Come the Night. Susan Krinard
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as a common nurse. Even when she’d been faced with devastating injuries and suffering, she’d never faltered. And she’d given herself to a guy she’d assumed was human, a man not even from her own country.
Ross cursed under his breath. What the hell was he thinking? This was the real Gillian Maitland, the one who’d returned to her old life without a backward glance. That other Gillian had been a mask she’d temporarily worn, the way a little girl tries on her mother’s clothes and oversized shoes. And this Gillian—Mrs. Delvaux—had thrown away whatever spirit of rebellion and adventure had led her to volunteer in the first place.
Just like she’d thrown away his love.
Toby tugged at Ross’s arm. “May we go now, Father?”
“Toby!” Gillian said, inserting herself between him and Ross. “I doubt Mr. Kavanagh wishes his arm to be pulled from its socket.”
“Don’t trouble yourself on my account, Mrs. Delvaux,” Ross said. “I think I can handle my own son.”
She blanched and stepped back as if he’d struck her. Ross pretended he didn’t care. He ruffled Toby’s hair.
“What first?” he asked. “The Aerial Swing or the Dragon’s Gorge?”
“Which one is least frightening?” Toby asked in a low voice.
“Being scared is part of the fun, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I’m not worried about myself. But Mother is with us.”
“Do you think she’d be afraid?”
“I don’t know. She’s never been to a place like this before, either. I think she’s a little nervous.”
So even Toby saw it, though he wouldn’t realize that Gillian’s unease had nothing to do with the amusements themselves. He was capable of a child’s unthinking callousness, but he also wanted to protect his mother. Would he feel that way if he resented her, if he hadn’t already forgiven her those years of deception?
Ross cleared his throat. “Let’s start her off easy with the Dragon’s Gorge,” he suggested. “Mrs. Delvaux?”
“Yes, Mr. Kavanagh?”
“We’re off to see the Dragon’s Gorge,” Toby said. “You needn’t worry, Mother. You have two men to protect you.”
Gillian met Ross’s gaze. He could have sworn there was sadness in her eyes.
Because Toby wasn’t her little boy anymore. He was growing up. She was bound to lose him eventually, just like any mother. But for her, it was a hundred times worse. She might lose him to his humanity.
A sense of chivalry Ross had given up years ago compelled him to offer Gillian his arm. She ignored him and started toward the park entrance. Toby lingered to make sure Ross was following, and then he darted ahead. They waited in line to purchase their tickets and joined the stream of people sweeping into the concourse.
The Dragon’s Gorge was one of Luna Park’s primary attractions, and the crowd was considerable. Miniature railroad cars moved one by one along a winding track into the open maw of a vast cave, guarded on either side by snarling winged dragons. Toby walked at a rapid clip to the end of the line, trying to peer over the heads of the people ahead of him.
Gillian joined Toby, and Ross fell in behind them. The top of Gillian’s head was just level with Ross’s mouth; the smell of her skin and her hair, unsullied by the heavy perfumes so many women used, was far more intoxicating than the whiskey to which he’d become so attached since the hearing and its aftermath.
Both the whiskey and the woman were a kind of poison. Both confused his brain and his senses, made it all too easy to deny the hard facts of life. Ross backed away, bumping into the man behind him. He muttered an apology and deliberately closed off his senses until he, Gillian and Toby had reached the head of the line.
He wasn’t sure quite how it happened, but suddenly Toby was sprawled across the last seat of the waiting railroad car, leaving Ross and Gillian to take the first seat in the car behind it. The attendant gestured impatiently; Ross stepped into the car and helped Gillian in after him.
She sat just as stiffly as she had in her hotel room, her gloved hands tucked in her lap and her gaze fixed on the car ahead. Toby twisted in his seat and waved happily as the car lurched into motion.
“Is it quite safe for him to ride alone?” Gillian asked, speaking as if the words had been pried out of her by red-hot pokers.
“He isn’t a baby,” Ross said. “You can’t keep him in high chairs and diapers for the rest of his life.”
She glared at him, her eyes glowing as the shadows of the cave closed in around them. “You think me overprotective,” she said. “You think that Toby is as…worldly as any boy his age. He is not. He has lived all his life—”
“Around people just like him, where he’s safe from anything that could challenge what he’s been taught.”
“You know nothing of how he’s been raised.”
“I can guess.” He leaned back on the hard wooden seat, careful to keep from touching her. “The lessons don’t seem to have taken, though. He’s not a stuck-up little prig.”
Her breath came fast. “No,” she said, “he is not. But you, Mr. Kavanagh, are certainly not lacking in arrogance.”
“Because I’m honest?”
“Are you?” She searched his eyes. “Are you really?”
Ross started to answer and found he couldn’t speak. He was convinced in that moment that she could see right through him, right down to the core of the miserable failure he’d become.
He was saved as the railcar, which had been chugging its way to the top of a steep incline, suddenly plunged from darkness into a brilliant white scene of the North Pole. Ross hardly noticed. The car rolled on to the next exhibit, but he was no longer paying attention. He thought of all the places he’d read about and longed to see when he was a kid at his parents’ ranch in Cold Creek Valley, places with exotic names that seemed a million miles away: Timbuktu, Istanbul, Singapore. When he’d turned seventeen and the Great War was already raging in Europe, he’d seen joining up as a chance to escape Arizona and explore a little of the world. Ma had been against it at first, but Pa had understood Ross’s need to be part of something bigger than himself. They’d added to his own store of carefully saved money to send him on a boat to France.
There hadn’t been many American volunteers at the time; the United States was still years away from officially joining the War. But Ross had found exciting and often dangerous work as a driver for the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps. He’d served for about three months when his vehicle hit a mine; somehow he’d gotten mixed in with a bunch of British wounded and been shipped off to recover in a London hospital.
That had been where he’d met Gillian. Of course he hadn’t known her name in the beginning; his injuries had been pretty severe, though not disfiguring, and at first he’d hardly been able to tell the difference between the succession of doctors, nurses and volunteers who passed by his bed.
But then he started to heal—fast, with the help of his werewolf blood—and he’d seen her visiting the men in the ward. He’d become increasingly intrigued by her poise, her grace, her untouchability. If anyone in the place represented his idea of a European aristocrat, loaded to the gills with “good breeding,” she was it.
It soon became obvious that she was very skilled at what she did; ice queen or not, she had a gentle touch and soothing voice for soldiers who needed comfort, and she was more competent than many of the professional nurses. Plenty of guys seemed to find her attractive. But she seldom smiled and never laughed, and no one seemed to be able to breach her air of cool superiority.
Ross had almost dismissed her as a just another arrogant, privileged blue blood. But then his condition had begun to improve,