Stranger in Camelot (3 page)

“I’ll blush if you don’t stop.”

“You don’t look like a blusher to me.”

“You’re wrong, dear lady. Right now, you’re making me feel very shy.”

She stared at him open-mouthed. John had been joking, and he was intrigued when she looked as if she believed him.

“Whatever or whoever you are, you’re unique,” she said finally, and there was an awed tone in her voice. “And I’m very glad to meet you.”

John caught his breath and stared back at her. She was a good deal shorter than he, but not a short woman. He happened to be taller than average. She was average, he’d say. At least in height.

The sweet womanly smell of her, the voluptuous body, and the sincerity in her upturned face had an extraordinary pull on him. She was a solid fifteen on a scale of one to ten. Never average. Never.

“Come along,” John urged. “We’ll talk more on the way to hospital.”

“You
still
haven’t told me your name.”

“True. I apologize. Here.” He pulled a damp but expensive-looking leather wallet from a trouser pocket. “My passport, my international driving permit, and my credit cards. Look. I even have a card for the London library. No scoundrel would dare own such a respectable thing.”

She peered at the open wallet as he turned the plastic leaves containing his I.D. She squinted and swayed in place. John wanted to put an arm around her, but he knew better than to try, at the moment. “Thirty-seven years old, tall, dark, and able to read,” she recited vaguely. “And your name is …”

“John. John Bartholomew.” Very carefully, watching her closely, he added, “Just a modern-day knight in shining khaki, at your service, my lady.”

She looked up at him with a stunned expression on
her face. The last remnant of color fled from her cheeks. “Why did you say that?”

“You seem to have an interest in knights. When you were semi-conscious, you called me ‘Sir Miles.’ ”

When she fainted, John caught her in his arms. He felt guilty but victorious.

She was more confused than sick, more worried than in pain. Aggie stared up at the emergency room’s white ceiling, lost in frantic thought. Her back was stiff with tension, barely touching the gurney’s white-sheeted mattress beneath her. Each time a doctor or nurse walked past the white curtain that walled off her cubicle, she flinched.

She wanted John Bartholomew to stay out in the waiting room. She wanted him to fade back into the night. Into the centuries past?

The instant she’d looked up into those intense hazel eyes she’d felt his power, his easy command of a woman’s attention. Some chord of excitement vibrated inside her because of his elegantly wicked face, with its wreath of dark, coarse hair slicked around it in wet tendrils. The picture of worldly charm had a trace of dark brown beard stubble. But there had been sincere gentleness in his expression, and nothing but kindness in his hands.

The phantom had human form, and that form was mesmerizing.

Aggie groaned with disgust. Sir Miles of Norcross had
not
come to life to haunt her. Or was it to seduce her? Or to find out why his diary and prayer book had never been returned to his native England?

She sank her fingers into the hair on the unbruised side of her head and tugged in self-rebuke. She had to stop thinking this way.

John’s pullover, which she now wore, carried a trace of his cologne, and every time she inhaled she felt as if he still had his arms around her. Her damp shorts were clammy on her stomach, and her sockless feet felt cold. But that wasn’t why she shivered.

John’s question had been harmless, she repeated doggedly. No one knew about her books.
She
hadn’t even known about them until two months ago, when she’d opened the bank deposit box left to her in her grandfather’s will.

“Agnes? May I come in?”

She turned her head sharply toward John’s deep, melodic voice. He looked at her politely from one corner of the cubicle where he’d pulled the curtains aside and draped them dramatically over his shoulder.

Aggie caught her breath. The director of the St. Augustine Theatrical Society would kill to have this man and his dulcet voice in the summer production of
Macbeth
. John Bartholomew as Macbeth. Hmmm. No, Hamlet. A lusty-looking Hamlet with shoulders wide enough to carry Denmark.

“Agnes?” he said again, studying her closely.

“It’s Aggie.”

“Do you mind if I call you Agnes? It’s such a lovely name.”

“Call me Agnes if you want to, but nobody else does.”

“Good. I love being different. Bloody arrogant English pride, you know.” He smiled widely. “Fair Agnes, may I enter?”

But he was already halfway inside the cubicle. She wondered which dominated—the polite John or the John who had taken action first then asked permission. “You’re in,” she replied.

He let the curtains fall behind him and stepped close to the gurney. He looked rugged and indelicate against the curtain’s pristine background. Someone had given
him a wrinkled white orderly’s top to wear. Its elbow-length sleeves displayed muscular forearms where sinews and veins struggled artfully under the bondage of skin and hair. His khaki trousers had dried stiff and tight to his straight hips and long legs. Might as well be looking at the bottom half of a nude statue after it had been covered in papier-mâché, Aggie thought. She reluctantly dragged her gaze up to his face.

He smiled at her. His smile was so kind it only heightened the primitive, sensual thrust of his lips. Then he sat down on the side of the gurney, drawing one knee up. “The doctor tells me your head’s not cracked a bit. She suspects your fainting was brought on by a combination of the injury plus physical exhaustion. She said something about you working three jobs. She seems to know a great deal about you.”

“We’re acquainted. I sold her a quarter-horse colt last spring.”

“Do you really work three jobs?”

“Yeah. I write a few articles for one of the local newspapers, and four nights a week I tend bar at one of the tourist pubs over in St. Augustine. No big deal.”

“Why so many jobs?”

“Need the green stuff. Moolah. Bucks. Dough. Cold hard cash.”

“You Americans have the most inventive words for simple things. I like your imagination.”

“I like to imagine that I have some. Money, that is. I operate my quarter-horse business on a
very
slender budget. In fact, I’d say that it’s so slender, it’s anorexic.”

“Don’t you have any help?”

“Nope.”

A little subdued, Aggie pushed herself upright, trying desperately to ignore the pressure of John Bartholomew’s long, muscular thigh against her hip. He smelled of rain, horsehair, and a smoky masculine scent that made her think about kissing his neck.

“Remind me to have my head examined regularly,” she muttered under her breath.

“I beg your pardon? I didn’t catch that.”

“Never mind. I mutter to myself in public. It’s a job hazard of the one-woman ranching business. I spend a lot of time talking to horses.”

“Would you feel more comfortable if I neighed and pawed the ground?”

“Maybe.” She stuck a hand into a back pocket of her jeans and scraped out a crumbling, half-melted lump of sugar. She thrust it toward him on her palm. “Have a treat, stud.”

She was only joking but he smiled, bent forward, and took the sugar with a single deep, sucking motion of his lips. His tongue touched her palm as he finished. He swallowed, smiling at her mischievously the whole time. “Hmmm. Sweet. And the sugar was good too.”

Aggie slowly dropped her hand into her lap. Her palm tingled. The damp, coarse texture of his tongue was now imprinted on her memory.

They looked at each other, she feeling awkard, he appearing calm. “Be still a moment,” he ordered mildly. He brushed something from her temple, his fingertip warm and gentle. “A drop of antiseptic was creeping down. “He touched the scraped skin over the knot on her forehead. Aggie inhaled softly. His touch was so careful; it didn’t hurt a bit.

“What kind of work do you do, back in London?” she asked. “Give massages to butterflies?”

He smiled. “I own a chain of hobby stores. In other words, I sell model kits—airplanes, ships, cars, that sort of thing.”

Impossible, Aggie thought. She couldn’t picture this man in such a tame setting. Selling toys to grown-ups or slaving over bits of balsa wood and cheap chrome? Impossible. She couldn’t picture him as a business manager,
wearing a suit and shuffling papers with those big paws of his.

“You’ve always been in the hobby-store business?” she asked, watching him closely.

He nodded. “I inherited the business from my father. In fact, I’m the third generation of Bartholomews to run it.”

She decided she liked the contrast between his profession and his macho appearance. Actually, he’d done nothing to make her think he was less than civilized. It was only that she knew the opposite kind of man so well, and she couldn’t shrug off a feeling that there was danger beneath John Bartholomew’s confident hazel eyes. Aggie sighed. Maybe she’d been lonely and cynical for too long.

“As soon as the nurse brings my paperwork, we can hit the road.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll go to my Jeep when we return and gather my camping gear. Do you feel well enough to drive home after you leave me at your campground?”

“Sure. It’s only a couple of minutes on a dirt road through the woods.” Guilt caught in her throat. Aggie frowned at him while she considered her next words. “Ummm, John, after all you’ve done for me, I can’t dump you out in the dark and rain to set up your tent. You’re welcome to stay in my barn tonight.”

“Agnes, you’re a love.”

“I have six fat but protective dogs.” She met his eyes with an amused, slightly warning gaze. “And a shotgun that could turn you into Swiss cheese.”

“I rest convinced, dear lady. Now please be convinced in return. I’m a very trustworthy tourist, who’ll cause you no grief. I’m happy to have rescued you earlier this evening, and I won’t make you regret it.”

She gazed at him in growing wonder. Gentle, noble, and gallant. The same as Sir Miles of Norcross, the knight who had captured her imagination. But John
Bartholomew was no warrior, just a businessman from London on vacation.

Simple. Then why was her heart pounding?

The May night was so misty that every breath of air was damp and warm. The mares stood in a line along the wooden fence, the mist swirling each time they breathed into it.

Aggie thought them beautiful, as usual, but the moody atmosphere played on her unsettled emotions. She was weak with fatigue; her head hurt, and her senses were alert to the man beside her.

“All safe and well,” he said, stroking a hand down one mare’s neck. “And all pregnant, from the looks of their stomachs.”

“Yeah, I’m running an equine maternity ward. You’re looking at a hundred thousand dollars in horse futures, just waiting to be born this summer.”

He nodded toward the whitewashed wooden barn that backed up to the fence. “I hate to take their bedrooms.”

“I only bring them in at feeding time. If you sleep past eight, you’ll be sharing breakfast in bed with them.”

“As long as they don’t slurp their tea, I won’t complain.”

Aggie wearily motioned for him to follow her. Her dogs gamboled around his feet, licking his pants legs. They were certainly impressing him with their fierceness, she noticed.

Hoisting a backpack to one shoulder and his sleeping bag to the other, he kept pace with her easily. She sensed his gaze on her as she stepped into the barn and flicked a light switch. A line of bare bulbs glowed down the center of the ten-stall building. The floor was covered in fresh sawdust. The wooden stalls and their doors, though scarred from being kicked, chewed, and rubbed over the years, were solid and respectable.

“Nothing fancy, but it’s home,” she told him. “Pick any clean stall you like. Or a less-clean one, if you want to dream about organic gardening.”

“I’ll be fine.” He set his gear down and turned toward her, frowning. “But will you be? No more fainting, fair Agnes.”

“Nope. I’m going to get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow you’ll meet the real Aggie Hamilton. Fresh. Spunky.”

“Methinks the lady will be even more intriguing.”

Chuckling darkly, she went to the big open doors and took a deep breath of night air before she turned to say good night. It didn’t help. Under the dim lights he looked shadowy and compelling, a mystery waiting to draw her in. She was even more afraid of him.

“Do you always talk that way?” she asked sharply. “ ‘Methinks.’ ‘Lady this and lady that.’ Like Robin Hood in a singles bar?”

“No, sometimes I don’t talk at all. When a woman is tense, the right sort of action is far more effective.”

He walked over to her before she realized what he intended and kissed her on the cheek. He didn’t startle her like a thief; his kiss was a lingering, mobile caress. He sampled her skin like a gourmet tasting a sherbet.

Aggie wanted to be angry. Instead she stood there gazing up at him in a daze. He laughed. “You bring out the gallant in me. I’m helpless.”

“I’m still trying to decide if you’re for real.”

“Oh, yes.” He bowed to her slightly. “Forgive me for being so coy. I’m a dedicated medieval history buff, you see, and I tend to forget that I sound pretentious at times. I’ve been accused of living in the past. Very far in the past, in fact.”

Aggie came back to earth with a jolt. “Is that why you asked me about the name I said when I was groggy?”

“Yes. Is this ‘Sir Miles’ someone you’ve been studying? Are you interested in medieval history?”

“A little.” Caution made knots in her stomach. “I must have read about somebody with that name.”

“We have a lot in common. We both love horses, and we’re both caught up in the past. I look forward to staying at your campground and visiting with you.”

Aggie nodded woodenly. She didn’t want him to stay at her campground. Or in the neighborhood. Or in the country. And especially not in her thoughts.

“Good night, Lady Agnes,” he said, smiling as he bowed to her.

Aggie nodded vaguely and walked away, feeling worried and defensive. But underneath, a traitorous little part of herself whispered,
Good night Sir John
.