If he thought otherwise . . . well, there would no longer be the need for any further revenge on his part. Seducing her was going to ultimately hurt the father. If the father was dead, it would only hurt her—a thought he shied away from. Not that she wouldn’t still find a husband eventually. She was too beautiful to remain unmarried for long—another thought he shied away from.

It was really too bad that her father had to be such an underhanded bastard. And amazing that he had raised such a caring, compassionate daughter. Was the son the same, or was it only from the mother’s influence, which had been denied the boy? Vincent’s reports revealed that she had died with the second child’s birth. But Larissa would have had eight years in the mother’s care, long enough for her to have developed the softer qualities of her gender.

Compassion had poured out of her last night. He had never thought how deplorable his childhood would seem to someone else. He had lived it, but had put it behind him. Even speaking of it wouldn’t bring up those old feelings of pain and loneliness that he had buried so deep in order to survive them. But she had envisioned it all and had cried—for him.

What he had told her was the truth, but just a brief version of it. To no one would he ever admit how many nights he had cried himself to sleep as a child, or the anguish in thinking it was his fault that his parents didn’t love him, or the misery each time he stood alone at the window and watched them ride away with Albert, leaving him behind. To experience, every time they had had to deal with him, their impatience to have it done so they could continue with more interesting endeavors. To never have had a single hug or tender touch, even from his mother.

It was nothing to Vincent now because he wouldn’t let it be. He had made of his heart a rock void of emotion—in self-defense. But that Larissa would cry for him, when she had so many bitter feelings against him that should take precedent, still amazed him.

He had done his best to ignore those tears, because he didn’t want her getting defensive about it, which would have ruined the effect it had had on her. But he did mean to take advantage before she had time to remember why she should spare him no sympathy at all.

So he became annoyed that she wasn’t available that morning. Yet when several hours passed and she hadn’t returned, he began to worry.