Page 20 of How the Belle Stole Christmas

Silas jolted awake, every sense on high alert.

The fire that had been roaring when he’d gone to bed had guttered, nothing left but coals.

He was already shivering, but a sudden drop in temperature gripped the air, so cold it sucked all remnants of comfort from the space.

It raised gooseflesh on Silas’s skin and froze his breath into visible clouds.

As he struggled to understand what had woken him, a soft clinking grew louder, as though it came from the shadows in the far corner of the room.

He leaned forward, peering through the gloom, and the ghostly figure of his father, Lord Richard Frostwick, materialized beside his bed.

He caught his breath, certain he must be having a nightmare, but when Silas pinched himself, the spectral presence remained.

It seemed to mold itself from the very chill, the chains trailing behind it rattling and twisting like metal serpents.

However, this was not the commanding figure Silas remembered but something drained of life, sagging with otherworldly despair. The old earl’s piercing green eyes, once very much like his own, glowed eerily; his dark hair, touched by gray at the temples, blended into the night around him.

“Father?” Silas murmured, every instinct fighting the image before him.

His body remained rigid, locked in the tension between fear and reason.

He wanted to reject the vision, to dismiss it as a product of fatigue or fever.

But the chains clinked again, each sound an anchor that pulled the apparition closer to reality.

“Silas, I’ve come to warn you,” the ghost intoned, his voice filled with authority but also the heavy burden of what he had learned in death. “My selfish choices have forged these chains. I must carry them with me now, my boy. Regret is my constant companion.”

Silas’s breath caught, a visible puff in the air, as his father’s words struck him. Still, he made no move to respond, his mind reeling against the shock. The ghost took a step closer, and the chains rattled again.

“If you don’t change your ways, if you make the same choices I did—putting money and power above love and family—you will soon find out that the chains you’re forging are even heavier than the ones I'm wearing.”

“Father, are you really here?” Silas managed at last, pushing himself into a sitting position, still half-certain he was dreaming. Dear Lord, he hoped he was dreaming. “I don’t understand. You were a good man.”

“I was not!” the ghost roared, his chains rattling even louder, his face contorting in a hideous grimace. “I drove your mother to an early grave with my indifference, and when you had a chance at love, I convinced you to walk away from it.”

An ache of pain shot through him, even after all these years.

Grace. He’d been so furious at his father for deciding that she wasn’t good enough for the son of an earl, but over time—ten long years— he’d seen that a love that passionate and true could never have lasted.

Eventually, he’d come to accept it, but he’d never let himself care for anyone again.

“She was a maid,” Silas said dully. “I understand why you wouldn’t accept my youthful folly.”

“I was a miserable bastard, and I turned you into one as well,” the old earl said mournfully. “But I have asked the spirits to have mercy on you.”

“Spirits?” he asked, dread pooling within him. “What do you mean?”

“Tonight you will be visited by three spirits—your final chance for redemption.” The statement hung like a specter in the cold air, every word a dire promise.

The ghost’s eyes bore into Silas’s soul, forcing acknowledgment.

“You must learn the lessons they come to teach you, my son. Otherwise, I fear for your immortal soul.”

Despite his inner protests, Silas absorbed the dreadful reality of his father’s warning. His hands, always so steady, trembled now against the sheets.

The ghost’s form shimmered, flickering with an intensity that matched the raw emotion of the moment.

There was something mournful in his visage, an edge of regret that pierced even the most resistant corners of Silas’s heart.

The noise of the chains rose and fell like a spectral tide, and with each clink, the ghost seemed to lose substance.

The air thickened with an ancient fear Silas had thought long buried. Anger kindled faintly, born of his powerlessness, but was quickly quenched by the overwhelming sense of fate closing in.

What did this vision, this warning, mean? His carefully constructed solitude had not prepared him for anything like this.

“Be warned,” his father’s ghost echoed, his voice resonating from deep within the shadows.

“Love is all that truly matters…” The chains, an extension of his suffering and Silas’s impending fate, rattled once more with chilling finality.

Then the ghost shimmered with one last burst of solidity before vanishing entirely.

Silas rose from his bed, his mind churning with confusion and dread.

He pinched himself to make sure he was truly awake, then stared into the space where the ghost had been, wondering if he was going mad.

Pulling on his burgundy dressing gown, he hurried toward the fireplace, adding another log and stoking the embers until they roared, chasing away some of the darkness and bitter cold.

Had this all been some dreadful dream? He wished to dismiss it, to push it back into the realm of nightmares where it belonged. But the chill in the room and the memory of the clinking chains left an imprint too vivid for Silas to ignore.