Stranger in Camelot (20 page)

She shook her head. “I saw why he felt so protective of what Sir Miles had written. The diary may be valuable to collectors because it’s rare and ancient, but it’s valuable to me because it shows that there really are people who never stop loving each other and never let the world take away their dignity.” She was crying now. “That’s why I don’t think I could have made myself sell it.”

“I’ll tell you what helps a person keep the
dignity
you love so much,” John said softly, his voice strained. “Having the money to tell the rest of the world to take a flying leap.”

Aggie braced her hands behind her and gritted her teeth. With her feet trapped in his lap she once again felt like a rabbit caught in a snare. All she could do was sit there, naked except for her panties, and glare at John in helpless rage, while tears slid down her face. “You’re
going to sell the diary and prayer book,” she said flatly. “I can see it on your face. You’re not even going to read the diary’s translation. You’re just going to hand the books over to some rare-books dealer and rake in your money.”

He nodded curtly. “Do you have any idea how much the books are worth?”

“No.”

“Probably a million pounds, to a private collector. That’s over a million-and-a-half American dollars, Agnes. Is sentiment worth ignoring that much money?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, or what I want. They’re your books. I won’t fight you for them.
My
dignity is worth too much to me. It’s about all I have left, and I’m going to hang on to it.”

“We’ll see how you feel about my decision when I’m rich. Think of it, Agnes. I’ll be that wealthy man you wanted me to be.”

“You’ll never understand what I wanted you to be. But it didn’t have anything to do with money.”

His eyes were black with frustration. He started to say something, but the dogs began to bark outside the barn. Within seconds Aggie heard a car’s tires on the driveway’s crushed shell and gravel. She gasped.

“Expecting a visitor?” John asked calmly.

“No, but whoever it is might come in here looking for me!”

He clamped his hands tighter around her ankles. “If I can’t leave this stall, you can’t leave.”

“For godsakes, John, I didn’t bring the padlock key in here with me!” Let me go, and I’ll get it, I swear!”

He chuckled darkly. “An oath easily made is easily broken. No, if I have to sit here chained to the wall, you can damn well stay with me.”

She heard the car come to a stop in the yard. Aggie looked down at her nakedness frantically. John tugged on her feet. “I’m such a gentleman that I’ll
allow
you to
crawl over and get your sundress.” But he didn’t turn her feet loose. “Go ahead,” he urged, as she scowled at him. “You can wiggle.”

She cursed under her breath, rolled over onto her stomach, and squirmed to within arm’s reach of the dress, which he’d tossed across the stall. Grabbing it, she sat up and slipped it over her head. Wood shavings itched on her skin and clung maddeningly to her hair, and the dress’s torn back gaped open, but at least she was covered.

John slid back into his corner and pulled her across the soft bedding. “Come along, my little red-haired hamster,” he said with a calm smile.

“Let me go!”

“I let you get your dress. That’s as far as my nobility will stretch. Now come here and do what I say, if you want to salvage your precious dignity.”

They heard the car door open and shut. Aggie gave in and scooted over to him. He leaned against the stall’s back wall, draped the chain out of sight down his back, then he took her arm and pulled her to his side. She tucked her belted feet under the dress’s skirt.

She heard the visitor walking in the graveled yard. The footsteps faded in the direction of her house. John put an arm around her, crossed his legs in front of him, then drew one of her arms around the front of his neck. “There,” he said glibly. “If you keep your arm still, no one can see my chain. You won’t be forced to explain your bizarre technique for capturing men.”

When she stared at him in seething anger, he smiled and began flicking wood shavings off his rumpled shorts. “Our visitor will think we’re just a rambunctious pair of lovers.”

“You like to humiliate me?”

“No. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the one who’s chained to the wall. I’m the one who stands to be humiliated.”

“You don’t look humiliated at all.”

“I’m more concerned with what’s happening between you and me than about what some visitor thinks about this situation.”

They stopped talking as the footsteps came crunching back across the yard and approached the barn. Aggie found herself gripping John’s neck harder and inching a little closer to him. Deep down she admitted that he made her feel safe even now.

“Hello?” an unfamiliar male voice called from the barn’s open door.

“Come right in,” John answered cheerfully.

Aggie pinched the back of his neck in revenge.

The man who came to the stall door and gaped at them was small, slender, and dressed in gaudy yellow trousers and a bright orange, short-sleeved shirt. A large turquoise pin was fastened at the center of the shirt’s buttoned collar, and a matching watch swallowed his wrist. With his blond hair pulled back in a ponytail he was very West Coast, reminding Aggie of the cocky, tasteless young TV executives she’d known in California.

“Hello,” she said calmly. “Are you looking for someone in particular?”

He was still staring at her and John. Finally he got his wits together and shifted his attention to her alone. From the familiarity in his gaze she assumed he remembered her from TV. Occasionally people recognized her, or knew vaguely that they’d seen her somewhere before. “You don’t know me, Aggie, but I know you,” he said with a big, bright smile that worried her. “My name’s Allen Harper. I thought I’d look you up in person. I flew in from L.A. this afternoon. Uh, can we talk in private? Looks like I caught you at a bad time, but I think you really want to hear what I’ve got to say.”

“Certainly,” John interjected. “Go ahead.”

Aggie’s stomach twisted with a premonition of trouble.
She’d had all the trouble she could stand for one lifetime, tonight. “This isn’t a good time.”

“You did some work with my dad,” Allen Harper continued, as if he really didn’t care whether she wanted to talk or not. “Billy Harper. Does the name ring a bell? He was a photographer.”

She nodded vaguely, her nerves ready to snap. “Yeah. He did the publicity shots for a movie I was—” The rest of the sentence froze in her throat. John seemed to sense her distress, because his arm tightened around her.

“My dad died last year,” Allan Harper went on pleasantly, his eyes narrowing as he studied her reaction. “I’m a photographer too. Sort of inherited his business, I guess you could say. I want to talk to you about the photos you did with him.”

“Go ahead, talk,” John urged smoothly.

Aggie felt the blood pooling in her stomach. She knew
exactly
what sleazy little Allen Harper wanted. The day’s events crashed down on her, and she felt as if her shoulders would break from the weight. John had betrayed her, and now her past had betrayed her too.

“Excuse me, I’d better go talk to Mr. Harper alone,” she said to John, without victory in her voice, even though she’d found a smooth way to get out of his clutches.

“I’ll wait outside,” Harper said cheerfully, and left.

John took her shoulders and turned her to face him. “What does he want?”

“None of your business. And if you don’t let me go, I’ll scream. If I’m not mistaken, Allen Harper is so sleazy he’ll call the police just to see some excitement.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No.”

“You’re not telling the truth.”

“I guess it’s a habit I picked up from you.”

“Stop it.”
He shook her gently. “Tell me what he was hinting about.”

“Are you going to let me go, or am I going to scream? I swear, I don’t have anything left to lose, so don’t push me.”

He studied her leaden expression for a moment, then slowly released her. As he pulled her feet forward and untied them he told her, “Whatever’s wrong, I want to help you.”

“I don’t want your help. I want you out of my life.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes it is.”

She rose, grabbed one of the blankets he’d been sitting on during the day, and wrapped it around her shoulders to hide the dress’s torn back. Bits of wood shavings fell out of her tangled hair. She knew her face was red and swollen, and her bare feet were dirty.

She decided that she looked much, much better than she felt.

John listened as Harper drove away, after talking with Agnes for a long time. Every minute of their secret conversation tore at him. Harper had something on her, probably something to do with his old man’s photographs. What had Agnes done, posed for some nude shots six years ago when she was so confused and desperate?

Good lord, a few nudie photos didn’t matter. Some of the most respectable newspapers in London printed huge color photos of naked models. Nobody thought anything of it. He frowned, recalling Agnes’s hard work to change her life, and the way she fought for her pride. She wouldn’t consider naked photos of herself something to shrug off.

In fact she’d be terribly humiliated if that sleazy little pastel-colored con man had found an old file of photos
and was looking for ways to cash in on them. Some tabloid or men’s magazine could grab a few extra readers with her photos and a headline such as “Former Child Star Bares All,” or something equally stupid.

John got up and looked out the stall’s window, clenching the sill angrily when Harper left and Agnes walked into her house. She came out a few minutes later, wearing a different sundress and sneakers. She carried a suitcase.

John watched in stunned disbelief as she got into her truck and left.

Eventually a huge, hulking blond-haired man arrived. “I’m Oscar Rattinelli,” he told John with a lethal edge in his voice. “And since Aggie made me swear not to hurt you, you’re in luck.” He tossed John a tiny silver key.

“Where is she?” John asked anxiously as he unlocked the chain from his neck and slung it aside.

“She said for you to get the medieval books then get off her place. I’m gonna stay here until you do that, and then I’m gonna follow you to the airport and watch you get on a plane.”

“I’m not going. Frankly, I suspect you’re big enough to drag me out of here, but that’s a chance I’ll take. I want to see Agnes. Where is she?”

“I’d love to crack a few of your bones, but there’s no point. Agnes won’t be back anytime soon, so waiting here won’t do you any good. I’m gonna take care of things here for a few days. She won’t come back until you’re gone for good. So take the books and get out of her life.”

John cursed bitterly. He had no choice but to go. “I’ll take the books, but tell her I’ll be back to explain.”

“Right. She’ll believe
that.
”

John grabbed the sheaf of notes she’d left on the stall’s floor. He wanted to read the diary’s translation, if
only because it would make her happy. But reading would have to wait. For now he had a long trip to England ahead of him, and an eight-hundred-year-old legacy to claim.

Ten

Calfred Dolbrook was short, stout, and as determined as a bulldog. His pin-striped suit, derby hat, and bow tie were so proper they would have made Aggie smile ordinarily, but in the week since John had left she’d felt that all the laughter had been drained out of her.

Agnes wished it were later in the evening so the bar would be crowded. Oscar had nothing better to do than glare at Dolbrook while he shoved clean beer glasses onto a shelf. Oscar had seen how tormented she’d been in the past week by John’s actions and Allen Harper’s visit, and Oscar was ready to tear someone apart.

She leaned over the Conquistador’s bar between customers and shook her head at Dolbrook again. “I can’t help you find John,” she repeated. “I don’t know where he was going after he went back to England. I’m surprised you could track him here. Is he in trouble again?”

Dolbrook stared at her. His eyes twinkled over a pugnacious nose. “The bloody hellion is
always
in trouble.”

She tried not to show her despair. “I guess you’re not a friend of John’s.”

“Me, miss? A friend of his?” Dolbrook cackled. “I hope the day never comes when I’m reduced to being friends
with a man who never listens to an order and never plays by the department’s rules.”

“You worked with him at Scotland Yard?”

“For too many years.” Dolbrook bowed slightly. “
Inspector
Dolbrook, at your service.”

She fought the tears in her eyes, but Dolbrook peered at her closely and saw them. “I think we’d better have a talk in private about John Bartholomew.”

Oscar jerked a thumb toward the hall that led to his office. “You upset Aggie and I’ll break your pound note into shillings.”

“How charming to meet you,” Dolbrook said cheerfully as he followed Aggie to the back.

After she shut the door to Oscar’s tiny office she pivoted toward the inspector anxiously. “Did John really take bribes from terrorist groups?”

Dolbrook arched a bushy black brow. “John take bribes? Did I say he was a criminal? No, I only said he was a hellion.”

“You mean he really was framed? He’s innocent?”

Dolbrook nodded. His upper lip curled in disgust. “He was framed. John may be a hellion
and
a rebel, but next to me he’s the best and most honest detective at the Yard.”

Aggie sat down limply in a chair. “I didn’t believe him.”

Dolbrook perched his stocky but dapper body on a corner of Oscar’s desk. He idly brushed lint from the derby, which he held carefully in both hands. “Don’t feel bad, miss. He’s not an easy man to get to know. He grew up hard, and he keeps to himself.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

Dolbrook’s eyes were proud as they met hers. “To tell him he’s been cleared. The conviction’s going to be overturned. He can even come back to his career at the Yard.”

“That’s wonderful.” But she was crying silently, and not from joy.