Stranger in Camelot Read Free Page A

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 onher 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?