Stranger in Camelot (7 page)

Aggie screeched then slumped in the seat, chortling. “I won’t get out of here without causing a feathered frenzy. I just know it.”

John prodded her shoulder with one finger and smiled wickedly. “It’s a good thing they ducked.”

His prim attitude compounded the absurdity and brought her giggles to an uncontrollable level. They now had a mind of their own. She saw Ida on the porch, frowning at her, and swallowed hard, fighting for calm. John tapped her shoulder again. “Really, Agnes, do be serious.” He made his voice very solemn and aristocratic. “Agnes, that very stern-looking lady on the porch thinks we’re daffy.”

“I’ll be Daffy, and you be Donald.”

“Aren’t they cartoon ducks?”

“Yeah.”

“But aren’t they
male
cartoon ducks?”

“Yeah. So?”

“But then I couldn’t kiss you again. I’m not that kind of duck.”

She threw the floor shift into park, stamped weakly on the emergency brake, cut the engine, then hugged the wheel and nearly yelped with laughter. It was the nuttiness of the whole morning, her nervousness over John and the medieval books, and a long-lost need to be
silly. Obviously he intended to reduce her to a pile of hiccups.

He leaned close and asked sternly. “Are you about to lay an egg?” Aggie rolled against him, holding her stomach with both hands and gasping. From the corner of one squinted eye she saw Ida march down the porch’s wooden steps. Her gray hair, twisted into an upthrust knot at the crown of her head, bobbed with an anger of its own as she strode across the sandy yard, and her bright-pink tennis shoes made forceful impressions. Her print work dress sucked in and out between her knees.

John whispered in Aggie’s ear, “You didn’t tell me that Mrs. Roberts is nearly two meters tall and probably outweighs me. If she becomes violent, I’ll be injured protecting myself.”

“You? W-what about
me
? What do you charge for bodyguard services?”

“For duck cases? I don’t know. I’ll have to
bill you
later.”

“Bill me. Agggh.” Crying with laughter, Aggie rested her head in the crook of his neck and pounded her knees. “Ida w-will never f-forgive me,” she said between gasps.

Ida stormed up to the truck and stuck her face in the open window. “What the hell is your problem?”

Aggie swallowed gulps of air and sat up. She felt like a roller coaster balanced at the top of a hill. One look at Ida’s quivering topknot, and her lungs contracted again with spasms of laughter. The roller coaster plunged downward and all she could do was hang on for the ride.

She made a sputtering sound and shook her head. There had only been a few times, as a child working with professional adult actors, when she’d been this broken up by someone’s sly humor. John had undone her with more than silly teasing. He made her feel
comfortable, natural, and safe. She was ripe for relief from stress. He seemed to sense it.

“Miss Hamilton was hit in the head last night,” he told Ida solemnly. He extended a hand across Aggie’s lap and out the truck’s window to her. “How do you do, madame? I’m John Bartholomew. A friend of Miss Hamilton’s.”

“I’m not interested in shaking your hairy-ape hand.” Ida stared at Aggie, who looked back helplessly, choking on giggles and contorting her face to keep them in. “You better not be laughing at me, you redheaded cow.”

Aggies eyes widened. “M-moo. M-moo.” She covered her face and turned to bury her head in John’s big shoulder again. Her heels drummed on the floorboard.

He stroked her hair. “Madame, she’s not herself.”

“I couldn’t care less if she was a Mutant Ninja Toad! Her stud-crazy horses are locked up in my pasture with my Pogo, and I intend to keep ’em until I get good and ready to let ’em go!”

“T-turtle,” Aggie corrected. “Mutant Ninja T-turtle.” John curved one arm around her head and clamped a hand over her mouth. She began laughing against his palm. It was a wide, hard, sexy palm, she decided. She made tiny quacking sounds into it. She felt his chest quivering against her bowed head.

He cleared his throat. “On behalf of Miss Hamilton, I apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Forget about your slime-licking apologies! I don’t want them! I thought I was done with the Hamiltons! But it looks like I’ve traded the old goat for a young nanny!”

Aggie convulsed. “Baaah.” John’s hand muffled the sound.

“What did you call me?” Ida asked.

John intervened quickly. “Miss Hamilton wants you to know that she’s not going to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps. Any ducks which are deposited at her
lake in the future will be turned over to you. Agnes wants the ducks to be happy.”

“I don’t trust her! She’s exactly like her fish-gutted grandfather!”

“I hope so,” Aggie managed to say, twisting her mouth away from John’s hand. For a moment she could only make small moaning noises of amusement and shiver with restraint. “He didn’t like selling the ducks for alligator snacks, but he knew that you were already overrun with them. And you wouldn’t let him donate any money or feed for their upkeep. He felt sorry for you. So do I.”

“You pig-livered cat! I didn’t need sympathy from Sam Hamilton, and I don’t need sympathy from you—a has-been actress who was married to a drug dealer!”

Aggie gave another soft snuffle of laughter, but the humor died inside her. She sat up, avoiding John’s gaze, and looked wryly at the irate Ida. “Even has-been actresses feel sorry for somebody like you.”

“Get your mares out of my pasture and keep ’em away from here!”

Growing somber now, Aggie said firmly, “Can do. I’m sorry they bothered you, Ida. And I’m sorry you have such a mean mouth.”

“I’ll ‘mean-mouth’ you, you Technicolor tramp. Why don’t you sell your ranch to somebody who knows how to be a good neighbor? Go back to Holly-weird and walk around half-nekkid in another trashy TV movie! Uncover some more of your talent, ’cause you sure can’t do anything else right!”

“Madame,” John interjected abruptly, in a voice that had become cold and devilish, “if you don’t stop making insulting speeches, I’ll get out of this truck, come ’round to your side, and kiss you until you turn purple.”

The bizarre threat silenced Ida as nothing else ever had. Her mouth hung open. She took several stiff steps
back from the truck, staring at John the whole time. “Don’t you dare, you shark-faced hellion!”

“I will, madame. I promise. And if you don’t go into your house immediately, I’ll demand you apologize to Miss Hamilton. In fact, I think I’ll demand it right now. An apology, madame. This second.”

Ida shook her fists at him, “Why, you—” John started to open the truck door. Ida shrieked, then turned and bustled into her house, slamming the screen door and then the wooden one. Aggie watched the door quiver and all the way across the yard could hear the lock click.

She frowned pensively and swiveled her gaze back to John. “I’ve never heard a more creative or more gallant threat. It was incredible.” She searched his eyes and tried to determine his thoughts. Her stomach had ice in it. “Thank you.”

“He took one of her hands and lifted it to his mouth. His lips touched the back of it as if her skin were silk. “At your service, fair lady.”

“Look, you can drop that ‘lady’ stuff.”

“No.” He raised his head and studied her firmly. “What’s next, Lady Agnes?”

He wasn’t going to ask about the things Ida had said. Aggie’s throat burned with emotion. He wasn’t even going to look curious. She could have kissed him again.

“I’ll ride Valentine. She’s the one you rode last night. She’s the boss. The others will follow her. Will you drive the truck back to my place?”

“Certainly.”

Aggie got out and reached into the truck’s bed for the bridle she’d tossed there. “Insurance. I don’t want to go home at a gallop.”

John came to her side and took the truck keys she offered. He looked down at her with so much reassurance in his expression that she felt like crying. One second laughing like a hyena, the next on the verge of tears. She was coming unglued.

If he noticed, he didn’t say so. “You could use help mending that fence this afternoon.”

Her shoulders sagged. “No. There’s not a damned thing I can give you in return for that much work. Not money, not a good time, not even a good meal, because I’m a worse cook than I was an actress.”

“You better stop before you insult me, Agnes.”

She studied the hard glint in his eyes then nodded. “I want you to understand that I’m too busy to go on vacation with you. I hate for you to waste even one day of your trip on me.”

“Working on your ranch would be different from anything I do at home. I’d enjoy myself if you’d stop worrying about it.”

“Gee, maybe when I’ve known you for a long time—like maybe a week—I’ll feel foolish for feeling uncomfortable.”

“Time has nothing to do with it,” he said, his voice becoming gruff. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. His expression was troubled as he watched her. “A day, a week, a decade, a hundred decades—what difference does it make? We have all the time we need.”

She wanted to ask, For what? but she was afraid. She might like his answer.

“I’ll help you with the fence,” he repeated. “After we feed your horses, see about my Jeep, and have breakfast. All right?”

“All right.”

“And then, if you’ll tell me where to find another campground, I’ll move out of your barn.” He studied her expression carefully. “If you still want me to leave.”

She struggled in a silent war with herself. Thirty-one years of hard experience said to keep him as far away as possible; the past few hours of intense companionship told her to hang on to him for dear life.

Aggie clasped the sore bump on her forehead. “I’m still scrambled. Let me think about it.”

“That’s all I ask, Agnes.” He looked pleased.

Nothing was going the way it should. She was pleased too.

John traded his rented Jeep for another one, then let Agnes buy him breakfast at a diner overlooking Matanzas Bay and the historic section of St. Augustine, where the massive, gray Castillo de San Marcos still loomed over the bay’s entrance, as it had since the 1600s. He loved the feel of the city, with its Spanish styles and aging Victorian opulence. Having grown up in a city where the past was a living force, he couldn’t scoff at Agnes Hamilton’s affection for her own city.

He liked listening to her chirpy Southern voice as she told him about local history. He liked seeing her eyes light up with pleasure. What was so wrong with that? The scene this morning with that crone, Ida Roberts, had made him feel like snuggling Agnes inside his arms and promising that he’d never let anyone call her names again. Even if she had possession of his inheritance, and even if she had a reputation as notorious as his own—and might have been given it unfairly, he was beginning to believe—Agnes deserved to enjoy herself. He was willing to admit that it thrilled him to make her smile.

“How did you get those scars on your knuckles?” she asked, pointing to the network of fine white lines on his right hand.

“They’re sports-related,” he said vaguely.

“Let me guess. I know! Fencing. I can picture you doing an Errol Flynn routine with one of those long thin swords.”

“I may not have heard of Annette and Frankie, but I do know about Errol Flynn. It wasn’t quite like that.”

“But you got those scars in fencing tournaments. I knew it.” She nodded sagely. “And how’d you get that little oval scar on the front of your neck?”

John stared at her in dismay. Why not tell her the kind of story she wanted to hear? “I splattered hot oil on myself during a business trip to the Orient. I was in an antiques shop examining oil lamps. I collect them.”

Agnes sighed in admiration. Exactly what she’d expected, her smile said. “Tell me more,” she urged.

His stomach twisted with disgust. He’d never collected any kind of art or antiques, unless one considered cheap detective novels and photos of famous London criminals. His scars were from street fights.

She appeared to believe everything he said. Watching her prop her intelligent, rosy-cheeked face on one hand as she listened to him, never looking away, her beautiful eyes trying to trust him, did a nasty thing to his appetite. Guilt replaced it, poking him in the stomach until all he could swallow were sips of his weak American coffee and a few bites of fried egg.

She probably had his inheritance stashed somewhere, damn her. And she had to know it was stolen. Even though she wasn’t the one who’d pilfered it during the war almost fifty years ago, she was the one who stood to benefit from the theft.

There was no reason to feel guilty for doing whatever it took to worm the truth out of her. Worm. He felt like a worm. Very well. So he could live with himself, anyway.

He remembered as a boy watching his father cheat at a card game with the stable hands. The manager of the Bennington stables getting drunk and cheating his own workers!

His father was despised by the men who worked for him, but they were too much in awe of him to complain to the estate’s lord. They took out their frustrations by
tormenting John. He’d learned to fight, to work harder than everyone else, and to dissect human nature.

Those skills had saved him from the streets. He’d earned sergeant’s rank in the army. Then he’d gone to college, and by the time he turned twenty-five he was on his way to becoming a detective with Scotland Yard. Until last year, he’d been one of their best.

He’d played by the rules, and the rules had betrayed him. So this time he’d make up his own rules. Six months ago a London rare-book broker had tracked him down after being contacted by Sam Hamilton. John had listed his family’s books in Scotland Yard’s records of stolen art objects. The dealer had checked the records because the books Hamilton wanted him to sell were so valuable.

John wondered what would have happened if he’d come here then, while Sam Hamilton was still alive. At John’s request, the dealer hadn’t warned Hamilton. He’d told him that he needed to see the books before he agreed to represent them, and Hamilton refused.

John had planned to pay Hamilton a surprise visit, but then his life had come apart at the seams. Betrayal. Accusations that he’d taken bribes from the terrorist organizations he’d been assigned to infiltrate. A trial. A conviction. Three months in prison. The end of his career and reputation. And Sam Hamilton had died of a heart attack in the meantime.