Crocodile on the Sandbank - Elizabeth Peters [24]
“Do not hope too much. I daresay there are other, equally cynical reasons that may explain Alberto’s appearance here. I shall take steps, tomorrow, to see what I can find out. I must also go to Boulaq and hurry Reis Hassan. The sooner we leave Cairo, the better for both of us.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, smiling wistfully. “It is becoming crowded with people whom I do not wish to see. But Walter will not be here much longer. He and Mr. Emerson are leaving in two days.”
“Where do they go?”
“I cannot remember the name. It is several hundred miles to the south; the remains of the city of the heretic pharaoh.”
“Amarna,” I said. “Yes. Well, child, let us go to bed. It has been a tiring day.”
But the day was not yet over.
Evelyn dropped off to sleep almost at once. She was worn out, poor girl, by her emotional experiences. I could hear her quiet breathing as I lay sleepless under my canopy of white netting. Her bed and canopy were across the room from mine, which stood near the window. There was a small balcony outside. I had left the shutters open, as I always did; the netting protected us from insects, and the night air was particularly sweet and cool. Moonlight streamed in through the window, illumining the objects in its path but leaving the corners of the large room deep in shadow. A ray of silver light shone distractingly on my bed.
I am not often unable to sleep, but the events of the day had given considerable food for thought. Oddly enough, I found myself principally preoccupied with the exasperating Mr. Emerson and his peculiar ideas. Peculiar—but stimulating. I thought about them for some time; and then forcibly turned my thoughts to more important matters.
Walter and Evelyn… Now there was a worrying subject. If she had been what she pretended to be, an impoverished gentlewoman serving as my companion, a marriage between the two might have been eminently suitable. But I suspected that the elder Mr. Emerson controlled his young brother; that there was not sufficient income to support a wife for Walter and an archaeological expedition for Emerson, and that, if a choice had to be made, Emerson would have the deciding vote. And poor Evelyn was right; she would have to tell Walter the truth, and I doubted that any man would take it in the proper way. He might marry her and then spend the rest of his life nobly forgiving her. Nothing can be more infuriating than being forgiven over and over again.
I turned restlessly in my bed. The springs squeaked and something outside the window—a night bird, or an insect— squeaked as if in answer. I turned over on my side, with my back to the brilliant moonlight, and lay still, determined to woo sleep. Instead, my thoughts turned to Alberto, and I began to speculate about his motive for following Evelyn. I could not credit the creature with the slightest degree of altruism or love; he must have another reason for pursuing her. I thought of several possible answers. No doubt he had other prospects in mind when he deserted her. Perhaps one such scheme had brought him to Egypt, the destination of so many travelers from Italy, and, finding Evelyn under the protection of a wealthy woman—for so I must seem to him —he had decided to see what could be gotten from me.
With such thoughts churning around in my mind I was no nearer sleep than I had been. They distracted me from the usual night noises, however; I was unaware of extraneous sounds until one sudden noise, close at hand, struck my ear. It was a squeaking sound from one of the boards of the floor. I knew it well; the faulty plank was between my bed and the window, and my foot had pressed it several times that day.
I turned onto my back. I was not alarmed; I assumed that either I had been mistaken about the origin of the sound or that Evelyn had woken up and crept to the window for a view of the moonlit garden.
Standing over the bed, so close that its body brushed the folds of white