Free Christmas Belles by Susan Carroll

have been surprised if he had received no
answer, given the strangeness of everything else about this place. But the next
second, a girl emerged onto the path. Although she was garbed in a long, green
coat, Trent could tell that she was as slender and graceful as a sylph. Her
hood was flung back, revealing masses of golden brown hair, tumbling in waves
about a delicate face with an ivory complexion blushed with rose.
    Because she came upon him as she did, so suddenly out of the
mist, Trent was reminded of those legends his sailors wove on dark, lonely
nights at watch. Legends of a nymph riding the ocean's foam, a lady of the sea,
calling with her siren song, her arms outstretched. Trent himself had never
been visited by such an apparition. Until now.
    The girl halted a few feet away from him on the path and
dropped a curtsy. "Good day to you, sir," she said simply.
    It took Trent a moment to realize he was staring, frozen as
though some spell had been cast upon him. He snapped himself out of it with a
brisk shake.
    "Good day, Miss…" He paused, subjecting the girl
to a quick assessment, deciding that whoever she was, she could not be his Miss
Emma. "Are you one of the daughters of this house?"
    Before the girl could reply, a second figure darted out from
nowhere. Erupting from behind the girl's skirts was a moppet of a child, a
coarse woolen cap crushing her flyaway baby curls. She was bundled up in a
thick coat that made her look round enough to roll.
    Yet the urchin managed to launch herself at Trent and fling
her arms about his knees. He stiffened, considerably taken aback. His
experience with small children was limited, but he followed one invariable
formula. Admire their well-scrubbed appearance, give them a stern smile, and
pat them on the head.
    But he had never had one leeched to his leg before.
Moreover, besides appearing grubby, with blueberry stains about her mouth, this
babe looked fierce enough to take off his hand should he attempt to touch her.
    "Kotcha, kotcha, kotcha," she called out in a
singsong of triumph. "Bean'tu n'elf kin?"
    Trent felt very much as though he had wandered into a
strange land whose inhabitants spoke some Lilliputian language he could not
comprehend.
    "I am afraid I don't quite understand," he said.
    The girl in the green coat broke into a trill of laughter.
Her remarkable light blue eyes sparkled like sunshine on the water.
"Peggety wants to know if you are the king of the elves," she said,
amazingly able to translate the moppet's speech.
    "Certainly not!" Trent told the child gruffly.
    "Bean'tu kin o'ferries, 'en?" Peggety demanded,
equally as gruff.
    "Be not you the king of the fairies, then?" the
girl repeated.
    "No!" Trent bent down to pry the child away, but
Peggety had already released him with a look of disgust.
    "C'mon, Klooey," she said, tugging at the older
girl. "No ferries 'ere. 'Et's go back inner kittchin n'eat s'more
pie."
    With that, the child ambled off down the path, vanishing
round the corner of the house Trent almost reached out, fearing the girl would
disappear as well.
    But she lingered to apologize. "I am sorry if Peggety
startled you, sir. We have been searching in the bushes for fairies all morning
without success, and she has grown impatient."
    Trent frowned. "Do you think that a proper game to play
with the child, encouraging her to believe such nonsense?"
    "Why not? We might actually turn up an elf or
two."
    "Of course you won't."
    "But we could."
    Trent raked the girl with an impatient stare. He realized
she must be older than he had first imagined. Her lack of inches had deceived
him, but the hinting of her curves did not. She must be eighteen, at the least.
    "Aren't you a little old," he said sternly,
"to be thinking such things as fairies really do exist?"
    "Aren't you a little young to be so sure that they
don't?"
    This absurd conversation was getting him nowhere. The young
woman confounded him further by saying pleasantly, "You are a stranger to
these