A Gift of Love

by A Gift of Love (lit)

  "Papa! Papa she heard me! Mama heard me! Just like she did when she sent Alaina!" The little boy positively glowed. "Put yours in, Papa!"

  Tristan knelt down and fed his own note to the flames, his shoulders rigid, his eyes dark and intent and sad.

  The note burned to ash, and he watched until the last bit of smoke spiraled up on its path to the sky.

  Gabriel sidled over to him, leaning against Tristan's side. "Papa, what did you ask Mama for?"

  "Forgiveness." Alaina barely caught Tristan's raw whisper.

  "Papa, what for?"

  "Because I didn't—wasn't a very good husband to her, Gabriel. Nor a good father to you."

  "I think you're a wonderful papa. It's just that you're busy and worried a lot."

  "You didn't have a Christmas, Gabriel," Tristan reminded him with ruthless self-loathing.

  "I got something even better. You smiled, Papa, three whole times. And besides, there'll be lots of other Christmases when you don't feel so sad."

  A choked sound rose from Tristan's throat. Lots of other Christmases . . . No, this would be the last, Tristan thought with a sick clenching in his chest. The last he'd ever share in this house, alone with his little boy.

  Next year everything would change. Gabriel would be with Beth and her husband, stolid, kind Henry Muldowny. Henry's hand would be the one Gabriel would hold; Henry's arms would offer comfort to the boy when Gabriel fell. Henry would teach Gabriel to ride and to play cricket, and what it meant to be a man.

  The future stretched out, a bleak wasteland, and Tristan realized just how much he would be giving up when he sent Gabriel away.

  The pain cut so deep, Tristan feared he'd shatter. But Gabriel would be better off without him. He had no other choice than to let him go. Tristan fought back the impulse to hold the child in his arms forever, knowing that if he did so, he'd lose the courage to send Gabriel away.

  "It's time for you to go to bed, son," he said. Gabriel shot him a smile full of trust, then gave Tristan a quick, rare hug. The child had lavished hugs on Burrows and Cook, his mother and Alaina, yet so rarely on his own father.

  Tristan clutched the precious weight of his son in his arms and carried the child to bed. He tucked Gabriel under the coverlets; the rag-stuffed horse was nestled on the pillow beside him. When Tristan raised his eyes, his gaze caught Alaina's as she paused in the doorway. Her eyes clung to his for a heartbeat, seeming to peer straight into his soul. Then she turned in a rustle of dove-gray skirts and disappeared.

  His heart swelled and ached, burning in his chest, as if it were coming to life again for the first time in more years than he could count.

  It was Alaina's doing. Alaina's. Who was she—this woman who had tunneled past his defenses, who had reached past his pain and into the secret grief of his son? Gabriel had claimed her as his angel. But as Tristan knelt there, beside the child's bed, he wondered. Had Alaina MacShane come to answer Gabriel's prayers? Or Tristan's own?

  Seven

  THE NIGHT WAS VAST AND DARK AND LONELY. Alaina pressed her fingertips to the drawing room window and stared out into the blackness, her nightgown a gossamer whisper against her skin. The old house sighed around her, asleep like the graceful old dowager it was.

  It had been hours since she had left Tristan alone with his son, hours during which she'd read the green leather journal by flickering candlelight. An eternity in which she'd paced the confines of her room, tormented by the words Charlotte Ramsey had written so long ago.

  Words that had haunted her until even her lovely bedchamber became too small to hold the restlessness of her thoughts, the discoveries she'd made that would give her no rest.

  All the years she'd spent peering into Tristan's window, she had drunk in the warmth of the fire, the brilliance of candleshine and laughter, the cozy familiarity of well-worn books and beloved trinkets. And she'd believed that anyone inside that magical chamber never had to face the darkness. But she had been wrong.

  Tonight she had seen just how deeply loneliness could carve itself into a man's face. How barren his eyes could be. How cold and alone he could be even when stout bricks and rivers of light and decades of security surrounded him.

  In the pages of Charlotte's journal Alaina had traced the slow destruction of his dreams and discovered how bitter the betrayal must have been when those dreams had been crushed by his own wife.

  What had Tristan suffered in the years since Gabriel's birth? A loss so devastating she could still feel it pulsing through him. And yet, tonight in the drawing room, she had sensed the faintest stirring of hope as well—like flecks of gold sprinkled in a crystal-blue stream. He had reached out to Gabriel, blessed him with the comfort only Tristan could give, offered his son the gift of his own vulnerability.

  A letter to heaven—Gabriel's had been filled with a child's love; Tristan's with pleas for forgiveness that curled up into smoke, rising to where the words could bring tears to the eyes of the angels. All angels. Even Tristan's wife?

  No. Charlotte Ramsey had been no angel. Tristan had done all in his power to make her smile, protect her, love her. But she hadn't deserved that gift. She'd used it against him ruthlessly, destroying him because she was too afraid to face the world, even at his side.

  Tonight, as the smoke curled up the chimney, Tristan had asked Charlotte Ramsey for forgiveness—a request that had sent anger pulsing through Alaina's veins. For what crime should he be forgiven? Not thanking the woman when she so wantonly demolished the last vestiges of his dream? For daring to show pain and feel resentment at surrendering the creative fire that God himself had molded into Tristan's fingertips with the loving hand of a master sculptor?

  If Tristan had belonged to Alaina, she would have guarded his artistic gift as she would his sensitive heart— cherished it, a tangible reflection of the beauty in his soul and the passion of his body. The mystic union their love would have woven between them would have found expression in their bed late at night as his fire invaded her, filling her with rainbows and light. And pray God, a new creation would eventually have come into the world, blinking and awed and frightened until Tristan gathered it into a father's loving arms.

  But that dream had always been impossible. She'd known it from the first moment she'd scrubbed away the frost on Tristan's window and peered through that melting ice circle to watch him. She'd been more painfully certain with every brush of his thigh against hers as they'd danced to the music box's enchanted melody. She'd felt the utter hopelessness of it all—in the soul-searing abrasion of his callused palm engulfing her hand and in the bone-melting sweetness of his kiss.

  It was said Eve had cast paradise away for a taste of the forbidden. Alaina understood that fall from grace completely now. For she would have let the clouds and stars, the heavens themselves, run through her fingers for one taste of Tristan's love.

  If only Alaina dared to take up Tristan's hand, to kiss magic back into its supple strength, to slip the smooth wooden handle of a paintbrush between his fingers in benediction. If only she could reach out her arms to Tristan as women had offered themselves up to the men their hearts had chosen since the beginning of time. But she and Tristan were from worlds apart—as distant as Gabriel had been from the star he'd wished upon.

  She crossed to the music box, raising its lid so that music spilled, silvery, shimmering, into the night. Inexpressible longing welled up until her whole chest felt raw with it— each suppressed tear crystallizing, cutting deeper and deeper into her soul.

  She'd believed she'd known everything about Tristan Ramsey—the flicker of mischief in boyish eyes, the fierce inner strength that had radiated from every long, lean muscle, the fiery resolve that had awed and bewitched her from the first moment she'd looked upon his face.

  I'm going to be the greatest artist who ever lived—a boy's boast? No. There had been a willingness to sacrifice, to labor, to give all for his art, a man's determination to fulfill destiny. Until Tristan's father had lost his way, wandering blindly
into oblivion, on a nightmarish journey he would have had to take alone, if Tristan hadn't taken his hand.

  She'd never realized that walls that could shelter could also entrap, that love that could warm could also suffocate. Yet even as a child, gazing up at her own father, she'd known that dreams shriveled into bitter things when they could never be fulfilled. She could only be grateful her mother had never seen the agony she had—watching the man she loved treading his stygian path to a living death.

  "Please, God," she said aloud, "help Tristan. He needs You to help him."

  "Gabriel would say that was why God sent you."

  "Tristan!" She shut the music box with a guilty click, then wheeled to find him standing in the doorway.

  Black breeches clung to his lean hips. His shirt spread across his chest in smooth ripples, the front open, exposing a wedge of burnt-honey skin dusted with dark hair. His face was carved in haggard lines of strain, yet so desperately beloved, it stripped her emotions raw.

  If he painted her at this moment, Alaina knew what he'd capture on the canvas. Every brushstroke would reveal a tender, wistful yearning for the impossible, the pulsing anguish of a passion that could never be fulfilled.

  She wanted to race across the space that separated them, to take him in her arms, press him close to her heart. But she knew that even if she held him forever, she could never bridge the chasm between them.

  Heat stung her cheeks, and she was excruciatingly aware of the thin cloth of her nightgown drawn taut over her breasts. "I didn't mean to wake you."

  "You didn't wake me." His gaze trailed over her, from the crown of her head to where her toes peeked from beneath the gown's delicate hem. He didn't seem surprised or shocked that she was wandering about his house in nothing but a whisper of cotton. Rather, there was an odd sense of acceptance in him, as if he'd not be surprised to discover wings upon her back or a halo concealed in the ripples of her hair. If only he knew the truth . . .

  Tristan cleared his throat, crossing to the hearth. On the mantel a half-dozen miniatures were clustered—portraits of the family Alaina had watched for so many years.

  Beth Ramsey, smiling in her bridal finery, sturdy Henry Muldowny at her side.

  Tristan's mother looking distinctly uncomfortable garbed in the height of style, a single rose seeming out of place in a hand fashioned for drying tears and brushing dirt from scraped knees.

  Tristan, astride a cream-colored pony, ready to go off adventuring—to battle with the Green Knight, to vanquish the Titans, or, perhaps, to journey to the Continent to enchant generations, not with a sword, but with brush and canvas and the colors of his own imagination.

  "Strange," he said softly, fingering the frame of gilded roses about his mother's portrait, "you seem to know everything about me, my family—where the Christmas greens were hung, the games we played. Even my pony Galahad, the most wonderful present I ever got. But never once have I heard you speak about your own family or Christmases in your past."

  "I never celebrated Christmas. The closest I came was watching other people."

  Tristan stared at her, touched by the bittersweet sting of her words—watching Christmas, barred from the magic circle of laughter and warmth and light.

  "You watched us?" he asked, suddenly realizing how she had known so many things about his family, his life.

  "I watched through the window. Your family was always so happy and beautiful and loving. The oddest thing of all was that I was never cold while I stood there. It was as if the warmth of that love was so strong it slipped through the pane to curl about me."

  "It's so strange, Alaina. Sometimes I feel as if—as if I've known you forever. As if some rare magic—Christmas magic—brought you here."

  Firelight gleamed on her face, her hair, the delicate rose blush of her skin tantalizing him through the thin cotton nightgown. Her small breasts pressed against the fabric in delicate perfection, and he wanted to touch them, like a penitent touching something ineffably holy.

  But it was the golden glow of her eyes that drew a hard knot of need into Tristan's throat. Never had he seen such light in a mortal's eyes. They shone, almost as if she loved him.

  Loved him.

  The thought echoed a desperate longing in the deepest reaches of his heart. Dear God, this was insane. He was falling in love with her, and he wasn't even certain she was real.

  He wanted to tear down the wall of mystery that separated them, wanted to spill everything he was into her hands. But what kind of a man would soil an angel's hands with the soul of a sinner?

  No. He couldn't touch her, couldn't taint her. But maybe, just maybe he could reach out to her with words, tell her things he'd not confess to anyone else, share things he'd only begun to admit to himself. He sucked in a steadying breath, reaching out the only way he knew how.

  "Ever since Gabriel fell asleep, I've been in the attic," he said at last.

  Alaina's heart wrenched at the image of Tristan amid his half-finished paintings. Had he gone there trying to find his dreams again? Or had he gone there to mourn their loss?

  "Did you find what you were looking for?" she asked.

  "I don't know. I just... sat up there, thinking—about so many things I hadn't considered for a very long time. Charlotte. My father. Gabriel—all the time I missed spending with him when he was small."

  "You were wonderful with Gabriel tonight. Did you see his eyes shine when you helped him send a message to his mama?"

  "Did it reach her, Alaina?" He was regarding her with dark, intense eyes.

  "Wh-what?"

  "The letter. Did it reach heaven?" His gaze plumbed to the core of her, earnest, a little afraid. The sight of that shadow of fear devastated her. "Am I forgiven?"

  Dear God, did he really believe she had the answers he needed to hear? What did he want to be forgiven for? For sacrificing too much? Loving too deeply? Being too strong?

  "Tristan, I—" She lifted her chin and peered straight into his eyes. "Yes. You are forgiven."

  Blasphemy—the wrath of heaven should pour down on her for daring to say such a thing. Why, then, did she feel such absolute certainty?

  He swallowed hard, and Alaina realized he'd been holding his breath, waiting for her answer, as if she had the power to lift him past heaven's gates or plunge him into hell. "Are you my guardian angel, Alaina MacShane?" He lifted his fingers to her hair, twining an auburn strand through them as if he were weaving enchanted chains to bind her to him. "I've been waiting for you a very long time. I'd almost given up."

  "I'm here now." She cupped her palm against his jaw, feeling the stubborn strength in it, his warm breath melting along the fragile underside of her wrist.

  "Can you show me the way, angel? Why is it that I feel if I just take your hand—" His voice broke on a laugh, and he let her glossy curl slip through his fingers. "I'm beginning to sound like Gabriel—concocting fairy stories about wishes and enchantment and some wild, magic place that drifts angels down to heal a man's empty heart."

  "If I could heal you, Tristan, I would."

  "There is so much yearning in your voice and in those wide golden eyes of yours when you say you would heal me—if you could. Have I fallen so far from grace, then? Is it impossible?"

  "I can't heal you. No one can. You have to decide yourself to let the wounds heal."

  "Heal myself?"

  "Do you want the pain, Tristan—more than you want to love your son? To watch him grow up? Is your guilt over the past more important than all the years that lie ahead? It's one thing to make mistakes, have regrets. It's another thing to cast away a child's love because of some crazed sense of self-loathing. I've watched you raking open all the guilt and the pain and the regrets inside you. All of heaven could forgive you. Charlotte, your father—even Gabriel. But it will mean nothing until you decide to forgive yourself. What do you want, Tristan—from now until forever?"

  His gaze met hers, his voice ragged. "I want—I want this Christmas back again. I want the ki
ssing bough and music. I want to bring Gabriel a pony so beautiful he'll never forget the first moment he saw it, to lift him up and set him astride it and see his eyes shining up at me."

  Hope, joy, burst like bright-winged butterflies in Alaina's breast. She caught his hand, held it fiercely in her own. "Then take Christmas back, Tristan."

  His eyes betrayed just how agonizing the past days had been for him, barren of Christmas candles and his family's laughter and Gabriel's boyish delight. "It's too late," he said. "Christmas is over."

  "Only if we allow it to be." She pulled away and ran to where the mantel clock stood, ticking away inexorably. Standing on tiptoe, she tugged on the tiny key in the glass door that protected the clock's face. It opened, and she reached in, moving the black clock hands backward, one hour, two hours, three, until it stood at a minute before midnight. Then she caught the pendulum, stopping time itself. "I'm magic, Tristan. Remember? There is still time to make wishes come true."

  Eight

  SUNLIGHT REACHED THROUGH CRACKS IN THE NURSERY'S CURTAINS, like the fingers of eager children trying to snatch ginger nuts from a favorite uncle's pocket, and the promise of delight curled, warm and sweet, in Tristan's chest.

  He should have been exhausted from lack of sleep, harried from the crazed pace he'd set since he and Alaina had left the drawing room, bent on working a miracle for Gabriel. Instead, he felt as if he had been reborn sometime during the night.

  He crossed to the window and tugged open the drapes, letting sunlight splash over his sleeping son. Gabriel wriggled and croaked a protest, burrowing deeper into his coverlets, but Tristan strode to the side of that small bed and stole them away.

  "Wake up lay-a-bed!"

  "Papa?" The boy rubbed his eyes.

  "Happy Christmas, Gabriel."

  "Christmas?" The dimpled fists fell away, and eyes like melted chocolate popped open. "Christmas is over."

  "Is that so? We'll just have to see about that." Tristan strode to where a clock sat on the nursery mantel. His fingers closed on the tiny gold key, and he tugged, opening the glass door that protected the timepiece. "Gabriel, come here at once."