She had been so wrapped up in the play that she hadn't paid much attention to the bitterness in Lord Wrotham's voice and the cynical gleam in his eyes as he had spoken so slightingly of her sex. Now, alone with her thoughts, she recalled the scene in vivid detail. It was more than bitterness that she had detected; there was also pain, the pain of disillusionment. Small wonder, she supposed, with a harpy like the Dowager Countess of Claverdon for a mother. A woman so greedy for masculine attention would have had little love to spare for anyone but herself, and certainly not for a small son. The major must have been a very lonely little boy. Alex remembered her own happy childhood, which had been filled with the love of her parents and the warmth and companionship of brothers and sisters. How unhappy she had been when Alexander had begun to show his true nature, and how much worse it must have been for the major to have the sole person in his life be someone as self-centered as his mother obviously was.
