Free Bewitched by Sandra Schwab

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