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"Does it bother you seeing your father with his wife?" Rowan asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Lysander frowned. His father had presented the image of solidly married man, with his wife on his arm at every public event for Lysander's entire life. That couldn't be what Rowan meant. "His current wife, you mean?"
Rowan nodded.
"That's a heavy question for me, are you sure you want the answer?" he said, being more candid than he would have been with anyone else, except his mother.
"Yes." Rowan pressed in closer to him. "I want to know everything about you."
Why did hearing that make him want to smile. Their liaison was temporary. He had to admit, if only to himself, he was just as curious about her. "The short answer is no."
"And the long answer?" she prompted.
"It bothered the hell out of me that he did not marry my mother when his first wife died, but it did not surprise me." Lysander was too pragmatic not to have realized a long time ago what a shallow human being Baptiste Andino was.
Citing adherence to his religious beliefs that did not allow for divorce, Lysander's father had kept his mother on a string, living as his mistress, for decades while remaining married to the socialite wife with all the right connections. When the first Mrs. Andino had died three years before, Lysander's father had started dating a bare six months after he buried her. And he'd married another socialite whose family had business connections he wanted a year later.
The fact she was twenty years younger and considered beautiful had no doubt played their role as well, Lysander thought cynically. His father was all about the image.
His loyal, trusting mother had never even been in the running, despite the fact that Baptiste recognized Lysander as his.
"A man of his ilk does not marry his mistress," Lysander said.
It had devastated his mother when she'd realized all the promises and if-only-I-wasn't-married refrains she'd heard from the man were nothing but hot air, but it had been the best thing that could have happened to her too. At least as far as Lysander could see.
It had never been Baptiste's religious conviction that kept him married, no matter what he'd told the woman who had born him his second son. It had been pure self-interest. Just as self-interest had prompted Baptiste's second marriage tosomeone suitable.
Lysander's mother had finally broken things off with his father the night he announced his engagement to his current wife. Lysander had been so proud of her, even as he'd held her while she cried.
He'd vowed in that moment never to cause a woman that kind of heartache. Lysander would never make vows he could not keep.
He would never have more than one lover at a time, but he would not make promises to any of them. He didn't do forever, wasn't sure it was even possible.
CHAPTER 9
"You don't think much of him, do you?" Rowan asked perceptively.
"No. Do you?" he asked. "You lived in the same house with him for years. You probably know him better than I do, despite me being his son."
Rowan's lovely features twisted with distaste. "No, I never did think much of him. He didn't even try to be discreet about his affairs. I guess that's one reason why finding out Cyrus was a philanderer came as such a shock."
"Because he was better at hiding it."
"Yes. I think modern sensibilities are less forgiving of that sort of thing. When your father was a young man, it was common for powerful men to have what they called theirpillow friends."
Lysander hated thinking of his mother in those terms, but she'd never been anything else to Baptiste. Even the house Lysander had grown up in had not belonged to her. A mistress didn't own her home, she lived at the behest of her lover and provider.
"Culture swings on a pendulum." At least on the surface.
Lysander wasn't sure there were any fewer men of his standing that took lovers, but they weren't as forthright about it. It all sickened him. His mother's life, his own life, could have been so different if his father had been a man who kept his word.
"What put that look on your face?" Rowan asked.
Lysander shook his head before moving to take her hand and tug her out of the room and toward the stairs.
"Where are we going?" she asked with laughter in her voice.
"Where do you think?" he riposted.
