Daniel and the Angel (2 page)

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."