Come the Night. Susan Krinard
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Toby protested. He looked at Ross for support. “It isn’t fair.” Before Ross could respond, Toby tried another tack. “Mother, why don’t you go back to the hotel and rest? Father and I will go on alone.”
“Certainly not,” she said. “We have done quite enough for one day. I am certain that Mr. Kavanagh will understand.”
“Mr. Kavanagh doesn’t,” Ross said. “We had a deal. I’ll take you back to the hotel, and then Toby and I—”
But Gillian was already walking away, dragging Toby behind her, body tensed as if she were about to break into an all-out run. Ross caught up with her.
“For God’s sake, Gillian.”
She spun. Her lips curled back from her teeth, wolflike. “Where?” she demanded. “Where is the way out?”
Ross was on the verge of another argument when he noticed that Gillian had suddenly gone still. He turned to follow her stare. Behind him, a crowd had gathered at the base of the platform where the coaster’s cars came to rest after each circuit.
Gillian pushed Toby toward Ross and set off for the platform at a run. By the time Ross and Toby caught up with her, she had shoved her way through the circle of gaping observers and crouched beside the boy who lay on the ground, flopping like a fish thrown onto dry land. A cut on his forehead was bleeding profusely, and Ross guessed that he had somehow fallen from the platform.
“What’s wrong?” someone asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
Gillian didn’t answer. She had rolled the boy onto his side and placed a wadded piece of cloth under his head, watching him intently as the muscles of his body contracted violently and then released. When a man from the crowd tried to help by restraining the child, she warned him off. He persisted. Ross told Toby to stay put, told the guy to back off and crouched beside Gillian.
“It’s a Grand Mal seizure,” she said, in a tone meant only for werewolf ears. “Either he’s an epileptic, or he’s dangerously ill.”
As she spoke, the boy’s convulsions grew weaker and gradually ceased. Gillian produced another strip of fabric—torn, he presumed, from some part of her clothing—and pressed it to the child’s wound. Ross glanced at Gillian’s profile. She hardly seemed to realize that she was the center of attention; the boy was all that mattered.
“Someone ring for an ambulance,” she said. “I’m only a nurse. Someone needs to find a doctor, if one is available.”
After a brief hesitation, several men huddled together and ran off in different directions. A shriek silenced the murmurs of the observers, and a woman stumbled into the center of the circle.
“Bobby!” she cried, dropping to her knees. “Bobby!”
“It will be all right,” Gillian said, nothing but compassion and understanding in her voice. “Ross, please watch Bobby and hold this cloth in place. He should regain consciousness presently. I must speak to his mother.”
Ross moved so that he was level with Bobby’s head, listening to Gillian as he waited for the boy to wake up. Gillian began to ask the sobbing mother a series of questions, each spoken so calmly that their rhythm slowly eased the woman’s hysteria. She squeezed the woman’s trembling arm gently and turned back to Ross.
“This has never happened to him before,” she said. “It’s possible for children to develop epilepsy at any time, but Bobby must have a full medical examination to rule out an infection. It’s fortunate that he wasn’t more badly injured in the fall.” She passed the back of her hand across her forehead. “We must move him to a cool, quiet place.”
Ross knew that she didn’t have to explain anything to him, but the fact that she was doing so, and asking for his help, meant a lot more to him than he was willing to admit even to himself. He lifted the boy in his arms while Gillian assisted the mother to stand and gave her an arm to lean on. Ross made sure that Toby was following and aimed for a vendor whose booth was fitted out with a wide awning.
Not long after they’d made Bobby comfortable on a blanket provided by the vendor, he began to regain consciousness. Gillian smiled at him and asked him how he was feeling. The boy, obviously confused, tried to answer, but his mother’s weeping distracted him, and Gillian left them alone.
One of the observers returned a few minutes later with a harried, bespectacled man whose day’s amusements had obviously been interrupted. He introduced himself as a doctor and spoke briefly with Gillian, examined the boy and assured himself that someone had summoned an ambulance. As soon as he’d taken charge, Gillian faded into the background.
But she was not to be allowed to resume her anonymity. Several of the men and women who’d followed them to the vendor’s booth gathered around her, exclaiming and congratulating her. She answered rigidly, all the ease she’d shown with the boy instantly gone. Ross wedged himself between her and the man closest to her.
“Give the lady a little room,” he said gruffly. The people retreated, responding to the quiet authority he’d honed to near perfection during his years on the job. Gillian seemed to breathe more easily, though she was much too pale for Ross’s liking.
“Are you all right?” he asked, taking her elbow.
She stared in the direction of the vendor’s stall. “Where is Toby?”
“Here, Mother.” Toby joined them, clutching his bag and grinning up at his mother with obvious pride. “That was smashing, wasn’t it, Father?”
“Yes.” Ross heard the wail of a distant siren. “The ambulance is coming. I think it’s time for us to leave.”
“But there’s a man who wants to talk to Mother. He says he’s a reporter for a newspaper.”
Ross’s neck prickled. “Not today, Toby.”
“But he wants to know about the lady who saved the little boy’s life!”
“I did not save him,” Gillian said faintly. “I merely made him comfortable until he emerged from the seizure.”
“But he could have hurt himself,” Toby said, pugnacious in defense of his mother’s expertise. “Isn’t that right, Father?”
That was probably true, and by the end of the day a lot of people on Coney Island would probably regard the mysterious English lady as a heroine. But one look at Gillian’s face told Ross that she didn’t want anything to do with newspapers or the notoriety they could bring.
He gazed over the heads of the people still hovering nearby. A man was striding toward them at a fast pace, his hat jammed down on his forehead and a notepad clutched in one hand.
His name was O’Grady, and he’d been a gadfly biting at Ross’s heels all during the hearings and even after Ross had been released for lack of evidence. Once he’d recognized his victim, any chance of keeping Gillian and Toby ignorant of the scandal would be over.
“No reporters,” Ross growled. “We’re leaving.”
Toby’s face fell, then brightened again.
“Will we take the subway?” he asked.
The last thing Gillian would want now was to be sandwiched into a subway car jammed with weekend revelers. “We’ll find a taxi,” he said.
But before he got Gillian and Toby moving, O’Grady had caught up with them.
“So this is your mother?” the reporter said loudly, striding alongside Toby while he simultaneously noted Ross’s presence and tipped his hat in Gillian’s direction. “Morning, ma’am. Miles O’Grady, New York Sentinel.”
“The lady’s got nothing to say to you, O’Grady,” Ross said, keeping his hand firmly on Toby’s shoulder as he hurried Gillian toward a waiting cab. “Get lost.”
O’Grady wasn’t put off. “What’s the lady to you, Kavanagh?”