Page 23 of How the Belle Stole Christmas

In the silence that followed the Ghost of Christmas Past’s departure, Silas paced his room, still trying to process everything he’d learned.

A child! He had a daughter. Guilt clawed at him as he realized that he’d seen Grace and Emmaline as they were years ago.

Nearly a decade had passed. Had they even survived all these years?

Given their reduced circumstances, it seemed doubtful.

Everything within him cried out to go and search for them at this very moment, but he had no idea where to even start.

Should he hire a Bow Street Runner? Could even a seasoned detective find Grace in the warren of tenements in this city?

Besides, his father had said he’d be visited by three ghosts this Christmas Eve.

Should he wait?

A harsh laugh escaped him at the thought of waiting around for two more ghosts to appear, but how could he not believe, given what had already occurred this evening?

As though his thoughts had summoned it, a tendril of mist seeped into the room. He blinked, and the shadows parted to reveal a towering presence draped in deep folds of shimmering gold cloth, eyes gleaming with infinite wisdom.

Silas drew back, but the spirit’s commanding eyes and outstretched hand left him no refuge. “Are you one of the ghosts my father said would come to me?” he managed to ask, then immediately felt ridiculous, for what else could it be?

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” the ghostly figure replied. “Are you prepared to see what I must show you?”

Silas could only nod, and as he did so, his bedchamber once more dissolved around him. He was thrust into the frigid London night—the streets writhing with fog and hardship.

Bitter wind whipped through narrow alleys, and the warren of dingy streets echoed with distant shouts.

The spirit’s immense form pushed effortlessly through the press of weary workers and drunken revelers. It never faltered or looked back, an unwavering beacon that compelled Silas forward.

He clutched his dressing gown tightly, struggling against the chill that cut through him.

His slippered feet sloshed through muck and grime but somehow did not get wet.

Coal smoke clawed at his throat, mingling with the scent of sour ale and the briny tang of the Thames. Gaslights flickered like watchful eyes.

He shivered as the spirit led him along a street he vaguely recognized. The buildings loomed overhead like ominous giants, and the damp cobblestones glistened in the lamplight. Silas tried to commit their path to memory so that he could retrace it later, but he knew it would not be easy.

They left the last of the wide streets and plunged into a maze of grim alleys, and at last, the relentless journey ended.

They stood before a dilapidated tenement, its dark silhouette blocking out the bleak night sky.

Silas stared at it, dread and anticipation warring within him.

The weight of the spirit’s guidance hung heavy in the air, and he knew, with a certainty as cold as the winter night, that he was about to confront the full consequences of all he had done.

The ghost led him to a door at the end of the hall on the third floor.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Silas stood in an even smaller, more dilapidated room than the last one he’d visited.

In the far corner, Grace pulled a threadbare shawl tighter around a young girl’s thin shoulders and smoothed a lock of dark hair from the girl’s sweaty brow.

“Hold on, my darling,” she murmured. “Be strong. We shall have brighter days.”

The girl shivered and coughed, her small body shuddering with the force of it. Her face was pale and ghostly in the sputtering candlelight, but her eyes were vivid green, much like his own.

Emmaline. If this were the present, she must be nine or ten, but she was so thin and frail that she looked much younger. Still, she was alive. Thank God, they were both still alive. And the ghost had shown him the way here. Which meant he could find them again.

Grace’s hands trembled only slightly as she turned to the meager fire and scooped some thin broth into a cup from the pot hanging above the flames. “Emmy,” she said, gently lifting the cup to her daughter’s parched lips, “here, drink a bit of this.”

Silas stood near the stove, a specter in the gloom.

The chill air gripped him with icy fingers, but he could not move.

The cramped room pressed in on him from all sides, making him feel as though he couldn’t breathe.

There were no windows. Not a single one.

Near the bed, the flame of a single candle fought against the darkness.

It cast long shadows over Grace’s drawn face as she watched the child struggle to swallow.

The ghost hovered behind Silas, its presence inescapable.

“So much spirit in one so frail,” the ghost intoned sadly. “Without intervention, her fragile light will soon be extinguished.”

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked the ghost tremulously.

The ghost shook its head sadly. “They don’t know. Grace doesn’t have the money to ask a doctor to look in on the little girl.”

Silas swallowed back the lump in his throat. This was his fault. All of it. He had so much money and so many resources at his disposal, yet his daughter and the woman he’d loved were shivering in the cold, teetering on the brink of starvation. How had he let it come to this?

Emmaline sank back against a lone, lumpy pillow, her spindly limbs frail beneath the rough covers. “Will there really be better days, Mummy?” she asked, her voice both hopeful and resigned. “By next Christmas, will it be better?”

Grace hesitated, her silence showing a brief crack in her brave facade. “Yes, my darling,” she answered at last, the words soft but fierce. “We shall have brighter days by next Christmas, I promise.”

The broth was no more than a few spoonfuls, but Grace offered it to Emmaline as though it were a feast. Silas watched in silence, wanting to turn his back on this sight that was too painful to bear. However, the ghost’s stern gaze held him there, making him witness the consequences of his actions.

The room was still but for Emmaline’s labored breaths and the occasional clink of the spoon against the cup.

Grace’s care was patient and unwavering, a stark contrast to Silas’s earlier selfishness.

He could see now what he had done—how his carelessness, selfishness, and indifference had reached across years and miles to settle in this room, into their very bones.

If he’d left Grace alone, she’d have stayed in service, perhaps married a handsome footman, lived a life so much better than the one he’d sentenced her to.

How she must have loved him, to have risked ending up like this, because she’d probably understood far better than he what making love to him might cost her.

He wanted to speak, to call out to them, but they couldn’t hear him. His presence felt like an obscenity amid their struggle. He longed to be gone, and yet the need to stay, to witness and repent, was even stronger.

The spirit shifted slightly, drawing Silas’s attention.

“She works long hours in the mill and must leave Emmaline here alone. She worries about her all the time, but her meager pay has left her with so few choices. Her greatest fear is that she’ll return home one day to find that Emmaline has died all alone. ”

“I’m going to help them,” Silas said fiercely. “This will be their last cold, hungry night.”

“Unless it’s already too late,” the ghost said, its eyes filled with sadness.

“Is it?” Silas asked, guilt nearly consuming him. “Please, Spirit, tell me that I can change this.”

In response, the ghost merely gestured once more to the scene before them.

“Do not be sad, Mummy,” Emmaline whispered. “Shall I tell you a story?”

“I would love a story,” Grace replied. “But only if it won’t tire you out.” She put the spoon down and climbed into the narrow bed, pulling Emmaline against her chest and drawing the thin covers over them both, shivering as she sought to get warm.

Emmaline smiled weakly and nestled against her mother. “Once there was a princess who lived in a castle with only cobwebs and rats to keep her company,” she began, her thin voice clear despite the rasp of illness. “But she made friends with a mouse, which changed everything.”

“Did it now?” Grace asked, leaning back against the headboard and letting her eyes drift closed, finally letting herself relax. “How did it change things?”

“The mouse found things for her.” Emmaline’s brows knitted together in concentration. “Lost things, like treasures and...” She paused as a deep cough wracked her thin frame, the sound rattling Silas’s very soul. “...and love.”

Grace wrapped the blanket more securely around Emmaline’s shoulders. “Don’t push yourself too hard, my darling.”

But Emmaline shook her head, insistent. “I want to finish the story.”

With a look of resignation mixed with admiration, Grace settled back. “Go on, then.”

Through it all, Silas remained silent, absorbing the details with an intensity that belied the emotional distance he had trained himself to maintain: how thin and pale Emmaline was, how gently Grace reassured her, how much like him, like Grace, the girl looked.

He clung to each observation, mourning all he’d missed.

“Tell me, Emmy,” Grace encouraged, her voice the only softness in the room’s harsh edges. “What else did the mouse find?”

“It found courage,” Emmaline said, her smile as bright as it was sad. “And then, it found a family for the princess.”

Her words cut into Silas. How easily she shaped her hopes and fears into something beautiful.

Emmaline looked at her mother with eyes far too large for her thin face. “Mummy, do you think we can find such a mouse?” she asked, her voice small and earnest. “Do you think it will find us?”

“We have all we need right here,” Grace replied fiercely, glancing around the sparse room before letting her eyes rest on her daughter. “We don’t need a mouse to show us that.”

“But what if the mouse wants to?” Emmaline asked.

Silas flinched at her words, her unknowing invitation. Did she somehow know he was lurking at the edges of their meager existence? Or was her young heart simply generous enough to let him hope so?

Silas felt something break inside him, a shattering as profound as it was silent. The life he had resigned himself to—barren, unfeeling—collapsed under the weight of all that he had missed out on. The ghost’s stern presence bore down on him, leaving no room for denial or escape.

He took a step toward them, driven by desperation and the urgent need to make things right. The spirit’s unwavering gaze followed him, a faint trace of pity in its fathomless eyes. Silas faltered, uncertain, reaching for them once again, even though he knew it was futile.

Unlike before, this scene was really happening, right now, in this moment. His daughter was sick, perhaps even dying, across town from his well-appointed home. He could still help them. Silas knew that this time—perhaps the last chance he would ever get—he could not fail them.

They would have brighter days. He would make sure of it.