LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

      “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

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