Page 98 of Savage Blooms
Robert could have let it go. He could have given her a stiff hug, forced a smile, and congratulated her on her upcoming wedding. He could have sat through picking out flowers and the dress and the cake and then sat in the front row of the church and clapped like everyone else. If he had been younger, he might have. If he had more to lose, hecertainlywould have. But he was a grown man already suffocating under the weight of his parents’ double-sided expectations, and the only thing he had ever had to lose was standing right in front of him in a silk dress, telling him she was going to marry another man.
“You can’t marry him,” Robert said. He wished he could be more articulate and come up with a convincing argument on the spot. But there was none. There was only his heart, and the way it beat and bled for her.
“Why can’t I?” she dared.
“Youknowwhy.”
“Do I?”
“Belle,” he groaned. “Come on. You know that I… The way we are, I thought… Last week, when you were in the bath and you saw me standing there—”
“The things you do when you’re bored and there’s no one else around,” she said, glancing down at her satinshoes so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye when she broke his heart, “Those aren’t the things you want to do for the rest of your life.”
Robert felt like she had punched the wind out of him. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the way any of this was supposed to go, if either of them ever plucked up the courage to be honest about the way they adored each other, the way they trusted only each other, the way they slipped handwritten initiations under each other’s doors to the games of chase-and-seek that had only grown more deliciously aggressive as they had gotten older. Last Boxing Day, Arabella had found him in the broom cupboard before dragging him into the hallway, straddling his chest, and pinning his hands above his head with a triumphant grin. Why would she have done that if she didn’t feel the same way he did?
Robert pushed up from the wall he had been slouching against and drew himself up to his full height. He was tall for a boy his age, much taller than Arabella, and she glared up at him with watery eyes as he stood over her.
“Is that all I am to you?” he demanded. “A toy you can take up when you’re bored and discard when someone else comes around?”
“God, don’t be dramatic—”
“I’m not being dramatic; I’m being honest. If I have to be the first one to say it, I will. I love you, Belle. I love you as my family and I always will, but you must know by now that I love you more than that, too.”
“You’re just confused,” Arabella said, trying to slip pasthim in a whip of hair and a rustle of silk. Robert caught her wrist tightly. When she spun around to glare at him, he softened his grip, rubbing a circle into her palm with his thumb.
“Please don’t do this,” he said, and now he was begging, all intentions to stand up for himself as a man forgotten. “I know you don’t want to marry him. You always told me you would rather go live with the birds in the trees and eat nothing but nuts and berries than be sold off to some minor aristocrat. That’s exactly what’s happening here! I don’t know why you can’t see that—”
“You aren’t a girl, Robbie,” she snapped so ferociously that he recoiled. “You don’t know what it’s like to be in my position. Ihaveto marry and Ihaveto have babies. Otherwise our family will be destroyed. How I feel about that doesn’t matter.”
“Then marry me,” he said, panic making him rash. He scrubbed a hand over his face, over his stubbled jaw and overheated throat. “Have babies with me, if that’s what you want.”
“This is exactly what I was afraid of. You’re too attached to me, Robbie. I had hoped if you saw me with someone else you would let me go and—”
“I can take care of you, Belle, as your brother or as your husband, or as both if that’s what you want. Marry me, and I swear to God you’ll never be bored. I promise I’ll—”
“Oh, please don’t,” she said, tears gathering in earnest in her eyes now. “I’ve already said yes to him, Robbie. Ihave a real future with him. There is no future for you and I. Our parents would kill us both.”
“I don’t care about them,” he declared, pulling her in closer. Robert latticed their fingers together even as he pressed his body against hers, just like they had when they were little and making a pact. “I only care about what you want. Tell me what you want, Arabella. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I want you to let me go,” she said, her voice a self-betraying whisper.
She had always been a bad liar.
Robert wordlessly hooked his hands under his sister’s thighs and scooped her up, sitting her in the reading nook built into the windowsill. The trio of stained-glass hares gazed down at them from above with dead marble eyes, their linked ears illuminated by distant lightning.
“Tell me to go then,” Robert said, hands braced on either side of her hips, lips inches away from the kiss they had been denying themselves for years. “Make me believe you don’t want me and I’llgo. Come on, send me away. Say it like you mean it.”
Arabella glared at him as though she hated him more than anyone else in the world, and Robert just stood there, letting her hate him. He refused to touch her, but he also refused to draw away. No matter how this played out, it would be Arabella’s decision what happened next.
Then, all at once, she made a frustrated noise and surged forward to crush her mouth against his.
Robert cradled her face in his hands, her skin smooth as porcelain and twice as cool, and he kissed her back. They wrestled for dominance for a moment, like this was just another expression of sibling rivalry, but then at Robert’s gentle urging, Arabella slowed down. Her breathing deepened as he kissed her deep and soft, reverent as a priest. She gripped his wrists in her trembling hands, letting him take his time with her and treat her as gently as he had wanted to since they were both teenagers.
Robert pulled her in tighter, ignoring the distant murmur of their parents’ voices downstairs. She was warmer now, a hot flush spreading across her skin as he pushed the silk up over her thighs and around her hips. He dug his fingers into her flesh, just hard enough to leave a half-moon indent with his short nails.
“I can’t,” she gasped, breaking the kiss.
Robert released her as though he had been burned, tugging his sister’s dress back down over her legs.
