
JILL BARNETT
1
IT WAS THE PERFECT DAY FOR A MIRACLE.
The shimmering sky above Heaven was as gold as Gabriel's trumpet, and the distant sound of canticles filled the celestial air. Clouds, puffy and white as spring goosedown, created the holiest of firmaments ---a place where no angel feared to tread.
Standing just outside the Pearly Gates was a novice angel named Lillian. She glanced left, then right, and, just for good measure, she cast a quick peek above her.
The coast was clear.
With a look of pure determination, she shoved up the sleeves on her flowing white robe, flexed her fingers, and did exactly what she had been forbidden to do: She tried to create a miracle.
The blast was loud enough to crack Heaven.
A backdraft of near hurricane force sent clouds skittering and bumping every which way. Lilli landed flat on her back. For a stunned moment, she lay atop a bouncing cloud with her arms and legs out like a snow angel.
Slowly the dark smoke from the blast settled around her. She blew a hank of silver-blond hair out of her face and blinked a few times, then found herself staring up into the Heavenly sky. She wiggled her toes first, then moved her arms and legs.
No ... Nothing broken.
She sat up quickly. Her halo slipped down over her eyes. She shoved it back into place, then quickly tugged down her robe so her bare legs were again covered.
Like falling snowflakes, three pearlescent wing feathers floated in front of her. She looked over her shoulder and frowned down at her crumpled wings. She rolled her shoulders, shimmied slightly, then fluttered her wings to get the kinks out of her feathers.
She heard a muffled squeal and whipped around. "Florida? Is that you?"
There was another muffled grunt.
"Where are you?"
Nearby, two bare feet suddenly popped out from within a dark cloud.
"Oh. There you are."
The feet kicked in the air a few times, then disappeared in the motion of a somersault. Florie's dark head popped into view, and with Lilli's help she crawled out of the dark cloud, kneeling there for a second, her wings tilted downward while she coughed.
Lilli patted Florie's back gently until she stopped coughing and flung her head up. She stared at Lilli from dazed eyes. "What happened?"
"Nothing."
Florida turned back around and froze, staring horrified toward the west. "Oh, no! Something did happen." She pointed. "Look what you've done now!"
Lilli turned around and almost died---again.
"You've broken the Pearly Gates!"
Lilli covered her eyes with both hands and groaned, then slowly opened her fingers and peered through.
Her stomach dropped. To somewhere near her bare toes. Slowly she stood and walked toward her latest disaster, with Florie "tching" and trailing right behind her. She stopped, unable to think, to speak. She could only stare.
The entrance to the most hallowed place in the universe was in complete shambles. The gates hung at cockeyed angles from their twenty-four-karat gold hinges, which had been shattered in half, their golden pins bent like boomerangs.
The gates, which were originally in the shape of an angel's wings, were meant to meet in the center, where a diamond-encrusted lock held them in perfect symmetry.
"Where's the lock?" Florie whispered.
Lilli stared down at her feet, where diamond dust winked like bits of sand amid cracked pieces of precious pearl. Chewing on her lower lip, she pointed. "I think it's there." She had a sick feeling. "Somewhere."
Florie bent down and scraped together the dust.
"That's all that's left?" Lilli gave the small pillar of white dust an uneasy glance.
Florie nodded.
"It looks like Lot's wife."
"Saint Peter's going to be mad enough to spit lightning. And can you imagine"---she leaned closer and whispered---"His reaction? You'll get the worst punishment yet. It might even be worse than the time Saint Peter made you polish all those silver linings."
"Well," Lilli said in a rush, "He can't punish me if He doesn't know who did it." She spun around, gripping her long gown in her fists. "Come on! Follow me!" And she took off at a full run.
"Wait!"
"Hurry, Florie!" Lilli called out over her shoulder. "Or He'll think you did it!"
All the color drained from Florida's face. Quick as a wink, she fluttered after Lilli.
Wings shimmying, they leapt from one cloudbank to another, until Lilli found the perfect hiding spot deep inside a plump cumulus cloud, where glittering icicles framed a silver lining. She grabbed Florie's hand and dragged her inside.
Florie glanced around with an uncertain look. "Do you think Saint Peter will find us?"
"Of course not. This is the perfect place. I found it when I spent those months silver polishing. No one thinks there's a lining in this cloud."
"You're certain?"
"I hid in here the last time."
"Oh." Florie paused, then gave her a knowing look. "The time you were trying to fly and ran headfirst into Jacob's ladder."
Lilli hung her head. "If only all the archangels hadn't been standing on it at the time."
"Gabriel still has a tweak in his halo."
"I know. I've never been able to look him in the eye again." Lilli looked at her friend and after a quiet moment admitted, "Well, you know . .. that wasn't exactly the time I was talking about."
She stared at Lilli with suspicious eyes. "What else have you done?"
"You promise never to tell?"
Florie nodded solemnly.
"Cross your heart and hope to die?"
"I already am dead."
Lilli squirmed for a second, then said, "So am I, but if they ever find out about those ancient scrolls ..."
"You lost the scrolls? The sacred scrolls?"
She nodded.
"How could you lose the scrolls?"
"Well, I didn't exactly lose them."
Florie just stared at her.
"I dropped them," Lilli admitted.
"Where?"
Lilli's face took on a sick look. "Deep in the Dead Sea."
Florie's mouth hung open.
"I just wanted to move them . . . out of the way. Then I tripped." After a long silent second, Lilli raised her chin, a hopeful look on her face. "But someone will find them ... someday."
Florie gave her a skeptical glance, then shivered. She craned her neck around the long frosted icicles that framed the entrance and looked outside. "You're certain no one can see us in here?"
Lilli patted her friend's hand reassuringly. "Trust me. Look: See how our wings blend with the sparkling ice and silver? And our robes are white. My hair is so light blond that it won't show."
She looked at Florie's dark hair and frowned. "Well, in your case, just keep your head down." She shoved Florie's head under her wing.
A moment later Florie sneezed. She sniffed and rubbed her nose.
"Are you that cold?"
"No. It was just one of these." She held up one of Lilli's wing feathers.
Lilli's face fell a little.
Florie gave Lilli's wing feathers a reassuring stroke. Four more feathers fell out. "You can't help it if you're the only angel with a molting season."
Lilli rested a chin in her hand and her wings drooped.
"I believe that's why you have so much trouble flying."
Lilli gave a huge sigh. "But I can't blame molting feathers for the reason I can't sing one heavenly note, or play the trumpet, or perform a miracle."
There was a long lapse of telling quiet, until, in the distance, came the lovely lyrical sound of harp music. It grew louder and louder. And closer.
Florie gasped, and both angels ducked down.
"Glo ... oh-oh-oh ... oh-oh-oh ... oh-oh-oh ... ria! In ex-cel-seees dey-ohhh," sang a group of clarion-clear voices.
"Shhhh!" Lilli raised a finger to her lips as they huddled closer together. "It's a chorus of archangels."
There was a loud clunk and the angels stopped singing right in front of Lilli's hiding spot. Both novices were so still they barely breathed.
There was another plunk, then a sharp boing!
A tall regal archangel named Mesopotamia flinched and looked over her shoulder. "Are those your harp strings breaking, Israfel?"
Another shorter angel nodded, frowning at her golden harp. "Four of them have broken just this moment. Look."
The archangels stared at the harp. One by one, five more harp strings snapped.
There was a long pause, then Mesopotamia glanced around. "If I didn't know better, I'd think that Lillian was around here somewhere."
All the archangels scanned the surrounding clouds while Lilli and Florie huddled in frightened silence.
A second later there was a huge crash of lightning. Then another.
Everyone froze.
"My gates!" Saint Peter's thunderous roar echoed through Heaven. "My gates!"
There was an eternal moment of silence. Then ...
"Lillian!"
Lilli blanched.
"Lill-lee-UNN! Come here! Immediately!"
"Uh-oh," Florie whispered.
"Shhhhh. He can't possibly find us."
Saint Peter shouted her name again. And again. Louder.
An icicle broke, landing with a tinkle at Lilli's feet. For a brief moment there was utter stillness.
A burst of light flashed through Heaven, so strong, so brilliant it made the sun dim. The walls of Jericho didn't hit the ground as quickly as Lilli and Florie tumbled onto the cloud floor, their arms over their heads. All around them, icicles shattered like broken glass.
A moment later, the entire cloud dissipated.
In unison, Lilli and Florida both uncovered their heads and looked up, right into the censorious and knowing eyes of Saint Peter. Taller than the tree of life, he stood before them, glowering, his arms crossed and one gold-sandaled foot tapping impatiently.
Her lip between her teeth, Lilli raised one hand and waved her fingers. "Hello, sir."
He was rigidly silent.
"You know," she said, sitting up quickly, "I was just thinking about you ..."
His eyes narrowed.
"In fact, I had just said to Florie, 'Florie?' I said, 'I'll bet Saint Peter is looking for us, and he'll never find us.' Didn't I?" She jabbed Florie with an elbow, and wide-eyed Florie nodded her head like a woodpecker.
She raised her eyes to meet his. "How did you find us?"
Saint Peter held up a handful of her molting feathers and let them spill from his hand. He watched her from eyes too intelligent for comfort. "Someone has destroyed the gates to Heaven."
"You mean while we were in here, the Pearly Gates---your Pearly Gates, those precious Pearly Gates---were actually broken? How in the name of Heaven could that have happened? Stray lightning? Celestial phenomenon? The Big Bang theory?"
Saint Peter reached out and plucked something from her tangle of blond hair. He held it out in front of her.
It was a piece of pearl. She winced.
Saint Peter clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. "You have been forbidden to attempt any more miracles." He turned quickly and pinned her with a dark and knowing stare. "I assume that is what you were doing."
She nodded.
He paced again. "I thought as much. Angels are supposed to protect, guard, and educate the human race." He paused in front of her. "Not. . . wipe it out of existence."
Lilli stared at her toes and whispered, "I didn't try to make it rain again. Not after all that lightning . . ." She shuddered. "... And the fire in Rome." She slowly raised her face and looked him in the eyes. "I would never do that again."
He was silent for so long she almost couldn't bear it. She needed him to believe her. He had to believe her. She meant no harm. She never meant to do any harm. She stared at her bare toes again.
After eternal minutes he took a deep breath.
She waited to hear her punishment.
"I'm afraid there is nothing I can do for you this time."
Lilli's head shot up. "Nothing?"
"Nothing," he said.
Florie gasped, "No!"
All the archangels began to whisper and mutter. Lilli stood there, stunned, unable to move, unable to speak.
"Please sir," Florie begged. "She didn't mean to do it. Please."
Saint Peter shook his head. "There's nothing I can do."
The light of Heaven dimmed and with it her naive and foolish sense of invincibility. The clouds grew suddenly dark and gray. Lilli looked at the surrounding darkness and knew that she had no hope. No chance. She had nothing but an empty feeling in her heart and the shameful sting of tears in her eyes.
Saint Peter stood up to his full height. "From this day forward . . ." He paused and looked at her. "Lillian is no longer welcome in Heaven."
Lilli slowly raised her head. Everything before her was a painful blur. She heard a clank.
Her halo disappeared.
There was a loud and shrill whistle.
Her wings were gone.
Saint Peter gave a direct look. "You will return to Earth."
She could hear Florie sobbing.
He raised his right hand and touched her head. "To a time and place where angels fall."
2
All God's angels come to us disguised.
---James Russell Lowell
December 1886
ALL HE HEARD WAS THE SCREAM.
"She ran right in front of the carriage, Mr. Stewart. I swear it."
D.L. Stewart stared at the crumpled woman lying so still in the middle of Madison Avenue. A second later he was kneeling on the icy street, feeling for a pulse.
"One minute the street was empty, sir, then suddenly she was just, just there. I---I---"
"She's not dead, Benny." D.L. scooped the woman into his arms. "I'll carry her to the house. Take the carriage and get a doctor. Quickly." He turned and crossed to the wide sidewalk, where streetlights spilled yellow gaslight onto the ice and mucky snow.
He heard his carriage rattle past him, but it was a distant sound, as if the world had fallen away, leaving only himself and the woman in his arms. So foreign was the feeling that he looked down at her.
There were no answers in her features. Her skin was almost as pale as her blond hair, a sharp contrast to the dark blood that trickled from the corner of her mouth and from the red scratches on the side of her face.
Her scarlet hat hung over his arm, still tied beneath her chin with black velvet ribbons that were shredded on one side, the same side on which her dress and jacket were torn from skidding over the rough brick pavement.
Her breathing was labored, short and tight, but she made no sound, no moan of pain, nothing. The faint scent of lemon seemed to drift around her, and it struck him as odd, very odd for a woman to smell of lemons, to smell clean rather than cloying.
A moment later he was in front of the stately marble mansion that served as his home. He ran up the stairs and kicked hard on the front doors.
Nothing happened. He cursed, then awkwardly leaned down and pressed the door handle with an elbow. The massive door clicked open.
An instant later D.L. was inside and he called out, "Gage!"
The butler's name echoed up three open stories to the gallery above.
Gage came running into the foyer, then stopped at the staircase, gaping.
D.L. pinned him with a hard stare. "Gage!"
The man recovered. "Sir?"
"I pay you a bloody fortune to open doors." D.L. gave the library doors a pointed look.
"Yes, sir." Gage shot over to the doors, then paused. "Mr. Wallis is waiting in the library."
"Good. Perhaps," D.L. muttered as he looked down, "he'll know what the hell I should do about this."
Her head was killing her. Almost as badly as the time she had flown headfirst into Jacob's ladder. And one side of her face burned terribly.
Someone touched her shoulder, and pain shot up her neck. She heard an anguished moan. It sounded like her.
She could feel the presence of others---standing over her, around her---but she couldn't quite find the will to open her eyes. It seemed an effort to breathe.
"She's coming around," a man said in a gentle tone.
"Find out who she is." There was no gentleness in this second voice. It was the dark, strong voice of a man in command.
"God?" she whispered. "I know that voice. You are God."
Someone behind them laughed. Someone new. "She called that right. D.L. Stewart, the Money God." Someone cynical.
She felt the tension again and opened her eyes then, but she saw only darkly blurred images. She licked her lips, which felt dry and swollen, then whispered, "My face ..."
"Yes, my dear?"
"It burns."
"I'm certain it does, but you'll be fine. Just a few scratches. I'm a doctor." A rough but gentle masculine hand touched hers. "Can you tell us who you are?"
"Lillian."
"That's good, Lillian." The kind man shifted away, then said, "It appears she has no serious injury. She knows who she is."
"Lillian who?" came the strong voice.
"Just Lillian. Lilli."
"Where are you from?"
"Heaven."
There was a bark of sharp laughter again, and the cynic said, "At least we know she's not from New York."
"Shut up, Karl."
"Only trying to add a little levity to a tense situation, D.L."
"I fell," she mumbled.
"No, my dear. You were hit by a carriage." The kind man gave her hand a squeeze of reassurance.
"No. No... you don't understand. I've fallen." She could feel the tears coming, feel the horror. The shame she carried. "I didn't mean any harm. I didn't."
"It wasn't your fault, my dear. Only an accident."
"No! I just wanted to be like everyone else. They all do it so easily. I'm so ashamed." She felt the tears spill from her eyes, drip over her temples and into her hair. "No more angels," she said, hearing her voice catch. "No wings. No halo. Such a beautiful halo. It's gone." Her voice was little more than a whisper. "My wings ... everything." She began to sob.
"She's hysterical."
She could barely catch her breath between sobs. "All of it is gone. Everything wonderful. Gone. I've fallen..."
Someone else stood over her. She could feel him, could feel the tension. The air seemed to swell with his very presence.
"You will stop crying, Lillian. Now."
Her shoulders shook. She couldn't help it.
"Stop it."
She tried to stop and took a labored breath.
"Stop!"
"Mr. Stewart, shouting at her isn't going to help. I suggest we get her into a bed and I'll give her something to calm her down, then clean the scrapes on her face and shoulder. She needs sleep. Sleep is the best thing."
She felt two strong arms slide beneath her. She opened her eyes and saw a tall dark image bending over her. Only the image of him through her tears. A second later he lifted her into his arms and turned.
She gave a slight moan.
He stilled immediately.
She blinked, and her vision cleared. She looked into a face so harsh she lost her voice.
He was no god. In fact, he looked like the Devil himself.
His hair was short and slicked back from a broad stern forehead. Like his hair, his thick brows were black as the River Styx, and his skin was rough, his jaw covered with a dark shadow.
As a whole, his features were nothing but sharp angles and firm ridges---a hewn-from-granite look that was rare in Heaven, a place where beauty was light and soft and gossamer, not dark and hard and glittering.
But there was harsh beauty in this face. A dark beauty that seemed fathomless. He stared down at her from eyes blacker than onyx. And in those eyes she caught one brief flicker of a soul that was lost.
As if he too had gauged her measure in that one look, he turned with her in his arms and strode from the room, her weight seeming no more a burden to him than a feather.
With the doctor following behind, he carried her up a never-ending staircase. He looked down at her once, his expression stem and hard, so hard that she sensed he was hiding behind it. She cocked her head slightly, but he fixed his gaze ahead of them.
He took her to a room where the door opened quickly, efficiently, when they were but a few steps away. She caught a quick glimpse of a gray-haired servant, but then she was inside, and he laid her down on an elegantly draped bed.
She winced and instinctively gripped his hand for strength.
"Did I hurt you?" His voice was gruff.
"No."
He stared oddly at their joined hands.
She watched his eyes change, flicker with something indefinable, then she whispered, "But I think you will"
He stiffened and shifted away.
She released his hand.
He gave her a long unreadable look, then without a word he turned and left the room.
D.L. leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, crossed his arms, and just watched her sleep. He didn't know why he felt compelled to do so, but he did.
Sleep had escaped him. That in itself was not unusual. Of late he slept little, his mind unable to rest. His work drove him, and he cared for little else. Did little else. He suspected he worked now because it was something that kept him busy.
Weak as it was, there was still a thrill he could eke from closing a deal. The profit meant little anymore, except that money gave one power. He had enough of a fortune to be omnipotent.
But he took this small moment for himself---for some reason that probably bordered on sheer nonsense. He shoved away from the door and crossed the room, standing at the bedside.
Moonlight spilled through the windows by the bedstead and shone upon the pillow where her silver-blond hair fanned outward like an angel's halo. He wondered how long it had been since he'd noticed moonlight, and if he had ever paid a bit of attention to a woman's hair.
He reached out and touched a strand of it, ran a finger along it, slowly. He didn't know what he had expected to feel: coolness from the icy color or smoothness from the silk of it. What he felt was the insane urge to bury his hands in it.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
He hid his surprise. Something that was natural and instinctive. Just as feeling any emotion had, over time, become a foreign thing to him. It wasn't often that someone could surprise him. She had.
He looked directly into her green eyes, where frank curiosity stared back at him. "You are supposed to be asleep."
"I've never done what I was supposed to."
He leaned over a night table and picked up a glass still almost filled with a pinkish liquid. "You didn't drink the medicine."
She shook her head.
"I see." He set the glass down. "A rebel."
"More of a disaster, I think. That's why I'm in this fix."
He searched her face, trying to decide why she would admit something like that to him, a stranger. She didn't look like a fallen woman.
"Doing what is expected is so ... I don't know." Her expression told him she had trouble finding the right word. Finally she gave a small sigh and looked up.
"Boring?"
"Yes! That's it exactly! It would have been extremely boring, for example, if I had slept through your visit." She sat up slowly. "Then we wouldn't be having this chat."
"You would have never known I was here."
"True. But you would have known."
He didn't know how to answer her, so he just watched her---this woman who would be bored by convention. He had been bored until he came into the room. Not that he cared to admit it.
"So, Mr. Stewart. What does the 'D.L.' stand for?"
She reached out and grabbed another pillow, then placed it behind her and settled back for what appeared to be a long chat.
"'Daniel Lincoln.'"
"A famous lawyer and a president."
"I hate to burst your bubble, but I was named after my two grandfathers."
"Oh. That's not as romantic, is it?"
"I suppose 'Romeo' would be more to your liking."
"No," she said very quietly, looking up at him from the most sincere face he'd ever seen. "I didn't mean to make you feel badly about your name. 'Daniel' is a perfectly wonderful name."
She thought she had hurt his feelings? How strange, to worry about hurting someone over something as silly as a name. He made no comment, but she didn't seem to notice. Not more than an instant later, she lifted the covers in one hand and peered under them.
"What am I wearing?"
He could see her wiggle her toes beneath the covers. "A shirt."
"Yours?"
"Yes."
"Silk?"
"Yes."
She dropped the covers and folded her hands on top of them, then looked up at him with a small smile. "Nice."
"I need to contact your family."
"That would be impossible."
"Nothing is impossible."
"Contacting my family would be nothing short of a miracle."
He crossed his arms and watched her. "Not for me."
"Oh. I see you haven't a problem with confidence."
"No, I haven't."
She gave a huge sigh and stared at her folded hands. "I don't have much confidence."
"It has been my experience that having enough money can make one confident about any number of things."
She looked up. "What an interesting philosophy. So ... you think you have to be rich to be confident?"
"It helps. Money can buy anything."
"I don't think so." She shook her head.
"Name something money can't buy."
"People."
He laughed then, at her naiveté. "I buy people every day."
"Do you really? Hmmm." She frowned, then mumbled, "I had thought slavery was illegal."
He wasn't certain if she'd just cut him purposely or not. Before he could comment, she continued: "Okay then. How about love? Money cannot buy love."
"For a small part of my fortune there are at least a hundred women, perhaps a thousand, who would be happy to love me."
The sparkle left her eyes and she gave him a long pensive look that made him feel uneasy. "Memories," she said so quietly that he wasn't certain he'd heard her right. "You can't buy memories. You have to make them."
"It takes money to do things that make memories."
"No it doesn't," she said, with a certainty that jarred him.
"Nothing in this world comes free."
"I assume from this conversation that money is important to you."
"At one time it was." He shrugged. "Now it's a means to an end."
"I see. So what do you do with all this money? Set up charities? Help the sick and poor?"
"No."
"Did you ever hear the expression 'You can't take it with you'?"
"Of course."
"Where I come from, wealth doesn't matter."
"Then it's probably a place I'd rather not visit."
She looked away and muttered, "I don't think that will be a problem." After an awkward silence, she began to pluck at the coverlet.
"Tell me where to find your family."
"I can't." She stilled. "You can't find a family that doesn't exist. I have no family."
He didn't know why he tensed inside, but he did. Something in her manner, something in the way she couldn't look him in the eye, said she was either lying or ashamed. He changed tack. "Where do you live?"
She was quiet. Too quiet. She was going to lie to him, and that angered him more than he cared to admit. He didn't want her to be like every other woman he'd known. He wanted her to be different. "Are you going to answer me?"
"I don't know."
He leaned over her, placing one hand on either side of her hips, and brought his face closer to hers. He looked right at her, just a few inches away. It was intimidation at its best. "I insist."
"No, you don't understand." She returned his look with one so innocent he almost fell for it. "I am answering you. I don't know where I live."
He straightened. "How convenient."
She stiffened as if he had slapped her. "You don't believe me?"
"No. I don't believe you."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't want apologies, just answers."
"I wasn't apologizing. I'm sorry for you."
"Don't be." He turned and walked to the door and opened it. "I have everything I could ever want. I don't need anything."
"Except more money," she muttered.
He froze, then turned very slowly, scowling. "Tomorrow, Lillian, you will tell me the truth." Just before he closed the door, he added, "And drink the damn medicine."
She didn't drink the medicine. A short time later, she tiptoed down the dark staircase, her leather half boots in one hand, the other using the thick, smoothly polished banister to steady herself. She was still a little light-headed from the accident.
But not light-headed enough to stay here even another few hours.
She reached bottom and slowly made her way across the dark foyer until she felt the wood of the front doors. Leaning against them, she pulled on her boots, then, as quietly as possible, opened the door, blanching when the handle made a loud click in the eerie stillness of the mansion.
She stood frozen and listened. She heard nothing, then carefully opened the door a little wider and stepped outside.
It was freezing, colder than the highest and stormiest cloud in Heaven. She shivered and stared at the bleak darkness for an uncertain moment, then pulled her short woolen jacket even tighter around her. She took a deep breath and watched it turn to frosty mist in the night air.
Lilli closed her eyes and said a quick prayer, then ran down the front steps. In less time than it took a tear to fall, she had disappeared into the winter darkness of New York City.
3
Angels keep their ancient places,
turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
that miss the many splendoured thing.
---Francis Thompson
WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN, SHE'S GONE?" D.L. stood up and threw his napkin down on the breakfast table. He glared at his butler.
Gage stood just inside the double doors of the morning room, awkwardly holding the white silk shirt---the one she'd been wearing. "She's left, sir."
"Damn." He should have poured the medicine down her throat. He looked at the shirt. Or hid her clothes. He glanced up. "Find out if anyone saw or heard her leave. Check the entire block. Let me know immediately if you find out anything."
His butler turned to leave.
"Gage."
The man turned back. "Sir?"
"I'll take that." He nodded at the shirt. Gage looked at the shirt oddly, then handed it to him and left.
His attorney, Karl Wallis, removed his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief, then put them back on and watched him curiously.
D.L. didn't care. He stared at the shirt. It carried the subtle tang of lemons.
"You need to find her, D.L."
He tossed the shirt onto a nearby chair and walked across the room, where he stood at the long windows, his hands in his pockets. He watched the snow falling lightly on the street corner below. "I know."
"About the release? Yes, well, that's good."
D.L. turned. "What release?"
"You need to have her sign a document of release." Karl began shuffling through some papers on the table. "I have it here somewhere. I was going to give it to you after we finished with the details of these contracts. Here it is." He waved a paper at him. "It releases you from any liability for the carriage accident."
"I am liable."
"Good God, man, never say those words to your attorney. You pay me a fortune to make certain that no matter what, you are never liable for anything."
He turned back around. "Odd," he said quietly. "I hadn't thought she was one to run away."
"What?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. Just an observation."
Outside, snow drifted down on the few pedestrians who hurried along the slushy sidewalk. His mind flashed with the image of a woman with pale skin and even paler blond hair. A fragile, angelic-looking woman who was crying because she had lost everything. A woman huddled on the street with snowflakes sticking to her shivering form, as if each one were a small increment of the burden she carried.
A woman with no one. Some old, time-buried part of him seemed to understand the devastation of that kind of loneliness.
He suddenly felt his exhaustion. He hadn't slept at all after he'd left her. Every time he'd closed his eyes he saw her expressive face looking up at him with disappointment---a look that said he had ripped the stars from her eyes.
"D.L. Have you heard anything I've said?"
"You said I need to find her."
"Yes. Get this release signed, then she can go wherever she wants. And you won't find yourself in the middle of some legal action a year or so from now. We need her signature for you to be free and clear."
"Fine," he said in a clipped tone.
"My advice would be to pay whatever it takes to get it. She seemed a bit of a lost lamb, so I doubt it would cost you very much."
D.L. turned back around and strode over to the table. "Let's get these finished." He sat down but found that he listened to the terms of the deal with only half an ear. He couldn't rid himself of the niggling feeling that this woman might cost him much more than either he or Karl could imagine.
She had spent most of the day on a park bench, watching the world go by. Somehow, with all that had happened, she'd forgotten it was the Christmas season. But once the sun came up, New York City had awakened.
Horsecars decorated with Christmas greenery filled the streets and storefronts opened, festooned with lush ropes of cedar and laurel. Cheery red ribbons were the color of the season, and they trimmed the greens and windows of businesses and residences alike.
Lilli had taken refuge inside a large department store, because it was warm and sheltered from the light snow. But once inside, she had been caught up in the spirit of the season---the smiling faces in the crowds, greetings of "Happy holiday to you" and "Merry Christmas."
There were magic lanterns and fancy dolls, new-fangled electric trains that chugged and chooed and circled the store Christmas tree. It was festive and joyous and alive.
By the time the storm had stopped, she was smiling when she wandered to the park. Snow-covered trees and plants looked as if they'd been sprinkled with sugar. Ponds that had iced over took on the quality of frosted mirrors, and the fountains and birdbaths stood like stiff snow soldiers.
Before long the air sang sweetly with laughter and the jingle of brass and silver sleigh bells. She smiled, rather sadly, at the sound of the bells. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.
For most of the afternoon the sleighs dashed by, their runners whizzing on the fresh white snow and knocking down keep off the grass signs. She laughed at snowball fights and gave a misty little smile at a group of children, skates in hand, running for the skating pond with dire threats that the last one there would be a rotten egg.
But by evening, she was alone and the last one to leave the park. She felt like a rotten egg.
She was little more than an aimless wanderer in a foreign land. She had found a small bit of joy in the laughter of others, which had gotten her through a very long day, but by the time the sun had set, she had no idea what she was going to do. She huddled against the cold.
It was difficult to believe that one could be cold with all the clothes she wore. She took a deep breath, something that was nigh on impossible laced into this corset contraption. Her mortal underwear was the closest thing to Purgatory she'd ever come across.
The air was colder than the frostiest cloud, and she could feel the chill right through to her bones. She pulled her jacket even tighter and looked around.
The streets were edged with snow, and ice covered the curbside gutters. A delivery wagon rattled past, and a hansome cab was parked just a few steps away. Near the corner, a small boy hawked newspapers to the passersby. Everyone looked as if they had a place to go and were hustling to get there now that night had fallen.
She stopped and just stood there for a moment, feeling so lost and alone, aware that she had no place to go. She stepped back and looked upward, instinctively turning toward the Heaven that had been her home.
There were buildings all around her, so tall---as tall as seven stories, and she could barely see the stars twinkling in the night sky. She wanted to see those stars, wanted to reach out and touch them, to wish on them and hope that they would show her the way back to Heaven.
Finally she looked down, staring bleakly at the snow. The tears just fell until she had no more tears left. She wiped her eyes and cheeks, then took a deep breath.
Squaring her shoulders, she turned, then made her way toward a different area of the city, where immigrants, foreign and homeless as she was, were huddled on street corners or around small weak fires in alleys and on stoops.
She wondered how many of them were like her--- fallen angels.
Cold, tired, and hungry, she finally stopped and leaned against a brick building where the scent of German sausages made her mouth water and her stomach growl. A group of families swarmed nearby, taking shelter under an awning over a side door in the alley.
The children, bundled in thin blankets and knit mufflers, watched her from frightened eyes and pale faces. A baby wailed. It had a hungry sound.
Hunched over a meager fire, a woman was cooking. She turned and looked up at Lilli. Something passed between them, something female. Something spiritual.
The woman reached over and poured steaming liquid into a dented tin can. She turned back to Lilli and held it out.
With tears in her eyes, Lilli shook her head. "Feed your children."
The immigrant woman frowned, then with a pride and determination that belied her circumstances, she walked up to Lilli and pressed the can into her hands. "Fröhliche Weihnachten. Merry Christmas."
Lilli thought she might cry, but she managed a weak smile and to choke out a "Thank you." The woman rushed back to her children and meal.
A few minutes later, huddled on a chilly stoop where damp snow drifted down and stuck to her clothes, Lilli sipped the sour German soup that was so warm and welcome she felt as if it had spilled from God's own table.
She gave a prayer of thanks. Watching the snow drift before her eyes, she sat there, a little lost, very cold, and so weary of heart, of mind, and fast getting weary of spirit.
Then she heard them. Bells. Church bells, ringing out like a chorus of archangels---clear and clean and calling to her.
There was no one near the church when she arrived. She walked up the steps, almost afraid to try the closed doors, afraid they'd be locked to her as Heaven was.
But the doors opened easily and she entered the massive church, where candlelight, warmth, and peace welcomed her. She walked toward the altar, stopping a few feet away. She sat in the center of the second pew.
She closed her eyes, seeking some small part of what she'd had. Here, in God's house, she felt some distant tie to Heaven, so here she sat.
A minute or so later, her eyes grew unbearably heavy. She untied the ribbons on her bonnet and removed it, letting her hair fall free and loose. Then exhaustion and cold and hunger finally took their toll.
Lilli lay down and fell asleep.
"Pssst!"
She was warm and tired, so very tired.
"Pssst!"
A pesky fly, she thought. Still half asleep, she swatted at it.
"Lilli! Wake up!"
"Florie . .." Lilli muttered, then snuggled deeper into her clothing.
"Lilli! Wake up!"
She opened her eyes, fully awake, then sat up quickly and shoved the hair from her eyes. "Florie? Is that you?" She reached out to hug her friend, but her arms held thin air. She blinked at Florie's image, then sagged back against the hard pew. "I forgot. I'm mortal now. I can't touch you."
The same emotion glistened in both their eyes.
"I can't hug you."
"I know."
"Florie." She looked down at her hands. "I'm so scared."
"Wait. Don't you see what's happening? I'm coming to you in a dream. You know, the angel coming to you in a dream thing? Lesson 103?"
"I remember. I never could get that right either."
"Wait! Give me a moment. Okay. Now watch." Florie took a deep breath, then fluttered her wings until she was hovering above Lilli. "Here goes. . . Behold! I bring you tidings of great joy!"
Lilli burst out laughing.
Florie stopped fluttering and lit onto the back of the front pew; her wings rippled for a second, then drooped as she dangled her legs over the edge and gave Lilli a small smile. "I suppose that's been overused, hasn't it?"
"I miss you."
"I miss you too." Florie sat up a little straighter, then smiled brightly. "But I do have good news! Well, I think it's good news," she said, chewing a nail.
"What?"
"Saint Peter has relented."
"I get to come back?"
"Well, not exactly. At least not right now. But he said that if you can perform a miracle---just one--- here on Earth, then you can come back to Heaven."
"But I can't create a miracle in Heaven. How can I make one here?"
"I don't think that in your case, Lilli, it would make any difference where you were."
"I suppose that's true. Now I must think of a miracle," Lilli said thoughtfully.
"Actually, that's not necessary."
"Why?"
"Saint Peter's decision was based on a more specific sort of miracle."
Another chance. She had one last chance. Lilli gripped the edge of the pew and leaned forward. "Anything. I'll do anything, Florie, if it means I can go back."
"That's good."
"So. Tell me. What's the miracle?"
"It's a lesson. You have to teach a mortal to give from his heart."
She thought about that for a moment, then remembered the kindhearted German woman who'd given her the soup. There were people like her, many of them, in a place like New York City. She looked up at Florie and grinned. "I can do that."
Florie was suddenly quiet.
Lilli looked at her. "You look as if there's more to this specific miracle."
"There is."
Lilli waited. Florie looked uneasy.
"I'm not going to like it, am I?"
Florie shook her head.
"Why?"
"Saint Peter has picked the mortal."
"From your tone, I suspect it might be easier to convert the Devil than teach this person a lesson."
"You can do it, Lilli. I know you can."
"Who is my miracle?"
Florie stared at her bare toes. "The financier D.L. Stewart."
Lilli's mouth dropped open. "Mr. I-Buy-the-World-and-Money-Is-My-Life Stewart?"
Florie nodded.
She groaned and stared at the altar. "You were right. This is the worst punishment yet."
"He can't be that bad."
Lilli snorted.
"Besides, look at the reward. It's the only chance you'll have. I pleaded and begged for you. Please, Lilli, just try."
She looked up to Heaven, then took a deep breath and raised her chin a notch. "I'll try. But this is truly difficult. I was joking when I said converting the Devil would be easier, but Florie," she said, sighing, "that's exactly what Saint Peter has asked me to do."
It took him a day and a half to find her.
He sat in his carriage, parked at the curb, and he watched her standing in front of the church doors. From her manner, she looked as if her burden had only increased, tenfold. Her shoulders weren't squared with determination, and in one gloved hand, her red hat dangled as if it were forgotten. She had the bewildered look of a bird that had fallen from its nest.
Then she saw him. Her face drained of color for the briefest of moments.
He walked up the steps toward her.
She swung her hat on her head and spent a long time tying the ribbons, looking everywhere but at him.
"Lillian." He tipped his hat.
"Mr. Stewart." She raised her chin and took a step.
One could have heard the rip a block away.
She froze, and her eyes grew wide as silver dollars. She looked over her shoulder.
He peered past her. Her dress was caught in the church doors. "Allow me." He opened the door and released her dress.
"Thank you." Nose purposely and humorously high, she descended the steps, her ripped hem dragging like a train behind her.
He watched her, biting back the sudden and foreign urge to smile. He moved to her side, his pace identical with hers.
She said nothing.
"Nice weather," he commented.
"If you like snow."
"I do."
"So do I."
He stopped at his carriage and opened the door.
She gave him a puzzled look.
"Get in."
"No, thank you."
"I wasn't asking."
"I could tell."
He took a deep breath, then gritted, "May I offer you a lift?"
"No. I wouldn't want to keep you. Time is money."
He said nothing but got inside and sat down, feeling suddenly disarmed. He pinned her with a stare meant to make her feel as uncomfortable as he did. To his surprise, something interesting passed between them: a challenge.
After a moment, she turned and sauntered away.
He tapped on the driver's box. "Follow alongside her, Benny."
The carriage moved right next to her, maintaining a slow pace that matched her stride perfectly.
She never made eye contact.
He slipped open the window and settled back against the carriage seat. "I've been looking for you."
"Why? No one for sale today?"
He wouldn't rise to that bait. "It's early yet."
"I would think that looking for me isn't very profitable."
"I have some spare time." He checked his gold watch. "It's ten a.m. The banks have been open for an hour. I've made nearly two thousand dollars in interest already today."
She tugged on her glove but never missed a step. "How nice for you."
"Do you want to know why I was looking for you?"
"No."
He watched her silently, tapping a finger against his thinned lips.
After a few more silent steps she stopped, plopped her hands on her hips in frustration, and looked right at him. "I don't understand you."
"Don't try."
She pulled her gaze away and stared down at her tightly clasped hands. "I think I might have to try."
He rested an arm on the window opening. "I have a proposition for you." He leaned a little closer. "Get in and we'll talk."
She looked up at the sky, then sighed. "I don't think I can do this."
"How do you know? You haven't heard my offer."
She shook her head. "I can't explain."
He paused to let the tension build. It was a tactic he used often. Time ticked by.
She just stood there.
"I'll give you a hundred dollars to get in this carriage right now."
Her eyes narrowed suddenly and sharply. She squared her shoulders and began to walk away again.
"Well?" he called out.
"I don't think so."
He watched her pass an alley crowded with immigrants. She said something to a woman holding a child, then reached into her pocket and handed the woman a bent tin can. The two of them spoke briefly, then Lilli turned around and went on her merry way.
He tapped on the carriage roof again. "Stay with her, Benny." When his carriage was directly beside her, he leaned back again and counted to five before he said, "Two hundred."
"No, thank you."
"Five hundred."
She shook her head.
"A thousand."
She ran into a streetlight and stepped back quickly ---as if she hadn't done it.
He did smile. "Two... thousand."
She spun around.
He couldn't tell if she was stunned or horrified.
"You're serious?"
"Very serious."
"Two thousand dollars?"
"Yes."
She gave him a direct look. "Cash?"
"Yes."
"Now?"
"Yes."
She walked over to the carriage and held out her hand, palm up.
He opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk, then peeled some money from a roll of bills and put them into her hand.
"Count it, please."
"What?"
"You need to count the bills into my hand. Just to make certain it's correct. You wouldn't want to make a mistake."
Irritated, he snatched the money from her and counted each bill.
"Thank you."
"Get inside." He held the door.
"Wait just a moment." She hurried past him.
"Now," he called out.
She waved him away, already halfway back to the alley, and stopped in front of a child, who looked up at her with eyes too big in a thin and pale face. She put a hundred-dollar bill in his small hand and closed his fingers around it. She then did the same with each person huddled in the alley. Finally she stood in front of the woman with the baby and handed her the rest of the bills. "Merry Christmas. Fröhliche Weihnachten."
The immigrants gaped at the bills in their hands, then looked at her as if she were God's own angel. He caught a whisper of a smile on her lips as she spun around and walked back to the carriage.
Standing in front of him, she raised her chin. "Okay, Mr. Stewart. I'm ready now."
He didn't know if he wanted to strangle her or congratulate her. He just stood there, surprised. Again. And he felt a strange sense of satisfaction. Silently, he helped her inside, climbed in, and closed the door.
They sat there measuring one another. Another kind of challenge. She appeared inordinately proud of herself. He could tell by her expression.
He waited a moment, letting her bask in her victory. Casually, he looked out the window, then said, "I would have paid more."
"Would you have?" she asked quietly.
"Yes."
"Interesting." She cocked her head and tugged on her glove. "I thought you needed a lesson on how to treat people." She leaned forward, propping an elbow on her knee and her chin on a fist. She looked right into his eyes. "I'll tell you a secret."
"What?"
"I would have come for nothing."
4
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers,
For thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
---Hebrews 13:2
LILLI SAT IN A LARGE LEATHER WING CHAIR IN HIS STUDY and looked at the paintings, the rich mahogany and brass furnishings, the long windows that looked out over the street two stories below, and the snow that was falling again outside. She looked at everything. Except him.
"Lillian."
She turned.
He didn't look at her. He sat at his desk, his chair turned to the side and his gaze fixed elsewhere. He had all the appearances of a man who did indeed have the world at his feet. There was no denying that D.L. Stewart had power. His stance, his manner, his surroundings, even his voice exuded it.
He picked up a gray-marbled fountain pen and tapped one end on the desk blotter, then absently flipped the pen and tapped its other end. "You said something that caught my attention when you were here before."
She didn't say anything. But she did wonder what she could have said that would be of interest to such a powerful man.
He continued: "You claim there are things money can't buy."
"There are."
"I don't agree."
She started to say something, but he raised his hand. "Let me finish. I don't agree, but I like challenges."
"I could tell," she whispered.
He gave her a stern look that said he wanted her quiet. She gave him what he wanted.
"I find what you said very intriguing."
"Oh? So what are you saying?"
"I'm giving you the opportunity to prove your point."
"I don't understand."
"You claim that you have no place to go."
She nodded. "It isn't a claim. It's the truth."
"If that's the case, then this is simple. I'm offering you a place to stay. You, in turn, will attempt to prove your theory correct." He swung his chair around and leaned an arm on his desk, pinning her with a dark stare that could intimidate Saint Peter himself. "Prove to me that there are things in this world that money cannot buy."
"Why? Why this? And why me?"
He leaned back with a bored look that she sensed was calculated. "For entertainment."
"But you called this a challenge."
"It is." He raised the pen and twirled it before his eyes. "You see, while you are trying to show me the things that money cannot buy, I, in turn, will show you just exactly what money will buy. Each of us will be out to prove our point."
"What are the stakes?"
He looked surprised, then laughed loudly and genuinely. There was no sardonic tone to his laughter this time. It had a rusty sound, as if he didn't do it that often.
"Name your price."
She shook her head. "You only think in terms of money."
"Name your reward then."
She thought about her circumstances and her goal. This almost seemed too easy, as if his whole plot was playing into her hands.
Perhaps her years in Heaven had earned her a small modicum of divine help.
Perhaps the carriage accident had knocked her senseless.
"Anything?" she asked.
There was something wicked in his eyes when he answered, "Absolutely anything."
"If I prove you wrong, you will---personally, once a week---find and create an opportunity for someone who has no hope. Someone like those people I gave your money to today." She watched for his reaction.
"Fine."
She froze. He had agreed too easily.
"What do you get out of this?"
He said nothing but stared at a legal paper in his hand. He seemed to be thinking deeply.
After a long silence, she cocked her head and said, "Mr. Stewart?"
He looked up.
"You haven't answered me,"
He gave the paper another look, then seemed to come to a decision and quickly set it aside. "I'll get companionship." His tone was clipped, and he braced his hands on his desk and stood up quickly, then shuffled some papers. "I have an engagement to attend tomorrow night and another a few days later. You will accompany me." He turned away then, his back to her, and he stared out the window.
She watched him standing there stiffly, unwilling to look at her. "That's it? I just go with you?"
"Anywhere I ask."
She stood up. "Okay. We have a deal."
He tugged on the bellpull and the butler entered. He faced the man, but his gaze was on her. "Show Miss Lillian to the gold suite, Gage."
Lilli had the uneasy feeling that she had just jumped in a lake with her hands and feet tied.
"See that she has anything she wishes." He paused, a silence filled with meaning, then added, "Anything that money can buy."
The gold suite was just that---gold. The bed was gold. The walls had panels that were covered in gold-flecked wallpaper, then wainscoted in gilt. The high ceiling was coffered and painted with a scene that showed a golden sunrise, and rich golden oak flooring was covered with huge imported silk rugs designed in various shades from deep to light golden yellow.
The rug fringe? Golden silk. Lilli bent down and examined more closely the motif in each rug, half expecting the pattern to be interlocking dollar signs. She straightened, somewhat relieved when she saw only an obscure floral design.
She crossed the room and opened a door that led to a dressing room, three quarters of which was paneled in mirrors, all gilt framed. Through another door with golden handles shaped like dolphins was a private bath of pale yellow marble with gold dolphin fixtures and---
"Good heavens ..." she muttered. "A gold sink!" She stared at it and at the gold-framed mirror above it with a dazed look of disbelief.
Then she saw something reflected in the mirror. Her mouth dropped open and she blinked twice, then spun around.
The water closet was a golden throne.
One second she gaped, the next she burst out laughing, and every time she looked around the room she laughed harder, until finally she had to sag back against the sink.
This had to be a joke. It was too ludicrous not to be.
But as she stood there, she knew that no one could deny the massive amounts of money it must have taken to decorate this suite. Everything was of the highest quality. What had been ridiculously funny only moments before was not funny any longer. It was a sad example of stupid waste and opulence. Worse yet, a cockeyed sense of values.
She straightened and left the room quickly, feeling oppressed, uncomfortable, and suddenly rather pessimistic about her chances of ever being able to teach D.L. Stewart anything.
Once in the bedroom, she just stood there and stared around her. Every piece of furniture, every painting, every bit of the room from the fireplace to the bric-a-brac was coldly flawless. Expensive. Priceless.
The minutes passed, one by one, time revealing what she hadn't understood before. The man who owned this house, this room, needed to learn more than just how to give from his heart. He was so lost, had his values so skewed, that she wondered if he could ever find any joy or happiness in just living. If he even understood the human spirit or the things that truly mattered in the world.
She lay back on the bed, with its plush down bedding, expensive silk drape, and hand-carved posts. She stared up at the canopy with a sense of grief so very deep it touched her in a way nothing had before.
And she began to cry. She turned over and buried her head in her arms, sobbing painfully and pitifully. Not for herself, a fallen angel, but for Daniel Lincoln Stewart, a fallen soul.
D.L. closed his carriage door and looked up. Lilli was watching him from an upstairs window. The drape drifted back and he watched it for a moment longer, then went up the snowy steps, fighting another smile---his second that day.
The front doors swung open wide and early.
Gage must be looking for a raise, he thought, then recalled it was near Christmas---that time of year when every servant, delivery boy, and elevator operator began to fawn, hoping for a large tip.
But to his surprise it was Lillian who met him at the doors. She was wearing her jacket and gloves, her hat tied beneath her chin in a shredded velvet bow.
He frowned and glanced back up at the window. "Weren't you just upstairs?"
She nodded.
He looked down the front steps. There were eight of them. He knew the main staircase had to have at least forty steps. How in God's name had she managed to meet him at the front door?
She was flushed and perhaps a little out of breath.
He shook his head, then gestured to her clothing. "Going somewhere?"
"Yes. We both are."
"I see. Why?"
"You said I'm supposed to prove my theory. Well, I'm ready."
"For what, exactly?"
"Your entertainment."
He gave a her long, pointed look.
She stared back at him from eyes that were a little too red.
"Have you been crying again?"
She looked down. "I had something in my eye."
"Both of them?"
She raised her chin, a sign of defiance. "Yes."
He crossed his arms with equal stubbornness.
Unfazed, she held out an old cloth valise. "Here."
"What's this?"
"It's a surprise."
He took the valise.
She stood there, silently waiting.
He stood there, silently amused.
It began to snow again, and she looked up at the sky. "Come," she said finally, and she threaded her arm through his, all but dragging him down the steps. They reached bottom just as his brougham disappeared around the corner and down the drive to the carriage house.
"Wait here. I'll call for the carriage."
"Oh, no." She tugged on his arm. "We'll walk."
"It's snowing."
She smiled up at him. "I know. That's the best part. Now come along."
A few minutes later he was walking down the sidewalk, valise in one hand, her arm holding his, while she chattered about the snow and the scenery and the sleighs that passed them by. She hummed a Christmas tune and smiled at people, wishing perfect strangers "Happy Christmas."
She grasped his hand and pulled him across the street to the park. Singing about bells and angels, she led him down a snowy path to a clearing, where a pond had frozen and the surrounding trees and bushes were heavy with white snow.
She plopped down on a park bench up a hill across from the pond and patted the spot next to her. "Sit here."
He bent down and dusted off the snow, then sat. "Is sitting on a snowy park bench your idea of entertainment?"
"Of course not." She took the valise from him and set it on her lap, snapped it open, and burrowed inside. A second later she looked up, grinning. She pulled out an old pair of ice skates and dangled them in front of his face. "Yours," she said, then dropped them in his lap.
He stared at them.
She pulled out another pair. "And mine."
"This is the surprise?"
She nodded. "And it's absolutely free."
"Where did the skates come from?"
"I borrowed them. For free," she said smugly. "Now go ahead. Strap them on." She bent down and fit her feet into the skate clamps, then buckled the leather straps. She lifted one foot, examining the skate as if it were a glass slipper. "Not bad."
She stood up and planted her hands on her hips. "You haven't put them on yet. I thought you said you liked challenges."
He bent down and strapped on the skates.
An instant later she was walking down the path to the pond. He glanced up. She sauntered away like a conquering queen. From the way she carried herself, one would never know she still had a large rip in her skirt and that the rear shoulder of her jacket was shredded from the accident.
Funniest thing. For the first time in too many years to count, he wasn't bored.
"Better hurry," she called out over her shoulder in a singsong voice. "The last one there has to give a thousand dollars to the poor!"
And for the third time that day, he smiled.
"What do mean, we have to pay a dime?" Lilli stared dumbfounded at a park official in a blue uniform coat. He stood inside a small toll booth that had been hidden by the trees and bushes.
The man leaned forward from the window in his booth. "The skating pond has a tencent toll."
She could hear someone coming down the path. She didn't want to turn around and see triumph in D.L. Stewart's dark face. Directly behind her, she heard his skates crunch in the snow.
"What's the matter?" he asked in that deep voice.
She stared at the ground for a long moment, then finally admitted, "I was wrong. There's a fee to skate."
A second later she heard the sound of coins and looked up.
He held out a hand filled with gold pieces.
She shook her head. "No."
He turned to the official. "How much does this booth take in on a good day?"
The man shrugged. "Fifty dollars. Maybe sixty.'
He gave him three twenty-dollar gold pieces, then added a fourth. "Consider this a good day and close the booth."
She started to say something, but he grabbed her arm and was pulling her along. A second later his hands were on her waist, and with a gentle shove he propelled her onto the ice.
Lillian would have protested, loudly, that he'd paid for something she had planned to be free, that they didn't have to do this, that she would find something else they could do.
Except that she'd forgotten one .. . little ... itsy-bitsy thing.
She had never ice-skated.
5
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
---Richard Lovelace
For the second time in two days D.L. stared down at Lillian. Only this time she was sprawled facedown on the hard ice.
She turned her head and looked up at him. "I've discovered something. Without wings, you can't hang on to thin air."
D.L. squatted next to her. "Are you hurt?"
"Only my pride." She pushed herself up on her hands and knees.
He straightened, grabbed her waist again, and picked her up. He set her carefully on the ice and kept his hands on her waist because it felt right. "I assumed that you could skate."
"So did I." Her blades slipped and she squealed, then wrapped her arms in a death grip around his waist. She peered up at him, her face sheepish. "It looks so easy."
"Turn around."
"I can't without letting go."
"Let go and turn slowly."
"I don't do miracles," she muttered.
He braced his skates and spun her around so her back was to him. He still held her waist.
She blinked at him for a second.
"Keep your ankles together and your back straight. I'll help you."
"You can skate," she said flatly.
His answer was to tighten his hands on her small waist and push off, skating smoothly and keeping her in front of him. He moved them both swiftly around the pond. "You're wobbling, Lilli. Keep your shoulders back."
She placed her hands over his and straightened. "You're right! It is easier."
She looked back over her shoulder as he picked up speed. Her cheeks were flushed pink and she was grinning. "This is fun!" Then she giggled.
He skated faster, until he could feel the cold air on his face. She laughed louder and clearer.
Before long the subtle scent of lemons drifted back to him, and her laughter---well, the sound of it did something queer to him. It made him want more. 'Round and 'round he skated, just to hear that joy.
He looked down at her at the same moment that she looked up. And it was strangely humbling to look into her face and see such honest emotion.
Over time he had come to accept that he was an outsider in a world where, no matter how much he spent or how much he made, he never felt as if he belonged.
For thirty years there had been an emptiness in him somewhere.
And now, for this one brief instant, skating on the ice with her looking at him as she did---as if he had given her the whole world---he thought that perhaps that emptiness inside him could be filled.
It was astonishing to think he might have seen in her, this odd woman who claimed to be fallen, a small glimpse of that part of him he had thought was lost---the part that could make him complete.
He forced himself to break contact. "Now you try." He gave her a small push, and she screamed for help. He stood there watching her wobble and shuffle her feet, occasionally swinging her arms when she lost her tenuous balance. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Keep your back straight!"
She didn't straighten, exactly. She went as stiff as a streetlamp.
In the next few minutes she must have called his name with every breath, half screaming and half laughing, until she was coming toward him at too fast a speed, her arms out and her mouth wide open.
He reached for her. But she whipped past him.
A tree trunk stopped her. She hit it hard, hard enough to make her grunt. Hard enough to shake the tree. Hard enough for the snow to fall in giant globs from the branches.
Onto her.
He laughed. He could do little else. She had snow on her hat, snow on her clothes, in her face. Snow was everywhere.
She let go of the tree and turned, her eyes---what one could see of them through all the snow---were sparkling like new coins.
He turned around but couldn't stop laughing.
After a moment, during which he had found his control, she called out, "Hey Daniel!"
He turned, his Christian name still sounding strange to him even though she had screamed it at least ten times.
"Here's something money can't buy!" She flung a snowball at him. It knocked his hat right from his head.
It was her turn to laugh.
He turned and looked at his hat, then turned back just as another wad of loose snow sped past his nose. He skated toward her, slowly, with purpose. He didn't know he was still smiling.
She stood in the deep fresh snow that edged the pond. "Isn't this fun!" she said and flung another wad of snow.
He had to dodge this one.
She stepped back a few steps and bent down to scoop up more but chanced to look up.
His purpose and his intent hadn't changed.
"Uh-oh ..." she said, apparently catching the vengeful gleam in his eyes. A second later she ran like hell through the snow.
He shouted her name and chased her into the deeper snow. Her hat fell back and her hair came loose, drifting behind her like the snow she kicked up, like her laughter and her joy.
He tackled her and they rolled in the snow, down a short embankment and under a cluster of low trees. She was still laughing when they stopped rolling, him on top, pinning her to the ground.
Snow sparkled from her face like Tiffany's diamonds. Her hat was crushed behind her and her hair was again spread out as if it were the glow of a halo. Her chest rose and fell with each warm breath that changed to mist in the small space of air between them.
And she smiled at him. For him.
It felt perfectly natural to cup her head in his hands. Natural to lower his mouth to hers. And natural to taste her when she gasped. But what happened after that was as unnatural as she was unconventional. Daniel Lincoln Stewart heard bells.
She dreamed that night that he hadn't stopped kissing her in the park. She dreamed that he hadn't looked at her so strangely. She knew that look. The archangels had looked at her with the same dazed and befuddled eyes when she had knocked them off that ladder. It was as if they couldn't believe she was real.
And she almost had to wonder if that kiss was real. It was the closest thing to Heaven she'd found on Earth. She stretched and threw back the covers, swinging her bare legs over the side and dangling them.
She still slept in the silk shirt, with the tails that barely brushed her knees. But she wasn't cold, even if frost did edge the windows. There was a fire in the fireplace, compliments of Peg, the same maid who had brought her hot chocolate and loaned her the skates.
Morning light streamed through the bedroom windows. She stood up and pulled back the drape. On the street below carriages moved past---a world outside where yesterday's snow was fast becoming today's pile of gray-brown ice.
She wondered what Daniel was doing now. Probably off to make more money. She shook her head. The man knew how much money he made by the minute.
From this same window she had watched him leave early this morning, before she crawled back into bed and had some odd dream of Daniel, dressed as a nursery rhyme king, sitting in an office in some city tower and counting all his gold. Four and twenty blackbirds wearing hats that looked like giant pie crusts were guarding the doors.
She frowned, then shook her head slightly.
A sharp rap rattled the door. She jumped back in the bed and pulled up the covers. "Yes?"
The door opened slowly and Peg smiled. "Miss Lillian. Your trunks have arrived."
"My trunks?" she repeated stupidly.
Peg nodded.
Lilli leaned to the left of the bed and peered past Peg and out into the hall where trunks and bandboxes, hatboxes, and cases sat in what appeared to be legions.
Peg stepped back. "Your things. Mr. Stewart said they would arrive this morning."
"He did?"
Peg crossed the room toward the dressing room. "I'll run your bath, Miss Lillian, and you can relax while Gage and I bring everything inside."
Lilli took the fastest bath in history. She asked Peg for some time alone, and as soon as the girl had left, she flew into the bedroom, rebuttoning her shirt. She just stood there looking at the incredible number of boxes and trunks, the stacks of packages. She was certain there was enough in this room to clothe all of New York City.
A little while later she was convinced he had bought out all of New York City. Inside a trunk marked redfern were walking suits in the finest cashmere, some trimmed with curly lamb or fur, day suits in figured silk with trims of imported lace and bead-work. Boxes wrapped in silver tissue held tea and dinner dresses of silk grosgrain and brocade, sateen and nun's veiling.
Another huge trunk that opened like a closet held cloaks with matching fur hats and muffs, drawers with silk and kid gloves in every color of nature's palette, and more corsets and underwear than she ever cared to see.
There were at least thirty hatboxes stacked along the wall and almost as many shoeboxes next to velvet drawstring bags with purses to match each pair of shoes. In another corner was a tower of large lace and ribbon-trimmed boxes stamped the house of worth.
Lilli grabbed the top one and carried it over to the bed, then crawled up and sat crosslegged. She untied the ribbon and lifted the lid, then broke the seal and pushed the tissue aside.
Her heart stopped for just one precious breath.
Inside was an evening gown of snow-white velvet with a skirt of matching cobweb lace. The velvet was soft and white as a cloud, and the lace on the skirt had a pattern more intricate than the stars in the sky. It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen.
Holding her breath, she pulled out the gown and held it up, looking at it for the longest time. There were little silver threads in the lace that caught the light from the fire and sparkled as bright as the silver lining of a cloud.
The gown was like a little part of Heaven. Her Heaven. Her only memories.
She hugged it to her chest and just sat there for the longest time, misty-eyed and unaware that she wasn't alone.
"I had thought you'd be pleased by this." Daniel stood in the doorway, watching with an edged look that said he didn't understand her.
"They're lovely."
"So lovely you're crying again."
She shook her head and said wistfully, "I was just remembering something I've lost."
Almost immediately he tensed. He looked angry. "Get dressed." His voice was tight.
She didn't understand his anger.
His face had turned hard, and the look in his eyes was as black as his features. "Come downstairs. Quickly."
"We're going out?"
"Yes." He paused for a moment, his hand on the door handle. He turned around. "I don't know who did this to you," he gritted. "But I'd like to get my hands on him." And before she could say a word, he shut the door.
She stared at it, completely baffled. She had done this to herself. If he wanted to get his hands on the person who had created her situation, she was right here.
She dropped the white dress and crawled down from the bed, grabbing a navy blue silk brocade suit---there were certainly plenty---as she went to the dressing room.
Once inside, she paused in front of the mirror and stared at her mouth---seeing it differently now that it had been kissed.
Her lips looked fuller. Did one's lips grow after a kiss? She touched them for a moment, then a silly smile spread slowly across her face.
After the kiss in the park, she knew she would be perfectly happy if he wanted to put his hands on her.
D.L. handed Karl the papers and stood up. They left the library and went into the foyer, where he leaned against the newel post and watched Karl stuff papers into his case. He had rushed through his meeting with no mention of Lilli to his attorney and friend.
He had no good explanation why he had wanted her here. No acceptable explanation. Entertainment, challenges, companionship---they all sounded weak and illogical.
What it boiled down to was that he didn't want to explain his motives for keeping a woman who claimed to be homeless, keeping for himself a woman who was fallen. Now, he knew one thing: He didn't care who or what she was. And that wasn't something he could analyze, at least not comfortably. As for the release, it annoyed him. In his mind it reduced her to nothing but a signature on a piece of paper.
Karl paused at the front doors. "I forgot to ask. Did you get that release signed?"
"No."
"I thought you said you had found her."
D.L. felt his hand tighten on the newel post. "I'll take care of it."
"This is important. You need to find that woman."
D.L. felt closed in and anxious for Karl to leave. He took a step toward the door, but near the top of the stairs he caught a flash of dark blue. He looked up with a sense of doom.
Lilli never looked down. He watched, stunned, as she sat on the banister.
An instant later she was sliding down the staircase, singing some silly song about this being better than wings in Heaven. A few feet from the bottom, she saw him and said, "Uh-oh ..."
That was the last thing he heard before she sailed into him.
He lay on the marble floor of the foyer, trying to catch the breath that was knocked out of him. He blinked, seeing stars first, then her surprised face. He shook his head to clear it.
She lay atop him, her nose just inches away, her body along his.
Her sheepish gaze peered down at him slowly. "You know ..." she said, shaking a finger in his face, "I was just thinking about you."
"You slid down the banister," he said, unable to believe it.
She shrugged. "You said come down quickly."
He sat upright, holding her to him. She squealed and grabbed his neck. They shared a look, a private memory of yesterday in the snow, and an instant later they were both laughing.
"Well, D.L. ..."
Daniel froze. He turned.
Karl was leaning against the front door, an all-too-knowing look on his face. He smiled sardonically. "I guess you found her."
6
Angels descending, bringing from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
---Fanny J. Crosby
So he did the most natural thing---he took her to Tiffany's.
She looked at the diamonds and found them "nice." She agreed with the bald-headed clerk that they did rather look like stars. But D.L. could sense the diamonds wouldn't put the stars back into her eyes.
Sapphires were "okay," the perfectly cut rubies and emeralds were reduced to "those red and green stones," and the pearls . .. God ... D.L. wondered if he could ever look at pearls again and not picture in his mind the pain he had seen in Lilli's face.
She had looked at the pearls as if they were her shame. She muttered something about the gates to Heaven, then quietly asked every person in the store if they didn't think that pearls looked like angel tears.
Two hours later, while Lilli was across the store peering into another display case, he'd covertly bought the diamonds and some of "those red and green stones," then asked that they be delivered. The jewelry clerk had sighed with relief and went into the back rooms, wiping his shiny head with a handkerchief.
When they finally stepped from the store, she wore a pair of flawless and exquisite diamond earrings set in platinum that would have made a society matron faint from joy. He knew she'd selected them only out of charity. He had tricked her. He'd casually mentioned that the clerk had ten children and worked solely on commission.
And she did wear one other piece---a plain gold pin in the shape of wings. It was the only thing that had caught her eye. And its purchase was what finally made her brighten.
But now it was that night, and they were riding in his carriage to the opera house, where this evening's symphony performance opened the holiday concert season. It was at these functions where D.L. actually did most of his business. They weren't obligatory. They were necessary.
Lilli sat across from him, extraordinarily quiet, but looking as if she had just stepped from the pages of a fairy tale. A snow queen---in the white Worth gown and a fur-lined silk cape, her pale blond hair piled regally high on her head, where silver combs caught the carriage light. At his request, she was wearing the diamonds.
The tension in the carriage was thick as gold bars and seemed almost as impenetrable. He, a man who had dealt with the most difficult men in the business world, could not seem to deal with one woman named Lillian.
He had the feeling that he could do little right where she was concerned. The day had been nothing but tension. He felt as if he kept doing and saying exactly the wrong thing.
She had taken his breath away when she'd come down the stairs---walking, not via the banister. And he'd complimented her. He had thought compliments made a woman feel better about herself.
Lilli had looked as if she might cry, or throw something.
Now, as the carriage moved through the damp and icy streets, she just stared out the fogged window, oddly silent and with no light in her eyes.
"You're still unhappy."
She looked at him sadly, then shook her head. "Not really."
"I don't understand. I've sat here for the last few minutes trying to figure out what the hell is wrong." He could hear the edge of anger in his voice. He thought to soften his words and added, "I meant what I said."
"When?"
"Tonight. When you came downstairs. I told you how you looked."
"Yes." She turned back to the window again. "I remember. You said I wear wealth beautifully."
From her tone, one would have thought he'd told her she had a wart on her nose. He felt so damned awkward. All day, no matter what he did, he couldn't do anything to please her. It annoyed the hell out of him.
The next moment the carriage stopped where the street ended and the opera house reigned. He shoved open the door and silently helped her down, holding her arm as he led her along the sidewalk. Just ahead of them, New York society crowded outside and on the steps like cattle hungry for hay.
On the walks and along the neighboring buildings were spectators, out to get a glimpse of Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. And beggars, out to get what they could. The indigent lined the sidewalks, clinging to worn woolen mufflers and rusty tin cans.
Lilli took one look at them and stopped as if she had suddenly grown roots. She pulled her arm from his grip and walked away from him toward the line of poor, her face showing every emotion she felt.
"Lillian."
She ignored him.
He watched, horrified, as she unscrewed an extremely expensive diamond earring and made to toss it into the nearest tin can.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted, grabbing her hand.
She looked up at him with surprise, then concern. She looked at the beggars, then back at him.
"Someone has to help them." She placed her hand on his arm.
He looked at her for a very long time. God ... had he ever been that kind and innocent?
"No matter how solitary your world is, Daniel, not everyone is strong enough to make it all alone."
He knew he'd lost.
Her voice became even smaller. "They could be fallen angels."
He dug into his pocket. His voice was more gruff than he'd have liked when he said, "Put the earring back on." He held out a handful of money.
An instant later he received a gift worth more than any fortune.
Lilli's smile.
It was the longest night she could remember.
She must have met a hundred people like Daniel. Women stared at her jewelry with covetous eyes. Men talked money and business while they looked at her---not her jewelry---with those same covetous looks. Two of those same men pinched her when Daniel had his back turned.
She'd lost count of the number of people who said "Worth? How lovely," never meaning a word they said.
She wondered if Hell was in truth one big New York society party.
And Daniel. From the moment they walked inside, he had kept her close, his hand on her arm. When he looked at her it was from a dark gaze that bordered on obsession, as if she were something necessary to him, desperately necessary.
It caught her off guard, because when he looked at her that way she sensed a vulnerability in him that she hadn't actually seen before.
His grip would tighten, and he would turn and look at her as if he thought she might not be there.
It made the night tense and difficult for her. She supposed she should have been grateful that the long night had been cut short.
There had been a harp solo.
Lilli sat in the balcony, her forehead resting on one hand, when ... one by one ... every harp string broke. A series of boing! Boing! Boing!
There were some things that were the same whether she was in Heaven or on Earth. Either that, or God had a strange sense of humor.
But now, over an hour later, she stood in the gold suite, dressed in Daniel's silk shirt---the one she loved to sleep in---and looked out the window at a world she didn't understand. In a moment of unexplained whimsy, she reached out and drew a heart in the frost on the window.
The moment she finished, she sensed that she was no longer alone. She turned.
Daniel stood in the room, half turned away, his hand just locking the door behind him. He turned back and leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed.
He studied her as if he wasn't going to stop looking for a long time. He was still in his dress shirt and black pants, but his tail coat and white tie were gone, and two of the onyx and diamond studs near the collar of his shirt were undone.
As casual as he appeared standing there, she knew that some part of him wanted to intimidate. It was protection. It was how he hid his vulnerable side---the side that held on to her because he was afraid she would leave him.
She saw the rigidness in his square jaw, the tension in his neck, the raw need in his black eyes. She moved to the bed and sat in its center, not knowing exactly why he was there and feeling small and overwhelmed.
She cocked her head and looked in his face, searching for answers before she asked her question.
He shoved off from the wall and moved toward her.
"Why do you always look at me that way?"
He stopped at the foot of the bed, looking down at her from an intimidating height. "What way is that?"
"As if you're hungry."
She had startled him.
He gave a quiet, sardonic laugh that said the joke was on him. "It's that obvious? I must be losing my poker face."
There was a force of some kind between them. There had been from the first moment she'd ever seen him. Now that force was so strong she could feel the pull of it closing in, even the small space that separated them.
He placed one knee on the mattress, his hand reaching out to cup her cheek, then slide through her hair, holding her head in his palm. He pulled her to him gently---too gently for a man with such power.
With a touch as soft as the brush of a snowflake, he kissed her. His hands moved to her waist and lifted her, then he sat down on the bed, pulling her into his lap as he filled her mouth with his tongue and tasted her.
The stars in Heaven were with her suddenly in a wealth of emotion that confused her. His fingers traced her jaw and he pulled his mouth away, only to kiss her face and eyes, her cheeks and ears.
"Let me make you forget the past, Lillian. Forget the man who ruined you."
She cupped his rough chin in her hands. "No one ruined me, Daniel. I ruined myself."
His eyes narrowed, and he ran a thumb over her bottom lip. "You're too generous. It takes a man to make a fallen woman."
Stunned, she sat back, dropping her hands. "What?"
"I know what happened to you. You cried about it after the accident."
"You think I'm a fallen woman?" She felt the kernel of a smile.
He gave her that direct look of his. "You admitted it, Lilli. You said you were fallen and ashamed. You won't tell me where you are from. I assumed that's because you've been disowned."
She laughed, just a small laugh, but a laugh just the same.
His black expression said he didn't think this was funny.
"I'm not a fallen woman. I'm a fallen angel."
7
But strength alone though of Muses born,
Is like a fallen angel; trees uptorn.
---John Keats
CALL IT WHAT YOU LIKE, LlLLIAN. FALLEN WOMAN. Fallen angel. Soiled dove. I don't really care." D.L. grabbed her by the shoulders. "Your past is not my concern."
"No." She shook her head. "I am an angel. Or at least I was one."
He looked at her, thinking she was making a joke.
"Truly. I had a halo and wings, but I couldn't perform any miracles so---"
He felt his pride and the deep wound to it. He tensed, then stood up abruptly. "If you aren't interested .. . say so. Don't make these ridiculous excuses."
"It's the truth."
"You expect me to believe that you are an angel."
"A fallen angel."
He crossed his arms and leaned against the bedpost. "Prove it."
"I don't know how I can prove it. You tell me how to make you believe me."
"I don't know. You're the heavenly being." His voice dripped in sarcasm and he waved his hand angrily. "Ask for divine guidance. Hell... sprout wings and fly around the bloody room."
"Why are you so angry? I can't help what I am."
"Then why are you making up this stupid tale? I told you. I don't care what you are, or even what you've been. But don't---don't lie to me."
"You won't believe me."
"You tell me you're an angel and then expect me to believe you?" He ran a hand through his hair and paced in front of her. "God, that's rich!"
She gave him that look---the one that said more than words that he had let her down. "I'm not surprised that you'd use such a phrase."
He froze. "What's wrong with it?"
"Do you want me to answer that? Honestly?"
"You're the angel." He heard the cruelty in his laugh. "You tell me."
"Okay. You want truth, I'll give you truth. The painful truth. You think only in terms of money. Everything is money with you. You offer me money to listen to you, to get in your carriage. You try to buy everything. Everyone."
He stood there, just watching her, listening to her tell him things he didn't care to hear, especially from her.
"You can't even give a woman a compliment, Daniel. Did you say 'Lillian, you look lovely'? No. You said 'You wear wealth beautifully.'"
She made him sound incredibly pompous.
"Don't you know there are things more important than money or fortunes or gold?"
He was stiffly silent, yet deep inside him he flinched at the sincerity in her voice.
"Is it truly that hard for you to understand? People shouldn't be bought. They should be respected. Even the most ragged and beggarly person in New York is still a human being. Can't you find it in your heart to help them, even one of them, all on your own?"
He was still silent, his jaw tight, his chin raised.
"And look at your house."
"What's wrong with my house?"
"You collect things."
"You make it sound as if that's a criminal act."
"Not criminal. Sad. Look at this room." She waved her hand around.
He gave it a cursory glance. There was nothing wrong with the room. It was the best his money could buy. "Yes?"
"It's filled with collections. Priceless art, perfect porcelain, but nothing .. . alive. And the color."
"What about the color?"
"Look around you. Open your eyes. Everything is gold---as if gold, wealth, is the most important thing in the world. This is not a home you live in. It's a temple to the almighty dollar."
He didn't look at the room. He looked at her. "You criticize my house because I won't believe this foolishness that you're an angel."
"No! You don't understand."
"You're the angel. Work a miracle and make me understand."
She began to pace alongside the bed. Grabbing the bedpost, she stopped and looked at him again. "Okay. It's Christmas. What is the first thought that comes into your mind when I say the word Christmas?"
Tipping, he thought, but he'd be damned if he'd admit it.
"Ah-ha!" She pointed a finger at him. "You thought of money just then."
"You're guessing."
"I'm certain. The gleam of avarice in your eyes was hard to miss. Nowhere in this entire house is there any sign of Christmas. No greenery. No tree. Nothing. And what about your servants?"
"What about them?"
"Do you give them special holidays to be with their families?"
"They'll be compensated."
"Money again." She walked over to him and, placing her hands on his chest, looked up at him as if she expected him to be something he wasn't--- something he didn't understand.
"Can't you understand? Can't you at least try?"
When she looked at him that way, he almost thought that perhaps he could be different. But he didn't know if he could give her what she wanted, what she asked. Because he didn't understand it, and it scared the hell out of him.
His gaze moved to her mouth, because he had to look at her. His look wandered slowly down the shirt and her legs. His anger turned to want, the need that seemed to consume him since that first night when she'd caught him looking at her.
He wanted her now, but his pride reminded him that he had for so many years had everything on his own terms. He made the rules.
"Please don't look at me like that."
"Why not? I paid for the privilege."
She flinched as if he had hit her.
Silently he stood there, part of him wanting to take the words back, and another part of him---pride and anger and rejection---not allowing him to move or speak. Everything was all mixed up in his head and his heart.
She stepped away, raising her hand as if to fend off a demon, her expression half horror, half hurt. "I can't do this," she said under her breath. "I can't."
She looked ready to bolt.
He grabbed her then. "Don't leave. Lilli, don't leave."
She watched him for a long time. "Daniel," she whispered. "What is it? What are you so afraid of?"
He shook his head. "Promise me. You won't leave like you did before."
"Why?"
He let go of her and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry." He turned away, feeling vulnerable and open, naked in her eyes. He just left her standing there because he needed to think and he couldn't think with her looking at him that way. He crossed the room and opened the door.
"Daniel?" Her voice was so soft he wasn't certain he'd heard it.
He paused and took a deep breath.
"I'll stay."
He exhaled and loosened his death grip on the door handle. He nodded, because he couldn't find his voice, and he left, closing the door behind him.
He leaned against it for a moment, then had an insane thought: Perhaps she was an angel.
Lilli stood at the window and watched Daniel's carriage pull away from the house. He'd left later this morning than normally. She'd been waiting and watching. She threw on a dark red cloak and tied on a matching bonnet.
She walked to the bedroom door and stopped suddenly, snapping her fingers. She ran back and grabbed a purse that was sitting on a chair, then she went back to the door, where she listened to make certain no one was in the hallway.
Cracking the door a smidgen, she peered out. The coast was clear. She left the bedroom and hurried to the gallery that ran next to the stairs. Her hands on the gallery railing, she looked down into the foyer.
It was empty.
She moved to the top of the stairs and started to tiptoe down. She paused, then sat on the banister and slid to the bottom, landing perfectly and quietly.
A minute later she was running down the steps and away from the house, and she never looked back.
D.L. stood at the window of his office, his hands in his pockets, as he watched the traffic on the street below. A delivery boy in a blue coat with gold epaulets and a gold-brimmed hat came running through the crowd outside his building.
A few minutes later he heard the chain hoist on the elevator. He stood there, tense and tight, as he waited. The door burst open and the boy rushed inside.
"I went as fast as I could, Mr. Stewart!" The lad was out of breath, which D.L. thought appropriate, since he himself was holding his.
"I spoke to your butler, and he said to tell you Miss Lillian was still asleep."
D.L. closed his eyes and sagged back against the windowsill. He felt the tension he'd been living with all morning drain away. He suddenly remembered himself and straightened, then shoved a hand in his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar gold piece. "Fine." He flipped it to the boy.
The boy snatched it out of the air. "Thank you, sir." He turned to leave.
"Willy?"
The boy paused and turned back. "Yes, sir?"
"Where's your family?"
Willy's mouth gaped open, then he suddenly snapped it shut. "Hoboken, sir."
D.L. nodded, then turned around and looked out the window. "If one wanted to buy some Christmas greenery and perhaps a tree, where is the best place to go?"
"The freshest greens are at the Washington Market, near the docks on the North River. Most of the freight barges dock there, sir."
"I see," D.L. said, lost in thought.
A few minutes passed, and then Willie cleared his throat.
D.L. turned back.
"Is that all, sir?"
"Yes." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold pieces. He stared at them for a moment. He looked at Willy and said, "Take off the two days before Christmas and spend them with your family."
"But sir---"
"With pay. Consider it payment for information."
Willie grinned. "Yes, sir!"
D.L. watched the door close, then heard a loud whoop echo down the hallway. His lips twitched slightly as he reached for his topcoat and hat, and he was smiling when he left his office. A few minutes later his carriage pulled away from the Stewart Building, headed for the Washington Market in lower Manhattan.
D.L. strolled through the marketplace, where Christmas greens were piled like cordwood along the walks and twined up awning posts and around storefront windows. Booths were made up of barrels with rising latticework that looked like arbors. And from them hung festoons of every shade and thicket of greenery from Maine to the Catskills.
Three ropes of greenery hung from around D.L.'s neck, and in one hand was a basket filled with holly, red roses, and rolls of ribbon. And the purchase he was most proud of, a large bouquet of snow-white lilies.
He walked along, breathing in the tangy clean scent of pine and trying to picture Lilli's face.
It wasn't difficult. She was standing just a few feet away.
She was bent over a little boy, who was looking up at her with serious wide eyes. He held a tin whistle in one hand, and under the other arm was a mechanical cow with a brass bell around its neck.
D.L. moved closer and listened.
"Yes, Alfred, it's true," Lilli was saying. "Didn't you know that?"
The boy shook his head.
"I have a rhyme to help you remember. Do you want to hear it?"
He nodded.
Lilli squatted down until she was at eye level with the boy, and she said, "Every time a whistle sounds, an angel falls to the ground." She paused, frowning dramatically and shaking her head.
The boy giggled.
"And every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings." She smiled and nodded vigorously.
The little boy looked at the whistle, then at the cow. He put the whistle down and ran off to tell his mother he wanted the cow instead.
Lilli straightened, then bent down again to pick up a basket of greenery. Smiling, she turned and froze the moment she saw him.
D.L. didn't move. "I thought you were still asleep."
"I thought you were at your office."
They said nothing else. The night before was still too fresh a memory, and it made the moment awkward and tense.
She looked at his neck and then gave a small smile. "Shopping?"
He glanced down, then shrugged. "Yes."
She held up the basket. "Me too."
He then remembered that he'd never given her one red cent. He felt stupid. But after the lecture she'd given him he wasn't certain how to ask her how she had paid for this. He eyed her basket a moment, then said, "I'm not certain I should bring up this subject after last night, but I have neglected to give you any money."
She looked everywhere but at him. Finally she sighed and said, "I pawned the gold pin."
"The wings?"
She nodded, and he groaned. He took her arm. "Where is the pawnshop?"
She pointed. "Down the street a few blocks."
"Come on." He headed down the street, Lilli by his side.
"You should have pawned the earrings."
"I couldn't do that."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because they don't mean as much as the pin does."
He stopped and looked at her. "That makes sense."
She gave a small smile.
"It shouldn't make sense. Don't ask me why. But for some hare-brained reason it does!" He turned and pulled her down the street.
Half an hour later they stood beneath the three white globes that hung above Murry's Pawnshop and D.L. pinned the wings onto Lilli's dress. She touched them when he finished. "Thank you."
Uncomfortable, he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked away. "Would you like a tree?"
Her smile was bright enough to melt the snow.
Two hours later, when the carriage left the market, a lush tree was strapped to the roof and the boot was stuffed with greenery. Baskets filled with flowers and fresh cranberries were on the seats by Lilli. In her hand she held a cornhusk doll in the shape of an angel. "Isn't it just wonderful?"
He looked at her. Only at her. "Yes. Wonderful."
She looked up, then something caught her eye and she gasped. D.L. turned just as they passed a German bakery, its windows filled with a fairyland of gingerbread castles.
He banged on the roof. "Stop here, Benny." He jumped out, then helped her down.
She almost ran to the window, where gaslights made the holiday display sparkle. Intricate castles and houses had snow icing on the roofs. Gingerbread soldiers in full uniform rode horses with trappings and full manes of sugary white. There were gingerbread women and children dressed in costume and carrying baskets of miniature marzipan candy in the shapes of pears and peaches, sausages and hams, little dolls and animals.
Three gingerbread men later, they left the bakery, and Lilli handed Benny a cookie shaped and decorated like a queen's carriage. She always thought of someone else before herself. She didn't want wealth or diamonds. She wanted so little. D.L. wondered if there was anything she truly wanted just for herself.
Then she saw the puppies. Small light brown canine heads with floppy ears and wagging tongues and bright red bows tied around their necks poked out of a street vendor's basket. A squeal of delight and she rushed toward the pups like a Vanderbilt to Tiffany's.
"Daniel, look!"
And he did look. But not at the puppies that were licking her chin and cheeks. Nor the kittens and the rabbits as she moved from one basket to another.
He looked at the joy on her face and wished that he could give her that kind of happiness every single day of his life.
Lilli. Who preferred puppies to diamonds. Kittens to pearls. Rabbits to ...
He looked down at her and scowled. "No rabbits, Lilli. Puppies .. . yes. And kittens too. But no rabbits."
8
With the breadth of Heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast
Though behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past
Oh never call it loving!
---Robert Browning
THE RABBITS WERE CHEWING ON DANIEL'S SHOELACES.
Lilli sat in a chair in the open parlor, her lap full of wiggling puppies, while purring kittens crawled on the arms and wings of the chair. She was stringing cranberries and smiling at Daniel.
He was on his hands and knees in front of a brass bucket filled with wet sand, muttering and turning the trunk of the Christmas tree. It was his third attempt to get the tree straight.
"It looks fine to me," she told him.
He backed out, scowled down at the two brown and white rabbits, then shifted away, eyeing the angle of the tree. "A little more to the right."
Lilli rolled her eyes and tied a knot in the string of deep red cranberries. The formal parlor was a disaster. A huge bowl of popcorn sat in the center of a Savonnerie carpet, a trail of plump kernels leading to the tree, where the rabbits nibbled the crushed popcorn from the soles of Daniel's shoes.
Scraps of colored paper and string had been scattered by tumbling puppies and playful kittens until the center of the room, where settees by William Kent formed a conversation area, looked like the aftermath of a parade. Next to embroidered pillows once owned by Marie Antoinette were stacks of greens, and in giant piles around the room were spools of red ribbons next to twigs of laurel and cedar.
The entire lower floor of the Stewart mansion was filled with the fresh scent of Christmas. By the time the mantel clock struck eleven the tree was decorated, and greenery hung throughout the front of the house. Tied with red ribbons, cedar and laurel, pine and holly hung from pictures and mirrors and wrapped around the bases of candelabra.
Besides the candles, tables held vases of red roses and the most exquisite white lilies she had ever seen. And the rabbits, puppies, and kittens were tucked into their baskets beneath the tree, exhausted after an evening of chasing string and cranberries---and Daniel's shoes.
"Now it looks like Christmas," she said, putting her hands on her hips. She turned just in time to catch the look on Daniel's face.
He stood next to her, silent and looking at the tree.
His expression was naked and open and for one brief instant filled with such desolation that she was unable to breathe.
She reached out and touched his arm. Because she had to. Because she sensed he needed touching now as he relived some memory.
"Daniel," she whispered his name.
He didn't respond, didn't move, until finally he looked at her as if he had just noticed she was there.
She searched his face for answers and saw nothing but a shuttered look that she sensed hid pain and fear and other emotions so personal that he couldn't bear to let anyone see. "What's wrong?"
He shoved his hands in his pockets, a move she was beginning to recognize. She suspected that his hands were tight fists.
Daniel had, over the years, learned to hide his emotions from the world.
"I haven't had a Christmas tree since I was thirteen." He didn't look at her. He stared at the tree.
She watched him with this horrid sinking feeling. "Do you want to get rid of it?"
"No." He shook his head. "It's not the tree. I never had the time for one. I was working too hard, and then when I did have the time ..." He shrugged. "I didn't care anymore."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No." He laughed without humor, then turned to her.
"I think perhaps you should."
He leaned back against the edge of the pocket door and crossed his arms. "Why?"
She could be as stubborn as he could. She mimicked him, crossing her arms and raising her chin. "You tell me."
He didn't look her in the eye, but he turned and took two strides into the room, his face hidden in the shadow of the doorway. His back was to her. "I wasn't born into wealth. I've earned every cent I have. What you said the other night made me think about what I am, Lilli. Why I am. Whether I have put money before everything else in my life." He turned back to her then. "I think it's true.
"My father died in an accident on the job. My mother was killed two weeks later. She was looking for a job and was murdered. No one ever knew what happened, except the police thought it might have been a robbery attempt.
"I lived with my grandfather for a while, but he had a stroke. No matter how hard any of them worked, no matter how much they tried, there was never much money. I don't have a lot of childhood memories, except that everyone I cared for I lost, and that we had little time together because they were always working so hard." He looked around the room, his gaze stopping on each priceless piece of art that adorned the walls.
"I remember thinking, when I buried my grandfather, that someday I would have so much money that I would never have to live like they did." He gave a droll laugh.
She looked at him.
"I realized this morning that I had done exactly what they had. I have spent almost every minute of my life working. The only difference is, I made money, more money than I could ever spend or need in my lifetime and theirs put together."
"Daniel. I'm sorry I said those things."
"Don't be. They needed to be said."
She stood there, feeling awkward because she wanted to run to him, but she was afraid.
"Can we start over? No challenges, no bets, no deals. And no questions. You can stay here as long as you want to, Lilli."
She didn't know what to tell him.
"Will you stay?"
Every person he had ever cared about left him in one way or another. Perhaps she understood that look. She understood him.
She couldn't leave him. Not now. Not when she was so confused and fast feeling as if Daniel were part of her. And deep inside her, she didn't want to leave him. She looked up and nodded. "I'll stay."
There was a flash of relief in his eyes. He gave her a slow and lazy smile, then looked pointedly above her.
She followed his gaze to where a giant ball of mistletoe, almost two feet wide, hung from the crystal chandelier directly above her.
Two steps and he had closed the distance between them. He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her softly, tenderly.
She slid her hands around his neck and returned his kiss, his taste. He groaned and his arms held her tightly, lifted her to him.
The kiss lasted forever and an instant. He pulled back. Her head was against his chest, and he rested his chin on her head, his breath a little fast, his heart pounding in her ear. "Whenever I kiss you, it's the strangest thing. I could swear I hear bells."
She smiled into his shirt and said, "Then perhaps you should kiss me more often."
"Perhaps you should go to bed before I do and then can't stop." He released her and stepped back, his look only for her.
She smiled and went up the stairs, feeling his gaze warm her all the way to the top. She stopped at the landing and turned. "Daniel. You know what they say about bells. Every time a bell rings---"
He smiled and finished, "An angel gets its wings."
\*
The next two days were theirs alone.
They went back to the park and skated again. Well, he skated. She fell. They joined the throngs of uptown shoppers who milled along Broadway from Union Square and along all the uptown avenues where, this close to Christmas, the stores were open until eleven at night to handle the crowds of people who were too busy to shop during the workday.
With hundred of others, they watched as a huge Christmas tree lit with two hundred gas jets was rolled into the Trinity Church sanctuary. Every branch of the tree was laden with gifts for children from a nearby orphan asylum, compliments of D.L. Stewart.
But the best Christmas gift Lilli received came in the form of laughter.
Lilli met Daniel at the top of the stairs one evening.
He stopped. "Go on down to dinner. I forgot something."
She walked down the stairs, humming "O Holy Night," a kitten tugging at her skirt and two puppies yapping in her arms. She reached the bottom step.
There was a loud whoop.
An instant later Daniel slid down the banister, off the newel post, and sailed into the foyer just as Gage opened the front door.
Daniel kept going.
He bounced down the icy marble steps until something on the sidewalk finally stopped him.
His attorney, Karl Wallis.
"I'm not certain I'll ever be able to sit again," D.L. said, wincing as he crossed the library and handed Karl a drink.
Karl took the drink. "You weren't at the Van Cleves' dinner party last night."
D.L. took a swig of Scotch. "No."
"Prescott was there."
"I'll call and set up a meeting with him sometime next week."
"I've never known you to miss an opportunity like this. The man has a fortune to invest."
D.L. didn't respond.
"Have you gotten that release signed?" The look Karl gave him spoke volumes.
"I said I'll take care of it, and I will."
"Tell me something."
"What?"
"What is she to you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You damn well know what I mean, D.L."
"Stay out of it, Karl."
"I've never seen you act this way about a woman."
"She's different. I don't know how to explain it." He'd known the night he took her to the concert. She looked lovely, but she'd been too quiet and out of place in that crowd---like fine silver exposed to the harsh elements. She had lost her luster. He felt some odd need to protect her from anything that would or could hurt her, anything that would steal her laughter.
Karl got up and set his glass down. "I'm not here to pass judgment. I was concerned, both as a friend and as your attorney."
"Don't be. I can handle this."
"Will I see you at the club?"
He shook his head. "Not until after Christmas."
Karl went to the door and opened it, then paused. "I hope you know what you're doing."
"I'm fine. Everything will be fine," D.L. said, but he wasn't certain if he was talking to Karl or himself.
A clock down the hall struck two.
Daniel didn't move, didn't even take a breath.
She stood by the light of her bedroom window, the moon shining down and making her look like the angel she claimed to be.
"You can't sleep either," he said.
She shook her head. "No."
She hadn't looked at him, but he could see that she had known he was there. It didn't surprise him. There was something between them, some elusive chain that bound them together.
Whenever he was near her he could feel it, as if it were a live, animated thing, this acute awareness that she was the other half of him---a side that had been lost or perhaps had never existed until he found her.
He crossed the room and stood behind her. She didn't step away but just slowly looked up at him.
He reached out and swept a hank of hair from her face, then cupped her cheek in his hand. Her skin was so soft and pale, and it made him even more aware of how fragile she was.
He trailed his fingers down her cheek and caressed her jaw, tilting her head up. He had never in his entire life touched a woman this way. Never had he run his fingers across her features, memorizing them with his hands.
But with Lilli it was a sensory need he had to fill.
His mouth touched hers once, the barest of touches ---the brush of an angel's wing. Moments later their kisses were dizzying and deep and felt as necessary as air. He craved her flavor, the same way he craved her scent, the sound of her voice, the brightness of her smile.
His hands floated down to her breasts, skimmed them and cupped them, brushed the tips and felt them react to his touch.
"Daniel." Her whisper was dreamy and wanton, and it made him want her more.
She was dressed in his shirt and nothing else. A slight touch here, a button undone there, and the shirt floated to her feet. She was sleek and pale and perfect, her skin flushed.
His own clothes fell away and they stood there bathed in moonlight and love. His hands on her waist, he picked her up, lifting her high so his mouth could worship her breasts, her belly, and lower.
She gasped, her breath coming in hard shocks, and her hands clutched his shoulders. He tasted heaven. Her fingers threaded through his hair and his name was a prayer on her lips.
He laid her on the bed and kissed her legs, her calves and ankles, then held a foot in each hand and slowly moved his hands up her legs, inch by slow inch, until his thumbs met, then he kissed her again, light feathery touches of his mouth---a kiss so intimate that it was theirs alone.
Tears of passion fell from her eyes. He moved up her body, touching her and kissing her. His hand cupped her womanhood and stroked her over and over. Touching her was everything. Watching what his touch did to her was more than everything.
They spoke in half-finished phrases, desire and passion stealing their words.
"Please, Daniel..."
"Lilli, my Lilli, let me . . ."
And he shifted, poised to touch something finer than Heaven. He slowly sank into her.
She gasped and stiffened. Tears shimmered from her eyes.
"My God ..." He froze. Time stopped. He tried to focus on her face, then groaned, "You couldn't have fallen very far."
She said nothing but gripped his shoulders and slowly opened her eyes.
He saw his future and his heart. "Easy, love, easy." He slid a hand between them and lit her passion again.
A gift for what she had given him. Soon his touches had her body crying tears too.
"Hold on to me, love, tightly," he whispered thickly, then buried his tongue in her mouth.
She gripped his upper arms and lifted her hips, seeking extra caresses that would send her over the edge he craved. He gave her those touches and more, feeling her ecstasy hit fast and pulsing.
Then he thrust home. She groaned and twisted. He stilled, afraid he would give her more pain. "Lilli. Look at me."
She slowly opened her eyes.
"Are you okay?"
She nodded, then reached up and ran her fingers over his mouth, unspeakable emotion in her eyes.
"Tell me if I hurt you." And he moved slowly, very slowly, for long minutes, watching her until her eyes drifted closed and she was meeting each of his thrusts and moving with him, catching an intimate rhythm of their own.
It went on forever, an eternity within this woman that showed him more than words ever could about life and love and his reason for being. He felt release coming hard and fast, from his mind to his heart and on to parts more elemental, hotter and faster and stronger than anything ever before. He slowed for control, wanting to take her with him, needing the first time to be them, together, completely them and nothing else.
He felt the rise in her, the heat run through him. He shifted and moved faster; their motion and drive changed too. Because they were reaching for something impossible, something that a primal sense told them was only a moment away.
The passion came hard and powerfully. Their breathing, like their bodies, became one.
He clung to her, consumed with an emotion that was wild and loose and free. And when every bit of physical passion drained away, what he felt for her was still there.
He tenderly cupped her head in his hand and told her then what he now knew had been there from almost their first moment together: "You are my heart, Lilli. God in heaven, how I love you."
Her face crumpled with emotion too. She shook her head, her breath a cry and a whisper. "Oh no ... please."
But it was too late.
Daniel had found in her a miracle, and he had already given her his heart.
Lilli stood by the bed and watched Daniel sleep. He had fallen asleep before she'd whispered "Oh no."
The house was quiet. Still. There were embers in the fireplace, but the chill she felt had nothing to do with the air. It seemed that her life in Heaven had been everything wrong. Here everything was right. Even her miracles.
There was a kind of cruel and wry irony in the fact that the one thing she could never do in Heaven she had managed to do here. A miracle. Daniel's miracle.
She wondered if she would go back to Heaven now. Could there be such cruelty? With all of her earthly being she hoped not. But if she must go, she had a brief glimpse of how painful eternity would be now that it no longer meant anything to her. Because Daniel loved her.
And what about him? She covered her mouth with one hand and tried to catch a shuddering breath that wouldn't be caught. Her mind became images of his pain should she leave him, this man who had lost every person he'd ever cared for. Dear Lord, she'd carry that pain for him too, would carry it throughout all eternity.
For his sake, she prayed to stay, knowing her prayers were lost before she even said them. She prayed again, and again, litanies of prayer, until finally she sank to her knees. Her hands were folded tightly. She stared at them, not knowing if she clasped her hands so tightly to try to hold on to this earthly life or to help insure that her prayers might by some chance be answered.
But prayers and folded hands and words were not helping. She could feel it. It was as if she were slowly fading away, after only this brief glimpse of Heaven on Earth.
I want to stay. Please . . . please. . .
She buried her face on her folded hands and sobbed silently.
Somewhere in the distance, a church bell rang.
And a second later, Lilli disappeared.
9
Her angel's face
As the great eye of Heaven shined bright,
And made sunshine in a shady place.
---Edmund Spenser
SOMEWHERE IN THE DISTANCE A CHURCH BELL RANG and woke him. He opened his eyes, then reached out and touched the sheet where she had been. It was empty.
He listened for her sounds in the bathroom but heard nothing. He wanted to go to her but thought perhaps she needed some privacy. He locked his hands behind his head and stared up at the canopy, a sense of profound peace surrounding him.
One night wouldn't be enough.
He had never thought of marriage for himself. But he lay there now, knowing that he wanted Lilli with him for a lifetime. He smiled at the contentment he felt, the fullness of knowing and loving Lilli. He closed his eyes and waited for her to come back to bed.
He didn't know how long he'd slept. Five minutes? Five hours? Time had given birth to uncertainty and fear.
He threw back the covers and stood up, then looked in the dressing room. The bathroom door was open. The room was dark.
His stomach turned over.
He rushed inside, stepping around baskets of sleeping puppies, kittens, and rabbits. She wasn't there.
"Lilli?" he called, tearing back into the bedroom. There was no sound but the sleepy meow of a kitten, the whimper of a puppy.
"Lilli!" he shouted again, pulling on his clothes.
He threw open the doors and ran down the hall. He stopped at the top of the stairs. "Lilli!" he yelled. Her name echoed mockingly through the gallery.
But at that moment he knew that she wouldn't answer him. In his heart he knew, because that magical feeling---the one he'd felt since the first moment he had looked at her---was gone.
As quickly as if God had snapped His fingers It was gone.
He stared at his hand, white-knuckled as it gripped the banister, then he sagged down on the top step. He didn't move for the longest time. Everything he was, and every joy he had, drained away until he felt as if he were nothing but emptiness . . . human emptiness.
He rested his head in his hand and took a couple of deep breaths.
"Lilli..."
He said her name that one last time. It was barely a whisper.
"Dammit, Karl! Just forget about the release!" D.L. spun around and glared at his attorney. "I don't care about it! I just don't care about it." He heard his anger and the desperation in his voice. His panic.
Time was going by. A whole day. He couldn't find her. No one could find her. No one had seen her leave. No one had heard a thing.
"I wish she would come back and sue the hell out of me." He spun around in his chair and stared at nothing. "At least then I'd know where she was."
Karl rose from his chair, picked up his case, and snapped it closed. He stood there for an awkward second, then said, "I'm sorry, D.L."
Daniel didn't respond. The door clicked closed, and a minute or so later he heard Karl get into his carriage and leave.
He just sat there staring at the white storm outside. And he relived his memories: Her standing under a tree with so much snow on her she looked like a snowman. Her face looking up at him, her eyes sparkling, the way she crinkled her nose at something, the delight in her eyes when she saw the bakery, and the animals.
He remembered mistletoe. A sweet kiss. Christmas greens. A cornhusk angel atop a tree. And another angel. The only angel he'd ever known.
He stood up and slowly went upstairs, his hand dragging absently along the banister. When he reached her bedroom, his hand paused on the doorknob. Some last remnant of hope made his breath still as he opened the door.
His hope died. She wasn't inside. He stepped into the room, because he had to, then closed and locked the door.
Four puppies, three kittens, and two rabbits greeted him. He crossed the room and stared at the bed. His shirt was lying where she had lain only hours before, when his world had been everything wonderful, when he had been alive in his heart as well as in his mind and body. When love had been there for an instant.
Now there was just his silk shirt, nothing more. He reached out and touched it, foolishly expecting it to disappear too.
But it didn't disappear. He picked it up and walked over to a chair, where he sat down, staring at it.
Her scent was there with him. Lemony and real. But she wasn't.
A puppy jumped into his lap, then another and another. One of them was chewing something, and he took it from its mouth. It was the gold pin. Her wings. He held it tightly in his fist, as if by doing so he could bring her home to him.
Fly home to me, my angel.
The kittens crawled up the chair and the rabbits chewed on his shoelaces. He looked at them, at the pin, then at the white silk shirt clutched in his hands.
A moment later he buried his face in the shirt and cried.
"Lilli's watching him. Constantly she watches him."
Saint Peter stopped pacing and looked at Florida. "Has she stopped crying?"
Florie shook her head.
He sighed, then moved across the clouds with Florie fluttering in his wake, until he stood near where Lillian knelt, clutching the rim of a cloud in tight hands and peering intently over the edge. Her halo had no glow and her wings drooped downward like the wilted petals of a broken rose.
She raised her head and looked up at Saint Peter, the tears she couldn't seem to stop streaming down her face. "He's at the park, calling my name."
Saint Peter looked down. "So I see."
She bit her lip and watched Daniel, his head bent, his hands shoved in his coat pockets and snow falling all around him as he walked despondently from the park. "He's alone and lost. Can't I help him? Can't you or someone help him? He's lost everyone."
"Some people have a harder road to travel, Lilli."
She looked up at him. "I never really knew what Heaven was until I found Daniel."
Saint Peter looked at Florida, who was crying silent tears of her own. He shook his head and waved her away.
Lilli's shoulders shook and she hiccuped as she looked downward. "He's at the church now, praying. Hear him?" She paused. "I can hear him."
Saint Peter sat down on the rim of the cloud. He looked down at the world below, then watched one man in particular---the dark and empty shape of a man.
Saint Peter was quiet, then he looked at Lillian for the longest time. After an eternal minute, he cleared his throat and said in a gruff voice, "So. Lillian. Tell me about your young man."
Daniel had searched everywhere. He went back to the German bakery and stood by the window, watching and hoping, until hope felt like it was nothing more than a fantasy. He sat on the same bench in the park for hours, wanting to see her running in the snow, her hat flying behind her, wishing to once again hear a little of that joyous laughter. All he found was the world going on without him.
Scouring the Washington Market had done no good either. He had rung bells and asked children if they'd seen her. She seemed to be as elusive as Saint Nicholas. He went into churches, every church, and he prayed, prayers that seemed to have no answers.
By midnight on Christmas Eve he had walked all the way to the opera house, not caring about the cold or the snow. There was a performance of Handel's Messiah scheduled. He wandered through the crowds until most had gone inside. He dug into his pockets and dropped coins and bills into every dented and rusty tin can along the way.
The snow began to fall harder and faster. He tossed a gold coin into an old dented enamel bowl sitting by a blind man dressed in rough homely clothes, then he paused and said, "The storm is picking up. Do you have somewhere to go?"
"I live near Grand Street, east of the Bowery." The old man tried to get up but his hands were old and gnarled and he had no gloves to protect him from the elements.
Daniel helped him, then bent down and picked up the bowl and placed it in the man's gnarled hands. He turned and hailed a hansom cab with a sharp whistle.
He opened the door. "I've paid the driver to take you home," he told the old man, helping him inside. He paused and looked into the old man's creased eyes, eyes that showed every hard year he had lived. Without a thought, he pulled off his gloves and placed them in the man's hands, closing his bent and aged fingers around them. "Merry Christmas," he said, then closed the door. "Merry Christmas."
For the longest time he just stood there, watching the cab disappear down the snowy street. He turned, stuck his icy hands in his coat pockets, and walked toward home, his mind in a place of loss and emptiness.
He passed a Salvation Army bell ringer near the corner and reached into his pants pockets. He'd used the last of his money for the cab.
He started to walk on but stopped and pulled out his gold pocket watch. He looked at it for a moment.
Time didn't matter to him anymore. Without Lilli, nothing mattered.
He walked back and tossed the watch into the collection bucket, then he turned and walked away.
He realized with a sudden sense of panic that the woman had stopped ringing the bell. He froze, his shoulders hunched against the cold in his heart more than the cold outside. "Don't stop ringing that bell. Please. Keep ringing, because . . ." His voice dropped to a tight whisper and he stared sightlessly at the snow-covered walk. "Every time a bell rings ..."
"An angel gets its wings," she finished.
"Lilli?" His head shot up. He spun around, then reached out and pushed back her bonnet. A pile of silver-blond hair tumbled loose. "Lilli!"
"Daniel..."
And she was in his arms.
"God, Lilli. It's really you!" He held her so tightly, afraid to let her go lest she disappear again.
"I'm here now. I'm here." She must have read the look on his face because she said, "And I'll not leave you. It's for a lifetime."
"My God, I thought I'd lost you." He held her face and kissed her over and over. "I've searched everywhere. Been everyplace we were, looking and hoping." He held her face in his hands and just took a moment to look at her, to memorize her face, that smile. "I've given away more money than you could fathom. Everything. Anything. Nothing matters but you."
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
He held her so damn tightly and whispered, "My angel."
She touched his lips with her fingers. "Daniel? Your angel?"
"My fallen angel. You've come home to me."
She smiled up at him, then fixed an odd look up at Heaven. She winked, then she was looking at him again, her smile only for him. She leaned back in his arms. "Maybe, just maybe, Daniel... all you had to do was whistle."
It is said by those who ought to understand such things,
That the good people. . . are some of the angels
Who were turned out of Heaven,
And who landed on their feet in this world.
---William Butler Yeats
AND TEN YEARS AFTER THAT CHRISTMAS, DANIEL STILL heard bells whenever he kissed his wife. They still lived in the huge house on the corner, but inside the house had changed.
Gone were the priceless art and porcelains. Gone were the collections. Instead, the walls of the Stewart home held simple drawings from children's unskilled hands and portraits of Lilli with his daughters and his sons.
She had named their eldest daughter Florida, the twins Cherubim and Seraphim---Cheri and Sera, for short---and then his sons Peter and Gabriel, saying she was naming them after old friends, very, very old friends, to whom she owed a debt.
Gone now were the French antiques and stiff-backed chairs. Comfortable and colorful furniture filled every room, some of it nicked and snagged from children and pets. But it was warm and welcoming and real, and it made Daniel's house a home.
There was not a whistle in the entire place. But there were bells everywhere, on tables, near doorways. There were dinner bells and sleigh bells, breakfast bells and door bells, chimes and clock bells, tea bells and Chinese gongs. Jingle bells tingled from toddlers' shoes and puppies' collars. A cow bell called the family together.
At a place of honor on a table in the foyer was a set of glass bells. Whenever someone slid down the banister they rang one of them.
For you see, Daniel and Lilli Stewart had given their children a wonderful gift: the ability to believe in things magical and whimsical and heavenly, to believe in people and, most of all, to believe in things that can't be proven---to know in their hearts that every time a bell rings . ..
An angel gets its wings.
JILL BARNETT enchants readers with her signature blend of love and laughter. Publishers Weekly called her latest book, Dreaming, "hilarious ... Her characters are joyously fresh and her style is a delight to read---a ray of summer sun." The Detroit Free Press named Bewitching one of the Best of 1993, cheering, "Barnett has a wicked way with a oneliner and she makes the romance sizzle." Her other books have all won critical acclaim: Just a Kiss Away was voted Favorite Book of the year by the readers of Romantic times, and was the winner of both its Reader's Choice and Reviewer's Choice awards; The Heart's Haven garnered both a Persie Award and Affaire de Coeur's Silver Pen Award; and Heartland Critiques called Surrender a Dream "delightfully funny." Jill is a native Californian and currently lives near San Francisco with her husband and daughter.

