“Not intentionally, no.”
He cocked his head and stared at her. “Intentionally, of course not, but how could I hurt you otherwise?”
“Your anger. Your pain. Your fear. I can feel it. I can feel it all and if I could take it away from you, I would.”
“I do not understand.” Philip was beginning to think that Lady Antonia wasn’t afraid of physical pain but something else.
“I feel the emotions of others,” she confessed and hung her head.
“An empath?” he asked.
Lady Antonia nodded. “I don’t just see auras, though I wish that was all, but experience emotions that accompany them.”
“Why did you not tell me when I asked?”
“People are closed and only want others to see what they are willing to reveal. If they knew what I could feel, nobody would ever come near me, nor would they invite me into their home. That is why nobody knows except for a few.”
“My cousins and Lady Samantha,” he guessed. “And the reason for the veiling spell?”
Lady Antonia nodded.
“I have known others that are empaths, but it has never bothered them so much. Is it because you don’t want to know?”
“Theirs is mild. A hint of an emotion that is easy to understand without drowning out everything else. I feel it all,” she explained.
“Do you feel this with everyone or only a few?”
“I wish it was a few, but it is everyone.”
“Do you need to touch them to feel it?” It must be touch because she had pulled away at his anger and fear.
“I only need to be in the room.” She closed her eyes. “The more people, the more I experience. A touch makes me experience the emotions even stronger.”
“There were several people at the Witches’ Ball. Did you experience the emotions of them all?”
Tears filled her eyes. “Yes. I feel everyone and everything at every ball or entertainment I have ever attended. Except, in a crowd, I cannot tell who is experiencing what. Instead, bundles of energy, emotions surround me, and I experience what each person in the room is feeling.”
Perhaps that was why she was so often quiet and seemed to withdraw except for the times she had waltzed with him.
“I do not mean to feel their emotions, and I realize how intrusive that is, but I have no control and cannot keep it from happening.”
Lady Antonia turned away and walked to the edge of the water.
“It is also why I do not spend much time speaking with others, Lord Chedworth.” She looked away and whispered, “I tend to avoid people.”
Yet, she hadn’t avoided him in London. Except, she had when he had called on her.
“I have become overwhelmed with emotions in such settings and distracted from a conversation. Too often I become confused and my biggest fear in not being able to think clearly was that I would say the wrong thing before carefully choosing my words, which could also put me in danger.”
“When we spoke in London, you struck me as someone thoughtful and who chooses your words carefully.”
“I was being careful and did not want you to think that I was not paying attention to what you were saying, but sometimes the noise in a ballroom gets in the way.”
“Noise?”
She turned back to him. “Have you ever been around children who are banging things, or yelling and it is so distracting…or a busy street where vendors are yelling over each other…when there is so much noise that you can’t concentrate or think?”
He nodded.
