Prologue
“I hate Christmas!” With a loud screech, the Christmas tree flew out of the window and landed on the asphalt below.
“Hey! You up there! Get down here this instant! Your tree just took out all my decorations!” A deafening female shriek erupted from below, belonging to the owner of the coffee shop on the ground floor. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA THAT YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME?!”
She brushed the pine needles from her hair and glared up at the very window from which the tree had been ejected just moments before.
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU OR YOUR DECORATIONS!” A booming male voice cut off any further argument before it could even begin, and with a loud bang against the frame, the window slammed shut.
Now, dear reader, do not think that our hero is inherently rude or tactless, or that he makes a habit of throwing Christmas trees out of windows. It just so happened that he had had a truly dreadful year; everything—absolutely everything—that could possibly go wrong in his life, had gone wrong.
Following a messy divorce and the scandal stirred up by his ex-wife—or “The Hag,” as Sir Guy Abraham Gisborne now called her—he had lost both his career and his social life. No leading roles, no supporting roles, no roles at all; no work whatsoever, save for teaching and the occasional commercial. And the worst part was that this streak of bad luck refused to end, and on some days, it only seemed to get worse.
And so, Mr. Guy Gisborne—a man endowed with intellect, charisma, striking good looks, and a multitude of talents—transformed from a kind and incredibly sociable soul into a grumpy, rather rude, and suspicious man, his hair streaked with silver and his heart filled with bitterness toward the world, just in time for Christmas.
Between you and me, dear reader, as I observed our hero’s behavior, I sometimes fancied that his fine, long, aristocratic nose was beginning to hook, as if he were truly "down in the dumps."
However, let us move on and turn our attention to another of our protagonists. At the very moment Mr. Guy Gisborne was tossing a sacred tree out of his window, simple magic was stirring in another part of London.
In the main hall of an orphanage, a boy named Timothy picked up a Christmas ornament. Following a modest tradition established a century ago, he hung it on the tree and made a wish:
"Please, let me be with a family by next Christmas, please"
Well then. So be it.
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