Dammit, this conversation was not going the way he’d planned it. He’d apologized, and shown her the letter as a justification for his early hostility. She was supposed toaccept his explanation and apology so they could then move on. To what, he wasn’t yet sure, but he didn’t want to be at daggers drawn with her.
Instead she was bristling like a drenched cat, those gorgeous green eyes narrowed and spitting with anger, her hands bunched into tight little fists.
Forced to defend himself, he said awkwardly, “I met your former neighbor, Mrs. Purdey, with whom you spent every Thursday.”
“So, I’m sure your nasty, suspicious mind has worked it all out. The squire’s visits, my stays with Mrs. Purdey are exactly what you think—in part. But you don’t know the whole story.” She glared at him. “And before you say another word, my mother wasn’t a whore as my father claimed: she was a desperate young woman doing what she could to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.”
“That’s all very well but—”
“My mother lay with two men in her entire life—two! One was my father when she was too young and innocent to know what she was doing. And the other was the squire.”
She shot Leo a dagger look; his skepticism must have shown. But honestly, didn’t all fallen women claim they didn’t know what they were doing?
She continued, her voice shaking with anger. “My father seduced a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, too innocent and unworldly to know what he was about. He was almost forty, worldly and sophisticated. Mama was young, naive—and very beautiful. But she didn’t even know how babies were made—her mother had never explained it.”
He frowned. “Did her parents not attempt to protect her?”
She snorted. “They were too impressed by him—his sophistication, his urbane air and address, and his title, so no, they trusted him as a gentleman, and assumed his intentions were honorable. Whether they were greedy and ambitious or as unworldly and naive as their daughter, youmust decide. As it turned out, he was already married, but they didn’t know that, then.”
“I see.” The parents were no doubt hoping for a good match for their daughter. The greedy fools.
“My father was a notorious rake, the squire a well-known womanizer who used his position to coerce village women—and yet my mother was the one branded as a whore!” She gestured furiously. “How is that in any way just? Why is there no similar word for men, eh? Because for sure my father was a male whore and so was the squire.”
“I suppose—”
She swept on. “Libertine, rake, philanderer, Romeo, Casanova, Lothario—none of them carry even a sliver of the depth of condemnation of ‘whore.’ Some even carry a suggestion of glamour. Call a man a rake or a Romeo, and more likely than not he’ll be flattered.”
Leo inclined his head. True enough.
“But to return to my mother, there she was, sixteen years old, discovering she was with child—she didn’t even realize it until she started to show—she was a true innocent, you see. And what did her parents do? They gave her two choices—have the baby in secret and get rid of it, or be banished from the family.”
Leo frowned. Wasn’t that what most respectable parents would do? It seemed like a reasonable solution to him. Though he could see how Isobel might see it differently.
“She did give birth to me in secret, and their plan was to place me in Captain Coram’s home for foundlings. But once I was born, she realized she loved me and refused to give me up.”
The foundling hospital? Leo was shocked. Treated as a foundling, and trained up to be a servant? He couldn’t imagine it.
“So Mama’s loving family threw her out. Gave her no support, no money, made no arrangements to provide herwith a place to live. She sold the few trinkets she’d inherited from her grandmother, and after a few false starts, she found a mean little house on the edge of a small village, and there—alone and unsupported—she set out to raise me.” Her voice hardened. “Seventeen years old and all alone in the world except for a baby.”
“Sir Bartleby—”
“Gave her not a penny, though she wrote to him a number of times. Nobody gave her a penny—until the squire came along, just when she was at her most desperate. He made her an offer she couldn’t refuse; the cottage rent and a small allowance—enough for us both to live on—in exchange for those Thursday nights. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, he was past fifty and a charmless, ugly brute. She was, as I said, seventeen and very beautiful.”
Leo swallowed. No wonder Isobel was bitter. He thought about how Sir Bartleby had described her mother in his letter:Isobel has shown every sign of being as immoral and manipulative as her whore of a mother.But it was Sir Bartleby who was immoral and manipulative, and her mother, the innocent victim of his lust.
Any halfway-decent man would have, at the very least, supported the child and the child’s mother with an allowance. Leaving them both to starve was unconscionable. Isobel Burton’s mother had not been fortunate in her choice of lover, or in her family. Her daughter, now—her daughter was magnificent, a daughter any mother would be proud of.
“The squire wanted to set Mama up as his permanent mistress—move her to a much bigger, nicer house in town, give her pretty clothes and jewelry—on the condition that she give me up, put me in an orphan asylum or leave me with one of his farming tenants. Mama refused. My mother loved me.”
Tears glittered like diamonds on the tips of her long dark lashes as she finished, her voice shaking with passion. “My mother gave upeverythingfor me—her good name,her family, a happy life, social acceptance, and the chance of a husband and family of her own.” Her voice broke slightly as she added, “So don’t youdarecall her a whore to me! And shewasa truly wonderful woman.”
Leo handed her a handkerchief. “I can see that,” he said quietly. “I cannot imagine what it must have been like for her—for you both. How is it then that you were raised by Sir Bartleby?”
She made a scornful sound. “ ‘Raised by Sir Bartleby’? Hardly. When my mother died, her brother, my uncle, appeared at the funeral, swept me away and tried to dump me on Sir Bartleby’s doorstep. He, of course, refused and said I should be dumped in the nearest orphan asylum—I heard him with my own ears.” Her voice softened. “But Clarissa found me, and we hid from the adults. And by the time they discovered us, she refused to let us be parted.”
“Shedid?”
She smiled. “Clarissa only seems meek and mild. When it’s something that matters to her, she’s a tigress. My father never did manage to get rid of me, though he tried many times.” Her eyes hardened. “And neither will you.”
