gone, isn’t he?” he asked.
“Yes.” Gillian sat in the chair nearest the bed and folded her hands in her lap. “Did we wake you?”
He shook his head. “I had a dream that Father was teaching me how to fish.”
“How to fish?”
“Mmm-hmm. Except I was very small. And Father was living with us at Snowfell.”
Gillian’s nails pressed tiny crescents into her palms. “Toby…it would be wise…it would be better if you didn’t call Mr. Kavanagh ‘Father.’”
His bright, direct gaze focused on her. “Why not? He is my father.”
“In a literal sense, yes. But once we return to England, it’s likely that you’ll never see him again. You will find it easier to adjust if you—”
“If I pretend I never met him?” Toby leaned back against the pillows and folded his arms across his chest. “I can’t forget, even if you can.”
It was surprising, Gillian thought, how much a child’s thoughtless words could sting. “Tell me,” she said, “why you’re so fond of Mr. Kavanagh when you’ve spent scarcely any time with him.”
Toby considered her question with a lightning shift to that precocious maturity that still had the power to surprise her. “Isn’t one supposed to like one’s father?” he asked.
If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought he was testing her. But she’d been careful, so very careful, to keep him away from Sir Averil and his volatile moods.
“That isn’t an answer, Toby.”
“I just like him. He doesn’t treat me like a child.”
“But you are a child. There are many things you don’t understand.”
“I understand that you wrote that you didn’t think Ross was good enough to be my father because he wasn’t like you and Hugh and Grandfather.”
Gillian felt light-headed. He’d read just enough to confuse him, and now she had to set it right.
“Do you remember when we talked about how rare werewolves are in the world?” she asked.
He tangled his fingers in the sheets, his expression turning sullen. “Yes,” he muttered.
“Wise men realized that the only way to save our kind was to marry those of loup-garou blood to each other, to preserve our abilities and our way of life. That is the purpose of the Convocation. That is why we must sometimes set aside the things we…might think we want in order to help all our people.”
“And Mr. Delvaux was the right kind of werewolf.”
Oh, how she had tried to keep this from him. How she had danced around the subject, knowing that one day Toby might discover his mixed heritage and what it could mean.
How much had he read in those damning notations?
“Mr. Delvaux,” she said, “was from a family that could trace its bloodlines back to the fourteenth century and beyond. No one questioned that he had all the qualities necessary to strengthen our people.”
“You didn’t even love him.”
“You can hardly make such judgments, Toby, when he died before you were born.”
He gave her a hard, direct look. “I know you didn’t love him, but you still thought he was better than my real father.” His jaw set in a way that reminded Gillian far too much of Ross. “There isn’t anything wrong with Father, whatever you say.”
Dangerous, dangerous waters. “You’re right, Toby,” Gillian said gently. “There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Kavanagh. I’ve no doubt that he is very competent in everything he does. I’m certain he has a full life here, with his work as a police officer.”
Toby wasn’t to be distracted. “He wasn’t a police officer when you met,” Toby said. “He was a soldier, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“Did you know, then, that he was only part werewolf?”
Dear God. “I…it isn’t always possible to tell.”
“But you liked him anyway, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I liked him, Toby.”
“I know the facts of life, Mother.” His cheeks colored, raising a spattering of freckles. “You decided to have a baby with him, didn’t you?”
The facts of life. Toby had only the weakest grasp on the nature of relationships between men and women, but he knew enough.
“Sometimes,” she said, “we don’t always expect what’s going to happen.”
“You didn’t want me to be born?”
“Oh, Toby.” She moved quickly toward the bed and sat down, her arms trembling with the need to embrace him. “You were a miracle. A wonderful gift.”
“But I’m part human.”
He knew, and there was no going back. “Yes. But your werewolf blood is of the very strongest. You don’t have anything to—”
Be afraid of. But he wasn’t afraid. Not…yet. She had almost slipped, almost revealed too much.
“Even if Father isn’t like Mr. Delvaux, he’s still a werewolf,” Toby said, speaking into her sudden silence. “I’ll bet he could thrash anyone coming to the Convocation.” He bit his lower lip. “Maybe you don’t have to Change to be a real loup-garou.”
Gillian began to shake. He was talking as much about himself as Ross. Either he’d seen through her private fears or he’d drawn the natural conclusions from what he’d read.
She couldn’t lie. But she wouldn’t tell the whole truth.
“You’re very real,” she said, cupping his face between her hands. “And there are many admirable things about humans. Think of Uncle Ethan. Haven’t we been good friends?”
“Would you marry him if he asked you?”
For a few seconds she was too stunned to answer. “Ethan? Where did you get such an idea, Toby?”
“It wouldn’t matter whom you married if you weren’t going to have any more babies, would it? You could even marry Father.”
If he really believed that, she had succeeded in one thing, at least: she had kept him busy enough at Snowfell—and isolated enough, when the occasion required it—that he hadn’t grasped how little her life was her own, or how hard she’d striven not to let him feel the weight of burdens he was too young to bear.
But he would have to be told about what awaited them both at the Convocation. And soon.
“No,” she said gently. “That is quite out of the question. Our lives have become too different. We are too different.”
He frowned at the counterpane. “What if Father wants me to stay in America?”
“He knows that is impossible, Toby. A boy belongs with his mother.”
“What if he asks you to stay, too?”
That icy river sluiced anew through Gillian’s veins. “He will not. You must put any notion of our remaining in America out of your mind.”
She could see right away how little impact that command had on Toby. She should have found a better way to control him, to raise him with enough discipline to have prevented him from considering such a mad course as running away from England. But each time she’d considered treating him more strictly, she’d thought of Sir Averil, and all such resolutions had deserted her.
There was only