“I…” she closed her eyes. “I spoke nonsense just now.”
“Did you?” He canted his head. “Sometimes it is best to express oneself to a stranger. One who would form no judgement.”
Her lashes swept down across her cheekbones, hiding her expression for the briefest moment. When she lifted her gaze to him, her storm grey-blue eyes were wild with emotions.
“It is safe to speak with me, I promise it.”
She stared at him as if he were an extraordinary creature.
“I am engaged.”
Swift denial roared through him with the power of an avalanche. No. It could not be that the only woman he had met in this lifetime that roused such curious hunger in him was already attached to another. Thaddeus took a deep breath.
“I mean I was engaged. I broke off our attachment before…before…leaving.”
Hell. Relief almost dropped him on his arse to the ground. Right there. “Lass,” he said gruffly. “That was the most pertinent part of the conversation. That you ended all connection.”
She blinked and cast him a narrow-eyed glance. “Why?”
“I dinna want a jealous fiancé to challenge me to a duel when he finds out I have been travelling with you.” Thaddeus would hate to kill the man.
She rolled her eyes in that pretty way he liked. “We are not travelling together.”
He didn’t waste any time correcting her.
Perdie glanced toward the skyline of towering trees in the distance. “It is more likely a brother you have to worry about. I did leave him a letter to not chase me, but I doubt he will respect my wishes.”
So the brother was true. He tucked that information away.
“You left home without telling your brother?”
Thaddeus could not disguise the shock in his tone.
“I told him in a letter.”
Her voice broke on the confession and revealed much to Thaddeus about her character. She felt guilt and pain about the decision she made. Yet she possessed enough strength of character to continue onward, despite such worries resting on her slim shoulders.
“He must be frightened out of his wits. Perhaps a candidate for Bedlam by now.”
“Would that not be his own fault? I am not a child. I can take care of myself. At my age, my brother was traipsing all over the country and even abroad, only with a valet! I have reassured him that I will be well. If once again he chooses not to trust me…to not believe in me a little, it will be no fault but his own.”
Until her shoulders relaxed, he hadn’t realized how tense she was holding herself. In a small voice, she admitted, “He did not trust me to form my own friendships. He does not care to listen to my worries. My fear and my doubts. If I made a mistake and thought a boy…a boy I had met and might marry but realized I cannot. My brother would put honor and reputation before my happiness.”
“Did he tell you this?”
She stared at him with large, wounded eyes. “No. But I know his character. He is hard and uncompromising!”
“There are no buts.” With a sarcastic lilt to his voice, Thaddeus said, “Let me tell you what my sisters would say of me. Arrogant, controlling, too absorbed in birds to pay any attention to the people around me. It depends on which sister you ask and what grievous offense I’ve committed recently. No siblings see eye to eye all the time.”
Breathing harshly, she stared at him in muted unhappiness.
“You said your brother hurt you. How so?”
For a long minute, she made no reply.
“I had friends in London. Friends like Felicity, the sort of friends you can’t easily make while pretending to be something you’re not for the sake of upholding your family’s image. These women, they were everything to me. They taught me how to shoot and fight and drive and a dozen other things,” Perdie said in a tremulous whisper. “We were remarkably close-knit, and with them it was like I found sisters I never knew I needed. I was not so alone anymore, and neither were they. They were friends I could share every feeling within my heart, even if they were silly. They listened…truly listened. And when my brother found out, he used his influence to have me removed from the club. I lost the only friends I had made in London in a single day, all but Felicity.”
The pain in her voice hooked into his gut and pulled harshly.