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"And now there are book thieves! In my library!"
Rick winced as half the people in the fancy hotel where they were taking afternoon tea turned towards their table with varying degrees of censure. It was hard to tell whether they disapproved because Evy had raised her voice or because she'd implied she was doing something more than being decorative.
Fancy London hotels weren't really Rick's forte, but he was learning to adapt. He gave them his best "Sorry, but isn't she amazing?" sheepish smile and waited for the tutting to die down.
Evy's eyes were sparkling with annoyance, and her only concession to the atmosphere was to drop her tone to an angry whisper. She was marvellous. Rick wondered why they were in a fancy hotel instead of somewhere more private, where she could be herself—pace and gesticulate and shout as much as she wanted to. Lately they were always in fancy hotels and fancy tea shops and fancy anywhere that wasn't private.
Egypt had been much more fun, if you ignored the undead mummies and plagues. London didn't suit Evy any better than it suited Rick, but she had her reasons for being here and that was what mattered.
"Honestly," Evy said, "I don't know what my predecessor was doing with his time. It clearly wasn't maintaining the catalogue. There are at least a dozen texts missing from what he did catalogue, and there are three stacks that are a complete mess, so I'll probably never know if anything is missing there."
"Maybe someone borrowed them? It is a library."
Evy snorted. "It's not that kind of library. The British Spencer Library isn't a lending library; people can't just walk out with books." She frowned and amended that. "Not without permission, anyway."
Rick knew that, but he enjoyed prodding Evy into dignified outrage. He grinned and waited until Evy's expression softened into a smile. "So, what's missing?"
Evy poured more tea and ate a tiny sandwich thoughtfully. "That's the odd thing. None of the missing books are particularly valuable or academically useful. They were published at least fifty years ago, so the research is hopelessly out of date, and all of them seem to be records of the most ridiculous parts of mysticism. One of them even has 'hocus pocus' in its title!"
A chill ran down Rick's back. He told himself it was just a breeze. "Uh, honey, are you sure they're ridiculous?"
Evy rolled her eyes. "I refuse to take any book seriously if it has 'hocus pocus' in the title. The Bembridge Scholars would laugh at anyone who published a book like that."
Rick waited.
"One mummy—"
"And its friends," Rick muttered.
"One mummy," Evy said firmly, "isn't proof that every ancient ritual actually worked. In fact, I could argue that Imhotep was the exception that proves the rule."
"An exception that nearly killed us."
Evy shrugged and looked in her teacup. "We survived."
"That time."
"We're hardly going to encounter another ancient mummy rising from the dead in England." Evy picked up the teapot and swished it experimentally, looking disappointed when it was empty. "Everything is far too ordinary here for that."
Rick perked up a bit. Maybe Evy was ready for another expedition somewhere?
"I really should go home," Evy said instead. "There's so much to do and Jonathan is no help at all. The bathrooms in the house need complete renovation. And we have bats in the attic!"
That didn't sound much like Evy was planning a trip. In fact, it sounded like the complete opposite, and Rick wasn't sure where he fit into that life. Regular lunches, afternoon teas, and antique hunting were nice enough, but Evy hadn't kissed him since they left Egypt and he didn't know how to change that.
Everything had been much easier in Egypt, even with the mummies and plagues. He'd been having that thought more and more often.
But only Rick smiled and said, "At least you have the money to fix that."
They all had enough money to do whatever they wanted, thank you Hamunaptra.
Evy grinned. "I do, don't I? I'm going to install the latest hot water system and the largest bathtub money will buy. Would you like to have lunch with us on Sunday?"
It would be a staid and stuffy lunch in huge formal dining room in Evy's house, with Jonathan and too many maids hovering around, but Rick agreed anyway, and they parted with a polite handshake. He decided to walk to his rented rooms despite the light drizzle that always seemed to be falling, and any thoughts of book thieves and ancient rituals were washed away by the time he got home.
***
The butler allowed Rick into Evy's house on Sunday with a poorly concealed sniff. Rick understood that when you had money there were staff, but why did they have to be so disapproving? He couldn't decide whether it was because he was an American or because he didn't follow most of the protocols butlers were rumoured to love.
He suspected either would have been a problem on their own, and the fact that he was both was why the butler didn't bother hiding his dislike.
The butler ushered Rick into the cold, uncomfortable parlour he usually tried to confine Rick in. Evy found him a few minutes later and dragged him to the warm, snug library. It was a ritual they followed every time.
"Why don't you just come straight down here?" Evy said when they'd exchanged polite hellos. "You know it's where I'll be."
"Your butler would probably try to have me arrested," Rick said. "I don't think he likes me."
Evy rolled her eyes. "You fought ancient mummies and Worth frightens you?"
"Pretty sure he'd eat Imhotep for breakfast. We should take him the next time you want to dig up unholy evils."
A hint of pink appeared on Evy's cheeks but all she said was, "Yes, well, um. Maybe."
Rick smiled and Evy went pinker, and there was a look in her eyes that he recognised. One he hadn't seen since they arrived in England. If he stepped a little closer…
The door opened with a bang and Jonathan walked in, already in full flow about something. Rick gritted his teeth and didn't punch him.
Jonathan's monologue continued, oblivious to whether Rick and Evy were listening, until they were halfway through the main course, gathered at one end of a very long dining table. Rick wondered if there was a less awkward room to eat in, but he'd learned weeks ago that guests didn't visit the breakfast room unless they stayed the night.
Despite everything they'd been through in Egypt, apparently Rick wasn't on the overnight visits list. He wasn't on Evy's list for anything other than polite lunches and teas. England was quickly becoming his least favourite place in the world.
"You'll help me out, won't you old mum?" Jonathan said, and Rick realised he really should pay more attention when Jonathan was talking.
He'd been enjoying the pained looks on Evy's face as she listened to Jonathan's tale. There had been at least three of the "He thinks I'll believe this?" faces she always made when Jonathan was talking, which was one of Rick's personal favourites.
Evy put her knife and fork down neatly. "Oh, Jonathan."
Jonathan's expression turned pleading. "Come on, old thing. You always know how to fix these little problems."
Maybe they'd be lucky, and Jonathan had just made a silly mess with a woman. Rick crossed his fingers under the table.
"Bronze Age barrows aren't really my area of expertise," Evy said. "I can identify a potential site, obviously, but so can you and that's as much as I know."
"That's as much as they know," Jonathan said.
Evy rolled her eyes. "I gathered that, or they wouldn't have thought you were an expert."
"There's treasure," Jonathan said.
Rick perked up.
"Otherwise you wouldn't be interested," Evy said with a sniff. She must have learned it from the butler. "You know, archaeology isn't all about treasure."
"But it does help," Rick said.
Evy sighed. "I'm a librarian. My treasure is in books."
"They have books!" Jonathan exclaimed before Rick could poke at Evy's attempt at being sanctimonious.
"Most people have books," Evy said.
"No, they have your books!" Jonathan grinned. "Books from your library. I saw the book plates."
Oh no.
Evy's head snapped up and her tone sharpened. "My books. Do you mean you've been helping my book thieves?"
"Ah." Jonathan's self-preservation instincts kicked in belatedly. "Possibly. But they already had them when I arrived, so you can't blame me for their actions."
The way Evy's eyes narrowed indicated she definitely could. Rick fought down a grin. Fierce Evy was his favourite Evy. Or one of his favourites.
He had a lot of favourite Evys.
"What are they doing with my books?" Evy asked.
"Er, reading them? And maybe...ah...trying to raise...some...remains...from the dead?"
Jonathan trailed off into a quiet questioning mumble under the force of Evy's glare. Rick adored her.
"Why?" Evy asked.
Jonathan shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "The treasure. It's not where they expected to find it. They thought they could ask for some guidance."
"Please tell me you didn't translate anything for them."
"I didn't know they were going to try the rituals!" Jonathan protested. "I didn't know they'd work."
Cold washed over Rick as the beef wellington he'd just finished eating turned into a rock in his stomach.
"What do you mean, they worked?" Rick said, trying to sound calm. From the sideways glance Evy shot him, he wasn't succeeding.
Jonathan's gaze slid between them and he tugged at his shirt collar. "Well I—er, that is...they...ah—"
Evy's glare turned flinty. "Jonathan."
"One tiny skeleton," Jonathan said. "Part of a skeleton. A skeletonette. Definitely not a mummy, you know they didn't do that in this part of the world."
"It's not the size that's important," Evy said.
Rick bit down on the comment he wanted to make. It definitely wasn't the right time.
"It fell apart two minutes after we—they woke it up!" Jonathan said. "Too fragile. Crumbled into dust."
"Then why do you need my help?" Evy asked.
Jonathan winced. "They found another ritual. Promises to preserve the bones a bit better. They're planning to try again, and I thought you could sort of...sniff around. Make sure we—they're not going to raise anything that could destroy the world. That sort of thing."
"I don't know anything about Bronze Age burial rituals!" Evy said.
"You've got books, though," Rick said. "I saw some in the library. Bronze Age barrows and burials—they're in the bookcase to the left of the fireplace, third shelf down."
The look Evy shot him wasn't one he'd seen before. He wasn't sure what it meant, except that it made his gut stir and he couldn't restrain a grin. He wanted to bask in it for a while, but Jonathan made a choking sound and Evy looked away.
"We'll need to retrieve my books," Evy said. "Do you know which one has the reanimation rituals in?"
Jonathan screwed his face up in concentration. "It had 'hocus pocus' in the title?"
"Of course it did," Rick muttered.
"Fine, I'll do some research," Evy said. "Jonathan, try to stop them doing anything more foolish than they already have. Do you know when they're planning to make another attempt?"
"Tomorrow night."
"I'd better start reading, then."
"I'll buy some train tickets," Rick said. "Where are we going?"
Evy turned to him, wide-eyed. "You're coming with us?"
Rick shrugged and Evy smiled.
"Of course you're coming with us," she said softly. "Thank you."
"My pleasure."
And strangely, despite the promise of reanimated corpses and muddy fields in England, it actually was. Rick felt cheerful for the first time since they'd stepped off the train from Egypt.
***
Evy fell asleep as the suburbs of London gave way to rolling hills. Rain lashed the carriage window under heavy clouds, but their compartment was warm and the golden lamplights created a cocoon of comfort that Rick didn't want to relinquish. He glared when a man in a black coat made to open the compartment door and join them, receiving a startled look in return and the satisfying sight of the man scuttling away.
Rick considered closing the blinds, but Evy was leaning against him and he didn't want to risk waking her up.
She must have been studying through the night, because she'd looked exhausted when he met her at Paddington. Jonathan had caught a train soon after they'd finished lunch, promising to delay the ritual as much as he could and find them suitable accommodation where his book-thieving friends wouldn't accidentally bump into them.
Evy's suitcase was too large and heavy to just be clothes, and she'd pulled out two books as soon as they sat down. One book was sitting next to her, a train ticket sticking out as a bookmark, and the other was open on her lap.
In fact, it looked like it might fall off her lap at any moment. Moving carefully, Rick rescued it.
Evy just sighed and shifted closer, her glasses sliding askew on her nose. It was adorable, but Rick could tell she was going to wake up with bent glasses frames and a cricked neck if that continued. Grumpy Evy had her charms, but he preferred to avoid her if he could.
Sleepy Evy was unusually compliant and only murmured something about Ramses when Rick gently maneuvered her into a more comfortable position. He tucked her glasses into his pocket.
Maybe he didn't hate all of England. Maybe it was only London he hated.
Towns and fields passed by their window, half-hidden by the rain, and Rick fell into a light doze for a while.
He woke up when someone knocked on the compartment door. The train wasn't moving, and the conductor made a sign through the window that indicated they probably hadn't been moving for a while. Rick sent him a sheepish smile, gesturing to Evy, and the conductor shrugged and moved on.
It took a bit of shaking to wake Evy up, and she smiled up at Rick with such a beautifully open joy that he couldn't resist smiling back. Before he could think twice, he ducked his head and kissed her.
Evy made a pleased sound and leaned into the kiss.
A train whistle screamed outside and Evy jumped away, looking pink and cross.
"You let me sleep!" she said.
Rick had expected her to be cross about something else completely. He blinked at her. "That was wrong?"
"Of course it was," Evy said, standing up and gathering her books. She started to pull her suitcase down from the rack, and Rick caught it before it could flatten her. "There's too much research to do!"
"You've been reading since yesterday afternoon," Rick said as Evy opened the case and shoved her books in. "Isn't that enough?"
"I've barely scratched the surface!"
When Evy looked up, Rick saw something her eyes that he'd never seen before: doubt.
In Egypt, even when she'd been afraid, she'd always forged forward, marching into danger with a fierce courage that he couldn't help admiring. Her courage came from her knowledge. That evening in the desert when she'd stood—swayed, really—by the fire and declared with pride and determination that she was a librarian and that made her equal to every adventurer and soldier around her, Rick had finally understood something about the complicated, beautiful woman he was falling for.
Her courage came from her confidence in her own knowledge, acquired through a lifetime of study.
Rick rested his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Evy. You've got this. I trust you."
He ducked and kissed her forehead, lingering where the scent of roses from her hair filled his nose. After a long moment, he felt Evy sigh, and some of the tension in her shoulders eased. He wrapped his arms around her, and Evy leaned against him.
"Thank you," she said, her voice muffled against his jacket. "You always know what to say."
He smiled. "I'll remind you that you said that one day."
A weak chuckle. "Of course you will."
They stayed there, enclosed in their private world, until another engine whistle broke the silence and they had to scramble out of the carriage before the train pulled away with them still onboard.
***
It took them another, smaller train, as well as a cab to reach the village pub and hotel Jonathan had found for them, so it was dark by the time they were shown up to their rooms. The dig team was staying in a bigger hotel in a nearby town, so hopefully they wouldn't bump into each other in the bar.
Rick's room was across the hall from Evy's, and there was a series of plates with disturbing kittens decorating one wall. He tried not to look at them as he unpacked and checked his weapon bag.
They ate supper in the snug and talked quietly while they waited. Well, Evy talked and Rick listened as she listed everything she'd learned about Bronze Age burial rituals and fretted about everything she didn't know about the stolen books.
Jonathan arrived as the landlord called last orders. He pouted when Evy wouldn't let him have a quick whiskey 'for the road', and Rick shrugged when Jonathan tried to appeal to him. There were times when he'd try to overrule Evy—whenever she tried to do anything ridiculously dangerous—but when it came to Jonathan, Rick was never going to interfere.
It was cold outside, but the rain had stopped and a bright full moon shone down on them. Rick pulled his scarf higher and wished his hat was the kind that covered his ears. Pilots had the right idea.
Evy was dressed warmly and he'd been intrigued to note that her usual long skirt had been replaced with a pair of trousers tucked into boots. A woolly hat pulled down over her ears completed the look and Rick wished he'd had the sense to do the same.
He also wished he could kiss her until she made that happy sound again, but Jonathan was grinning at them and that was enough to put any man off his game.
"Right, they're starting the ritual at midnight, so you should get moving," he said. "Here's a map of the dig site."
"Where are you going to be?" Evy asked.
Jonathan gestured back to the pub. "I thought I'd...er...you don't need me along, do you?"
Rick glared at him. "Yeah, I think we do."
Jonathan deflated. "I was afraid you'd say that."
Evy took Jonathan's arm—her grip was a bit white-knuckled—and smiled at him. "Where do they think you are, Jonathan?"
Rick raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.
"Ah." Jonathan winced. "They, ah, think I'm...er...fetching something."
"Fetching what?" Evy said, eyes narrowing.
Rick had a really bad feeling about the way Jonathan was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I might have mentioned, maybe, that you had an artifact from Egypt."
"I have quite a few," Evy said. "Why do they need one?"
Jonathan opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before shrugging helplessly.
"They're using an Egyptian ritual, aren't they?" Rick said. "They're raising mummies with Imhotep's spells."
"I don't think they're actually Imhotep's," Jonathan protested.
"They're probably not," Evy said absently. "They're much older than him, but he was rather good at them." She brightened up. "Well, this gives us a bit of an advantage then."
"It does?" Rick said.
Evy smiled. "I remember the spell. And I think that I know what they're looking for in the barrow, so we've got a real chance of stopping them before they destroy the world."
"There's a chance they'll do that?" Rick said.
"A small one," Evy said. "But we'll stop them."
Her confidence was infectious and in that moment, Rick loved her more fiercely than he'd loved anyone before.
***
An hour later, as he reloaded his shotgun and aimed it at a skeleton that refused to crumble no matter how much lead he peppered it with, he was feeling less confident. The archaeologists weren't using the same spell Imhotep had used.
"Why won't they die?" he shouted.
"They're already dead!" Evy said from somewhere to his left.
He risked a glance in her direction, in time to see her swipe at a skeleton with a walking stick and knock its skull off. Another solid whack and its arms and ribcage separated from the rest of it, but Rick could already see the bones starting to skitter over the earth floor towards each other.
At least Egyptian mummies didn't reassemble.
Rick turned back to his own opponent and took a hint from Evy: he wielded his shotgun like a club and scattered most of the skeleton in one hit. It immediately began reforming, but at least it gave him a moment's respite to go and rescue Jonathan from a headless collection of bones attempting to strangle him.
So far, crushing the bones was the only thing that stopped them from regrouping, but they were much tougher than they should be for their age. And even if you crushed the skull, the rest of the skeleton tried to reassemble into something functional and surprisingly good at strangulation.
Rick yanked and bashed at bones until Jonathan was able to roll away, coughing and massaging his throat.
"Thank you," he said hoarsely.
"Don't thank me," Rick said. "Find their book and kill these things."
Jonathan nodded and saluted, before crawling away in the direction they'd last seen his archaeologist friends running.
Deeper into the barrow. They had no sense of self-preservation. Then again, they'd tried to raise the dead to find out where some gold was hidden, so maybe that went without saying.
"Rick! Look out!"
He turned and caught a skeleton's down-thrusting arm with his gun. It had picked up an abandoned trowel, so that would have been painful. He didn't have time to thank Evy, all his focus had to be on pulling the walking nightmare's limbs off so it would stop hitting him.
As soon as that one was done, though, another one came at him; he'd lost count of how many there were. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Evy holding her own with the help of a walking stick and some well-placed kicks to the pelvis—that tended to scatter important parts that left skeletons on the floor for a while—and underneath the terror he was so proud of her.
If they survived this, he was going to tell her.
He kicked a corpse and swung his shotgun at another, and suddenly everything was quiet.
Faint skitters echoed around the chamber as bones attempted to find each other. Rick could hear his own panting and Evy's quiet gasps for breath.
He turned to find her, smiling at the sight of her poised over a collection of rattling bones with her walking stick poised to beat them down again.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Evy looked up and smiled at him, a smile so bright and fierce it made Rick's heart skip a beat. She had a scratch across her cheek and there was a smear of dirt down her throat. Her hair was a tangled mess. Rick wanted to kiss her.
"I'm fine," she said, and she sounded fine, too. "Why have they stopped?"
Rick was about to point out that the skeletons hadn't exactly stopped, they were just struggling to reassemble, when a high-pitched scream echoed through the barrow.
"Jonathan," they said in unison, and set off.
The passage to the inner chamber was narrow and so low they both had to run bent almost double. Evy led the charge, and Rick was a gentleman and definitely didn't look at her behind.
The ceiling wasn't much higher in the inner chamber, and Jonathan had been backed into a corner by three men wearing tweed and looking like they'd been rolling around in the mud outside. Two were pointing revolvers at Jonathan; one of them was wielding a shovel.
Jonathan was cuddling two books to his chest, and his expression of relief when he caught sight of Evy and Rick was comical. "Hah, now you're for it! They'll stop you!"
The three archaeologists and book thieves wheeled around, and Rick groaned internally. He also put his shotgun down and held up his hands. Evy glared at them, and he could feel her trying to straighten up to deliver a speech. She didn't drop her walking stick.
"Those are my books," she said. "You didn't have permission to borrow them."
They stared at her, and Rick couldn't blame them. In the middle of an epidemic of angry walking skeletons—a familiar clicking sound indicated they'd started to slot the right parts together—that was not the obvious thing to protest about.
One of the archaeologists, possibly taller than the others although it was hard to tell when he was half-crouched, gestured with his gun. "Put the stick down, miss."
"I will not," Evy said. "Return those books immediately. Before it's too late and the skeletons in the churchyard start to rise."
"That could happen?" an archaeologist with bright red hair said.
Evy shrugged. "I won't know unless you return those books. But the last time someone tried to reanimate corpses, they almost destroyed the world."
Rick decided not to point out that Evy had been more than a bit responsible for that one.
Red Hair looked worried. "We just need to find the treasure. Don't you know how much the hoard is worth?"
Rick down-graded them to treasure hunters and book thieves in his head. Archaeologists at least pretended to be in it for the research opportunities as well as the treasure.
"That's hardly the point," Evy said. "Where will you spend your money if the world is overrun with walking corpses?"
"And you're some kind of specialist?" the tall one said. "You're just a woman."
Evy drew herself up and scowled when she hit her head on the low ceiling. Rick grinned, and the three treasure hunters began to look nervous for the first time.
"I'm the closest thing to a specialist you'll find," Evy said. "I'm a librarian."
"And she put a really big walking corpse back in its tomb in Egypt," Rick added, not bothering to hide his pride. "Along with all its mummy friends."
Behind the treasure hunters, Rick could see Jonathan starting to leaf through the books he held.
The tall book thief scoffed. "Fairytales and bunkum. Mummies don't rise from their graves."
Jonathan stopped on one page and his lips started moving, but the frown on his face wasn't encouraging.
"Yeah?" Rick said, gesturing to the chamber exit behind him. "You wanna tell that to our friends out there?"
As if on cue, a skeleton stumbled through. Its skull was on backwards, but it had acquired an extra arm and it looked lethal enough. The treasure hunters collectively took three steps backward and the one with red hair crashed into Jonathan, sending the books flying.
Rick dove for his gun and smashed at the skeleton, but two more were already pushing through the passage and everything dissolved into chaos. He lost sight of Evy, of Jonathan, of everything except the skeletons swarming over him and the rank, mushroomy scent of earth and decay. He could hear screams and yells, Jonathan's yelps, but he couldn't help anyone else because the boney creatures just kept coming.
There were more this time. Far more. Evy had been right in her speculation: one of the skeletons was wearing the tattered remnants of a dress that couldn't have been more than a couple of centuries old. The churchyard was rising.
Rick's entire focus became survival, smashing and bashing at the creatures around him, stomping on any bones he found under his feet.
Something hit his head from behind, making him dizzy for a crucial moment, and another creature managed to shove him to the floor, trapping his arms. He could see a bony arm raising over him, holding a club. It descended fast, and Rick closed his eyes.
The club landed beside his head with a soft thunk. A sigh ran through the chamber, followed by the patter and rattle of bones falling.
Rick opened his eyes in time to see the skeletons above him wobble and fall over. A skull rolled across the earthen floor.
He lifted his head and searched until he could see Evy, book in hand and a triumphant expression on her face. "Take that, Bembridge Scholars."
"Are you going to say that every time?" he asked.
"Ow," Jonathan said from under a pile of skeletons.
Rick couldn't see where the three treasure hunters had gone, but he had a strong suspicion they'd snuck out during the confusion. He started to sit up, but as soon as he put weight on left hand, pain shot up his arm from his wrist into his shoulder and he yelped.
It was a dignified yelp, nothing like Jonathan's. That's what Rick told himself, anyway.
Evy dropped her book and hurried to him, kicking a couple of femurs and an ulna out of the way before she knelt down.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, voice filled with concern.
Rick used his other hand to push up to sitting and smiled at her, even though his wrist was throbbing and he could feel half a dozen bruises and scrapes starting to ache. "I'm fine."
Evy frowned. "Don't be brave; you're not fine."
"It's nothing," Rick said firmly. "Are you all right?"
"They could have killed you!"
"I'm also a bit sore," Jonathan said from somewhere else in the chamber. Rick didn't care much where he was.
Evy was looking at him in a way that made all his bruises and even his wrist fade away. He lifted his uninjured hand and cupped her cheek. "You wouldn't have let that happen."
"Of course I wouldn't," Evy said. "You still haven't asked me to marry you."
Evy slapped a hand across her mouth as soon as she said it, but the words hung there anyway, and suddenly Rick understood everything. The way she'd acted since they got back to England, how quickly she'd signed up to help Jonathan, everything.
"Was I supposed to do that?" Rick asked.
"Yes, you were," Evy said. "Unless you don't want to? It's just that I thought, the way you acted in Egypt...but then—"
Pulling her in for a kiss felt as natural as breathing, and they both melted into it. Rick smiled against her lips before deepening the kiss, pretending not to hear Jonathan's disgusted sigh and grumpy mutters. It was easy to ignore him, and everything else, when he had Evy in his arms, kissing him back as hungrily as he could ever have wished for.
Evy looked breathless and a little dazed when they broke for air.
"Marry me?" Evy said.
Rick tilted his head. "I didn't think you were still interested. We're always taking tea or chasing furniture for your house."
"Why do you think I've been renovating the house?" Evy said. "I thought it could be a home for both of us when we're in England."
"Yeah?"
"Yes." She touched her forehead to his. "I'm only working at the British Spencer Library until September. I thought we could go back to Egypt afterwards. I've got a theory about Seti II that I want to investigate."
"No more mummies," Rick said, already accepting that there would probably be more mummies.
Evy nodded solemnly. "No more mummies."
Rick started to get to his feet and grunted as his ankle protested at having any weight on it. Evy helped him, and he leaned against her for a moment as he caught his breath and his balance. The low ceiling and narrow passage made hobbling out awkward and uncomfortable, but they managed it, and when they finally emerged into the dark, drizzly night, Rick took a deep breath.
He pulled Evy close and hugged her, burying his face in her hair where he could still smell roses under the mud and decay from the barrow.
"You haven't said yes yet."
In the flickering light from the only lamp to survive the night's events, Evy's face was pale but her eyes were bright and hopeful. Rick smiled and said, "I thought I did."
"Not the actual word."
"Means a lot to you, huh?"
"You'd insist if you'd proposed," Evy said.
Rick shrugged. "Probably."
"Well?"
"Okay." He ducked down and kissed her. "Yes. How soon can we do it?"
Evy smiled. "Let's find out."