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Come the Night
Susan Krinard
The Great War has ended And Gillian is to marry a werewolf of her father’s choosing, ensuring the purity of their noble bloodline.Still, she can’t forget Ross, whose forbidden touch unleashed a passion she’d never known. Learning that they have a son makes Ross even more determined to prove his worth to Gillian, despite being merely a quarter werewolf.Then a mysterious spate of murders casts a pall of suspicion upon him. Torn between duty and desire, Gillian knows she must push Ross away. Even as their hunger for each other grows stronger by the hour…
Praise for SUSAN KRINARD
“A master of atmosphere and description.”
—Library Journal
“Susan Krinard was born to write romance.”
—Bestselling author Amanda Quick
Come The Night
By
Susan Krinard
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)
Dear Reader,
One of my favourite types of heroes is the hard-boiled detective…oh, not too hard-boiled, but the kind of rough-and-tumble guy who can dish it out and take it, who’s world-weary and cynical but just ready to fall for the right woman.
Ross Kavanagh is just that sort of guy. First introduced in Chasing Midnight, he’s an ex-cop who was thrown off the force for a crime he didn’t commit. Being a cop was his whole life, and now he’s rudderless, waiting for a chance to prove his innocence…when he is reunited with his former love, proper Englishwoman (and werewolf) Gillian Maitland.
For Gillian, seeing Ross again is painful but necessary—her son, Toby, has run away to America to find his father…none other than Ross himself. Ross didn’t know that his brief affair with Gillian had produced a child, and now he’s determined to claim his fatherly rights. The problem is that he’s only a quarter werewolf, unable to Change, and thus—by the laws of Gillian’s traditionalist werewolf clan—an unfit mate.
Now Ross has two things to prove: that he’s worthy of Gillian, and that he’s innocent of the crime that changed his life forever. But first he has to acknowledge his love for the woman who left him so many years ago, and she must defy her father and risk abandoning the life she’s known—by recognising that her love for Ross outweighs even the dangers of defying her clan and provoking its jealous enemies.
I hope you’ll enjoy reading Come the Night as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Susan Krinard
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—William Shakespeare
PROLOGUE
Cumbria, England, 1910
“CHANGE, DAMN YOU!”
Her father’s voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, but to Gillian it sounded like a shout. She curled into a tighter ball and concentrated as hard as she could.
Change. Oh, please Change.
It seemed as if her body was doing everything possible to resist, everything possible to make Papa angrier with her. He’d already chastised her numerous times for lagging so far behind most loup-garou children.
“You aren’t trying hard enough,” he’d accused. “You wish to shirk your responsibilities. Well, I won’t have it. You’ll do as I tell you, even if I have to beat it into you.”
Gillian had believed him. He’d resorted to the belt more times than she could remember, and for far less terrible infractions than this. But oh, if she could only please him. The sun would come out in his eyes then, and the beatings would be forgotten.
She wanted so badly to please him.
Change.
She squeezed her eyes shut with such force that little white lights danced behind her eyelids. Her muscles twitched and protested. She imagined what it would be like when she became a wolf…how different the world would seem, how beautiful, how perfect.
You’ll be like the others. You’ll belong.
Without understanding why she did so, she let her mind go blank and her body relax. Her arms and legs went limp. She could still hear Papa’s voice, but it seemed very far away. A softness flowed through her like liquid sunlight.
And then something shifted, as if invisible gears had clicked into place. She had expected it to hurt—surely something so difficult would have to hurt—but it didn’t. There was nothing strange about it at all. One moment she was a fourteen-year-old girl—neither particularly pretty nor unusually bright, as her father so often reminded her. The next she was crouched on four large paws, and the universe was exploding with sounds and smells she had never known in all her life as a human.
She straightened and shook out her golden fur. There was nothing awkward about her now, nothing to make Papa ashamed. She looked up at him, daring to allow herself a shining moment of hope.
Papa was smiling. The warmth of his approval spilled over Gillian, bathing her in relief and joy. She jumped up high, twisted in midair, landed again as lightly as a feather. Every muscle and tendon obeyed her to perfection. She turned toward the wood behind the house, longing to escape into the fells, to feel the power of her new shape in all its glory.
But it was not to be. “Enough,” Papa said. “I have business to attend to.”
He had already turned away by the time she Changed back. The crisp morning air brought goose pimples to Gillian’s naked skin. She pulled on the dress she had left lying over a bench, skinny and plain and awkward once more, and berated herself for her foolish expectations. Why should there be a celebration just because she could finally do what any werewolf was supposed to do? Why should this day be any different?
She slipped her shoes and trudged through the kitchen garden to the servants’ entrance, praying that no one would see her. Not even Cook’s sympathy would make her feel better now. Cook was only human and couldn’t possibly understand.
No one stopped her as she climbed the stairs to the nursery. She was briefly cheered by the thought that Papa would no longer force her to remain in the room she’d occupied since infancy; she’d proven herself a woman today.
A woman whose future was already decided.
Gillian slumped onto her narrow bed and covered her face with her hands. She barely felt it when someone touched her drawn-up knee.
“Gilly? Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes. Hugh was standing beside the bed, his normally cheerful face overcast with worry.
Gillian straightened and found a smile. “Of course I’m all right,” she said. “I Changed today.”
Hugh’s mouth formed an O of surprise. “Cor blimey!”
“You ought not to curse, Hugh.”
“Did you really Change, Gilly? What was it like?”
“Wonderful,” she lied, remembering how Papa had destroyed her brief pleasure with his casual dismissal.
Hugh shuffled his feet. “Now that you’re grown up, you won’t play with me anymore.”
“Nonsense.” She slid off the bed and wrapped her arms around Hugh’s thin shoulders. “I’ll still be close by. Nothing will really be different.”
Hugh allowed her to hold him for a few seconds and then stiffened to indicate that he’d had enough coddling. He’s growing up, too, Gillian thought. But it would be easier for him when it was his time. He’d always been Papa’s favorite. That was a fact Gillian had accepted long ago.
Just as she had accepted that he must never know how badly their father made her feel.
She pushed Hugh’s brown hair away from his forehead. “It’s almost time for lessons,” she said. “Would you like to go outside and throw the ball for a little while?”
Hugh’s grin was answer enough. He ran to fetch the ball and raced ahead of her down the stairs, his small feet thudding loudly in the stillness. Papa might take him to task for his noise—if Papa were paying any attention. If Sir Averil Maitland was involved in his “business,” nothing else would matter.
Gillian descended the stairs and joined Hugh on the lawn, catching the ball and throwing it back with just enough force to satisfy a rapidly growing boy. She’d almost forgotten that she was to meet Ethan by the beck this evening after supper, when Papa was in the library with his books. Ethan was human; there were a lot of things he couldn’t understand. But she’d told him about loups-garous years ago, and he wasn’t afraid. He would listen patiently, the way he always did, and in the end she would feel just a little bit better.
Mrs. Beattie rang the nursery bell, and Hugh heaved a great sigh. It was time for lessons, and there would be no more play for the rest of the day. Nothing had really changed. Except that now Papa would begin thinking about a suitable mate for Gillian, a man of pure werewolf blood who would be the father of her pure werewolf children.
Gillian looked one last time toward the woods and reminded herself all over again that there was no such thing as freedom.
CHAPTER ONE
New York City, July, 1927
ROSS KAVANAGH contemplated the half-empty bottle of whiskey and wondered how much more it would take to get him stinking drunk.
It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. He’d never been a drinker before they threw him off the force. There hadn’t seemed to be much point; even a man only one-quarter werewolf had a hard time becoming inebriated. And he’d been content with the world.
Content. Until everything had been taken away from him, he hadn’t really thought about what the word meant. He’d given up on anything beyond that a long time ago. It was enough to have the work, the company of the guys in the homicide squad, the knowledge that he’d kept a few criminals off the streets for one more day.
Now that was gone. And it wasn’t coming back.
He lifted the bottle and took another swig. The whiskey was bitter on his tongue. He finished the rest of the bottle without taking a breath and set it with exaggerated care down on the scarred coffee table.
Maybe he should put on a clean shirt and find himself another couple of bottles. Ed Bower kept every kind of liquor hidden behind his counter, available for anyone who knew what to ask for. Sure, Ed Bower was breaking the law. But what did the law matter now?
What did anything matter?
Ross scraped his hand across his unshaven face and got up from the sofa. He walked all too steadily into the bathroom and stared into the spotted mirror. His face looked ten years older than it had two weeks ago. Deep hollows crouched beneath his eyes, and his hair had gone gray at the temples. He wondered if Ma and Pa would even recognize him if he went home to Arizona.
But he wasn’t going home. That would mean he was licked, and he wasn’t that far gone.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow he would sober up and start looking for the guy who’d made a mockery of his life. The bum who had gotten away with murder.
Ross sagged over the sink, studying the brown stains in the cracked bowl. Clean up. Get dressed. Think about living again, even though no cop in the city would give him the time of day and the mobsters he’d fought for twelve years would laugh in his face.
Someone knocked on the door, pulling Ross out of his dark thoughts. Who the hell can that be? he thought. It wasn’t like he had a lot of civilian friends. As far as he knew, Griffin and Allie were still in Europe. They were the only ones he could imagine showing up at his apartment in the middle of the day.
Maybe it’s the chief coming to give me my job back. Maybe they found the guy.
He laughed at his own delusions. The person at the door knocked again. Kavanagh swallowed a stubborn surge of hope, threw on his shirt and went to the door.
The man on the landing was a stranger, his precisely cut suit perfectly pressed and his shoes polished to a high sheen. His face was chiseled and handsome; his hands were manicured and free of calluses. Ross sized him up in a second.
Money, Ross thought. Education. Maybe one of Griffin’s friends, though there was something about the guy’s face that set off alarm bells in Ross’s mind.
“Mr. Kavanagh?” the man said in a very proper upper-class English accent.
Ross met the man’s cool gaze. “That’s me,” he said.
“My name is Ethan Warbrick.” He didn’t offer his hand but looked over Ross’s shoulder as if he expected to be invited in. “I have a matter of some importance to discuss with you, Mr. Kavanagh.”
“What is it?”
“Something I would prefer not to discuss in the doorway.”
Ross stepped back, letting Warbrick into the apartment. The Englishman glanced around, his upper lip twitching. Ross didn’t offer him a seat.
“Okay,” Ross said, leaning casually against the nearest wall as if he didn’t give a damn. “What’s this about?”
Warbrick gave the room another once-over and seemed to decide he would rather continue standing. “I will come right to the point, Mr. Kavanagh. I’ve come to see you on behalf of a certain party in England with whom you were briefly acquainted during the War. She has asked me to locate you and warn you about a visit you may presently be receiving.”
The Englishman’s statement took a moment to penetrate, but when it did, Ross couldn’t believe it meant what he thought it did.
She. England. The War. Put those words together and they meant only one thing: Gillian Maitland. The girl he’d believed himself in love with twelve years ago. The one who’d left him standing on a London kerb feeling as if somebody had shot him through the heart.
“Sorry,” Ross said, returning to the door. “Not interested.”
“Perhaps you ought to hear what I have to say, Mr. Kavanagh.”
“Make it fast.”
“To put it simply, Mrs. Delvaux, whom you once knew as Gillian Maitland, expects her son to be arriving in New York at any moment.”
Ross turned his back on the Englishman. He’d been right.
Gillian.
“What does her son have to do with me?” he asked.
“He believes you to be his father.”
The floor dropped out from under Ross’s feet. “What did you say?”
“Young Tobias is under the mistaken impression that you are his father. He stowed away on a ship bound for America, and every indication suggests that he is on his way to you.”
It took a good minute, but the world finally stopped spinning. Ross made his way to the sofa and sat down, resenting the empty bottle on the table before him. “How old is he?” he asked hoarsely.
