Page 99 of Savage Blooms
“I’m sorry,” he began, the apology a deeply rooted childhood impulse. “I don’t want to hurt you, I—”
“I can’t be with you,” she said, decisive as she scrubbed stray tears off her face. “Please don’t kiss me again.”
“Belle—” he said, voice broken into pieces. She shrank away from him and slipped down from the windowsill.
“I think it’s best if you and I don’t talk much for a while,” she said, hurrying off into the dark. “At least until the wedding is over.”
Robert was left alone on the landing, his sister’s tearsdrying on his cheeks and a hot yearning in his blood and sickening shame heavy as a stone in his stomach. He felt like he was being torn to pieces, like part of him was already sitting at that wedding and part of him was ten years old chasing after the sound of his big sister’s laughter and part of him was eternally standing on this landing, reliving the kiss he would never be able to recover from. His parents’ voices grew downstairs, punctuated by the ringing of champagne glasses and the sound of laughter.
They were already celebrating. They had pawned off their daughter and now Robert would be left alone with them. The disregarded son who had only been adopted as an entertaining diversion for their beloved offspring. No matter how much they said they loved him, Robert saw it clearly, the difference in the ways they looked at him and looked at Arabella.
He hated Craigmar, hated its dreary old paintings of people who looked nothing like him and its drafty corridors and its hallways that led nowhere. He hated his parents for bringing him out here and he hated his sister for being exactly what she was: a half-feral creature more in love with the land outside their window than she would ever be with him. He was too human for this place, too fallible and needy. He would never be good enough, either for his parents or for Arabella.
Making up his mind with the brutal finality of someone who had been considering the unthinkable for months, Robert strode into his room and yanked the black leatherduffel out from under his bed. He had travelled with it only a few times, since he typically only travelled with Arabella and she was rarely permitted to leave Craigmar, but now he stuffed it full of clothes torn from his dresser.
There was no rhyme or reason to any of this, and he was crying through most of it, but within ten minutes he had most of his toiletries and his identifying documents and his best pen stuffed into the bag, along with stationery and stamps, a pair of trainers, and his dog-eared copy ofGulliver’s Travels. He plucked up Tammany the teddy before deciding it was better to travel as light as possible, with no reminder of his family with him. He settled Tam into the pillows of his bed and then flipped the lights off and crept into the hallway. Maybe the bear would be better appreciated by another child, better suited to this place.
He might be Arabella’s brother, but he wasn’t a Kirkfoyle. Not in any of the ways that mattered.
Robert hustled quietly down the stairs and let himself out the kitchen door, far away from where his parents were chatting in the parlor. Arabella was somewhere in the house, probably crying her eyes out and waiting for him to come apologize, but he wouldn’t be apologizing. There was nothing else to say. This place was rotting him from the inside out, making him a slave to unnatural desires, and the best thing he could do for any of them was to leave.
Robert strode out into the night just as a cold rain began to fall. He turned his coat up against the wind.
It was a rocky walk to Wyke, but from there he could warm up in the Hound and Grouse and hitch a ride into the nearest large city. From there, he could go anywhere in Scotland, or in Britain, or in the world.
He had always wanted to travel, unmoored from Craigmar’s dark, demanding magic and the disapproving glances of his parents. Perhaps now, at the other end of the world, he would find a happiness previously thought impossible.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Eileen
Eileen wiped the back of her hand across her mouth as she finished reading the shaky and fragmented diary entry from the night Robert ran away. Eileen was shaking too now, although she wasn’t totally sure why. Maybe it was the bottomed-out drop in her adrenaline levels after the fear, or all her illnesses conspiring against her at once, or just the way Adam was looking at her, like he wanted to take her to pieces in the most precise, clinical way possible.
“You knew. You knew exactly why my grandfather was here, and why he left.”
“Yes,” Eileen said, glad to have the secret out of her at last. No matter the consequences, at least she felt lighter. “From what I can gather he travelled around Britain and the continent for some time before settling in the States. Taking up the name Lancaster in the process, of course.He would play War of the Roses with Arabella when they were small, pretending to behead each other in the garden. She was always York. He was always Lancaster.”
“Why would you keep this from me?” Adam asked. She had expected him to be angry, but right now he seemed more wounded. This, somehow, was worse.
“I needed time to convince you. It would have worked better if you had come to certain conclusions yourself, if you had believed they were your own idea. But time isn’t something we’re spoiled for at the moment, so—” Eileen dropped down on one knee, only swaying slightly, and held her hand out to Adam. “Adam Kirkfoyle, will you marry me? Please?”
Nicola let out a high, delirious laugh, like she had stumbled into a carnival sideshow.
“Finley, what’s really going on here?” she demanded. “Say something.”
Finley just glared at the ground, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. Nicola took a step back from him, as though she had only just realized he might not be entirely trustworthy.
“Oh, be serious,” Adam scoffed. “Marry you? Stop this, Eileen. It isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking. I’m asking you to marry me. Now. Please.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” Adam went on, leaving her there bruising her knees on the ground like an idiot. She knew she was twisting his arm, but she thought he might like the gesture of a formal proposal all the same.She believed that important things should be done properly, after all.
“You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.”
“Maybe I do love you,” she snapped, with a ferocity that surprised her. Her head pounded, a blinding pain shooting through her ocular nerve. “Or I could come to love you, in time. Love doesn’t matter right now, all that matters is that our family line survives. Generally, the only way to make a new Kirkfoyle is to birth one, or adopt one. Marriage bonds don’t hold the same weight, not to the fae. But you’realreadya Kirkfoyle, you’re already family, and I hope to God marrying you works just as well as having a child by you. But for now, this is what I can do to survive. This is the only way.”
Adam stared at the journal, and he stared at Eileen, and then, he looked down at the ring of iron on his finger.
