A Touch of Camelot (34 page)

Cole laughed. "I remember. You said no."

"I want to change my answer."

As the Central Pacific Express pulled out of the Oakland station, Gwin smiled to herself. They were headed east, headed home. She had a feeling she was going to love Chicago.

***

From the Author

I hope you enjoyed
A Touch of Camelot
.

This book will always hold a special place in my heart. It was my first completed novel, written when my children were very young, and—much like hearing strains from a favorite old song—reading parts of it can even now bring those years back to me.

A Touch of Camelot
won a Golden Heart Award from Romance Writers of America and was published by Harper Paperbacks. It was soon followed by three more historical romances written under the name Donna Grove.

I invite you to read the excerpt that follows and look for Arthur's story in Book Two of the Camelot Series,
Search for Camelot
, to be released as an ebook soon.

For more about me, upcoming backlist releases, and new projects in the works, please visit me at www.delynnroyer.com.

*

Coming next in the Camelot Series:
Search for Camelot

Philadelphia and Britain, 1892

Arthur Pierce was raised on bedtime stories of Camelot, but growing up in a family of sharpers taught him that only suckers believe in dreams.

When he inherits an ancient clue that could lead to the fabled sword Excalibur, he tells himself it’s the payoff, not the adventure that draws him to the quest.

Chelsea Delafield is an aloof British bluestocking, certainly not the fun-loving type of woman Arthur likes to dally with, but he needs her. She’s an expert in Arthurian history.

So, why does Arthur find himself dreaming each night that beneath Chelsea’s cool intellect is his own Lady of the Lake, a passionate woman able to fulfill his buried desire for romance?

Excerpt from Search for Camelot

Prologue

The young king was not more than three and twenty when his mighty sword was lost in battle. He was most despondent, for it had served him well.

“My sword has broken,” said Arthur.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Merlin. “The time has come for you to take another. Come with me.”

And so, together they rode into the enchanted forest until they came to a clearing in which was cradled a magical lake. All was still. Not a breeze stirred the trees or the glasslike surface of the deep blue water.

Merlin pointed. “Look.”

And there, in the middle of the lake, Arthur witnessed a wondrous sight: a woman’s arm as it rose to break the water’s surface. In her grasp was a sword that gleamed more excellent than any he had seen before.

“It is called Excalibur,” Merlin said. “Until now, no knight has been able to claim it.”

As Merlin spoke, a woman appeared from out of the mist upon the lake’s shore. Of pale complexion, with bright eyes and hair as black as a midsummer night, she was clad in the green of the forest.

Overcome with her otherworldly beauty, Arthur dismounted and knelt before her. “My lady,” he said, “you are no mortal.”

“Why have you come, gentle king?”

“I have lost my sword in battle, and Merlin has told me of Excalibur. Now, I have seen it with my own eyes, and I want it for my own. To whom does it belong?”

“I am its guardian,” she said. “But I will make a gift of it to you upon one condition. You must return a gift to me when the time comes that I ask it of you.”

“I will,” promised Arthur.

“Then it is done.”

And with that, she was gone. Along the shore near where she had stood was a boat.

“Go,” said Merlin.

Arthur climbed into the boat, but before he could reach for the oars, it moved of its own accord across the still waters of the lake. It did not stop until it had reached the hand that held the sword.

“The Lady of the Lake has bequeathed Excalibur to me,” he said, then clasped its haft. To his astonishment, it felt not as cold as steel, but as warm as living flesh.

The hand relinquished the sword and vanished back into the deep. From that moment on, Excalibur was his.

The story of how King Arthur obtained Excalibur, as told by Emmaline Pierce to her young son, Arthur Pierce, 1875
.

Chapter One

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 1892

Her throat was dry and her palms were wet.

Chelsea Delafield’s heart thumped against her ribs as she paced the length of the elegant sitting room that adjoined the assembly hall of the Philadelphia Historical Society.

Clutching a sheaf of dog-eared pages to her stomach, she silently rehearsed the opening lines of her presentation. It was always like this when she had to address a group, whether it be five or five score; this wasn’t the first time she had been forced to wonder what sort of teacher she would make when, at the end of this week, she accepted her degree from Temple College and set sail for home.

Home.

Don’t think about it
, she berated herself, stopping to adjust her spectacles and focus on the first lines of her research paper. Its title,
King Arthur and His Role in the Saxon Invasion of Britain: Myth or History?
, written in her own flourishing hand, was committed to memory. She’d worked bloody hard on this final project, and her dedication had been rewarded. Professor Hawthorne had declared it worthy of presentation at the historical society. It was an honor.

So why did she feel as if she were about to be tossed to the lions?

Chelsea raised anxious violet eyes to the forbidding door that separated her from the assembly hall. From beyond, she could discern the low buzz of a growing crowd.
Bloody hell
, she thought,
I believe I’m going to lose my dinner
.

A connecting door to a rear corridor opened behind her. There followed a clatter, a yelp, and a crash. Chelsea winced. She was expecting only two people. The first was her fellow speaker, Arthur Pierce, another night school student who should have been here more than ten minutes ago, blast him. The second was her, well, beau, for lack of a better term, a mathematics honor student, Miles Middleton.

She didn’t need to turn around to know which of them had just stumbled into the room, but she did anyway, and her expression fell. Dressed in an ill-fitting black serge suit, Miles’s gawky, six-foot frame sprawled atop a mounted map of Arthurian England and a folding wooden easel.

Chelsea set her papers down and hurried to his side. “Miles, stop this nonsense and get up. Can’t you see I’m nervous enough as it is?”

“Sorry, Chelsea. I was doing fine until that blasted easel caught in the door jamb.”

“Is anything broken?” She dropped to her knees and struggled to tug her map out from under him, no small task as it measured an impressive four feet tall. Chelsea had slaved over it for weeks.

“No, I don’t think so. Except maybe for my—”

“Seems to be undamaged,” Chelsea murmured, scrutinizing the map for dents or smudges.

“—spectacles.”

Chelsea raised her head. “Your spectacles?” She stared at Miles, at the straight center part in his sleek, acorn brown hair, and felt a stab of guilt. “Oh, dear. Are you all right?”

He nodded as he searched the floor blindly. “Yes, except for my ...”

She plucked up his eyeglasses. “Spectacles.”

Miles settled them on his nose. “Oh, much better.”            

It was true that Chelsea had grown fond of Miles over the past four years. Despite his imposing size, there was an eager, puppy-dog quality about him that was hard to turn away. Ever since their first meeting in a freshman evening course, they had spent many weekends studying together in the library. They’d also passed many hours in the parlor of Chelsea’s rooming house, playing dominoes and backgammon.

Now, Miles surveyed the sitting room as if searching for something. Or
someone
. “Where’s Pierce? Isn’t he supposed to be here by now?”

Arthur Pierce. Even at the mere utterance of that name, Chelsea pursed her lips. “He’s late.”

“Late?”

“Late.” Chelsea snatched up Miles’s stovepipe hat. “Here.”

Miles took his hat and stood. “But what will you do if he doesn’t show?”

Chelsea stood and brushed off her skirt. Her presentation was exactly thirty-two minutes. If Pierce didn’t show up to deliver his companion lecture on William the Conqueror, Chelsea would be left with another twenty-eight minutes to fill.

“I don’t want to think about it."

“Well, I daresay you’d better think about it. He’s an irresponsible cad, and I wouldn’t put it past him to—”

“I don’t want to discuss it,” Chelsea said irritably.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Feeling another stab of guilt, Chelsea apologized. “Oh, I’m sorry, too, Miles. I shouldn’t be taking out my frustrations on you. I should be taking them out on Mr. Pierce, but he’s not here to receive them.”

“Quite all right.”

“And I do appreciate you offering to fetch my easel and map.”

He smiled. “Have I mentioned that you look ravishing this evening?”

Ravishing?
Chelsea cocked her head to one side. Poor Miles. He actually meant it, that was the thing. Most young men were intimidated by an intelligent woman, but not Miles. The mere thought of Chelsea’s brain positively inflamed him.

“Thank you,” she said, uncomfortable.

“Chelsea, I...” He trailed off, fingering the brim of his stovepipe. He tossed it onto a wing chair and began again. “Chelsea, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say ever since—”

“First, let’s get this taken care of, shall we?” She bent to retrieve her map.

“Oh, of course.” Miles moved at the same time.

Their fingers touched. Chelsea tried to draw back, but Miles caught up her hand as they both straightened.

“Chelsea, I know you’re planning to return to London after graduation, but there’s something I want you to think about before...”

She found it difficult to concentrate on his words. Instead, she found her thoughts turning to what had precipitated this most recent problem with him. Her birthday.

Although she didn’t subscribe to the antiquated notion that, at twenty-two, she was so bad off as to be withered on the vine, she did believe that it was well past time she be properly kissed by a member of the opposite gender. Due to proximity, she chose Miles.

Once her decision was made, Chelsea had begun to drop some subtle, then not-so-subtle hints during their times together. Miles, however, had been slow at taking up the baton. A full week had passed before Chelsea decided to confront the matter directly.

One balmy, blossom-scented evening, after leaving metaphysics class together, she had grabbed him by the lapels and dragged his face down to hers. “Don’t you want to
kisssss
me, Miles?” she had asked as they blinked at each other through twin pairs of steel-rimmed spectacles.

They were a good match, actually, she being myopic, he being hyperopic. Romance and passion be damned.

".. and so it has become clear to me that we share a certain intellectual compatibility that is more rare than ...”

As Miles droned on, Chelsea was assailed by a vivid recollection of their lips coming together with all the finesse of two battleships colliding at high sea. When they had finally drawn apart, Miles had appeared quite winded and pink about the ears. Chelsea, by contrast, had felt nothing.

“... and as I’ve now been offered a teaching position with the Episcopal Academy next fall—”

A knock on the open sitting room door startled them both. Miles swore under his breath, “Oh, diddlysquat.”

Expecting her rescuer to be Professor Hawthorne, Chelsea withdrew her hand from Miles’s grasp to peer around his shoulder. The portly, well-dressed gentleman who stood in the doorway, however, was not Professor Hawthorne. In fact, he bore no resemblance to her history professor. With a white beard and a full head of snowy hair, he looked more like Saint Nicholas.

“May we help you?" Chelsea asked, noting that in place of a sack of presents, he carried a leather Gladstone valise.

The man spoke with a refined British accent. “I say, sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for a chap by the name of Arthur Pierce. I was told he was lecturing here this evening.”

“He is, but he’s late, and ...” Chelsea stared as an alabaster cat executed a languid figure eight around the man’s ankles.

“Pierce is always late,” Miles said crossly. “That is, when he bothers to show up.”

“Is that so? Would you have any idea where I might find him? It’s urgent that I speak to him.”

Chelsea tore her gaze from the cat. “You might try his rooming house on Pine Street.”

“Oh, yes. I have the address.”

“And if he’s not there,” Miles put in testily, “try an establishment called DeLancey’s on Arch Street.”

“Jolly good. Thank you, sir.” The man looked down as the cat mewled at his feet. “What’s that, Crystal?”

The cat stood at attention, its white head cocked, its tail pointing toward the ceiling. It meowed again.

“Oh, yes, yes. Quite true, quite true,” the man said. When he looked up, he tipped his black derby. “Cheerio, then.” He gestured to the cat with his walking cane. “Come along, Crystal. No time to waste.”

And, with that, both the man and his feline were gone.

Miles and Chelsea stood motionless for a moment before turning to each other. “Did you hear that?” Miles asked. “I believe he was talking to that cat.”

“That's nothing. I believe he thought that the cat was talking to him.”

“Odd…isn't it?”

Chelsea frowned as she pondered the deserted doorway. Odd indeed.

*

MME. COLETTE’S BRITISH BLONDES!!!