“I’m not a whore,” she whispered in a trembling voice. “I never was a common whore. Lister kept me, yes, but it wasn’t what you think.”
A part of him ached at the pain he was inflicting on her, but he couldn’t seem to stop. And besides, another part of him wanted to inflict the pain. How could she have done this to her children?
He leaned a hip against a table and crossed his arms, cocking his head again. “Then explain to me how you were his mistress but not a whore.”
She clasped her hands like a little girl giving a recitation. “I was young—very young—when I met Lister.”
“What age?” he snapped.
“Seventeen.”
That gave him pause. Seventeen was still a child. His mouth tightened a bit before he jerked his chin at her. “Go on.”
“My father is a physician, a rather respected one, actually. We lived in Greenwich, in a house with a garden. When I was young, I would sometimes go with him on his visits.”
He eyed her. What she described was a lower class than he had imagined her to be. Her father worked as a physician, true, but he still earned his living. She wasn’t even gentry. She was leagues beneath a duke in social standing. “You lived with just your father?”
“No.” Her eyes dropped. “I have three sisters and a brother. And my… my mother. I was the second eldest girl.”
He jerked a nod for her to continue.
She was squeezing her hands together so tightly, he could see her nails digging into her skin. “One of my father’s patients was the dowager Duchess of Lister. She lived with the duke at that time. She was an elderly lady with many ailments, and Papa saw her every week, sometimes several times a week. I often accompanied him to the residence, and one day I met Lister.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip. The room was quiet; this time Alistair made no move to interrupt.
Finally, she opened her eyes and smiled crookedly, sweetly. “The Duke of Lister is a tall man—Tom was right. Tall and imposing. He looks like a duke. I was waiting in a small sitting room for Papa to finish the visit, and he entered the room. I think he was looking for something—a paper, perhaps, though I can’t remember now. He didn’t notice me at first, and I was frozen in awe. The dowager duchess was an intimidating old lady, but this was her son, the duke. He looked over at me finally, and I rose and curtsied. I was so nervous I thought I’d trip over my own feet. But I didn’t.”
She frowned down at her hands. “Perhaps it would’ve been better if I had tripped.”
He asked quietly, “What happened?”
“He was kind,” she said simply. “He came and talked to me a little, even smiled. I thought at the time that he was being gracious to a nervous young girl, but of course it was more than that even then. He admitted quite freely later that he wanted me as his mistress from the first.”
“And you went skipping into his arms?” he asked cynically.
She cocked her head. “It was a bit more complicated than that. Our first conversation was very brief. Papa came down from the dowager duchess’s rooms, and we left for home. I chattered all the way about His Grace, but I think I would’ve forgotten him eventually had I not seen him again on our next visit. I thought it an odd coincidence that I would meet him again so soon when I’d been accompanying Papa to the duke’s mansion for almost a year without meeting him. Lister had engineered it, of course. He made sure to enter the sitting room where I waited only after my father had gone to see Her Grace. Lister sat and talked to me, ordered tea and cakes. He flirted, although I was too unsophisticated to realize it.”
She walked to one of his display cases and peered inside, her back to him. He wondered if she was hiding her face from him. “There were several such tête-à-têtes, and in between he sent me secret letters and small gifts—a jeweled locket, some embroidered gloves. I knew better. I knew I was not supposed to accept such gifts, wasn’t supposed to let myself be closeted alone with a man, but I… I couldn’t seem to help myself. I fell in love with him.”
She hesitated, but he simply watched that curving back. Even at this moment, he could feel desire for her— perhaps more than desire.
“Then one afternoon we did more than talk,” she said to the glass case. He could see her reflection, ghostly in the glass, and she looked remote and cool, though he was beginning to realize that the appearance she projected might not be real. “We made love, and afterward I knew that I couldn’t go back home with Papa. My world—my life—had changed completely. I knew vaguely that Lister was married, that he had children not much younger than I, but in a way that only fed my romantic fantasy. He didn’t mention her often, but when he did, Lister described his wife as cold. He said she had not let him into her bed for years. We could never be together as husband and wife, yet I could be with him as his mistress. I loved him. I wanted to be with him always.”
“He seduced you.” Alistair knew his voice was cold with suppressed rage. How could she? How could Lister? To seduce a young, sheltered girl was caddish behavior beyond the pale of even the most dissolute of rakes.
“Yes.” She turned and faced him, her shoulders back and her head high. “I suppose he did, although I was more than willing. I loved him with all the fervor of a young, romantic girl. I never truly knew him. I fell in love with what I thought he was.”
That he didn’t want to hear. He pushed away from the desk. “Whatever your motives when you were seventeen, it doesn’t change anything now. Lister is the father of your children. He has them. I don’t see anything you or I can do.”
“I can try and get them back,” she said. “He doesn’t love them; he’s never spent more than fifteen minutes at a time with them.”
He narrowed his eye. “Then why take them?”
“Because he considers them his,” she said, not bothering to hide the bitter tone in her voice. “He doesn’t care for them as persons, only as things he thinks he owns. And because he wants to hurt me.”
Alistair frowned. “Will he hurt them?”
She looked at him frankly. “I don’t know. They are no more than a dog or a horse to him. Do you know of men who whip their horses?”