Vincent caught her before her legs completely buckled. She heard him calling her name, trying to keep her there when her mind was insisting on the oblivion of nothingness. He sounded like her father. Stupid mind playing tricks on her now. He demanded she open her eyes. No, she didn’t want to. No more disappointments. She’d had too many.

“Rissa, please, just look at me.”

Vincent had never called her Rissa. She opened her eyes, then forgot to breathe again.

“Papa?” she whispered. “Is that really you?”

For an answer, she was pulled into an old, familiar embrace, one of warmth, comfort and love, and everything-will-be-fine-now, an embrace she had grown up depending on. It was he. Oh, God, it was he, alive, and home, and alive, alive . . .

Great, racking sobs of emotion overcame her. She couldn’t help it. Her prayers had been answered. The season of miracles had given her one.

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

“WHY ARE MY CHILDREN HERE?”

It was the first thing George Ascot said to Vincent once they were alone. He was a big, heavyset man in his middle years. His light brown hair had a bit of gray at the temples; the trimmed beard had much more. His eyes were disconcertingly the exact shade of blue-green as Larissa’s, with that same warmth indicative of a compassionate nature, falsely so in his case, of course.

Vincent had stood there silently and watched the tearful reunion, witnessed the love and tenderness pouring out of the father for the daughter, which had somewhat surprised him. But what had he expected? Just because the man dealt viciously with his competitors didn’t mean he couldn’t love his family. Even a devil could love his children if he had any and be no less evil, he supposed.

Larissa shouldn’t have left them alone. She had finished her crying, and finally her laughing, and had run upstairs to fetch her brother to give him the good news. She hadn’t even asked yet what had detained her father. That wasn’t very important to her apparently, now that he was safe and sound—and home.

Vincent could have offered the man excuses. He could have made amends as well. If she hadn’t left them alone, he might have, for he’d already decided that his revenge wasn’t worth losing her. An amazing discovery which she had only just forced him to realize. But as he stood there alone in the hall with the man responsible for his brother’s death, the feelings returned that started it all. And unfortunately, those feelings governed his response.

“You left them without guidance or wherewithal; they had nowhere else to go,” Vincent said.

George would have had to be deaf to miss the disgust in Vincent’s tone, and although he didn’t understand it yet, he still took offense, replying stiffly, “Rissa had ample household funds.”

“When there were panicked creditors hounding her to settle accounts?”