Tillie had always had an unstoppable mouth. She said things before she’d thought them through and it had gotten her into trouble as often as it had been endearing. Now, she seemed a shade desperate to regain her wits, captured by her brother’s kiss. How exotic men taste. “Well, you shouldn’t be surprised.” She hummed, saucy despite the little pants that still edged between her sounds. “Sweet things go sour if you leave them all<i>too</i>long, though. So, you should keep your word.” A childlike petulance in her cockiest metaphors. She’d missed him, and she wasn’t hiding it.<br/><br/>A delightful blush and the cast of her gaze away from him was coquettish when it should have been timid. Of course she was fun. Matilda was all sorts of fun. “I couldn’t say, Brother Dear.” Her lips edged into a sidelong grin. “You’ll have to tell me what I’ve become, I supposed.” She wilted beneath him like it was all some sort of choreographed act, her deep autumn strands splaying like a wild and fiery halo around her face. She looked much like Ada had, when he’d left them. Really, she couldn’t be more than a few years younger than that, now. Tillie had sprung up like a strange little wildflower in his absence.<br/><br/>She let her eyes close, long lashes pressed to her smooth cheeks. Would her skin taste as delectable as the women he’d had in the east? She wondered and wasn’t ashamed for it. She’d never felt compelled to question her own heart. She’d be loath to do so now. Matilda arched prettily into his touch, like it was reflexive rather than eager. That sister had learned prettier lines for watching her experimental lovers bow the same way.<br/><br/>“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell. Secrets are a luxury, are they not?” Tillie laughed behind her pressed lips, sighing like they’d just rolled apart in bed. “You really are presumptuous, aren’t you…” she shook her head, upsetting her coiling hair on the blankets. “I think it’s only fair to make you learn these things yourself. I’d hate to make it so easy on you when you worried Mother for all these years.” Tillie hummed, like she hadn’t held a thought of him in all his absence. “But I’m practical, you know? I’m also willing to trade these things. I want to hear your stories too. I’m certain they’re more thrilling than anything here at home.”<br/><br/>She looked a little like Abraham’s knock at stolen a mouse from between her claws. Matilda was as hungry for his adventures as he was for her skin. Which was not to say she was unintrigued by the latter. Whether by her body or her own boasting, it did not seem to Tillie that she would lose in bartering for her brother’s memoirs on their pillow.<br/><br/>Matilda sat up and brushed down her skirt, neatly arranging the folds with practiced gestures. “Who isn’t impossibly infatuated with me, Ewan? It’s been a pain, keeping the world at bay for the sake of your return. You’d have a fight on your hands if I’d taken a husband, wouldn’t you?” She laughed again and stood, pushing her hair over her shoulders before she took his hand. She wasn’t wrong.<br/><br/>Eugene was waiting in the atrium when they came down the stairs, and he was every bit as starstruck with the arrival of his scarlet beauty as he had been when they'd both been children. Really, very little had changed since Ewan had left. It was only that intentions had become less modest with time. Matilda flitted over to the slight man and kissed his cheek in greeting, lingering there just long enough that it was perceptibly familiar. It was good and well that Mr. Grant felt special to the family. Tillie smiled at him. "You're so prompt, Mr. Grant." She said, as if they hadn't once played together in the yard. "My brother has been home less than a day, and here you are with papers."