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The deuce. “I only meant to say that what I share with Millie, and with Eliza, too, is not exactly friendship, but kinship, as if they were my sisters.”

“But you cannot feel the same toward me?”

“Would you want me as a brother?”

“No.” She wrinkled her nose. “But answer me this—if you feel brotherly toward Eliza and Millie, then what do you feel toward Cassie?”

What did he feel toward Cassandra, Duchess of Harbury? “When Cassie was my ward, I felt she needed defending.”

“And Nettie? Does she need defending, too?”

“Not quite in the same way, but yes. Nettie, too, is a responsibility. A charming, witty responsibility, but a responsibility.”

He’d answered so quickly, so frankly, he hadn’t realized where she might be leading. She had left one Wainwright out of her queries so far. Herself.

He braced for her to ask how he felt about her, but the dreaded question did not come.

“What’s wrong with me?” she whispered.

He’d hurt her anew.

Instinct told him to approach her slowly, just as he would with Mont. But it wasn’t as if he could soothe her by stroking her neck.

He leaned back on a post, partly to support his near-to-buckling knees. Then, he folded his arms.

“Nothing.” Beneath his elbow, he clenched his injured hand into as much of a fist as he was able to make. His scarred tendons stretched, protesting with pain. “Nothing is wrong with you.”

“Liar.”

He bristled as if smacked. Which he had been. Verbally.

“You must believe something is very wrong with me,” she said, “else you would not look so panicked.”

Deliberately, he crossed one booted foot in front of the other. “Do I appear panicked to you?”

She scowled. “You did just a moment ago... when you thought I was about to ask you how you felt about me.”

How had she known? Once more, she’d caught him in a lie.

“Caught,” indeed. He’d never been free.

Not at least since he’d bowed before a little waif who’d kindly asked after his hand. Kindly, that is, in her mind.

In his, she’d threatened to unleash the pain, fury, and guilt he’d wrapped up as tightly as he’d bound his pinky.

Would they always be this way? Sparring with deadly swords forged of good intentions?

If so, he should end this now.

He should tell her the truth. Nothing, not even friendship, could grow between them.

For one, he wasn’t who she thought him to be. Everything he’d done for the Wainwright girls hadn’t been done because he was decent, kind, and wonderful. He’d made those sacrifices because he’d been duty-bound from birth to make them.

If he allowed her to peel back his sense of responsibility, all she’d find was a man who might crack. But he struggled to speak the words that would betray secrets and held fast to her good opinion as if it were a lifeline.

Perhaps needing her good opinion had been the problem all along—the reason why he had panicked when she’d nearly asked what he felt.

He could not easily define what he felt for her because, put simply, she made him feel too much. And feeling too much was dangerous.