Bewitched

by Sandra Schwab

  And what was that supposed to mean?

  Sweat trickled down Bentham’s temple as, with apparent interest, the other man looked around the room. “Such a nice, cultivated place, a gentleman’s club. Prestigious, you might call it. Does it not just ooze wealth and distinction?” He turned back to Bentham, his lips curved. “What a lucky man to belong to such an institution. You have been … successful?”

  At the man’s sneer, Bentham felt his insides quake. He felt like a rabbit at first sight of a snake. “Yes.” He fumbled for his handkerchief to wipe his forehead. “Yes. I have … they have … drunk…”

  “And now they are violently in love. Beautiful, is it not? I have no doubt he will ask for her hand in marriage, soon. You will consent, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bentham muttered, twisting the handkerchief between his hands. In a way, wasn’t this what his old friend Bourne had asked him to do? Help his niece find a husband? And so he had, Bentham thought defiantly. So he had. Surely Bourne would understand his predicament—indeed, he had been a deucedly good friend back in their days at university, hadn’t he? Of course, Bentham had never told him about the gambling and the debts he had run up even back then. A gentleman didn’t talk about such base things as money. Besides, Bourne had always been such a stickler to the highest moral ground; he probably wouldn’t have understood.

  Sweat dampened his temples as Bentham realized that in all likelihood Bourne wouldn’t see the reason for Bentham’s present actions, either. How could he? He lived in the country, far away from the pressures of Town. No, it was better if Bourne didn’t know, didn’t know anything.

  “Very good. I see we understand each other.” The stranger regarded Bentham indulgently, as one would a favorite lapdog. “With the festive season approaching, Stapleton will want to go and visit his family soon. Rather disgustingly dependable, the Stapletons are in that respect. Yet thanks to our little intervention, he won’t be able to stand even the thought of being apart from the object of his lovesickness for too long. So, naturally…” He paused, as if wanting to draw out the moment and prolong the tension.

  Bentham gripped his handkerchief so tightly that his knuckles shone white against the skin. God, how he hated this bastard with his smooth voice! But no, no, he was trapped by his debts, by his obligation to his family. It could not be helped.

  “Naturally, he will want to take her with him. You should make sure your daughter accompanies them.”

  Isabella? The thought was a painful stab to his heart that made the breath catch in his throat. “My daughter?” he echoed.

  Those blond brows rose mockingly. “Indeed, your daughter. Surely that won’t be a problem?” Light blue eyes bored into his.

  Bentham dabbed at the sweat on his upper lip. “No.”

  “Very good. For just think how unfortunate it would be should our alliance no longer work.”

  Bentham swallowed, hard. “That won’t happen,” he assured the man tightly.

  “That’s what I assumed.” Another hateful lift of lips. “Her presence at Rawdon Park is crucial, for she will be given little … presents for the family.” The fingertips of his hands pressed together, the stranger leaned back, sultry satisfaction saturating his voice. “And then we shall make our Sicilian Dragon breathe fire.”

  Bentham looked at him blandly. “Dragon?” he asked.

  The man looked him up and down. “Not a player of chess then.” His thin lip curled. “Well, I would have been surprised if you were.”

  ~*~

  Amy put on her bonnet and eyed herself critically in the mirror. She turned her head a little to the left, then a little to the right. “Not bad,” she murmured. She had spent last afternoon trimming the bonnet so she would have lovely new headwear for the outing today. It now perfectly suited her dark blue pelisse—a color that always made her eyes seem to sparkle with extra intensity.

  Not that her eyes would have needed any more sparkle.

  Amy smiled at her image in the mirror as she tied her bonnet under her chin. Did not the eyes of those in love sparkle like the stars in the night sky?

  In love.

  She pressed her hands against her chest. Yes, yes—she was in love, passionately and completely. In a few short weeks Mr. Stapleton had become more precious to her than the air she breathed, had become her endless joy, her reason for being. She could spend hours studying the patterns of the cinnamon marks on his face. She wanted to memorize each and every one of them, starting with the sweetest of them all, the one on his earlobe. With a blissful sigh, she closed her eyes.

  In the next moment, a sharp knock at the door interrupted her reverie. “Will you come downstairs?” Slightly muffled, Isabella’s voice reached her through the door. “The carriage is already waiting.”

  “Oh.” Amy’s eyes snapped open. “Oh!” All at once, her heart thudded in her chest; her cheeks heated. Soon, soon she would… She snatched her gloves from the table and hurried out of the room. Wriggling her fingers into them, she followed Isabella downstairs. And there, there he was.

  Her breath caught. At the small sound, he looked up and their gazes locked. Surely she must have flown down the remaining steps, for the next moment she was at his side, gazing up at him.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled with a smile. “Miss Bourne.” He inclined his head.

  “Mr. Stapleton.” Breathless, she curtsied.

  “So very lovely to see you again,” he murmured, his voice softer than velvet.

  Amy felt her cheeks flame with mingled pleasure and shyness, and lowered her gaze. “And you,” she breathed. It seemed to her they were enveloped by a rosy glow, sealing them together, making their hearts beat as one, and—

  “Surely we must be on our way.” Isabella’s sharp voice dimmed the glow considerably. “I don’t suppose they will wait for us at the museum.”

  Amy sighed. When she looked up, she caught Stapleton’s rueful expression. Wordless, but with a small smile hovering around his lips, he took her hand and placed it on his arm to escort her out into the street.

  Soon they were all bundled into Lord Munthorpe’s landau, its hood pulled down so they could bask in the rays of the golden October sun. The sun sparkled on the windows of the houses they passed and made the trees in the squares and parks glitter like flitter-gold. They joined the flow of carriages in Oxford Street, most of them no doubt traveling toward Hyde Park. Lord Munthorpe’s landau, however, turned east toward Tottenham Court Road. They passed the old School of Arms and the once-proud Pantheon, now deserted and stripped of its fittings. On they drove, past the boundary stone and into Bloomsbury.

  It was not too long before Lord Munthorpe, sounding extraordinarily pleased with himself, said, “Here we are,” just as the landau rumbled through an open gate into a wide forecourt, where a few other carriages had already been parked.

  The landau halted in front of the stairs leading up to the entrance of the museum. Munthorpe opened the door, stepped out, and turned to help Isabella and Amy down. Mr. Stapleton was the last to alight from the carriage. The sunlight made his hair glint like molten copper—a sight that distracted Amy from admiring the stately building. She just couldn’t help smiling at him. Oh, he was so dear to her!

  His lips curving, he came and offered her his arm. Amy slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and shivered a little when her arm brushed his side. “What a beautiful house,” she said quickly.

  “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 bef
ore 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 wel
l. “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.