Free Belladonna by Anne Bishop Page A

and give Lee the satisfaction of knowing he'd startled her — Glorianna pressed her hand against her chest to push her jumping heart back into place. There was nothing quite like a brother when it came to shattering a sensual fantasy. She hoped to return the favor someday.
    Annoyed with herself for procrastinating and annoyed with him, since he wouldn't have been banging on her bedroom door if they weren't already late and that meant he knew she was procrastinating, she hurried across the room and opened the door.
    All her annoyance disappeared, because all she could do was stare.

    He was wearing his best black trousers and jacket, with a white shirt, a patterned green silk vest, and a black necktie. He'd worn those clothes for the weddings — Sebastian and Lynnea, and then, a week later, their mother and Jeb. Except for those two occasions, she couldn't remember the last time he had dressed so well.
    "My handsome brother," she said, intending a light compliment. But seeing him standing there, polished up because he was as nervous about this meeting as she, was a sharp reminder that his life would have been so much easier if she hadn't been his sister.
    Or if he had refused to acknowledge her after she had been declared rogue.
    So she couldn't keep her voice light, couldn't wave aside how much his loyalty had meant to her over the past sixteen years.
    "Don't get maudlin," Lee said, grabbing her arm and pulling her out of the room.
    "I am not getting maudlin," she snapped, insulted because she was so close to feeling that way. "I was just trying to be pleasant."
    "Uh-huh." He kept pulling her along, slowing down when they reached the stairs to give her a chance to lift her skirt so she wouldn't trip and send both of them tumbling.
    "Will you stop pulling at me?" Glorianna snapped when they reached the bottom of the stairs.
    "No." He pulled her out of the house and around to the side. "We'll use my island to reach the rest of Sanctuary. It will take too long to use a boat. You spent so much time primping, we're late as it is." He gave her a calculating look. "Or did you get distracted by something else?"
    Heat flooded her face, and Lee, being an odious sibling, laughed.
    "Sebastian will be pleased that you like his gift," he said.
    "I wasn't mooning over a painting," she replied, clenching her teeth.
    "Did I say mooning? I never said mooning." He stopped at the edge of where his island rested over hers, visible since there was no reason to hide it.
    Lee's little island was anchored in Sanctuary. She had originally created it as a private place for herself, but it had resonated with Lee from the moment he'd set foot on it, and the connection was so strong that he could impose the island over any other landscape. Unseen unless he chose otherwise, the island provided safe ground if he found himself in a dangerous landscape.
    "So," he continued, "do you want to sit around with the other Landscapers indulging in sterile, suffocatingly polite talk or just ask Ephemera to conjure up a big mud wallow?"
    "What?" She stared at him. "Did you knot that necktie too tight? I don't think there's any blood getting to your brain."
    "There's a custom in one of the landscapes — not one of yours but one I visited with another Bridge a couple of years ago.
    When two people — usually women since men tend to deal with things in other ways — start hurling insults at each other, and the disturbance starts dragging other people in to take sides, the village leaders have the two women — people — escorted to a wallow at the edge of town that was created just for that purpose. The two ... contestants, let's call them ... are assisted into the wallow
    —"
    "Shoved, you mean."
    Lee shrugged. "And they go at it. Every insult is accompanied by a handful of mud that is slung at the other contestant."
    "Mudslinging in the literal sense."
    He nodded. "So they scream and rant and rave and sling mud at each other until they're too tired to