didn't think firearms were a good idea at the moment. "Maybe we start with something a little less dangerous."

"You mean, like, hand-to-hand combat?" She put up two very small, very not intimidating fists, which were made the wrong way.

Rick swallowed the laugh that wanted to come out, instead taking one of those little hands in his and showing her how to form a fist so she wouldn't break her thumb when she hit someone. Then he showed her how to throw a punch from the shoulder, how to stand so she didn't put herself off-balance, and some of the various types of punches. He found her a serious student, paying close attention to everything he said, although she punctuated the lesson with increasingly long pulls off the bottle of Scotch, so Rick was skeptical how many of tonight's lessons might stick.

Evelyn found herself wrapped in a warm glow. The night, the excitement, the instruction, the man doing the teaching—and yes, maybe a little bit the Glenlivet. Jonathan had taken the bottle with him when he went to sleep, but she had downed her fair share before he did that. Now here she was, standing with O'Connell while he taught her to fight, and she had never felt more alive.

"Okay, tough stuff, try a right hook," O'Connell was saying to her.

She could remember that. She could.

"Ball up your fist," he reminded her patiently, "and put it—put it up like that." He positioned her arm, then held his hand up as a target. "Then mean it. Hit it right here."

"Mean it!" She struck his hand, but over-balanced, and fell into his arms. He caught her. Of course he did. She'd known he would.

"Okay." Smiling as she laughed uncontrollably, O'Connell put her down near the fire. "Okay, it's time for another drink."

"Unlike my brother, sir, I know when to say no," she informed him. But even as she was making the announcement, she was plucking the bottle out of the curve of Jonathan's arm and tipping it back, letting the Scotch warm her.

O'Connell watched her, frowning a little. "Uh-huh. And unlike your brother, miss, you, I just don't get."

"Ah. I know." He wasn't the first to think her unladylike, or incongruous. "You're wondering what is a place like me doing in a girl like this." Evelyn gestured at their surroundings.

"Yeah, something like that."

"Well, Egypt is in my blood." Some small place inside her that wasn't carried away by the night and the whiskey and the warmth of O'Connell's nearness marveled that she was telling him this so freely. She rarely mentioned her parents. They were hers to hold to her heart. But even as she was thinking it, she was reaching for the locket around her neck, opening it for him to see, something she never did. "You see, my—my father was a very, very famous explorer. And he loved Egypt so much that he married my mother, who was an Egyptian, and quite an adventurer herself."

Rick studied the locket, and then looked into the beautiful face, so close to his. "Hmm. I get your father, and I get your mother … and I get him," he added, gesturing to Jonathan. A very familiar type, that. "But … what are you doing here?" A woman this beautiful, this intelligent, this … everything that she was, belonged somewhere else, not in a filthy ruin surrounded by mercenaries.

She seemed to take that as an insult, although he hadn't meant it that way. "Ooh! Look, I—I may not be an explorer, or … or an adventurer …" She got to her feet, swaying, and O'Connell reached up to steady her. "Or a treasure seeker or a gunfighter, Mr. O'Connell, but I am proud of what I am."

"And what is that?"

What was she? Wasn't that the question she'd been trying to answer her whole life? "I … am a librarian," she announced to the stars and all who would listen. And flushed with that knowledge, she knew what else she wanted right in this moment, as well. Dropping to her knees in front of him, she finished, "And I am going to kiss you, Mr. O'Connell."

"You can call me Rick." It seemed only fitting if she was going to kiss him, which he could admit now was everything he'd wanted since that first kiss.

Her smile in response was dazzling. "Oh! Rick." She leaned forward, her mouth shaping itself beautifully for the kiss. He held his breath, but she just kept leaning—until she had fallen completely across his lap, taken down by the Scotch.

Frustrated with himself for not recognizing the signs, Rick kissed the air, instead. Then he bent and lifted her, carrying her to her bedroll, removing her shoes, and tucking her in.