Stranger in Camelot (16 page)

“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 Sir 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.

“It’s Mrs. Cranshaw,” a tearful little voice said. “From the campground.”

“Yeah?” he answered curtly.

“My husband fell. I think he’s broken his leg. Please come help us. There’s no one else at the campground. Please.”

What did she think he was, a doctor? He was tired of playing everyone’s saint around here. Tired of acting out Agnes’s fantasy. “I’ll be there right away,” he told Mrs. Cranshaw. He might not be perfect, but he wasn’t capable of cruelty either.

“Bless you.”

John gentled his voice and told her not to worry, that everything would be all right. He hung up the phone then muttered curses while he scrawled a note to Agnes.
He pounded it to the front door with one well-aimed blow of his palm against a thumb tack.

I’m no bloody saint
, he thought fiercely, as he threw his Jeep into gear and tore off down the dirt road to the campground. He was still thinking it when he took Mr. Cranshaw to the hospital, and when he spent the rest of the night comforting Mrs. Cranshaw in the waiting room.
No bloody saint
. They’d all better wise up. Especially Agnes.

She found the note when she finally came home, after talking to Detective Herberts for an hour.
Taking Mr. Cranshaw to hospital. Broken leg. Will call you. John
.

Agnes leaned woodenly against the wall under the porch light and stared at John’s words while tears slid down her face. As usual, he was playing the gentleman. The rescuer. The brave protector of the needy.

He was a brutal, coldhearted liar.

Her dogs flopped around her, gazing up curiously as they listened to her harsh sobs. They jumped and scattered when she made a guttural sound of pain and fury. Then they followed her to the barn at a lope.

Agnes threw the light switch and halted in the center of the hall, her hands clenched and chest heaving. She’d teach him a lesson as bitter and outrageous as the one he’d taught her. She’d make him admit the truth about who he was and what he wanted, and then she’d make him listen to every blistering word she had to say in response.

John could have the books belonging to his family. He could have his victory, and he could go back to England with a smirk on his face, but he’d never forget her or what she was going to do to him.

Agnes dumped several wheelbarrows of extra wood shavings into a clean stall. She checked the heavy iron eyelet bolted into its back wall. None of the horses that
had been tethered there over the years had been able to pull it loose. John Bartholomew, no matter how much of an animal he was, wouldn’t stand a chance.

He was half asleep by the time he returned to Agnes’s place. Mrs. Cranshaw was comfortably settled at a motel near the hospital, and her husband was doing well. The Cranshaws’ grown children were already on their way to Florida to help their parents.

His anger at Agnes sagged. Resignation set in along with the fatigue. He needed her the way the tide needed a shore. He couldn’t deny that, even if she didn’t love him, even if she looked at him and saw some Sir Lancelot type, straight out of Camelot, instead of a flesh-and-blood, highly fallible man.

Dawn painted her house and barn with a pink mist. The air was cool and tangy. John dragged himself from the Jeep and noticed the barn door was open. Frowning, he shooed the dogs aside and went in. The lights were on. Agnes’s palomino mare, Sassy, gazed at him from a stall in the far end.

“Agnes?” he called, frowning. “Are you here?”

There was a rustling sound in one of the stalls. She stumbled out, barefoot, brushing wood shavings from her shorts and shirt. Her hair was disheveled and she rubbed her eyes groggily. From the red, puffy look of her face, she’d been asleep for hours. No wonder she hadn’t answered the phone when he’d called. “Mornin’,” she said hoarsely. “Cranshaws all right?”

“Yes.” He told her what had happened. She nodded. “Thanks for helping them out. You must be exhausted.”

He walked up to her, feeling an odd strain in the air but unable to put his finger on the cause. Of course, in his pensive, simmering bad mood, he could be imagining things. “Yes. Why are you out here?”

“Sassy was hanging around alone when I got home
from work. I think she’s about to go into labor. She had a rough time foaling last year. I want to stay close by.” Agnes took his hand. “Come on. I fixed a place in the stall. Wood shavings make a great bed. Let’s go to sleep.”

“That’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all night.”

She’d spread blankets in one corner of the stall. When he lay down beside her the deep bed of wood shavings conformed to his shape like a luxury mattress. “Sweet man,” she whispered, and kissed his cheek. “Want to take your clothes off? You know how muggy it gets in here later in the morning.”

“That’s the
other
best suggestion I’ve heard all night.”

“I’ll help.” She quickly removed his jogging shoes, khaki shorts, and short-sleeved white pullover. John sighed when the pleasant dawn air hit his bare skin. It was soothing to lie there in nothing but his white briefs. He felt as if Agnes had stripped away some of his doubts. His arousal was quick and demanding.

“Whoa, boy,” she said, that edgy tone in her voice again. His imagination? She slapped his stomach playfully, but it stung. John looked at her askance. “Sleep first, play later,” she told him.

“I’m not the spanking type, Agnes.” He forced a chuckle.

“You’re a big ol’ sweet honey bear. But go to sleep.”

Her drawl was heavy as syrup. He wearily recalled something about her warning him about it. It was a sign of her dangerous side, she’d said. But what was dangerous about lying here beside her in nothing but his briefs, with her hands rubbing his shoulders?

He shut his eyes. Tormented emotions still churned inside him—sadness and worry and a sense of betrayal because her feelings for him probably weren’t what he wanted them to be. But when she continued to massage his shoulders he looked up at her gently. “You really look like you’ve been through the wringer.” He reached up to caress her face. “Anything wrong?”

She pulled back, shook her head, but smiled. “If you touch me like that I’ll pounce on you. But it might be painful.”

He chuckled sleepily and dropped his hand to his side. “Lie down and snuggle with me.”

“Yum. But let me take care of you first.” She tossed his clothes to a far corner of the stall then began rubbing tiny circles on his forehead, her fingertips coaxing tendrils of sleep through his brain. He shut his eyes and told himself he’d try to make sense of what Agnes wanted from him later, when his mind was fresh.

She bent over him as he drifted into darkness. “Relax and let yourself go,” she crooned, massaging his temples. “And when you wake up you’ll think you’re a new man.”

Maybe you can love him
, John thought just before he fell asleep.

Agnes stood in the stall’s far corner and watched him wake up. He was covered in sweat, but not from the barn’s noonday temperature. The fan she’d set in the stall’s open doorway made a nice breeze.

She hoped he was having a nightmare.

His muscular, nearly naked body was restless on the blankets. He rubbed one brawny hand across his face, raked it over his black hair, and grimaced savagely with his eyes still shut.

She shivered and hugged herself. His rough, unpredictable nature showed when he slept. She should have noticed before, but she’d been blind.

His eyes opened abruptly and he bolted upright, breathing hard and squinting in the sunlight that came through a big screened window. “Sleep well?” she asked in an acid tone.

But he missed the change in attitude and answered groggily, “I was dreaming about being choked. Strangest
dream …” He halted. His big, commanding hands flew to the thick chain padlocked snugly around his neck.

His astonished gaze shot to her bitter one. “Are we being kinky, Agnes?”

“No. We’re being realistic. You’re vicious. I chained you up like a rabid dog.”