Bewitched (8 page)

“Oh yes, enormous, isn’t it?” Stapleton cast a look around the forecourt before he looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. “Just as enormous as the debts Montagu incurred when he had it rebuilt after a fire. How desperate must a man be to marry a madwoman?”

“A madwoman?” Amy held her breath, enchanted as always with his stories.

The corners of his eyes crinkled, and she wished she could reach up and put her finger there. Or even her lips. A blush warmed her face. She was turning into a terrible wanton.

“He had to pretend to be the Emperor of China before she would agree to marry him. It’s said the servants had to serve her on bended knees.”

“Really?” Amy imagined a stately matron adorned with fantastical dresses—for surely the Empress of China had to wear fantastical dresses—and sitting enthroned on a chair in the drawing room, while the poor servants had to slither around on their knees. She giggled.

As he searched her face, the smile disappeared and his expression turned solemn. “And would you need your future husband to be a crowned head, too, Miss Bourne?” he asked softly.

The breath caught in her throat, which suddenly seemed to be filled with the thudding of her heart. “What?” she croaked, rather unladylike.

Yet that special moment had already fled. He looked past her. “It seems that Miss Bentham is impatient to explore the wonders of the British Museum. So, shall we?” He cocked his head to the side.

Amy bit her lip. “Of course,” she murmured. For one moment she had thought he meant to ask something she’d been hoping with all her heart to hear.

He led her up the stairs to where Isabella and Lord Munthorpe were already waiting for them. Isabella scowled at Amy. “We don’t want to be too late for our guide,” she said, her nose pinched with displeasure. “After all, we wouldn’t want to miss the barometz.” She turned and managed to switch from an expression of annoyance to a simpering smile in a heartbeat. “Isn’t that so, my lord?”

Lord Munthorpe’s chest swelled. “Quite so.” He beamed at her.

“Er…” Sometimes, Amy thought, it took heroic effort to stay polite in Miss Isabella Bentham’s company, especially when she was playing the sweet, coy girl for Lord Munthorpe’s benefit. Worst of all: the poor man seemed to fall for her tricks! “I’m sure we wouldn’t want to miss the… er…”

“Barometz,” Mr. Stapleton cut in quickly.

She cast him a grateful look and, smiling, he pressed her arm a little tighter to his side in answer.

Isabella sniffed. “Shall we proceed inside?”

“Of course.” Lord Munthorpe hurried to lead her gallantly through the entrance of the museum.

“Hm.” Amy stared after them. Isabella, she was sure, would have relished the role of Empress of China. As it was, she seemed hell-bent on becoming at least a countess. “So, what exactly is a barometz?”

Beside her, Mr. Stapleton shrugged. “I haven’t even the foggiest.” His blue-gray eyes danced with merriment as he laughed down at her. “Yet knowing Munty, I would almost bet it has something to do with sheep. Shall we find out?”

Laughter bubbled in her throat. “Oh, I absolutely insist, Mr. Stapleton.”

He sketched her a comical half bow. “As Your Majesty wishes.” And grinning, he swept her through the door.

In the front hall, overshadowed by solemn-looking marble statues, he produced their tickets for the porter. The portly man showed them to a room where a small group of people was already waiting for the tour to start. A few minutes later their guide, a pale young man, appeared, and they were finally led into the hallowed hallways and galleries of that venerable institution, the British Museum.

They admired sculptures from Persepolis; a marble bust of Hercules with curly hair and beard; a twelfth-century reliquary, said to have contained some remains of Thomas à Becket at one time; Sir Hans Sloane’s
materia medica
, a pharmaceutical cabinet full of seeds, dried fruit, bark, roots, ground mummies’ fingers for treating bruises, and rhinoceros horn, an antidote to poison. One room was filled with fossils, petrified teeth, and bones of enormous animals dug up from the earth—Devil’s Toenails and snakestones.

“Once collected by our superstitious forebears as charms against bad luck,” their young guide intoned in the slightly bored voice of one who had repeated the same words a thousand times, “we now believe these fossilized items to be the remains of extinct plants and animals.” Dutifully, the group looked at the teeth.

Charms and magic…

Amy could not help lightly resting her fingertips on the glass of the display case, which held the smaller teeth and bones. Her hands tingled with remembered power. She had to bite her lip to smother a gasp. Oh, how it hurt in such moments, the loss of her magic, of the joy and the power.

A hand touched her shoulder. Unwilling for someone else to witness her yearning, she jerked away. Her head whipped around and up, and she looked straight into Stapleton’s worried face.

“Are you all right, my dear?” he asked.

His gentle concern touched her heart and made the pain ebb away. “Yes. Yes, of course.” Stepping away from the display case, she forced a smile to her lips. “It’s just…” She turned and, with her head crooked to the side, pretended to study an enormous jawbone with teeth as big as her fists. “It’s amazing, is it not, to imagine that such large animals once roamed the earth.” Oh, how she yearned to tell him about the magic and the wonder of it! But she couldn’t, for had she not been taught from an early age never to share her family’s secret with an outsider? And never ever to perform magic where other people might watch. Still, she felt she could tell Mr. Stapleton
anything
. Dear Sebastian…

“Heroic ages when men could still fight dragons and monsters to prove their worth to the women they loved.” Amusement tinged his voice.

Following the pull of a new magic altogether, Amy turned her head to meet his gaze. As she watched, amusement left his blue-gray eyes and was replaced by a strange, compelling intensity.

The memory of loss and pain fled her thoughts. Just as in the courtyard, Amy’s breath caught and her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Dust particles danced around Mr. Stapleton, glittered in the sunlight that fell through the windows. His hair glowed like embers when he lowered his head toward her.

“It would have been an honor to put the head of the largest dragon at your feet,” he said.

“You would have done that?” she whispered, drowning in his eyes.

“Yes.” He took her hand. His thumb brushed over her wrist as if he wanted to feel the pulse that fluttered there like a little bird. “But would you have accepted it?”

Another brush of his thumb, and—though he didn’t even touch her skin—Amy felt her insides melt. “Oh yes.
Yes
.”

“Will you all please step this way?” the voice of their guide came from the other end of the room.

A slow smile curved Stapleton’s lips as he raised Amy’s hand to his mouth to bestow a quick kiss on her gloved knuckles. Then he tucked it into the crook of his elbow and led her back to the hallway.

Another room held treasures from the New World: a shaman’s drum, a lidded casket of dyed cane, and—something that made the ladies gasp and the gentlemen shudder—a human scalp stretched on a wooden hoop. From there they went into the curiosity cabinet and beheld petrified fish, a bottle of stag’s tears, a little silver box containing the stones taken out of Lord Belcarre’s heart, the skin of an antelope that had died in St. James’s Park, and—the barometz: a faintly shriveled something in tones of light brown that bore a faint resemblance to a sheep. Obviously deeply moved, Lord Munthorpe stopped in front of it.

“Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends,” he intoned, and his voice trembled with reverence.

“And round and round her flexile neck she bends,

Crops the gray coral moss, and hoary thyme,

Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime;

Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,

And seems to bleat…” He sighed. “A
vegetable lamb
.”

Amy bit her lip to prevent herself from bursting out in laughter. It didn’t help that Stapleton’s breath tickled her ear as he bent to whisper, “See? I told you:
sheep
.”

“Ah, I see you’ve found our Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.” Their guide joined them.

Lord Munthorpe heaved another sigh. “The barometz.” His hand touched the display case as if he yearned to reach through the glass and cradle the miniscule lamb in his hand.

Dutifully, Isabella stepped closer to the case to admire the lamb as well. “Oh, it’s
exquisite
!” she breathed. “Surely it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“It is a hoax, of course,” the young guide said. Naturally, he had no idea he was crushing another man’s dreams.

Lord Munthorpe’s face fell. “But…”

“It’s only the root of an exotic plant. The Royal Society found it out even before it was presented to us as part of their Museum of Curiosities some forty years ago. Excuse me, I have to assemble the group. We need to continue.”

With a woebegone expression, Lord Munthorpe gazed after the young man. Isabella merely blinked, obviously struck speechless that she had just admired nothing but an old root.

Stapleton left Amy’s side to clasp Munthorpe’s shoulder. “Don’t take it to heart, Munty. After all, this doesn’t prove your barometz doesn’t live somewhere in some faraway country. Who knows what is possible when dragons did indeed once roam our land?”

Indeed, even in this day and age there was still ample opportunity for a man to perform chivalric deeds—as became clear when they entered the room where the spoils of Lord Elgin’s Greek expedition were displayed.

“Oh la, what a wonderful frieze of riders,” Isabella exclaimed, then half turned to flutter her lashes at her companion. “What do you make of them, Lord Munthorpe?”

At being granted another dose of Isabella’s attention despite the sheep disaster, he perked up a little. His chest swelled. “Rather splendid specimens,” he pronounced.

“Oh yes, and look at these…” Isabella’s gaze was drawn to a group of headless and thinly clad women of stone. Faced with the sheerness of their garments, she wrinkled her nose. “I say! How shocking.”

Stony fabric clung to the women’s breasts and outlined them in loving detail. In fact, the imaginary fabric was so delicate that even the women’s marble nipples could be seen clearly.

“Hm,” Mr. Stapleton murmured beside Amy. “I find these rather splendid.” When she glanced up at him, his eyes twinkled with silent laughter—and another emotion that made her cheeks flush.

As she watched, one corner of his mouth lifted into a provocative smile before he turned his attention back to the stone women in front of them, subjecting each to a thorough perusal. Shockingly, Amy imagined herself in place of the statues, his gaze traveling over her.

As if her fantasy had suddenly become reality, Amy could feel her breasts swelling against her stays, and her face grew even hotter than before. Heavens! The things he was doing to her! Never before had she entertained such wanton thoughts. But then, she mused, she had never been in love before, either.

Dreamily, her gaze wandered to the next exhibit, the head of a stone horse, nostrils flared, and the next—Isabella gave a shriek and fainted artfully into Lord Munthorpe’s strong arms—a stark naked man. And while his hands, feet, and half of his nose were missing, his other appendage most certainly was not.

“Oooh,” Isabella moaned.

A hectic flush blooming on his face, Lord Munthorpe fanned air at her with his free hand. Other ladies of their group were quite overcome by the sight too, and had to be escorted from the room. Angry murmurs could be heard.

“Shocking!”

“Most indecent…”

“…should be forbidden!”

“Heavens, man!” one of the gentlemen barked at their guide. “How can you allow ladies to enter this room without giving fair warning beforehand?”

The young museum attendant paled even more. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and he gulped. “I-I apologize m-most profoundly,” he stuttered. “If you would like to step into the next room.”

Amy couldn’t help chuckling at the whole brouhaha—all because of a little bit of stone. Quickly, she raised her hand to her mouth to stifle the sound, but obviously not before Mr. Stapleton heard.

“Miss Bourne!” he said.

She looked up at him, still trying to subdue her merriment. A cinnamon-colored eyebrow arched.

“Why, how shocking, Miss Bourne: you appear to be not shocked at all!”

A gurgling laugh escaped her lips, which made his eyebrow rise even higher. “I can assure you, Mr. Stapleton, that having grown up with seven male cousins I am well acquainted with the male form.” A new, unfamiliar thrill coursed through her veins as she teased him. Feeling naughty and daring, she cocked her head to the side.

He promptly took her up on her silent invitation. “Now you shock
me
, Miss Bourne.”

Delighted with their game, Amy gave another laugh. “We are like brothers and sister—nothing terribly shocking. I came to live with my Aunt and Uncle Bourne when I was only three years old.” Her smile dimmed and fleeting sadness passed through her as she thought of her parents, who had died in a carriage accident on icy roads. Her mother had been the one who had been seriously injured. And while her life had ebbed away, Amy’s father had tried to save her with magic yet it had been all in vain: the effort to save her had drained all his powers and he had died along with her.

But the shadow of the past quickly dissolved. It had all happened so long ago! And her aunt and uncle loved her as if she were their own child. Indeed, hadn’t Aunt Bourne often told her how happy she was to have a little girl among the horde of her sons?

“My cousins,” Amy took up the thread of their conversation, her lips curving. “During the summer they all go bathing nude in one of my uncle’s ponds. And they apparently like to compare the sizes of their… uhm… appendages on this occasion.” She lifted her shoulders. “You men can be quite vain, it would seem.”

Chuckling, he offered her his arm again. “Oh, you wound me, Miss Bourne. Shall we follow our group ere I fall at your feet, bleeding from the wounds you’ve inflicted?”