Come the Night

“Are your parents still living?”

She wondered why he would ask. Or care. “My mother died long ago. My father…has become rather eccentric in his old age, and seldom leaves Snowfell. I do what I can for him.”

“So you’ve never left.”

“Toby and I have everything we need there.”

“And Toby was doing all right without knowing about his real dad. The only mistake you made was to write the truth down so that he could find it.”

He was right. It had been a terrible mistake. She’d remembered having destroyed the diary a year after Toby’s birth, after she’d learned that Ross had found employment with the New York City police force. But her memory had played tricks on her…she’d only torn out certain pages, leaving a patchwork of notations that had revealed the very things she’d never wanted Toby to know.

“Why did you keep track of me?” Ross asked.

She couldn’t invent a convincing reason. “I don’t know,” she said.

He seemed to accept her answer. “What did Toby do when he found out that Delvaux wasn’t his father?”

“He was…intrigued,” Gillian said carefully. “A boy of his age is incessantly curious about everything, especially himself. It was only natural that he should wish to know more about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I had little chance to discuss the matter with him before he ran away.”

“And you didn’t notice he was gone until he’d gotten all the way to the ship?”

Gillian felt a prickle of heat rushing over her skin. “He’s run away before, but never went farther than the neighboring estate.”

“Sounds like he didn’t have everything he needed at Snowfell after all.”

“Boys of his age are naturally restless.”

He offered no contradiction. “You never considered letting him meet his real father, even in secret?”

Another question filled with pitfalls. “It would hardly have been fair to him—or to you,” she said. “My…writings did not continue beyond the first few years. I knew nothing of your present life. You might have had a wife, children of your own. I could not anticipate that you would wish…to be…burdened with the knowledge.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Mighty considerate of you,” he said, lapsing into that peculiar Western dialect she remembered from London. “But you were wrong on all counts, Mrs. Delvaux. No wife. No kids. Never had much use for the idea.”

“Then I see no real difficulty in our…in the situation. Toby has met you. His curiosity has been satisfied.”

“Has it?”

She remembered what Toby had said to her in the bedroom. “Toby is a boy of intelligence and ability beyond his years,” she said. “He is affectionate with those who have earned his trust. But he can also be rash and stubborn. He has done a very dangerous thing by traveling alone to America. Such behavior must not be rewarded.”

“So he should be punished for wanting to know the truth?”

Her stomach began to knot. “I have answered your questions,” she said. “What more do you want of us?”

Ross looked at her and then down at the carpet between his feet, and she recognized something she hadn’t expected to see: uncertainty. She might almost have called it vulnerability. But the moment passed quickly, and when he spoke again, it was without any trace of hesitation.

“I want to see more of my son,” he said.

CHAPTER THREE

PANIC SWELLED in Gillian’s throat, but she fought it down. She needed to use reason now, not emotion. Unless Ross had lost the basic decency that had been such a fundamental part of the boy she had known, he would listen to a sensible argument.

“Please be seated,” she asked.

He regarded her as warily as if she’d asked him to jump out the window, but he acceded to her request. He selected one of the deep armchairs, and she took a seat on the sofa, holding herself still and erect.

“I understand,” she began, “that you are curious about Toby. That’s only to be expected. I can see that you are also concerned about his welfare.” She paused, trying to collect her thoughts. “Since you lack experience with children, you may not realize…how impressionable a young boy can be.”

“Impressionable.” Ross got up abruptly, went to the illegally stocked sideboard where Hugh had left his bottle of brandy and poured himself a glass. “You mean he might be susceptible to bad influences.”

How easily he twisted her words. “He may be entering the transition at any time. Additional distractions will only serve to confuse him and make him unhappy at such a crucial juncture in his life.”

Ross emptied the glass. “You think I’ll confuse him?” he asked. “You think he’ll lose his ability to Change just by being around me?”

Gillian flinched. “I implied no such thing,” she said stiffly.

“But you’re worried about it, aren’t you? He’s my son, and that means…” He paused to pour himself another glass and inspected it critically. “What else are you worried about, Mrs. Delvaux? Afraid I’ll give Toby a yen to be a cop like his old dad?”

Gillian pushed her anger back into the little hollow deep inside her chest. “You can only hurt him if you give him reason to believe…if you allow him to form an attachment to you which cannot last.”

“Hurt him?” Ross quickly swallowed the second drink and set it down so hard that Gillian expected the glass to shatter. “Is that what you think I’m trying to do?”

“No, of course not. But Toby’s future is in England, and you surely would not wish him to be torn—”

“Between you and me?” He pushed the half-empty brandy bottle aside with a sweep of his hand. “Do you think I could take him away from you?”

Ice water rolled through Gillian’s veins. “Is that what you intend to do?”

Ross dragged his palm over his face and returned to the chair. “No.” He met her gaze with an earnestness that battered at her defenses more surely than a barrage of curses. “I don’t steal kids from their mothers. But he’s blood of my blood. You can’t make that fact disappear, no matter how much you want to.”

“I have no wish to deny it.”

He gave her cynical smile. “Yeah. I guess it’s a little too late for that.” He sobered. “All I’m asking is a few days. Just a few days, Jill.”

Gillian swallowed and looked away. “Jill” had been Ross’s pet name for her; she still remembered when he’d told her, with a teasing sort of tenderness in his eyes, that “Gillian” was too “highfalutin” for everyday use. She’d thought that it was his way of bridging the gap of wealth and class that lay between them, differences she had been just as ready to set aside.

Until he’d tried to make their affair more than it could ever be.

She rested her hands in her lap, deliberately relaxing her fingers and letting all emotion drain away. “I know you have no reason to trust me,” she said, “but I must ask you to believe that I know what is best for our…for Toby. He has romantic notions that may perhaps have led him to believe that he will find something—something mysterious and wonderful—here with you that he hasn’t found at home. He has an idealized image of the father he never knew.”

Ross dropped his hands between his knees. “I never claimed to be anyone’s ideal. I won’t lie to the kid.” His voice grew husky. “Am I asking so much, Jill? A few days out of a lifetime?”

His question hung between them, so saturated with unspoken feeling that Gillian felt worse than if he’d shouted and raged. The gentleness of his voice didn’t change the circumstances in the least, but her mouth simply refused to speak the words that necessity should have made so simple.

He was asking her to trust him. Trust him with the most important thing in her life, when he had every reason to resent her. She had known from childhood that emotions could change in an instant, that one could never rely on anyone else’s behavior, only one’s own. His motives were still a mystery to her; it wasn’t as if he knew more than a trifle about Toby or could even begin to understand him.