by Jill Barnett
And in my soul am free.
Angels alone that soar above.
Enjoy such liberty.
—Richard Lovelace
Chapter Eight
FOR THE SECOND TIME IN TWO DAYS, D. L. Stewart 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 interesting. 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 since you planned this event 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 looked 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 leaned back and blinked up at him for a second.
"I'll help you. Keep your ankles together and your back straight.” He pushed her slightly away. “Look forward, not up at me."
"You can skate," she said flatly. "Of course you can."
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 her spine, her shoulders back. "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 great 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 joyous sound.
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.
Now it was her turn to laugh.
He turned and looked down 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, her skates kicking up 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, 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 actually existed.
And she almost had to wonder if that kiss had existed. It was the closest thing to Heaven she'd found on Earth. She stretched and threw back the bedcovers, swinging her bare legs over the side of the bed, 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 looked past Peg and out into the hall where trunks and bandboxes, hatboxes, and cases sat in what appeared to be in the number of legions.
Peg stepped back. "Your thin
gs. 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 filled with neatly folded silk chemises 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 delivery." 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 said with honest anger. "But I'd like to get my hands on him." And before she could say a word, he shut the door.
She stared at the closed door, 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 one thing: she would be perfectly happy if he wanted to put his hands on her any time.
* * *
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 looked 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.
Karl.
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."
Angels descending, bringing from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
—Fanny J. Crosby
Chapter Nine
IT HAD ALREADY BEEN ONE OF THE of the longest days he could remember. After he'd gotten rid of Karl with some weak excuse they'd both seen through, D.L. had wanted to buy Lilli something to make her forget the sadness of her past.
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? D.L. wondered if he could ever look at pearls again and not picture in his mind the gut-wrenching 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 looking 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 tha
t 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 tonight 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 and 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."
