Stranger in Camelot

  “Sssh. Stop explaining to me. I understand.” She led him to the comfortably sprung chintz couch, tossed his coat aside, then lightly pushed him down into the couch’s corner. “Lean back.” She stuffed throw pillows behind his head, then propped his feet on an ottoman she pulled from under a lamp table. Quickly she removed his soft camel-colored loafers. “There. Are you hungry?”

  “Not really.”

  “I know what’ll be good! Be right back.” He had to smile. Agnes was unstoppable. Five minutes later she returned from the kitchen with a bowl of vanilla ice cream and a tall frosted glass rattling with ice. “Sugar and liquor,” she intoned wickedly.

  John sank deeper into the cushions and chuckled. Her inventive attention delighted him. Sipping a stiff gin and tonic, he watched her curl up beside him. She fed him a spoonful of ice cream, and its coolness followed the liquor’s fiery path down his throat. “Wonderful,” he admitted.

  “I thought you’d like it. By the time you finish all this, you’ll be under my spell.”

  “That sounds intriguing. Then what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s be spontaneous.” She fed him more ice cream. He downed half of his drink in a deep swallow then gazed at her through half-shut eyes, a purposeful little smile on his lips. He wanted her to love him. That was the first step toward making things right. “What can I do for you, Agnes?” he asked in a thick whisper, the gin relaxing his throat.

  She stroked her fingertips across his forehead. Tears glistened in her eyes, but she looked serene. “Enjoy yourself,” she answered. “I’m going to make you feel better.” She dabbed the smooth vanilla on the cleft of his lips, leaned forward quickly, and licked it away with the tip of her tongue.

  Languid desire wound through him. He felt weighted to the couch. His heart was beating faster, and his skin was hot and sensitive. He kissed her hand. “There’s a lazy, tired sultan in my head who’d love to lounge here and let you play harem slave. But that’s not fair to you. You’re tired too.”

  Slipping another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth, she shook her head. The seduction in her eyes made the ice cream melt on his tongue. “Don’t be a gentleman tonight,” she commanded in a husky tone. “And I won’t be a lady.”

  The breath soughed out of him. She winked and got up from the couch. “What are you leaving for?” She was already halfway down the hall to her bedroom.

  “To put on my harem outfit.”

  John set the dishes on an end table, laid his head back on the pillows and shut his eyes, his thoughts whirling. He’d won her trust. Could he win her love?

  Aggie stripped off her clothes and, going to her bedroom closet, took out a pearl-gray silk robe she’d bought after her divorce to cheer herself up but had never worn, until tonight. Her knees quivered, but she wasn’t nervous. Her body hummed with tenderness and arousal. Touching her nipples, she sighed at their heavy, strutted excitement.

  She carried a damp washcloth with her when she returned to the living room. John lifted his head as she sat down beside him again. The admiration in his dark eyes scorched her. Slowly their gaze moved down the robe’s sheer surface to the black tie-belt at her waist. She’d arranged the lapels to show a vee of pale skin down the center of her chest.

  Her breath shuddered when he reached over and brushed a fingertip across the tiny beauty mark between her breasts. “A lovely landmark for wayward travelers.”

  “You have a way with words.” She knelt on the couch and began gently cleaning his face with the cloth. With her other hand she unbuttoned his shirt down to the slim leather belt at the waist of his white trousers. Her eyes met his as she pulled the shirt open and ran the warm, wet cloth in slow circles on his chest.

  His face was flushed and had a primitive look of hunger along with the slightest hint of a smile, which made her realize this languid tiger was patiently waiting to eat her up. The danger in him still shows, she thought with a hot rush of pleasure.

  Some people used that kind of emotional power as a weapon. Richard had. Her parents too. But with John she shared a sense of security and partnership. Their backgrounds had nothing in common, but he seemed to understand her problems and needs.

  Aggie’s fingers trembled with desire as she unfastened his belt and trousers. His quiver of response aroused her even more as she smoothed the cloth over his belly and the hard welcome there.

  Curling her arms around his legs, she bent forward and placed kisses on that eager, intimate part of his body. His hands sank convulsively into her hair and his back arched. His pleasure sang in her blood.

  She tantalized him slowly, listening to his soft baritone murmurs of encouragement, half-formed words mingling with the heavy rhythm of his breath. Suddenly he gave a harsh groan of restraint and pulled her up to him. She lay across his chest, her robe wrenched open, as his hands stroked and squeezed her breasts. He kissed her roughly, and she clung to him.

  Seconds later they were both naked and stretched out on the couch, winding themselves around each other. Aggie curved her hand down the sloping muscles of his back and sighed with pleasure when he slipped his leg deeply between hers. She gripped him with her thighs. He pulled her against him and flexed enticingly. Aggie was quivering with sensation.

  She encouraged him wildly, lapping her tongue into his mouth, loving the taste of vanilla and gin. John reached over her and pulled his coat from the back of the couch. It tumbled down on them, smooth and inviting on her skin.

  He retrieved something from an inside pocket then tickled the slim soft edge up her arm. Aggie lifted her head to look at the plastic packet. They traded a quiet, serious gaze as he brushed it across her lips. “I bought a few of these today.”

  Aggie kissed the packet and nodded, satisfied. He was as perfect as she’d expected. “I bought some today too,” she admitted. “I told you that I never know what’ll happen next between you and me. I decided to be ready.”

  She prepared him with slow, provocative hands, while he sank his fingers into her hair and kissed her. Then he knelt between her knees and pressed her onto her back atop the comfortable cushions. His gaze holding hers intensely, he stretched out on her deeper and deeper until suddenly he was inside her. Her moan of delight made a keening sound.

  “My lady, you’re humming like a bell that’s just been rung,” he whispered against her ear. Aggie wound her arms and legs around him. An ecstatic laugh bubbled in her throat. “Oh, how well you do the ringing, Sir John.”

  Smiling, he put his mouth on hers, stopped the laugh, and took the last of her control away with his body’s movements. She whispered his name as if it were the soft, sweet echo of a timeless song.

  John stood in her dark office, a glass of milk in his hand, a pair of shorts hanging, half-fastened, on his hips.

  Her old rolltop desk looked ridiculously easy to open. The drawer locks wouldn’t last a minute when he coaxed them with the slender metal pick he kept in his backpack. When Agnes went to work at the pub Thursday night, he’d pop the drawers and check their contents.

  Maybe she didn’t have the books. He had to find out, then decide how to tell her why he’d come here. If she didn’t have them, he still wouldn’t have an easy time explaining himself. But dammit, he’d convince her, somehow, that the books were a separate problem and had nothing to do with his feelings for her.

  He scrutinized the books and papers stacked on the desk. She’d put all her medieval textbooks and notes away. All he saw now were veterinary manuals and forms to be filled out on the new colt so he’d be confirmed by the country’s official registry for purebred quarter horses.

  John idly toyed with the ceramic vase holding a silk begonia while he burned inside with grim speculation. Had Agnes deliberately hidden the evidence from him? He’d never given her any reason to worry about his motives. Maybe she didn’t trust him as much as he thought.

  John angrily thumped the vase. As it had the other time he’d disturbed it, the vase rattled inside. Quickly he turned it upside
down, jabbing his fingers into the fake begonias so they wouldn’t spill.

  A tiny, rusty key fell out.

  His breath rough in his throat, he inserted the key into the desk’s top drawer, tested it, and felt the lock click. He had a dull sense of victory. Agnes wasn’t very good at hiding things. Not exactly skilled in the sleazier arts of deception, the way he was.

  Or maybe she’d believed him too decent and honorable to look through her desk. John locked the drawer without opening it, tossed the key into the vase, and left the room.

  Still carrying his glass of milk, he returned to her bedroom. John scowled at the glass and mocked himself. Wholesome, yeah. He halted at the foot of the bed and watched Agnes sleep. She was an enticing pale shape half covered by the sheets. She lay on her back with one hand unfurled over her breasts and the other tossed aside on his empty pillow.

  He promised her silently that he wasn’t going to steal from her or hurt her in any way.

  She shifted, stretching sleepily, her body as supple as a dozing cat’s. The thin white sheet accentuated the inviting sight. Bittersweet desire and concern almost made him dizzy.

  Her hand feathered over his pillow. She rose on one elbow and looked around groggily. “John?” He went to the side of the bed and knelt, stroking a hand over her hair. “Sssh. I’m right here. I went for a glass of milk. I have to keep my strength up, you know.”

  “Hmmm. Keep it up.” She lightly ran her hand over his chest, as if reassuring herself that he was real. “Hmmm.” Her fingertips tickled their way down his belly and found his unzipped shorts. “Hmmm.”

  John inhaled sharply. “My milk is turning into a milkshake.” He held the glass to her mouth and she took a sip. “I have a cow mustache,” she told him, chuckling.

  John set the glass on the nightstand, bent over her, and took her face between his hands. He licked the crest of milk from her upper lip. “All gone.”

  “Too bad.” She curled her arms around his neck and nuzzled her nose to his. Then she said his name tenderly. “This night makes a whole lifetime of loneliness seem worth it.”

  John retrieved the glass of milk, pushed the sheet off her, and began kissing her thighs. He tilted the glass over them and trickled milk into the fluffy auburn hair at their center.

  She gasped. “We’ll have to change the bed!” But her voice was breathless.

  “I won’t let one drop escape,” he promised, catching the milk with his tongue.

  “Whatzit?” Oscar demanded as soon as she walked into the pub on Thursday evening. A few tourists were eating sandwiches at the big, rustic tables covered in checkered vinyl cloths; the pub was an after-dinner hangout, and the crowd wouldn’t arrive for about an hour.

  Aggie grinned at him mysteriously and began tying a white apron around her white shorts. She made an X over the center of her bright-red blouse. “Cross your heart and promise not to tease me?”

  “Got no heart.” Oscar made an X over the midsection of his white T-shirt. “I’ll cross my stomach. That’s the part I pay the most attention to. Well, almost.”

  “Close enough.” She bounced onto a tall chair behind the bar and swung her feet cheerfully. “I’m in love.”

  “Yow! The British guy?”

  She nodded. “Not just in love, but absolutely crazy about him. Just your basic once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. Do you think anyone can tell I’m happier than I’ve ever been before?”

  “Have you said all this to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “He said it to you?”

  “Uhmm, not yet.” She frowned at Oscar. “We agreed to live in the present. We’re takin’ things slow. We just met about two weeks ago!”

  “Huh. Slow, right. But he’s already Mr. Forever.” Oscar looked doubtful. “He’s gonna love you in the future, but not now?”

  She stopped swinging her feet. “Oscar, if anybody ever asks you to play Cupid, break their face.”

  “Whatza matter? Can’t take a little reality?”

  “I hate reality.” She huffed at Oscar’s attitude. “We agreed this week we’d get to know each other better. Next week we’ll talk about love, I’m sure.”

  Oscar pursed his mouth primly. “Getting to know each other, hmmm. As in, Who hogs the covers at night and who’s got the most ticklish tummy?”

  Aggie gave him her dead-eye-dare look and said drolly, “I guess that’s one way of lookin’ at it.”

  “Just asking.”

  “He’s a jewel, Rattinelli. A jewel. I’ve known a lot of fakes in my life, but John’s the real thing. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so.” Oscar lumbered away to attend an elderly couple who were impatiently tapping their canes on the bar.

  Aggie glared after him. She’d expected congratulations from big-hearted Oscar. He knew her well enough to see that John had made a remarkable change in her attitude. And that wasn’t reckless, that was good, dammit. What was wrong with deciding that fantasies could come true?

  She glowered at Oscar for the rest of the night.

  At closing she looked up from washing bar glasses to find Detective Herberts pushing open the pub’s creaky screened door. Aggie stared at him with exasperation but also a sense of dread. Why was he so persistent?

  “Got time to serve you one drink,” she said brusquely. She gestured at the chairs stacked on tables and the disconnected neon beer signs. Oscar was in the back, checking inventory. “We’re rolling up the sidewalks.”

  “I’m not here for a drink.” Herberts settled his tanned, neatly dressed self on a bar stool and studied her somberly. To his credit, he didn’t look smug. “I couldn’t get over my curiosity about your friend.”

  “Oh, no, not another interrogation. I’m telling you, John Bartholomew is a classy British businessman with nothing to hide. If the man were any more idealistic, honest, and brave, he’d be locked up in a museum with a plaque that said ‘The Only One of His Kind’ on it.” She shook drops of water off a beer glass and hoped some of them hit Herberts.

  The detective sighed. “Oh, he’s been locked up, all right, but not in a museum. Until a month ago he was serving time in a London prison.”

  Herberts had the good grace not to smile when the beer glass shattered on the floor.

  Eight

  John sat in the darkened office at Agnes’s desk for a long time before he turned on its gooseneck lamp, retrieved the key from the vase of begonias, and unlocked the desk drawers.

  In a deep bottom drawer he found the metal security box. He held it on his lap, his nerves tingling. Was there a fortune inside? If there were, had Agnes realized that already? A shiver of awe slid up his spine. Was he holding the diary and prayer book that had belonged to his ancestor more than eight hundred years ago?

  He ran his thumbs over the box’s lock. Knowing Agnes, the key was probably tucked into a cranny of the desk drawers, easy enough to find if he needed to. But his method would be simpler. He set the box on the desktop, located two gym clips in a plastic cup in one drawer, and bent the clips to suit his purpose.

  After a minute of delicate, creative lock-picking, the mechanism popped open. John’s pulse hammered in his ears as he lifted the lid.

  He’d found them. One book was larger than the other, slightly wider and longer than his spread fingers. The other was a slender volume small enough to cup in one hand.

  The leather bindings were faded and bore fine cracks. Still-colorful designs were stamped into the leather, and words in Latin. He realized he was caressing the words with his fingertips. Opening the larger book, he found dark, masculine writing on leaves of yellow parchment. The writing was in Latin, also, but he turned the pages with reverence, as if he understood. This man’s blood ran in his veins.

  The smaller book contained beautiful artwork in the page corners, and the highly ornamented script probably meant the book had been copied by monks for use in a church library or the private collection of a wealthy noble. Its pages were filled with titled verses. It was obviously Si
r Miles’s prayer book.

  John had never expected to feel as if he’d found something holy and yet very personal. But these books were his link to a family legacy far more noble than any of his family in modern times. He set them on the desk reverently.

  Under the books was a thick sheaf of notebook paper bound with a heavy black clip. John thumbed through it, his heart in his throat. The writing was uneven and angular, not Agnes’s smooth, looping hand. John realized suddenly that this was the diary’s translation. The handwriting was her grandfather’s.

  But the writing on the small yellow squares of paper stuck to an inside page was definitely Agnes’s. John read the notes, disbelieving. Phrases, obviously from Sir Miles’s diary, were copied and underlined. Love and honor are never forgotten. A man is the measure of his heart. To live without honesty is to deny courage.

  And on one slip of paper she’d written “Sir Miles” a dozen times, with pretty flourishes. It was the kind of thing a schoolgirl would do while she daydreamed about a special boy.

  Stunned, John stared at the books. Now he understood why she didn’t trust him enough to confide about them, the way he’d hoped she would. Sir Miles of Norcross, a hero, a martyr, was the knight in shining armor Agnes wanted.

  John shut his eyes and cursed wearily. He’d played right into her fantasy, not realizing that he wasn’t winning her with his own gallantry, but with his ancestor’s.

  She was in love with a man who’d been dead for eight centuries.

  He knew he was being a sentimental fool, but it hurt. It hurt because he was no more like his ancestor than a draft horse was like a Thoroughbred. John shoved the books and notes back into the box and thrust it into the drawer.

  He left the office with long, angry strides, his mood black. Agnes didn’t want to love him, not the real John Bartholomew, and he’d been stupid to ever think she would. Pacing the living room floor, he glared at the couch were they’d first made love. Whom had she been clinging to so wildly—a ghost?

  The phone rang in the kitchen. He jerked the receiver from the cradle and coldly snapped a hello.