“Well I wouldn’t go that far,” Richard said with amusement, and then quickly added, “But my question is, why then do you not trust Lisa? She is their sister. Raised by the same parents with the same values. Why is she untrustworthy when her sisters are not?”

“I do trust Lisa,” he said with a frown.

“Not if you think she would be unfaithful,” Richard said firmly.

“That is different. It wouldn’t be—it’s not that I think she—it’s—”

“The curse?” Richard suggested when Robert paused again.

“Yes,” he said on a sigh and the other man shook his head.

“You do not even recognize how irrational that sounds, do you? Your father pounded that ingrained belief so firmly into your head, you cannot see that it was just the rantings of a bitter old man.”

“They weren’t rantings,” Robert said quietly. “My mother was unfaithful.”

“Has it occurred to you that he may have driven her to it with his beliefs and suspicions?” Richard suggested quietly. “I suspect your father was raised by his own father on the same milk of hate and mistrust for women as he tried to instill in you. I think had you not been such good friends with the Madison sisters, you would have grown up a woman hater like him.”

Robert frowned. “He didn’t hate women.”

“Really?” Richard asked with a disbelieving laugh. “Give one example of a good or kind thing he ever said about women. Because I met your father a time or two over the years when I was younger and it seemed to me he was a bitter, nasty woman hater.” Richard downed his drink then and stood up. “I am going back to bed to cuddle up to my wife. You should get some rest too. You are still healing.”

Robert merely nodded. His thoughts were now on his father as he sought for even one good thing the man had ever said about any woman. The only thing he could come up with was that Cook made damned fine pasties. Sadly, he’d followed that up with the comment that it was too bad she wasn’t a man.