A Gift of Love

by Judith O'Brien

  The words lanced through Tristan's chest. Gabriel believed this fable with his whole heart—believed in angels and that his mother had answered his prayers. Was there any way to tell a grieving child that neither miracle was possible?

  Tristan crossed to his son, then sank to one knee so that his eyes were level with the boy's.

  "Gabriel, maybe your mama was right. But this woman isn't an angel. She doesn't belong here."

  "You can't send her away!" Dark eyes blazed with their first bout of defiance. "I won't let you."

  "Actually, Gabriel, I have a..." The woman paused, obviously groping for an explanation. "... a coach I need to catch."

  Gabriel's brow crinkled. "A coach to go to heaven? I thought you just flew where you wanted to go." He turned to Tristan. "Please, Papa. I never asked for anything, ever. I didn't even care that you forgot Christmas ... at least not so very much. But I want to keep her!"

  "She's not a puppy, Gabriel!" Tristan snapped, battling against the conflicting emotions inside him. "You can't keep a woman."

  "God sent her," the boy asserted stubbornly.

  "God would have done better to send a governess."

  "Maybe He did! She's my governess!" Gabriel brightened. "You were so angry when Miss Grimwiddle didn't come. Maybe God heard you shouting."

  Tristan ground his teeth, grappling for patience.

  "For God's sake—" he began, then stopped. "No, blast it, God has had more than enough to do with this disaster."

  "Please, stop it. Both of you," Alaina pleaded. "I think it will be best if I just go on my way."

  "No!" Gabriel clung even tighter to Alaina's skirts, tears welling in his eyes, a thin note of hysteria in his voice. "Papa, look at all the Christmas pretties. She put everything in exactly the right place. Just the way Grandmother used to. How could she do that if she wasn't an angel?"

  "Don't be absurd." Tristan tried to dismiss the observation, yet as his gaze skimmed over the mantel festooned with holly, he was stunned to realize that the scarlet ribbons and gilded bits of fruit were all tucked in the exact places where his mother had put them every year.

  A chill coursed beneath Tristan's skin. How the devil had a complete stranger known where to put things, down to the tiniest red bow? Surely someone from his infernal meddling family must be responsible for dropping this disaster of a woman in the middle of his drawing room. He couldn't even contemplate any other possibility.

  He dragged his gaze back to the woman, who was gently but firmly disentangling herself from his son's clinging arms. It was all Tristan could do not to snatch Gabriel away, then fling Alaina MacShane out the door and nail it shut behind her.

  He grabbed hold of Gabriel, tugging him away from the woman as she went to the door, her lovely face filled with dismay and pain as she gazed into the distraught features of the child.

  She started to say something, then tugged open the door. A blast of snow swirled in on a bitter-cold wind, knocking her back a step. A wall of falling snow obscured everything an arm's length from the door, obliterating the stone wall, the iron gates, and the street beyond, until it seemed as if an evil spell had cast the house adrift in a sea of white.

  A blizzard. Hell, yes, the way his luck had been holding lately there would have to be a goddamn blizzard! Why hadn't he noticed the wind beginning to howl?

  Alaina caught her lip between her teeth, eyeing the blinding wall of white with barely concealed trepidation.

  "Perhaps I'll have to take a sled to heaven, Gabriel," she said with a wan smile.

  "No! You can't go out in the storm!" Gabriel wailed. "Papa, you can't let her go into the snow! She could get lost, Papa, or hurt! What if she fell down and nobody could find her until she was all frozen up?"

  "Surely an angel's wings could manage navigating through a little snow, wouldn't you think, Miss MacShane?" Tristan's mouth twisted with grim amusement. "Or are they rather impractical after all? Made for gliding over silver clouds and through star fields. Not for everyday use?"

  "I'm certain I can manage somehow."

  If only she could, Tristan thought in disgust. But no. She'd probably build a tower out of coach seats and hitching posts and land smack outside Gabriel's window or be killed by some cutthroat when she tried to stick a sprig of holly in his buttonhole.

  "No thank you," Tristan snapped, dragging her back into the room by an elbow and thumping the door shut against the storm. "I have enough on my conscience without adding a frozen angel to the list."

  Gabriel gave a skip of delight, his bare feet leaving little prints in the layer of snow dusting the entryway. "You can come upstairs and tuck me into bed, Alaina," he said. "Did my mama tell you about how she did that, every night?"

  As his son slipped one small hand trustingly into Alaina's own, Tristan's fists knotted with anger and frustration. Damn the woman! He'd said she could spend the night, not drive him insane filling Gabriel's head with more nonsense.

  But unless he was willing to forcibly pry Gabriel away from her, he had no choice but to allow her to ascend the stairs and plunge deeper into his home, and into the hidden pain that limned each silent corridor, every shadowy corner, where joy had once sparkled with abandon.

  Tristan glared after her, hating her, yet unable to take his eyes from her lithe form as Gabriel led her up the stairs and back to the nursery where Tristan himself had dreamed as a child. Impossible dreams, caught ever so briefly by paint-smudged fingers before reality stole them away.

  Tristan followed them to Gabriel's bedchamber. He leaned against the wall in the shadows, achingly aware of the woman, his dark eyes never leaving her and his son.

  The nursery was always painfully tidy—the condition wrenching at Tristan's heart because no nurse or governess or upstairs maid had enforced this rigid code. Gabriel had done so himself, as if the child instinctively feared that the slightest mistake or mess or disturbance would have dire consequences. Consequences like being sent away.

  Tristan's chest ached as Gabriel tunneled under his covers, his "angel" sitting down on the edge of his bed as if she had tucked him in a hundred times before and listened to him lisp his child prayers. As if she belonged there far more than the child's own father did.

  Gabriel clung to her hand, fighting against sleep, and Tristan could almost taste his son's fear. "Promise you won't go away without saying good-bye . . . like . . . Mama did," the boy pleaded, gazing up into eyes as golden as heaven's gates. "I won't sleep unless you promise . . ."

  A soft sound tore from the woman's throat, and she scooped Gabriel into her arms, comforter and all, crooning some half-forgotten lullaby. But she didn't make promises she couldn't keep. The realization flayed Tristan's nerves, setting them even more on edge.

  No matter how he tried to resist it, her voice entranced him as she sang the soft, lilting melody. Haunting, ethereal, it curled around the battered places in Tristan's soul like crystal-cold water after an eternity of thirst.

  Every fiber of his being seemed to be captured by this woman who had come from nowhere. His gaze traced the fragile curves of her face—high cheekbones, thick lashes, a delicate, upturned nose sprinkled with a dusting of freckles. She had that almost otherworldly beauty that could only be born of Irish mists and magic, that impossible coloring God's hand had stroked into rose blooms and sweet cream, polished amber and starless nights.

  Tristan remembered in excruciating detail what her breasts had felt like, pressing sweetly against his chest, how that riot of auburn hair had smelled, like cinnamon and honey. How close her lips had been to his own when she'd lain beneath him on the drawing room floor, the soft curve of her mouth temptation incarnate.

  Temptation? Or a wild enchantment that induced madness? For only a madman would be leaning against a wall, watching a stranger with his son, furious with the woman, wanting to hurl her out of his house, out of his life, while at the same time some demon buried deep within him, all but forgotten, yearned to draw Gabriel's angel into his arms. He wanted to ho
ld her as a man holds a woman, wanted to taste her, to touch her, to draw her to his own bed, where she would soothe him in a way different from the way she'd soothed his son.

  Tristan stifled a groan, furious at his own weakness. It was nothing but a stab of lust. God knew, there had been no one since Charlotte, and in the last years of their marriage, she and Tristan had found it as difficult to touch each other's bodies as it was to touch each other's hearts.

  Relief surged through Tristan as he saw that Gabriel had finally surrendered to sleep. He crossed to his son's bed and with one strong hand encircled the woman's wrist. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and golden and agonizingly familiar, though he was certain he'd never seen her before.

  Drawing her to her feet, he tugged her out of the nursery. In the corridor, Tristan turned her to face him, her back to the wall, her auburn hair forbidden fire against the cream-colored plasterwork. A need fiercer than any he'd ever known swept through him, a need to kiss her until her knees melted, his heart healed. The image jolted through him, appalling in its vividness. Sickened by himself, he released her, aware that if he scrubbed his hands until they bled, he'd never be free of the feel of Alaina MacShane, the soft warmth of her wrist pulsing beneath his palm, the bone-melting heat of the kiss they would never share.

  "You owe me an explanation, angel," he grated, latching on to anger to suppress desire, confusion, longing. "What the devil is this all about?"

  Three

  "WHEN GABRIEL OPENED THE DRAWING ROOM WINDOW, I heard him wishing on the stars," Alaina said, her voice musical as meadow breezes. "He sounded so sad and so lonely."

  Tristan flinched, but his eyes grew even harder. "My son is none of your concern."

  "I'm afraid you're mistaken. You heard Gabriel. He ... wished me here."

  If she'd slapped him, she couldn't have fed his fury more. "Blast it, leave off this lunacy. You're no more an angel than you are the bloody queen! And wishes are nonsense. The boy knows that better than anyone. He spent last Christmas wishing for his mother to get well, and that was a waste of time. Three months later she was dead. Now, who the devil sent you here? Which of my meddling sisters—"

  "Beth didn't send me, and Allison wouldn't dare—"

  "They didn't send you, but you know their names?" Tristan's lip curled in a bitter sneer. "How much did they offer you to kick up this nonsense? I made it clear to them that Christmas was over for eternity as far as I'm concerned."

  "I'm certain they wouldn't defy you. They adore you—"

  "Damnation, you speak as if you're a family friend."

  Color stung the woman's cheeks. "I'm not. I just. . . just wanted to take away the sadness in Gabriel's eyes. It's as simple as that."

  "Simple? None of this is simple. You break into my house, dragging Christmas rubbish in your wake. You work my son into a frenzy, until he believes you're some sort of angel." He paced away from her, so he wouldn't be distracted by the spicy tang that clung to her hair.

  "God knows, you'd think they'd dress you better if you came from heaven. Blast, that's right. Your clothes . . .What the devil would my sisters be doing associating with someone like you? I can't imagine you're one of their acquaintances. Even their servants wear better clothes."

  The woman's chin bumped up a notch. "If I'd known breaking into someone's house was a formal occasion, I would have dressed in my Sunday best."

  In a heartbeat his hands flashed out, encircling her arms, drawing her mere inches away from the hard plane of his body. Her face swam before him—all creamy curves and peach glow, her breath wisping warm against his lips, taunting him to taste her. "Don't toy with me, girl. You listen to my son's dreams, hang the kissing bough where it's dangled every Christmas since before I was born, and you know my sisters by name. Damn it, who are you?"

  He could see the woman grope desperately for an answer. In the end, she clutched on to Gabriel's staunch belief. "If you don't believe in angels, what can I possibly tell you?"

  Tristan shoved her away as if she'd burned him.

  "All right," he snarled. "Keep your secrets. First thing in the morning, I want you out of this house. Before Gabriel wakes up."

  "I understand."

  "Do you? Do you understand half the damage you've done here tonight?"

  "By trying to give a child a Christmas? If that's a crime, I'll gladly be condemned. There are countless people who would be thrilled if they had your blessings. A warm house, a loving family, years of Christmas memories. And a fine, healthy son who adores you. If I were you, I wouldn't waste time feeling sorry for myself!"

  The words lashed Tristan's raw emotions. "Don't you dare criticize me over things you know nothing about. Apparently it was my son's wish that brought you here. You may sleep in the chamber across the hall. In the morning, I will see to it personally that you are delivered wherever the hell you are going. Is that understood?"

  "Perfectly," she said, a soft mourning clinging to her lips. She looked at him as if he'd failed her somehow, as if she were grieving. . . because he was prepared to forfeit his son? He didn't even know the blasted woman!

  "Good night, Miss MacShane," he snapped. "One final word: Stay away from my son. I won't have you building up hopes that will only end in disillusionment. He's had enough pain to last him two lifetimes. I will be leaving for my place of business tomorrow at nine o'clock. On the way to the office I will deposit you in a coach that will take you wherever you are going."

  "You can't mean that!"

  "I may be a cad, madam, but I would hardly dump you in the streets."

  "I don't care if you dump me into the Thames! You can't possibly mean that you intend to leave Gabriel alone tomorrow! It's Christmas Day!"

  "I am familiar with the calendar, Miss MacShane. The date has no meaning for me—unless I care to remember it as the day the doctors told me my wife was going to die."

  Alaina's lovely face went ashen, dismay flooding into rare amber eyes. She reached out, taking his large hand in her small, warm one. It seemed an eternity since anyone had touched him.

  "I'm sorry, Tristan." She called him by name, that lilting Irish voice wrapping about the syllables with unbearable sweetness, as if she'd used it a thousand times. "But your wife is dead. Gabriel is alive. This is the child's first Christmas without his mother. You should make this holiday as bright as possible for him, so he won't spend the time remembering—"

  "You think a kissing bough and some holly can make Gabriel forget the loss of his mother?" Tristan demanded, pulling away from her tender grasp.

  "No. But I—"

  "Miss MacShane, my son will remain in my household another two weeks only. If I chose to carpet this house in holly, it wouldn't change anything. His mother is dead. And he will be far better off settled elsewhere."

  Dismay flooded her face. "Tristan, you're sending your own son away? You're his father!"

  Guilt lanced deep. "I'm closing up the house and selling it. I'll take rooms above my office, and Gabriel will live with his aunt. It will be better not to foster any tender memories this Christmas that would make the parting more difficult."

  She was gaping at him as if he'd plunged a knife in her breast. He could feel her bleeding for the child, her eyes huge and heavy with the sorrow Tristan had brought to her. Why the devil should a complete stranger be so devastated by his decision? Why did her reaction lance to the farthest reaches of Tristan's soul, making him feel barren and brutal and lost?

  "I was wrong about you." Her voice cracked on a whisper. "You don't deserve a son like Gabriel."

  Anguish coursed through Tristan, because he knew that she was right. He sucked in a burning breath, his gaze searing into hers.

  "When you talk to God tonight, Miss MacShane, perhaps you can convince him to make other arrangements for the child." Tristan spun on his heel and stalked away to his cold, empty bed, a lifetime of regret, and to dreams he knew would be haunted by an auburn-haired angel.

  Alaina stared after him, feeling battere
d, bewildered. What had happened to him in the years she'd been away? What horrible events had transformed the laughing, sensitive, kind Tristan she had known into this cold embittered man? A man who treated his son like a stranger—who would leave the child alone on Christmas, then cast him onto an aunt's doorstep because it was no longer convenient to keep him?

  She shivered, as disillusioned as if she had scooped up a handful of jewels and discovered that they were bits of colored glass, cutting her, deep.

  There isn't any magic . . . Gabriel's voice echoed in her mind.

  When you talk to God. . . make other arrangements . . . Tristan's cold words hung like a challenge in the room. She might have been able to hate him, if she'd not seen his eyes—dark and wounded and hopeless.

  Her chin jutted up in sudden defiance. Perhaps she would make other arrangements after all.

  Four

  TRISTAN HAD AWAKENED ON MANY CHRISTMAS MORNINGS, yet never one so bleak as this. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, his hands fumbling over the knot of his cravat. Dark circles smudged the skin beneath his eyes; there was an unaccustomed pallor to his face. Lines of strain carved deep about his mouth. He looked as if he'd spent the night battling for his soul. In a way, he supposed he had—with a flame-haired angel who had drifted into his world with the subtle magic of a child's Christmas wish.

  He had spent hours wrestling with the mad notion that the woman might be the answer to his problems—the temporary governess he needed so desperately—and then had raged at himself for even considering such insanity. The woman was a total stranger, quite possibly touched in the head. And Gabriel would have a difficult enough time adjusting to the changes about to take place in his life without Alaina MacShane whispering to him about star wishes and angels and Christmas magic.

  She was nothing but trouble. Tristan was certain of it. Then why had he spent his own dreams reaching for her in the night—his hands closing on coverlets, his fevered mind conjuring images of petal-soft skin and fiery hair and golden eyes with all the joy and pain and compassion of the heavens above?