Come the Night

She held his gaze, struggling to disregard the half-familiar scent of his body beneath the inexpensive suit. Surely that warm, masculine fragrance hadn’t been quite so potent in London. Surely his shoulders hadn’t been so broad, his movements so steeped with barely leashed power. Surely she hadn’t forgotten so much…

“I always knew you came from money,” Ross said, leaving his post by the door to wander around the sitting room. “I just didn’t realize how much until now.”

It wasn’t the way Gillian had expected the conversation to begin. Accusation had seethed in his voice when they’d spoken outside his apartment building, and Gillian could still feel a suggestion of violence beneath his deceptive calm. But he was attempting to approach their differences in a relatively civilized manner, and for that she should be grateful.

“I guess that’s why Warbrick offered to buy me off,” Ross said, picking up a fragile vase of intricately engraved crystal. “You’d hardly notice losing a thousand bucks.”

Gillian turned to face him, the solidity of the sofa at her back. “I must apologize,” she said, “for any insult Mr. Warbrick may have unintentionally given you. He and I had not discussed—”

“Unintentionally?” Ross laughed. “Where is your friend, by the way? He seemed pretty anxious to spare you any inconvenience.”

“I don’t know where he is at the moment,” Gillian said. That was the truth; she’d tried calling Ethan’s hotel when she and Hugh had arrived, but he hadn’t been in. “I assure you that he meant no harm. He—”

“Tried to make me believe that Toby wasn’t my son.” Ross set down the vase. “Was that your idea or his?”

Gillian revised her hopes for a civilized discussion. “I didn’t authorize him to deceive you,” she said.

“Even though that’s what you’ve been doing for the past twelve years?”

There was no sense in denying obvious fact, no point in stammering excuses that would only ring hollow. “I’m sorry that it has come to this, Ross,” she said, pushing past the barrier of his name. “It was never my intention to cause you pain.”

She expected another harsh retort, but Ross surprised her. His face emptied of all emotion. “I don’t remember saying anything about pain,” he said.

That was when Gillian realized he wasn’t going to speak of what he’d felt on the day she’d left him. She had assumed that a large part of his anger was directed at her—not because of Toby, but because she’d cut off all contact with him the day after he’d made his declaration. She couldn’t blame him; she had endured months of confusion, unhappiness and self-reproach before she’d come to terms with her decision and recognized its inevitability.

She had gradually erased all speculation about Ross’s feelings. Even if part of her had wished he would search her out and sweep her away, she had known such an act would be a terrible mistake. And when he hadn’t come for her, she’d assumed that his love had been like hers, built on a transient passion that would never have endured.

Apparently Ross had come to the same conclusion. If he was bitter, it wasn’t because he still loved her. If he was angry, it was because his pride had been damaged, not his heart.

Strange how little relief she felt.

Gillian released her breath. “I assume,” she said slowly, “that you have questions about Toby.”

Ross walked to the window and pushed back the silk drapes. “When did you marry Delvaux?”

Again he’d caught her off guard. She briefly considered telling him the real story, which Toby would have discovered for himself if her diary had been intact.

No. She would tell Ross exactly what she’d told Toby when he was old enough to understand.

“Jacques Delvaux,” she said, “was the man I was engaged to marry before I went to London.”

Ross stiffened, every muscle frozen, and then gradually relaxed.

“You were engaged?” he asked.

“Yes. My work as a nurse only postponed our wedding.”

“Let me guess. He was pure loup-garou.”

There. He had reached the obvious conclusion, as she’d known he would. The unpalatable truth lay between them, stinking of shattered dreams.

“Yes,” she said.

He could have berated her then, could have brought it all out in the open, painting her as the unredeemed villainess. But Ross said nothing about her lack of honesty. He laid no blame, offered no reproach. He simply waited, calm and remote, as if he were a priest awaiting a supplicant’s confession.

“Jacques and I were married a month after I returned to Snowfell,” she said. “Only a few days before he left to join his regiment on the front lines. He died within the week.”

Ross gazed at the wall behind her. “You knew Toby wasn’t his,” he said.

Of course she’d known. How could she not have recognized the changes in her own body? A werewolf female knew instinctively when she was with child. It ran in the blood as surely as the Change.

“I knew,” she admitted.

“Did you tell him?”

Gillian took a deep breath. What would she have done, if events had occurred just as she’d claimed? What if Sir Averil had been able to keep her pregnancy a secret and her arranged marriage—the real marriage—had happened exactly as Sir Averil had so carefully planned?

Let Ross think the very worst of her. It didn’t matter now.

“No,” she said. “There was no time.”

“But no one questioned that Toby was Delvaux’s,” Ross said. “You were together long enough to give your son a legitimate, acceptable father.”

The bitterness was gone. She’d done nothing to soothe his pride; she’d only given him more reason to despise her. But Ross’s words were rational, almost detached. It was as if he had become a different person than the one she’d been speaking to only an hour ago.

An hour. Had it really been such a short time? Could they have passed so easily through the turmoil of their reunion and emerged relatively unscathed?

“The world hasn’t changed so very much,” she said. “Toby would have been subject to harsh judgment if anyone knew that he was illegitimate.”

“But you weren’t really worried about what regular people might think. All those other loups-garous with their plans for the werewolf race wouldn’t have been too happy with you, either.”

Oh, yes. He clearly remembered her attempts to explain what had seemed so important for him to understand in those days, even before she’d known he was a little more than human.

“I was concerned with Toby’s future, yes,” she said.

“What about your family? You never talked about them. How were they involved in all this?”

Now he was striking much too close to the truth. “They approved of my marriage to Jacques, of course. Our families had been connected in the past.”

“So you couldn’t tell them about me, either.”

“They would not have understood. They trusted me…my honor. I could not have disappointed them.”

He cocked his head, as if he sensed how much she was omitting, but couldn’t frame the right questions.

“You did what you had to do to protect Toby,” he said evenly. “Where did you go after Delvaux died?”

“To Snowfell, the estate where I grew up. My family welcomed me.”