Once Upon A Christmas Past

10. Chapter 10

Chapter ten

S crooge stared hard and sharp as flint. The cold within him froze his old features, shriveled his cheeks, and made his lips blue as he inquired in a grating voice, “Where is it?”

The boy took a step back and wrung his hat in a death grip. “I slipped, sir. On the ice. But I can get more!”

The old man stepped forward with such evil about his countenance that the boy stood immobilized, even as Scrooge raised his open hand.

The boy shrank back.

A nasty wind swept in from the sea, nipping at Raven’s exposed nose and burning her ears despite the hood covering her head. She pushed her feet faster, gripping the handle of her doctor’s bag like a security blanket.

Golden Square, once an esteemed area for gentry and politicians, had gone down in the world, its great estates broken up into rooms for rented lodgings. Raven had volunteered to make two house calls in the area and had declined a comfortable carriage ride in favor of walking.

She considered herself a fair judge of character. It was she who always sniffed out the addicts who faked their pain to gain opium. She, who had sensed Lord Eaton’s true nature before he’d cheated on Bel. She, who had met a potential investor in her father’s business and discerned his unsavory intentions. Observation of details that others looked past was one of her strengths as a physician. There were always tells—fidgeting, evading eye contact, excessive lip licking, halting dialogue. Those observations followed by a few well-aimed questions seemed to ferret out one’s true intentions.

And yet, Brit had exhibited none of it.

The plinking notes of a piano from a lower-level room, a harp from down the street, and a set of violins through a third-floor window, floated in discordant harmony through the air. Many musicians who played for the opera and theater resided in Golden Square. It was a colorful area known for its artists and foreigners. A dark-complexioned man with bushy whiskers and gold in his ears, approached and tipped a carrot-colored bowler hat to her. She gave a smile and a nod in return. They were a friendly lot here, living on the inspiration of their creative minds.

Raven had almost reached her destination at number thirty-five but slowed her steps. The semi-circle of buildings had cut down the wind and a fleeting bit of sunshine peeked through the clouds. Needing a moment before attending to the colicky baby she could already hear wailing in the distance, she approached a bench that faced the park square and sat across from the half-naked statue of an unnamed king, his rounded belly protruding over a loosely wrapped toga. She pushed back the fur of her hood and lifted her face to the sun.

Behind her closed eyes, a dark, midnight gaze leveled upon her; unwavering. But the evidence, that only she knew, was damning:

One: Brit had stolen her locket from around her neck without giving her the slightest hint that he had done so.

Two: He admitted to the skill of thievery.

Three: John’s accusing glare aimed at Brit the moment he’d heard Clementine’s bracelet had been stolen.

That gut reaction had been unguarded and unequivocal, which led Raven to wonder what John knew of Brit’s past that she did not. Under the heat of John’s stare, Brit had melted a bit. His shoulders had slumped as his gaze rushed to meet hers. Was he afraid she would tell everyone what had transpired between them in the darkened hallway?

She shivered. Not likely.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Bel appeared on the bench beside her; a shimmery outline that filled in like paint spreading through water.

“Where have you been?” Raven questioned more accusingly than she’d meant to. Her sister had quite literally disappeared before entering Wexford House. Most times when Belinda disappeared, Raven harbored the secret hope that her sister had made peace with this life and moved on. But selfishly, she’d needed her best friend at that horrendous Griffin dinner party and subsequent fallout.

“Around. I had some thinking to do,” Bel said as she smoothed the silk of her peach and mauve skirt. The dress she’d worn for the past two years. The dress she’d died in.

Raven clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed against the clang of memories pounding in her head. A splash of dawn light across pallid skin, the lifeless stare, white tablets dotting scarlet linen. A hastily scrawled note that confirmed the catalyst for her sister’s rash actions. Belinda had taken her own vibrant, precious life over a man.

As if Raven needed any further proof of the perils of love. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her medical bag onto her lap. But the action didn’t stop the warning bell from ringing. Brit held the same danger for her—uncontrolled and vulnerable feelings that could jeopardize everything. She—Raven the Reliable, the Stoic, the Sensible—held the same capacity to drown in her devotion, suffocated by unfathomable emotion.

Everyone believed her detached, and perhaps a bit cold. Only Bel knew that Raven’s

scope of feeling was as wide and deep as the ocean—a dangerous precipice that once crossed would consume her. Precisely like her sister. Thus, Raven would not—could not—give in to the powerful sentiment.

“Rave?” A flutter of butterfly wings brushed against her fisted fingers.

Raven took her beautiful sister’s hand, marveling at her corporal presence even after all this time. “I hoped you’d gone this time,” she whispered, the lie catching in her throat and burning her eyes.

A sad smile flitted across Bel’s face. “You know I wouldn’t… go without saying goodbye to you.”

Raven stared down at the scuffed toes of her boots, disgusted by her selfishness. Who was she to deny her sister eternal peace? Of course, she wished her sister would move on.

“Besides, how can I leave behind all of this excitement? The lost Earl of Wexford returned and handsome as sin!”

“And about as treacherous,” Raven muttered before clearing her throat and asking, “Did you hear about the stolen bracelet?”

“I did. But you cannot think Brit Griffin actually took it?”

“I’m not so sure. What do we really know about his past? Where he’s been all of these years?”

Bel pulled her bottom lip into her mouth.

Raven swiveled to face her sister. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Just that we shouldn’t judge a person without knowing all the facts.” Hastily changing the subject, Belinda asked, “How did Brit react when he found out you are engaged to his brother?”

Brit’s empty expression had said all that he did not. Heat infused Raven’s neck as she thought about how she’d behaved when they’d met in the darkened corridor. She’d practically thrown herself into his arms and he had merely stood there watching her make a ninny of herself! “I don’t believe he cares a whit. Besides, John is the reasonable match for me.”

“Reasonable?” Bel’s brows winged up.

“Perfect,” Raven clarified with a decisive nod.

“But Brit Griffin can see me, can he not?”

Raven nodded, still marveling at the oddity. She’d been so wrapped up in her attraction to him that she had forgotten to ask him how such a thing was possible. Or perhaps it was more that she did not know how to broach the subject that they were each living with the spirit of someone who had passed on. This was not a conversation one approached lightly. “By the by, I noticed your friend Mr. Fox is among the unliving. How do you find such a relationship?”

“He is the first one who has seen me, besides you,” Bel said softly.

“It would seem so,” Raven murmured as a gentleman approached with a long black beard and a bit of round fabric perched on the back of his head, a yarmulke. He carried an enormous instrument case in a bell-like shape. Raven presumed it contained some sort of horn. A large group of eastern European Jewish families occupied a corner of Golden Square, although they, as yet, were resistant to medical treatment from outsiders such as Peter and herself.

After the man had rushed past without so much as a nod, Raven asked her sister, “And what do you know of Mr. Fox?”

Bel grew still, her aura flickering as she gazed into the sky, a patch of brilliant blue eclipsed between shifting clouds. “His is not my story to tell.”

A careening cry pierced the quiet of the square, the baby’s wail followed by a shout. Raven shot to her feet. “Well, that’s my cue. Are you coming?”

Belinda shook her head, curls brushing her shoulders as she faded. “I have something I must d…”

But before she had finished speaking, Bel winked out of existence.

Raven started and blinked at the empty spot beside her. From what she had observed, Belinda went where her heart called her. Since they had been the best of friends in life, that often meant she appeared at Raven’s side. Although Bel did occasionally shadow their parents or one of their siblings when they were in a time of high emotion—even if they did not see or feel her presence.

Raven could only hope Belinda’s sudden disappearance did not mean a family member was in distress.

Belinda, no longer held back by the constraints of society, nor corporeal limitations for that matter, appeared at Archie Fox’s closed bedroom door in the attic of Hill Orphanage. Once her heart had decided to speak to him, her body had followed. She could have willed herself inside of his room but had found out the hard way during her time as a spirit, that startling the living—or even the dead in this case—never turned out well.

Bel stared at the door, smoothed her hair and then her skirt and worked to calm her breathing. This highly irregular visit must be done. She could see no other way to keep her bullheaded sister from ruining her life.

Since her poverty-stricken childhood, Belinda had had one purpose in the world: to protect her family. She had ensured, as best she could with her limited resources, that they were happy and well cared for. She had dedicated herself to inventing new games that would occupy her siblings on cold winter evenings and distract them from the hunger pangs that had plagued them all. She had lost count of the times she’d given up her meager dinner to Tiny Tim or sat up with him during the night when he was in too much pain to sleep. Yet, she had failed her baby brother time and again; none of her efforts making a bit of difference. Thankfully, Mother and Father’s relentless love and perseverance had prevailed—with a bit of help from Mr. Scrooge’s influence and fortune.

Bel could not blame her parents for their singular focus even if their preoccupation with Tim’s health had meant they had less attention to give to their other, hale and hearty, children. Thus, they sometimes missed the struggles they had each endured.

Lucy Ann most of all.

Raven , Bel corrected herself.

The name Lucy had never fit her younger sister, who had liked to dissect the dead creatures that their housecat dropped at her feet. Raven’s brain had always worked differently. More logical with less fancifulness. As a child, Raven had followed in Peter’s footsteps and shunned romantic fairytales in favor of texts on the cellular makeup of human beings or the most recent medical remedies.

Yet, it would seem, the ruling paradigm of poverty solidified one’s view of life; even after money and material possessions were plentiful. Therefore, Belinda never stopped trying to protect her loved ones, even after they no longer needed her—or thought they didn’t.

When the Cratchits had the funding to send the girls to a finishing school, Raven’s first year had been a misery. Even at the age of twelve, she was precocious enough to question her instructors on the chemical reactions used to create the perfect patisserie and had pushed for more useful lessons than singing and needlepoint technique in favor of mathematics and science. She was wholly ignored by her teachers and an object of ridicule to the other students. Raven’s pale skin, stark black hair, undernourished, angular body, and too-serious mien did not help.

Once, after school when Raven did not appear for them to walk home together, Bel had found her sister locked in a basement closet with a black eye and a bloody lip. Her views on the impracticality of learning to serve a proper tea had proved to be one too many condescending judgments, and her fellow classmates had turned on her like a rabid pack of wolves.

That day began a sort of transformation in Raven, who had finally seen the evidence that her actions were odd and her logical conclusions sometimes hurtful to others. She cared for others’ feelings, perhaps a bit too deeply, so had learned to turn off the erudite parts of her brilliant brain in order to survive in the environment of privilege she’d found herself in. Subsequently, once she began to pay attention to her toilette and ate enough to put a bit of meat on her bones, Raven had transformed into a great beauty.

Looks, it seemed, allowed others to forgive a myriad of eccentricities. Even John Griffin had looked past Raven’s lack of pedigree and her chosen profession when he had offered for her hand. But from what Bel had witnessed, John did not plan to allow Raven to continue her pursuit of medicine once they were married. And anyone with eyes could see Raven did not love the man. She’d admitted as much herself.

But there was one she did love.

Belinda raised her arm to knock just as a hand reached through the door and pulled her bodily through the wood.