Stranger in Camelot Read online

  DEBORAH SMITH

  #468 STRANGER IN CAMELOT by Deborah Smith

  #469 SECRET KEEPER by Victoria Leigh

  #470 MEMORIES by Joan Elliott Pickart

  #471 EARTH ANGEL by Linda Cajio

  #472 ROMANCING SUSAN by Theresa Gladden

  #473 HOT PURSUIT by Patt Bucheister

  “You’re perfect in that bathing suit,” John said. “This sort of body made Marilyn Monroe a star.”

  Agnes smiled. “I could learn to enjoy your brand of flattery.”

  “Please don’t think I’m flirting.” He hesitated. “It is flirting, but it’s sincere.”

  She moistened her lips. “I never heard of anyone getting into trouble for kissing on a public beach.”

  He put a hand on the center of her stomach, caressing the small patch of bare skin the two-piece suit revealed. She trembled under his fingertips.

  “We’re very secluded back here by the dunes,” he agreed. “No one’s paying any attention to us.”

  “I don’t feel like Marilyn Monroe, I feel like Doris Day in this suit—and all she ever did was kiss.”

  The hot breeze drew a strand of red hair across her face. He lifted the hair aside and let the pad of his thumb caress her cheek. “I’m trying to decide which corner of your mouth to kiss first. You have sexy lips, Agnes. I can’t tell which lip is nicer. I think it’s a tie.”

  She grinned. “Just kiss me, and I’ll help you decide.”

  When he lowered his mouth to hers, she mewled softly and opened her lips, at first playful as she kissed him, then so intense it was all he could do to keep from snatching her into his arms. A sudden rush of emotion made him feel like a teenager again.…

  STRANGER IN CAMELOT

  A Bantam Book/May 1991

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  Copyright © 1991 by Deborah Smith.

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  v3.1

  For Ann White and our phone bills

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  One

  This is the last farewell my lady, my love.

  The tender words of a doomed English knight reached across more than eight hundred years and once again filled Aggie Hamilton’s eyes with tears. Dismayed, she brushed a calloused fingertip across her damp cheeks. Her reaction was beginning to worry her.

  The powerful story of Sir Miles of Norcross, and his love for his wife, Eleanor, had taken over Aggie’s imagination for the past month. But Sir Miles’s diary and prayer book were worth a small fortune, and she couldn’t afford to let her infatuation with him get out of control.

  She jumped as another round of thunder bowled across the black sky. Beyond her bedroom window the sultry Florida night was filling with heat and electricity, and the wind rushed through her white curtains like boiling ocean surf. She could imagine the white breakers flinging themselves against the beaches in St. Augustine, ten miles away.

  Her emotions were in the same fever.

  Her hands quivering, she placed the notebook pages covered with her grandfather’s neat, scholarly translation back into the metal security box along with its more precious contents, Sir Miles’s original diary and his prayer book. She’d never suspected that her grandfather was capable of harboring such an unnervingly valuable possession. Or of bequeathing it to her. Every time she thought of how much the books must be worth, her mouth went dry.

  Because she didn’t want to sell them.

  When lightning flashed outside her window Aggie jumped. She turned up the volume on the small radio beside her bed to catch more details from the announcer of tornado warnings for St. Augustine and the surrounding areas.

  A chill ran up her back. She had to check on her mares. Sliding out of bed, she shoved the tail of her short nightgown into cut-off jeans then laced hiking boots on her bare feet. She carried the security box to the room next to hers and dropped it into a bottom file drawer of a scarred old desk. She locked the drawer hurriedly, using its tarnished key, and tossed the key into a flower vase filled with silk begonias.

  No time, no time. The thunder seemed to rumble the message to her, and she wondered why she wasted precious time on daydreams.

  She ran to her front porch. A half dozen ugly, fat, adoring dogs huddled around her legs as she stared anxiously into the storm.

  Trouble was brewing in the night.

  Aggie grabbed a flashlight from a porch shelf. As she crossed the sandy yard past the outbuildings, large raindrops slapped her face. Behind the main barn the pine trees swayed wildly. She climbed a pasture gate and stumbled when her boots sank into the churned sand on the other side.

  She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled into the tempest. “Val-en-tine!” Squinting, she saw her six mares galloping toward her from the pasture’s far side. One ran slightly ahead of them. Valentine, undoubtedly. She was always the leader.

  With a rider on her back.

  Astonished, Aggie shook her head to clear the phantom from it. Her imagination had been overloaded lately. The darkness absorbed the mares again. Aggie’s heart pounded. She whistled and called toward the racing shadows. “Val-en-tine! Come here, Val-en-tine!”

  When a burst of lightning whitened the darkness, Aggie was already running down the pasture’s edge along the pine forest, drenched and shaking with fear. Moving from tree to tree in the pouring rain, she gritted her teeth when the wind threw a small limb against her side.

  It tangled in her nightgown, and when she jerked it loose it tore a long gash in the cotton material. She tried distractedly to cover her exposed breast, then gave up.

  The limber pine trees bent like flowers in a stiff breeze. At the edge of the pasture the flat Florida landscape stretched into infinity across a universe of tall grass. Aggie peered helplessly into the blackness as streamers of her long hair plastered themselves over her eyes.

  She tripped on a clump of sharp palmetto grass and fell to her hands and knees, while the flashlight tumbled into the grass, turning off as it rolled. Her dogs hovered nearby, whimpering in the cover of the pines.

  Aggie’s raspy breaths were lost in the slashing rain and wind. The thunder crashed around her
as she slung her hair back and staggered to her feet.

  The night snapped open as lightning flared. Aggie gasped, both hands raised defensively, her fingers knotting in her torn gown. Yes, someone was riding Valentine.

  The phantom was tall. A cape flared around him in the tearing wind. He was riding straight out of the night toward her. Sir Miles would have been this dramatic, Aggie thought, riding out of the darkness. Then she shook her head furiously. She was losing her mind over a medieval fantasy.

  Within the space of a few frantic heartbeats the man and the horses closed in on her. Aggie broke her stunned stillness and waved her arms to halt them. She wouldn’t let herself be run over by a phantom or trampled by her own imagination. She was too practical for that.

  “Val-en-tiiine! Whooa!”

  The other mares fanned out and kept running when they saw her, but Valentine began to slow, as if controlled by the apparition astride her back. Lightning illuminated his outstretched arm as the mare loped the last few paces toward Aggie. Her blood thundered like the storm. He was reaching toward her.

  Then her ears filled with the moan of wood being ripped apart behind her. Aggie pivoted blindly in the darkness and rain, staring at a pine that had broken in the middle. The top lurched crazily.

  The mares brushed past her on either side, snorting, flinging soggy clumps of sand with their hooves. Valentine slid to a stop and bumped her in the back. Aggie lost her balance and nearly fell as Valentine twisted sideways, prancing.

  The horseman reached down and grabbed Aggie’s shoulder.

  Terrified, she whirled toward him. What was happening to her simple life? She’d been waiting for something or someone to break the spell that had captured her. To break it, or make it real.

  “What are you doing here?” she screamed up at the phantom, twisting out of his grasp as she did. The wind howled around them as if filled with spirits. “What do you want?”

  She heard the whoosh of a torn tree branch a second before it struck her head. Then there was just the darkness and the phantom, who absorbed her last conscious thought when he called her name. It seemed he had answered her question.

  The publicity photographs hadn’t come close to doing her justice, John Bartholomew decided as he hurriedly carried the woman into her house. Of course, the photos had been taken more than twelve years before, when she left show business.

  She wasn’t the girl-next-door teenager anymore. Good. He’d been struggling to picture the mature Aggie Hamilton, and he hadn’t wanted to see her as that cute, oddly vulnerable-looking kid. There was too much at stake for him to risk feeling sentimental toward her.

  No problem there, he grumbled to himself. The half-conscious woman he carried into the small, weathered house and placed on the old couch was disarmingly voluptuous compared to the skinny teenager, and the hair that had been done in tomboy braids was a thick, curly mane, even when wet.

  And photos hadn’t hinted at her intriguing scent—a mixture of hay, spices, rainwater. In his arms she felt achingly soft but not delicate. Her ruddy fists—even when knocked nearly senseless she never unclenched them—impressed him with their determination.

  Americans grow their thieves lovely but tough, he thought.

  Scowling, John tucked a throw pillow under her head. Then he strode into her kitchen and ran water over a dish towel. He’d seen too many knocked heads and been knocked in the head too often himself to be very alarmed about her condition. Still, his heart was tripping along a bit too fast for its unfeeling self, he thought wryly. Had to be the storm’s effect. And seeing her in all the thunder and lightning, braced against the elements, fighting them. And seeing her get hurt. All of it had given him the feeling that she’d been waiting for him. It made him feel guilty. What rubbish!

  John ran back to the living room and bent over her, his yellow poncho streaming water onto the pale, glistening skin of her face and neck. He removed the poncho and tossed it aside then cupped her head in one hand, while he wiped the cloth over the scraped place at the top of her forehead. A nasty bruise was swelling there.

  She continued to move her head weakly, frowning and squinting. John smoothed back her sopping red hair. With what he hoped was cynicism he studied her face. Still a girlish package, with those apple-round cheeks and that tipped nose, he decided. But the sexy mouth gave her away. Her mouth had grown up a long time ago, according to the stories about her. He reminded himself that her past wasn’t as pretty as she was.

  Finally he looked at her breasts. The soaked gown didn’t leave any secrets about their size, shape, or general magnificence, and the torn place neatly framed one breast and its rosy, upthrust nipple. A drop of rainwater perched there. Her restless movements made it slide onto her blue-veined skin and disappear beneath the gown’s ragged edge.

  John was dismayed but not surprised when blood rushed to his belly and tightened him. He never hesitated to admire a woman, the fewer clothes on her, the better. But he didn’t want to admire a hurt, helpless one who had no choice in the matter.

  He had nothing else to cover her with, so he removed his soggy white pullover and draped it along her torso. The pullover hid her from neck to thighs. John shook his head at her long, sculpted legs. He’d covered what he could. He deserved to enjoy looking at the rest.

  He knelt beside the couch and pressed the dishcloth to her head again. The rainwater inside his khaki trousers made him itch to strip his clothes off. With grim humor he wondered how quickly the sight of a tall, hairy man wearing nothing but briefs would shock the lady back to her senses.

  The other women who had seen him that way over the years had not been shocked, of course, but, well, delightfully astonished. But Aggie Hamilton would probably punch him with those hard little fists and call the local constable.

  “Agnes?” he said gently, pressing the cloth to her forehead. “Miss Hamilton?”

  Her hands finally unfurled and moved limply toward her head. She touched her face with tentative fingertips, bumped his hands, stopped, then sighed. Even with her eyes still closed her expression seemed confused—or was it hopeful? “Sir Miles,” she murmured.

  John was so startled at hearing his ancestor’s name that he drew back abruptly, forgetting gentleness. After studying her for a moment, grim determination took over. She had the books. This proved it.

  Blinking rapidly, she opened her eyes and stared into space, wincing with pain. Slowly her gaze shifted to him. He watched her eyes focus then widen with alarm.

  “You’re all right,” he assured her distractedly, squeezing her hand for a moment. “You were hit on the head by a tree branch. I carried you to your house. Please don’t be afraid of me.”

  “Who are you and what were you doing in my pasture?”

  He started to tell her the truth. He’d come here planning to tell her, to confront her. But he couldn’t start making trouble while she was hurt and groggy. The way she’d said “Sir Miles” made a shiver run up his spine. She’d caressed the name as if it meant something special to her.

  “Who are you?” she repeated. “Quit givin’ me that stare and say something.”

  “Miss Hamilton, relax. First things first. Are you all right?”

  She gingerly touched the knot on her forehead. Her gaze bored into him, not sidetracked by the pain. “I said, Who are you?”

  He planned quickly and came up with an evasive answer. “I’m a tourist. I was looking for your campground when my Jeep broke down. I climbed over a fence along the road—your fence, apparently—and started walking. I hoped to find the campsite or your house.”

  “What were you doing with my horses?”

  “Nothing wicked, I assure you.” He chuckled, trying very hard to distract himself from the intriguing mixture of colors in her eyes. The irises were gray toward the center, darkening outward to soft blue, and rimmed in dark blue at the perimeters. He could understand how a camera would fall in love with those eyes.

  He leaned forward again and stroked the wet cloth o
ver her bruise. An injured woman could turn a man to mush. All his protective instincts rose to the surface. And it was pleasing to touch her, more pleasing than touching any other woman he could recall. Glancing down at her generous breasts making hills under his shirt, he admitted that his plan might become much more personal than he’d expected.

  You’re no gentleman, Bartholomew.

  “I’m terribly lazy,” he told her. “I saw the horses and decided that searching for your campground would be a great deal more pleasant if I had four hooves under me.”

  “That mare you were galloping is in foal.”

  “Eight hooves, then.” He laughed, saw her stern expression soften a little, and knew that his charm was working. “I could see that she was pregnant. I didn’t encourage her to take off like a rocket. But she didn’t ask for my permission. With nothing but my belt snugged around her nose as a rein, she didn’t have to.”

  “You’re English, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. From London.”

  The information upset her. He could see her withdrawing, wariness and surprise cloaking her eyes. Dull anger grew inside him. She had the books. That was why meeting an Englishman startled her. If she was this nervous about her secret, he’d have a fight when she learned why he’d come to find her.

  But maybe she didn’t need to know. Maybe he could coax her into telling him about the books, if he played his cards right. “Is there a problem?” John asked.

  “No. Nothing. I don’t get many foreign tourists, that’s all. By the way, the campground is on the other side of the woods, not here. This is my home. My ranch.”

  “All right. Now that we’ve got the introduction settled, let’s take care of you. How do you feel?”