Free Bewitched by Sandra Schwab Page A

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