Stranger in Camelot

  “Fine.” She pushed upright and wedged herself into a corner of the couch, inching farther away from him. He noticed his pullover was about to fall down, but couldn’t decide how to point that out to her delicately.

  “I fear you’re being brave. We should give a name to that small mountain growing on your forehead. Honor it, as if it were a monument. I believe we could charge admission. Perhaps turn you into a state park. Mount Agnes State Park. Yes, I rather like that.”

  His teasing earned a vague smile from her, though suspicion still clouded her eyes. “This is like listening to Richard Burton try to do stand-up comedy. Or being heckled by a British Don Rickles.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I wasn’t trying to annoy you. Only make you smile. How do you feel, really?”

  “Like a cartoon character who’s been hit with a hammer. I’m sure there are stars and little birds circling my head.”

  “No stars, not in this weather.” Steady rain drummed on the house, rattling the porch’s tin roof. Cool, sweet air had filled the night, carrying with it a hint of salt marshes. Thunder growled faintly in the distance. John had trouble paying attention.

  “Did you notice where my horses went?” she asked, straightening.

  “Sssh. They’re safely gathered in the woods. The worst of the storm is over.”

  “I have to go check on them.”

  He pretended to study the floor lamp behind the couch. “You’ll need dry clothes, first.”

  She looked down at herself. “Oh, boy.” She calmly lifted his pullover shirt and held it over her chest. But her cheeks were red. “Thanks for the loan.”

  “Sorry about the embarrassment.”

  “Don’t apologize for being gallant.” She looked at him with an intrigued expression, then glanced at the faded chintz-covered couch. The cushions where she’d lain had a wet outline of her body. Frowning, she wiped drops of water from a torn place in the upholstery. “Guess it’s a good thing I donated the priceless antiques to the Smithsonian.”

  “Yes, I like this style much better.”

  “I must get up. See about the mares.”

  John placed a hand on her shoulder when she started to scoot past him. “That’s a nasty bump, Miss Hamilton. Your horses are fine. Rest.”

  She stared at him, then at his broad, darkly haired hand. Her breasts rose and fell swiftly under his shirt. Her eyes darted anxiously to his bare chest, then back to his face. She gave him a cold look of warning.

  John casually dropped his hand to his knee. She was looking at him the way a woman did when she distrusted men—all men—intensely. He felt even more protective toward her. “You don’t have to be nervous. I know this is an odd situation, but you’ve got nothing to worry about where I’m concerned.”

  That might be untrue in some ways, he thought a bit guiltily.

  She shuddered and exhaled a long, tired breath. “Sorry. Don’t take it personally.” Tilting her head, she studied him with fascination again. “I guess you’re the first man who rescued me from anything, and I keep wanting to pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming.”

  “Please, no pinching. You’ve got one bruise already.” He was glad to see her smile at his teasing. “I’ll check on your horses for you, if you like. All right, Agnes?”

  “Who told you my name?” He sat back on his heels to give her space. He knew he was too large and brawny to look harmless, but a lot of women found that appealing. He hoped Agnes Hamilton was one of them.

  “You’re listed on the bulletin board at the crossroads grocery,” he said. “ ‘Hamilton Lake and Campground. Aggie Hamilton, owner.’ Your advertisement is right under the one for a fishing supplies store. I was looking at ‘Live Worms and Shrimp—Cheap,’ and then I found you.”

  She smiled again. “There are other campgrounds listed on that board.”

  “True. I’m lucky, I suppose.” He held out the wet dishcloth as if it were a gift. She took it slowly and dabbed it against her bruise. Her hair was a mass of wet ringlets that twirled several inches below her shoulders.

  She could have stepped from a shower. Easy enough to envision her naked and surrounded by steam, John thought. Too easy. “I was trying to lead the horses safely into the woods,” he told her. “Not using one for a free ride.”

  With painful effort she cocked a dark-red brow and studied him solemnly. “What’s a British tourist doing so far off the beaten track? You ought to fire your travel agent.”

  “I wanted to roam the back roads of America. I’m here for a whole month. I decided to rent a Jeep and go wherever the mood took me. Besides, this isn’t so secluded. I hear that St. Augustine is a lovely, large town. And it’s close by, isn’t it?”

  “Fifteen minutes.” She held her head and shut her eyes. Her pale complexion, sprinkled with almond-colored freckles across the nose, was turning a sallow color. She had exactly five freckles. John had counted them. “I’m a little dizzy,” she said.

  He rose to his feet quickly. “I think an X ray of that lovely noggin is in order. If you’ll trust me to drive your car, and you’ll give me highway directions, I’ll carry you to hospital.”

  “Carry me to hospital?” she mimicked gently, doing a surprisingly good imitation of his accent. “I don’t like hospitals, but the way you put it, going to one sounds pretty quaint.”

  “ ‘Kindness it is that brings forth kindness always.’ ”

  “Hmmm, a philosophy lesson.”

  “The ancient Greeks had a way with words. ‘One who knows how to show and to accept kindness will be a friend better than any possession.’ Sophocles. About four hundred B.C.”

  The look on Aggie Hamilton’s face said that she had doubts about a man who tried to impress her by quoting Sophocles. Getting off the couch with slow, careful movements, she recited darkly, “ ‘Skipper, I smell something fishy around here.’ ” She cut her eyes at him. “Gilligan. About 1967.”

  He bit back a rich laugh and latched a hand under her arm as she stood up. “Thanks for your help,” she said abruptly. She held the dishcloth to her head and peered up at him from under an orange chicken embroidered on the material. “This is a strange night. A strange night.” She seemed to be mulling those words, lost in some private bewilderment. “But I appreciate what you did for my horses. And thanks for bringing me inside. And for offering to drive—”

  “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.