But she had survived a harrowing attack. It was clear that the experience still weighed heavily on her. And he simply couldn’t abide the thought of her suffering alone.

He stepped closer, placing his hands on her shoulders. She felt rigid to the point of trembling, and he gently massaged her tight muscles. “Are you certain you don’t wish to talk, Natalie? I suspect more transpired during the massacre than you’ve let on. When the British soldiers attacked the settlement, you said that you were in the schoolroom. And that you hid the children in a shed. What else happened?”

She glanced away, biting her lip. “You’re better off not knowing.”

He cupped her cheek, turning her face back toward him. “But you’re not better off,” he said softly. “I suspect this has been eating away at you, that it’s the true cause of that bout of weeping in the kitchen. You said, ‘I didn’t want to kill him.’ You couldn’t have been referring to Bert because you’d just seen him walk out of the room, very much alive.”

Her bleak gaze fixed on Hadrian. But he had the sense that she wasn’t really seeing him, that she was looking inward at some horror from the past. “It serves no purpose to rehash the past.”

“Yet it can’t be doing any good, either, to let it fester inside of you. A burden is easier to carry if it’s shared.”

He wasn’t sure where that knowledge had come from. It was precisely what he’d avoided doing in his own life. His friends wisely respected his aloof reserve and knew better than to pour out their personal problems. Until this moment he’d never wanted anyone to confide their darkest secrets in him.

But he did now.

Their gazes clung for a moment. Then she drew a ragged breath and stepped away from him, her arms wrapped around her middle. “It all … happened so fast. After I ushered the children to safety, Leo included, I put one of the older boys in charge of the little ones. They were to remain in the shed and stay quiet. I couldn’t just cower there with them, you see. I had to go and help my friends and neighbors. They were dying.”

Chilled, Hadrian watched her pace back and forth in front of the hearth, the hem of her robe swishing around her ankles. “My God, what did you think you could do against armed troops?”

“I had my pistol. My father taught me from a young age how to defend myself. Upon leaving the children, I made haste toward the sounds of gunfire and … and screams. But as I went toward the front of the schoolhouse, a man came at a fast pace around the corner … one of the British soldiers.”

Hadrian gripped his fingers into fists to keep from going to her. It was clear from her tense posture that she’d erected a wall around herself and would reject comfort. Especially from an Englishman.