Chapter Thirteen
Afew days later, at the opening of the drawing-room door, Perdie lifted her attention from the book she read. It was Sebastian. His hair was windswept, and his handsome features looked strained. Then joy suffused his face. Her heart lurched. Perdie expected her reunion with her brother to be fraught with disapproval, but he only opened his arms to her. She put down the book, stood, and went willingly, letting him enfold her in his embrace without any attempt to appear brave. The sun slanted in through the drawing-room window. He smelled of starch and cedar and home.
“Mother told me you were home,” he said gruffly. “Thank Christ you are really here.”
Perdie gathered that he had been worried that she would have run again by the time he reached Maidstone. “I thought you would have been frightfully angry.” She wanted to say more but, fighting back the tears, she couldn’t manage it.
Sebastian held her tighter. His solidity reminded her how foolish she had been not to trust him, how foolish she had been to leave in the first place. As she cried into his jacket, he rested his chin atop her head.
“There is no need for tears.”
Perhaps not, but she couldn’t prevent them from spilling out anyway. And with them, her apology, her worry for the heartache she’d caused, a worry that had been brewing ever since her mother had scolded her.
“Mother told me everything.”
Drawing back, she wiped at her eyes and finished, “I should have been brave enough to tell you of my feelings.”
Her feelings about everything, including losing her friends.
Sebastian considered her gravely. Somehow, his assessment of her state didn’t seem so calculating as when Mama had done it. He didn’t care a whit if she ruined her complexion from tears or not.
“It is entirely possible if you had told me I would have insisted you still wed Lord Owen to avoid a scandal. Your feelings as they were might have been secondary.”
Perdie couldn’t breathe. She placed a hand on her stomach and forced herself to focus not on what might have happened but the fact that he was confessing as much to her now. In the past tense. “But now?”
If he tried to insist she married a man who would only dismiss her wishes—
The gravity in Sebastian’s expression cracked. “Now, I want to trust you to make the decisions that impact your life. You were unhappy enough to run away from home. From your family.” It was clear in his expression, in his tone, that he wanted to avoid that at all costs. He hung his head. “I failed you.”
“You did not!”
Perdie had made her own choices to leave and damn the consequences. She didn’t want her brother to add her as one more burden.
He looked up, the glimmer of a smile on his mouth. “Trust that you can come to me, Perdie. Always. Even if the problem seems insurmountable, come to me.”
Perdie barely heard the rest of his words about providing Lord Owen with a reasonable explanation and facing the consequences as a family—if she decided upon reflection that she still didn’t want to marry him. She was so overjoyed that he would listen to her, that he would grant her that measure of independence to decide her future, that she rushed back into his arms and hugged him tightly.
Only then, it occurred to her, that she didn’t want to keep secrets from him. “There’s something I must tell you.”
Or rather, she had to tell him about someone. Perhaps not all of it. Those moments in the folly were for her and her alone. She wanted to be able to trust him like he asked. Thaddeus was a man of honor, a gentleman. It was one of the reasons he wanted to marry her. Should they encounter each other in the future, though she doubted it highly, she wanted to be able to count on her brother for support. If something untoward happened because of her indiscretions, she would have to tell Seb the full truth.
Her head tucked down into his collar, she confessed, “In my travels…I met someone.” She felt the blush overtake her no matter how hard she strived for serenity.
Seb saw it, no doubt when he took her by the shoulders and pushed her far enough away to see her face. “Perdie?”
Perhaps she needed to be clearer about her intentions. Marriage was not an option. Not with Lord Owen, not with Thaddeus. She raised her chin. “He is a most odious creature who is insisting that we are married.”
“Married.” Seb sounded as though he were choking on air. The color rose in his cheeks too, as no doubt he wondered what would lead a stranger to make that declaration.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. And then, without meaning to, she spilled more of the story. Not how Thaddeus had happened upon them after Perdie had dealt with a band of highwaymen—she didn’t wish to give her brother an apoplexy—but how the man had pretended to be her husband for her to get a set of rooms for the night.
Sebastian’s expression darkened. “He shared a room with you?”
Oh, no. She would definitely not tell him about her activities at the folly. If he ever found Thaddeus, he would challenge him to a duel or something equally sinister and stupid.
Her cheeks still heating, she mumbled an explanation. The truth. Thaddeus’s escort of her had been proper, after all. Until the folly, and that had been her doing as much as his. When Sebastian learned that she could neither name Thaddeus’s identity—save for his distinctive Scottish brogue—nor could he name hers, the duke seemed to consider the matter put at rest.
For now.