"So she just asked you to not look into me and you just, obey? You don't strike me as the type to accept orders." Brunhilde remark.
"When you say it like that, it does seem to be an order but it wasn't. She asked me to do something, I trusted and respected her enough to accept." He answers.
"You trust her despite knowing that she's hiding things from you?"
"Of course. I'm not insecure enough to demand to know every part of someone's life before working with them. Everyone is entitled to their own secret. Her, you, me, it's all the same. If one day she trusts me enough, maybe she will tell me about some of them and maybe I will too but in the meantime I have no right whatsoever to ask about them." Nathaniel explained.
"I see." She mused out loud. "You really sound and think nothing like a seventeen years old teenager should."
"Maybe because my life has been nothing like any seventeen years old should be. I went from trial to trial and now I'm here, somehow the world is not tired yet because they kept testing me. You are one of those trials, Duchess."
"You seriously expect me to believe this is it? I can't recognize a half truth when I see one." She said with a huff.
"Of course it is, I did tell you that there will be things I will not say and honestly, you really believe you deserve to know?" Nathaniel said, turning his head to the side and looking at her in the eyes.
Coming to a sudden halt, they both faced each other in the middle of the street. Andy, not knowing what was happening, just took a sitting position between them and looked at the passerby around them in an alert state. Nathaniel on his side did not cower and just face her impassively, waiting for her to speak.
"That is fair and way more honest than what I'm used to." She finally answered. "You said, you believe I'm a trial. What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, that's easy." Nathaniel began, patting Andy's head before starting to walk again. "You could very well may be the most dangerous person I have ever met. Considering the people I already know, this is saying something. The trial lies in what's going to happen next, are we going to become friends or bitter enemies?"
"Between those two, I would like better to become friends if it was my choice to make." Brunhilde affirmed.
"That's exactly my point, I don't think I want to be friends with you." He said frankly.
"Why?" She asked with a bit of anger creeping in her voice.
"You are a devious, manipulative, conceited and pretentious woman. Like you can guess, those are not the qualities I want in a friend."
"Do you want to anger me, Nathaniel?" She asked in a dangerous tone.
"No but I'm just being honest here."
"Honest doesn't mean right." She pointed out.
"Of course but for my defense, I'm not the one who hired a private investigator in three different American cities to look into you, the whole thing four thousand miles away from my hometown." Nathaniel commented.
"Touché." She acknowledged with the ghost of a smile on her face.
"To be fair since I know next to nothing about you, I based my opinions on how you behave. Maybe this cold and uncaring exterior is only a facade to push people away or maybe it's not. Either way, it's not my place to unearth the real you, I'm just here to satisfy your curiosity so I can go back to my important work."
"Well, I can say you know how to make a girl feel special." She sighed.
"You are right, I'm being rude here and I'm sorry Duchess but I just want to be clear." Nathaniel said.
Walking ahead, Nathaniel saw a little away to his right a young man bumping on an old lady before moving quickly without even apologizing. Sighing to himself, Nathaniel angled his body and bumped on the same young man who swore at him to be careful. Surprised by the scene, Brunhilde just looked at him with an eyebrow raised which Nathaniel just shook his head in response, signaling it was no big deal. With two quick strides, Nathaniel catches up to the old lady.
"Excuse me, ma'am." He called. "Your wallet just fell off of your purse."
Seeing her purse in Nathaniel's hand, the lady was shell shocked for a moment before taking it from Nathaniel's hand.
"Oh! Thank you, young man. Thank you! I don't know what I would have done if I would have lost it."
"Don't worry about it, just stay safe alright?" He said, smiling brightly at her before continuing walking.
Feeling the stare of Brunhilde on him, Nathaniel chose to ask a question to change the subject but was unfortunately too slow.
"Well, well. Look at you, a millionaire teenager with experience in grifting." She said in a judgmental tone of voice.
"I just have nimble fingers and this old lady didn't deserve to have her wallet stolen like that. Duchess, how old are you supposed to be by the way?"
"A true gentleman would know that this is not a proper question to ask a lady." She commented before she realized Nathaniel's choice of words. "Wait, what do you mean by 'supposed'?"
"I mean if I were to see your birth certificate, what would be written on it?"
"I was born on February the thirteen, 1990. Now, I want to know where you are going with this."
"It means you are twenty three years old."
"You are good at math but I still don't see the point." She remarked.
"I still remember the first time we met and the first time you said something to me, it wasn't that long ago to be honest so no surprise there. But I'm studying to become a lawyer and I was always taught to take note of people's use of words. They are giving away a lot of the person's upbringing and education." Nathaniel explained.
"I see. What did my choice of words that night give away about myself?"
"The same that you gave off for the most part, that you are a very well educated and sophisticated woman but there was one thing. It was the way you pronounce the word 'here', at first it sounded almost foreign to me so I got curious and met with a linguistic expert. He told me that it sounds weird not because it was foreign but because it was like this the word was spoken, almost two hundred years ago." Nathaniel explained casually.
He did not have to wait for his last word to leave his mouth that he suddenly felt a huge sense of danger coming to his left. More than that, Andy who was between them started growling and was looking at Brunhilde with hostility. Turning his head to the side, Nathaniel could see that she was watching him but her face was carefully neutral, letting nothing out about her feelings. Looking down, Brunhilde watches Andy's behavior before watching Nathaniel again.
"What's going on with your dog?"
"Andy is a crossbreed by the way, in fact genetically, he's more of a wolf than a dog. Do you know that their sense of smell is so developed that they can smell feelings? They are especially good with strong feelings like fear, anger or the premise of violence. Andy reacted like that because he smelled that you were going to attack." Nathaniel answers, patting Andy's head to make him calm down.
"Luckily for me, we are in a public setting or you might have even if I doubt it. It would have been tentamous with agreeing to what I just said and you are too smart for that."
"You use your crossbreed to trap me." She affirms in a neutral tone of voice.
"Trap is such an ugly word but can you really blame me? I just wanted some truth coming from you, something you've never done before." Nathaniel shrugged.
"We are done here." She said, turning around and walking away, not giving him time to say anything else.
Watching her leave, Nathaniel shook his head. Judging by the way she reacted, he knew he had stumbled upon their secret closer than he thought he would be and that was dangerous. He didn't know how to factor that in what he knew or guess about her yet and was not in a hurry to find out. He had the feeling that going further into that line of thought would be too dangerous and honestly he had better to do at the moment. He just wanted to be left alone and doing his work. Sighing, he pet Andy some more.
"The mean woman left now, let's go home and play with Jaydon."
Andy seemed to have understood him because he made an excited bark, making him laugh.