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"Sit down, please." Hoyt gestured to a group of chairs clustered around a marble-topped coffee table. "Can I get you anything?"
"Nothing, thank you." Conor sat and Hoyt settled across from him. "Mr. Winthrop, I was wondering if we could discuss your daughter."
"Stepdaughter," Hoyt said with a little smile.
"Yes, of course, sir. Your stepdaughter. Would you describe your relationship with her as close?"
Hoyt sighed. "It was, when I first married her mother. Miranda was, what, six or seven, I guess." He smiled. "A beautiful little girl, Mr. O'Neil, and the sweetest child imaginable. Eva and I had our concerns, you know, that it might be difficult for her to adapt to having a stepfather—her own father had died when she was only a baby—but she took to the new arrangement like a fish to water. Why, it was only weeks before she asked if she might call me Daddy."
"And you said...?"
"I said it would be fine. I'd waited a bit longer than most men to marry, you see. The thought of having an instant family was most appealing."
Conor nodded. "So, you and Miranda got along well."
"Yes." Hoyt's aristocratic forehead wrinkled. "We did, until Miranda changed."
"Changed, sir?"
Hoyt rose to his feet and paced to the wall of glass that looked out over the Hudson River.
"At first, we thought it was simply prepubescent nonsense. You know the sort of thing. Temper tantrums, disobedience... we were sure she'd grow out of it."
Conor rose, too, and walked towards Winthrop. Far out on the river, toy boats chugged their way upstream.
"But she didn't?"
"If anything, her behavior got worse. She began to lie, to cheat at school. Well, they wouldn't put up with that, of course, so we took her out and placed her elsewhere. Not that it did any good. She was asked to leave that school and the one after that. And the next, if I remember correctly." He looked at Conor and shook his head sadly. "To be honest, I've lost count of how many places she was in and out of before she finally went to Miss Cooper's."
"You agreed with your wife's decision to put her into a school as strict as that?"
"Certainly. It was what she needed."
"And?"
"And, as my wife has already told you, Miranda disgraced herself completely at Miss Cooper's, enticing her roommate's distinguished cousin into an escapade only she could have devised."
"You hold your stepdaughter responsible, then?"
"I wish I could say otherwise, but I know Miranda."
"How do you mean that, sir? Did she have a history of promiscuity?"
Hoyt swung around and looked at Conor. "Promiscuity, and of orchestrating things to suit herself. She wanted freedom from Miss Cooper's and from parental control."
"And she thought eloping with a man almost old enough to be her father would provide that freedom?"
"That's my assumption. It was not a practical decision but then, practicality was not Miranda's strong suit."
Conor nodded. "You didn't accompany your wife to Paris, to confront the girl?"
"No." Hoyt sighed deeply. "I regret it, to this day. I wonder if things might have gone any differently if I'd been there to give Eva support."
"You don't agree with how she handled things, then?"
"Offering Count de Lasserre money for an annulment, you mean?"
"Buying it from him, yes."
