With a sigh, Sara closed the book she had been reading. Another happily-ever-after ending, she thought despondently. If only real life, her life, would end like that. If only there were a Prince Charming waiting in her future, eager to carry her off on his prancing white charger; a tall dark handsome man who could look past the wheelchair and see the woman.
She stared at the closed veranda doors, remembering the mysterious man who had come to her in the dark of the night. A faint smile curved her lips. All day, she had thought of him, her imagination creating one fantasy after another.
He was a prince in disguise looking for his own Cinderella.
He was an eccentric nobleman searching for the perfect mate, and she was it.
He was a depraved monster from a childhood dream, and only she could save him...
A small sound of disgust erupted from her throat. No man, whether prince or monster, would ever want a woman bound to a chair. What prince would want a princess who couldn't walk? What monster could be reformed by half a woman?
Tears stung her eyes and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. Lately, all she wanted to do was cry, to wallow in self-pity. She was tired of it, ashamed of it, but she couldn't seem to stop. She was almost seventeen years old. She wanted to run through a sunlit meadow, walk along tree-lined paths, swim in the pretty blue lake behind the orphanage. And more than anything, she wanted to dance.
She glanced at the beautiful little ballerina music box beside her bed. Her one dream, ever since she'd been a little girl, had been to be a dancer. It was a hope she had held close to her heart through all the years of her childhood, a hope that had grown fainter each time the doctor had changed the braces on her legs, until, in the end, they had removed the braces altogether. Any hope she had ever had for a normal future had died that day, killed by the cold, implacable realization that she would never walk. She would never be a ballerina. She would spend her whole life in a wheelchair.
She wouldn't cry! She wouldn't!
Sara choked back a sob as the door swung open and Sister Mary Josepha came in to see to her nighttime needs before tucking her into bed.
"Sleep well, child," Sister Mary Josepha said.
After making sure the bell pull was in place in case Sara Jayne needed something during the night, the nun left the room.
Sara lay in her bed, wide awake, as silence fell over the household. She was drawing the covers up to her chin when she saw a shadow move across the gauzy curtains that covered the veranda doors.
"Gabriel?" She peered into the darkness. "Gabriel?" She called his name again, the cry echoing in the lonely corridors of her heart. "If you're there, please come in."
She held her breath, waiting, hoping, and then the doors swung open, revealing a dark figure silhouetted by the moonlight.
"Gabriel."
"Sara." He inclined his head in her direction as he stepped into the room and closed the doors behind him. "You're up late."
"I'm not tired."
"You've been crying," he remarked, his voice tinged with accusation and regret.
She shook her head. "No, I haven't."
She pulled herself into a sitting position, then lit the lamp beside the bed. "Have you been watching me again?"
Gabriel nodded. He had stood in the shadows, watching her read, watching the play of emotions on her face. It had been so easy to divine her thoughts as the story unfolded, to know that she had imagined herself as the heroine, that she yearned for the perfect fairy-tale kind of love and fulfillment that existed only in books.
"I've seen you before, haven't I?" she mused. "Before last night, I mean?" She studied his face, the deep gray eyes, the sharp planes and angles, the strong square jaw. "I remember you."
Gabriel shook his head. She couldn't remember him. It was impossible.
"You're the one who brought me to the orphanage."
"How can you possibly remember that? You were only a child."
"So it was you!" She smiled triumphantly. "How could I ever forget the face of my guardian angel?"
A muscle worked in Gabriel's jaw as guilt and self-loathing rose up within him. He was an angel, all right, he thought bitterly, the angel of death.
"And you've been watching over me ever since? Why?"
Why, indeed? he thought. He couldn't tell her she represented everything he had lost, that her innocence drew him like a light in the darkness, that he had watched her grow from a beautiful child into a beautiful woman, and that his lust had grown with her. No, never that! He shoved his hands into his pockets and curled them into tight fists. She must never know that.
"Why?" He forced a smile. "Curiosity, of course."
"I see," Sara said dryly. "Since you saved my life, you wanted to see how I turned out?"
"You could put it that way."
"And how have I turned out?"
"Beautifully," he murmured.
"Beautiful but useless."
"Sara!" He was at her side in a heartbeat. "Never say that. Never feel that."
"Why not? It's true. I'm no good to anyone."
"You are. You are good for me."
"Really?" she asked skeptically. "How?"
How, he thought. How could he explain what she meant to him?
"You can't think of anything, can you?"
"I have no family," Gabriel said quietly. "No close friends. After I found you, you became my family. Sometimes I pretended that you were my daughter..."
"And you left me gifts, didn't you?" Sara glanced at the ballerina on her bedside table. "You brought me presents on my birthday, and at Christmas."
Gabriel nodded.
"I always wondered why there were no cards with the gifts." She smiled up at him. "I've loved all your presents, especially the music box."
"I'm glad they pleased you, cara," he said, rising smoothly to his feet. "And now I must go."
"Oh." She looked away, but not before he saw the disappointment in her eyes.
"Do you wish for me to stay?"
"Yes, please."
With a sigh, he drew a chair up beside her bed and sat down. "Shall I read to you?" he asked, glancing at the book she'd been reading.
"No, I finished it. But you could tell me a story."
"I'm not much of a story teller," he remarked and then, seeing the disappointment in her eyes, he acquiesced with a slight nod. "Many years ago, in a distant country, there was a young man. He came from a very large family. A very poor family. He was sixteen when a mysterious illness spread through their village. He watched his whole family die, one by one, and when they were all gone, he laid them side by side in their cottage and then set it on fire.
"For many years, he traveled the land, and then, when he was nine and twenty, he met a woman, and for the first time in his life, he fell in love, so much in love that he never questioned who she was, or why she would see him only at night.
"And then one day he contracted a fever, and he knew he was going to die the same horrible death that had claimed his family. Though he was loath to admit it, even to himself, he was terribly afraid to die.
"The woman he loved came to him when he was on the very brink of death. Weeping from pain and fear, he begged her to save him.
" 'I can do it,' she said. 'I can do as you wish, but the price will be dear.'
" 'Anything,' he said.
" 'And if the price is your soul, will you still pay it?'
"Foolish man that he was, he agreed. And the woman, whom he had thought was an angel, carried him away in a dance of darkness. And when he awoke again, he realized he'd struck a bargain, not with an angel, but with a devil. And though he would now live forever, he would never live at all."
"I don't understand," Sara said, frowning. "Who was the man? Who was the woman? How could he live forever, but not live at all?"
"It's only an old fairy tale, Sara," Gabriel replied. He glanced out the window, then stood up. "This time I really must go," he said. "Rest well, cara mia."
"Thank you for the story."
"You are most welcome," he replied softly, and bending, he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. "Good night."
"Will you come back tomorrow night?"
"If you wish."
"I do."
"Until tomorrow, then."
"Until tomorrow," she called as he moved through the doorway. "Sweet dreams."
A muscle twitched in Gabriel's jaw as he vaulted over the railing that enclosed the veranda. Sweet dreams, indeed, he mused bitterly.
And landing lightly on the damp ground, he disappeared into the darkness, as silent as the rising sun.
