Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] by The Mists of Time Read Free Book Online Page A

Camelot I saw in Arthur’s time? Do you know that name?”
    He grew wary. “Arthur is dead.”
    “Oh.” Her last bit of hope whispered away like ash on the wind. She put down her fork. “Well, I guess if there was a shining moment, it was over,” she muttered to herself in English. Maybe there was no possibility for happy endings.
    “The Saxons wait to pounce on the kingdom if we cannot unite behind a successor. I am the only one who canhold it. I will marry his queen. I’ll give her what she didn’t get from him.” His expression was self-satisfied.
    Marry Guinevere? This man? Perhaps he was some king of a smaller kingdom. Orkney? “Perhaps she will mourn too much for Arthur to marry. Or perhaps she would go to Lancelot.”
    “Who? I know not this man.” He was wolfing down the pasta.
    She thought so. Lancelot had been made up in Medieval times. She heaved a sigh. “It is not important.” Camelot wafted away like the dream it was. It had been literary dream, not a real one. She should be used to that. Wasn’t her specialty making up stories about finding true love in unusual places? She liked to think she wasn’t writing fantasy, that’s all.
    She answered his questions patiently, as well as she could, as she did the dishes. Then she showed him how to use the bathroom to wash and relieve himself. She felt obligated to explain that in this time men were expected to bathe daily. That was a shock to him. When he finally emerged from the bathroom with the towel around his waist, she had the pullout bed made up. She glanced up to see that he had a lean body with ropy muscles. Not her type.
    He sat on the bed. His gaze roved over her. “It is customary for a warrior to take a comely woman to his bed on the eve of a victory,” he said. How could he have the energy to even think about that? But he was thinking it all right. The bulge in his towel said so. Revulsion washed over her on some elemental level she couldn’t explain.
    “Hold on. I didn’t see a victory,” she protested, backing toward her bedroom.
    “I lived.” He held out a hand. “Come. With your powers and mine, the world is ours.”
    “I do not have power,” she hissed. “I have told you that.And I will not be a marker of your victory.” Indeed, the whole thought of bedding him made her just go
ewwwe
, inside. Her gaze darted to the great sword leaning against the desk. “Keep your hands to yourself or leave.”
    He held up his hands, palms out. “Forgive me, my lady. Our ways are different. I shall not touch you. My honor is my promise.”
    She chewed her lip. She couldn’t throw him out. (A) it was cruel to abandon him in a world he didn’t understand, and (B) she wasn’t sure she shouldn’t be bundling him back to the fifth century. Oh, this was bad on so many levels. She had no idea what to do. “You will sleep there.” She pointed to the fold-out bed. “I will sleep in my bedroom.”
With the door locked.
    She was bone tired, but still she was drawn to the front window again. She drew back the drapery. Her stalker moved into the pool of light and there was something infinitely attractive about him, Most horrifying of all was that she wasn’t horrified at that.
    Maybe tomorrow it was time to buy a gun.
    The man with her was dressed in fifth-century chain mail and had a sword. He’d seen them at the museum and entering the apartment, not up close, but you couldn’t mistake chain mail. He could hardly swallow. His mouth was dry. Where had she gotten him? How?
    Or maybe this man had come to keep her from fulfilling her destiny, whatever that was. Was she in danger? It took all his restraint not to burst into her apartment and strike down the man. But if he burst in now, without preparing her, she’d be even more frightened of him. She might call the police. He knew where that would lead for someone like him. Then he would have failed his father once again.
    Still, he had to know if she was in danger.
    He slid across the