Christmas At His Chateau

Gram’s letters always seemed so innocent—full of quirky anecdotes about town life—but in between the news of whose dog had had puppies, complaints about the mayor and Gram’s book club gossip was a plea.

Come home.

Faith knew she should, and she planned to some time soon, but she really didn’t want to this Christmas. She was too busy, too exhausted. And if both her sisters and her mother turned up there’d be more than enough noise and drama and no one would need Faith there to keep up the numbers. She’d given up trying to be family referee a long time ago, so there was no reason for her to be there.

She walked over to the door and retrieved the crumpled lilac letter. She stared at it for a moment, steeling herself for the inevitable tug on her heartstrings, and then she pulled the pages from the envelope and read.

It was the same old news about the same old town, but it still made her smile.

When she’d finished she reached into her purse and took out the other item that had been in the envelope. Gram had got tired of hinting about her girls coming home and had just gone for the jugular: she’d sent plane tickets to each of the McKinnon sisters, and she’d also requested a ‘favour’ from each of them. So one sister was travelling from Sydney to Canada, the other had been summoned back to Beckett’s Run, and Faith had wound up here, at Hadsborough.

Crafty old woman, Faith thought, frowning. Gram was counting on the fact the sisters wouldn’t refuse her—the favour or the trip home.

But Faith didn’t think she could face it. It would be easier to hide away in her rented cottage until her next job in York. But if she was going to do that she needed time to work up the courage to tell Gram no.

She sighed and pulled yesterday’s sweater from her bag. Yesterday’s jeans, too. But before she went downstairs she had some internet research to do. Today she was not going to get caught out by Marcus Huntington.

It was still snowing hard when Marcus made the short walk from the estate office in the old stable block back to the castle. He prised his boots from his feet and left them by the kitchen door, then shook the ice off his coat before hanging it on a hook.

He’d almost forgotten about their unexpected guest until he walked into the drawing room and discovered Faith McKinnon sitting on the sofa she’d occupied yesterday. This time, instead of perching on the edge of the seat, she was sitting back against the comfy cushions, her legs crossed, drinking tea out of their Royal Doulton.

When she heard him approach she turned to look at him and put her teacup back on its saucer on the small mahogany table. The warmth that had been in her eyes faded.

‘Good morning, Lord Westerham,’ she said evenly.

Ah, she’d done her homework, had she? Discovered that as Bertie’s heir he had the use of one of his grandfather’s lesser titles. Not only that, she’d worked out the proper form of address for a courtesy earl. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or irritated. It would depend on whether she was trying to be polite or to butter him up. He could accept the former, but he detested the latter, and he didn’t know enough about her or her motives to guess which was true.

‘I’ve been talking to the landlord of the Duke’s Head in Hadsborough village,’ he said, looking at his grandfather. ‘He says the snow is drifting and it’s already more than a foot deep in some of the lanes.’

‘But the snow ploughs will be here soon, right?’ Faith stopped abruptly, as if she hadn’t meant to blurt that out.

He gave a rueful smile. ‘Oh, they’ll be here—eventually.’

‘And by “eventually” you mean…?’

Bertie reached over and patted her arm. ‘They’ll concentrate on the motorways and the main roads first,’ he said. ‘We don’t get much traffic in this neck of the woods. But don’t you worry… They’ll be here in a few days.’

‘That’s crazy! At home in Beckett’s Run the roads would be clear by the next morning.’

Marcus stepped forward. ‘Unfortunately this isn’t Beckett’s Run.’

She looked up at him, the look on her face telling him she was all too clear on that point. He met her gaze—the challenge she gave without even opening her mouth. And that was when it happened again. That strange feeling of everything swirling round them coming to rest. And this time they hadn’t even been touching.

Faith was sitting stock still, her face deadpan, but he saw the flash of panic in her eyes before the shutters came down.

‘Sorry, my dear,’ his grandfather said, looking less than crestfallen at the prospect of having an unexpected house guest. ‘It seems as if you’re stuck with us for a while yet.’

Faith tore her gaze from Marcus’s and fixed them on Bertie. ‘In that case,’ she said, in a very brisk and businesslike fashion, ‘is there somewhere I can plug my laptop in? I might as well get on with that research.’

She was meticulous. He’d give her that. Marcus watched as Faith wrote carefully in a large notebook with a pencil. She’d been at it since he’d returned just after lunch, pulling up research on her laptop and then recording it in her notebook in a clear, neat hand. He had the feeling she wasn’t the kind to scribble away furiously, no matter how excited she got.

He looked out of the window. The low sun was a pale glowing disc in a gunmetal sky. It had been snowing too hard most of the day for their guest to venture to the chapel, but now the weather had lost its fervour and flakes drifted lazily towards the ground. The forecasts had predicted clear skies tomorrow. He hoped they were right.

‘Haven’t you got other things you need to do?’ Faith asked quietly as she reached for the mouse once again.

He shook his head, and noted the glimmer of irritation that flashed across her features.

‘Are you sure?’

She didn’t like him hanging around watching her? Too bad. This was his family—his life she was carefully digging into before pulling it apart bit by bit—and today at least he had the luxury of being able to witness each new discovery. He needed to know before his grandfather if she unearthed anything significant.

‘You know what? If you’re so interested in what I’m doing—’ and the look on her face said she didn’t believe that for a second ‘—it would really help if you could check the estate archives for any mention of the window.’

‘I already have.’

She raised her eyebrows hopefully but he shook his head.

‘You’re sure? Finding some documentary evidence one way or the other would help me finish this more quickly.’

The eyebrows lifted again, but this time they had a slightly knowing air. She knew he’d like that suggestion.

He was ashamed to admit it was true. Something about her straightforward ‘don’t care’ attitude set his hair on end and raised his awareness.

He didn’t have the luxury of not caring. Once, maybe, he’d thought he’d be able to forge his own path, create his own life, but his father’s actions had scuppered those fantasies nicely. Now he had to care, whether he wanted to or not, and it irritated him that he’d been confronted with someone who had perfected that skill so perfectly.

He glanced over at her again. Her dark ponytail hung forward, draping over her shoulder, and she was lost in concentration. It didn’t stop him admiring the thick, slightly wavy hair, or her small, fine features.

No, not that kind of awareness, Marcus.

Well, partly that.

Okay, he found her attractive. But that wasn’t what he meant. Ever since she’d arrived and sent Bertie into hyperdrive about this window he’d felt like one of those big black guard dogs the security team used.

He’d spent two years trying to rebuild the family name after the crash of his father’s investment company and subsequent death, and now he’d discovered he couldn’t stand himself down when a potential threat appeared.

The current threat was crouched over her laptop on the antique desk, and he had no business noticing its thick ponytail or elegant nose. He didn’t want her digging around in the family’s past. Any skeletons lurking around in the Huntingdon closet—and he was sure there were many—should remain undiscovered. Maybe not for ever, but for now. He didn’t want to hide from the truth—just to wait until things were more settled.

As for his out-of-leftfield attraction to Faith McKinnon? He sighed. Well, maybe he didn’t need to worry about that. The fact that he’d ‘changed’ after his father’s death was one of the things that had sent Amanda running. She’d told him she was fed up with his snapping and snarling. Apparently women didn’t find it very appealing. And from the looks Faith McKinnon had been giving him all afternoon she’d joined that lengthy queue. Even if there was something strange humming between them, he was pretty certain she wasn’t going to act on it.

And neither was he. So that was all good.

‘Oh, my…’

Something about the tone of Faith’s breathy exclamation stopped him short. He leaned forward to look at the laptop screen. She was transfixed by an image of an oil painting of a richly robed redhead in a beautiful garden, her arms overflowing with fruit.

‘That looks a bit like the window,’ he said.

Faith looked up at him, her eyes shining. ‘It looks a lot like the window! Do you see that plant with yellow flowers in the corner?’ She used the mouse to zoom in on one section of the high-res photo, showing a low-lying bush. ‘It’s quite distinctive,’ she said, indicating the papery leaves and, in the centre of each bloom, an explosion of long yellow filaments with red tips.

Marcus blinked. He was having trouble concentrating on what she was saying. That shine in her eyes had momentarily distracted him. All day she’d been like a robot, hardly talking to him, interacting as little as possible, and all of a sudden she was zinging with energy.

He cleared his throat. ‘And this means something?’

‘Maybe!’ She ran her hand over her smoothed-back hair and stood up, let out a little bemused laugh. ‘I don’t know…’ Her face fell. ‘Darn! I forgot to take a photo of the window when we were in the chapel yesterday.’ She shook her head, excitement turning to frustration, then marched over to the window to inspect the weather. ‘It’s not snowing nearly as hard now. Do you think we could go back? I need to see it up close—compare the two side by side.’

Marcus was so taken with this moving, talking Faith that he forgot to question if he should be pleased about this new discovery or not. ‘I don’t see why not.’

She was almost out through the door before he’d finished speaking, running to get her coat and boots. He followed her out of the drawing room, only to be almost bowled over when she dashed back to pick up her laptop.

‘Come on,’ she said, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘It’ll be dark soon and I want to find out for sure.’

He nodded, not quite sure what else he could say, and then he wrapped up warm and followed Faith McKinnon out into the snow.

Marcus stood back, arms folded, as Faith walked close to the window, her laptop balanced on her upturned hands. She looked from screen to window and back again repeatedly, and then she sat down on the end of the nearest pew and stared straight ahead.

He went and sat beside her. Not too close. She didn’t register his presence.

‘Are you okay?’ His low voice seemed to boom in the empty chapel.

Faith kept looking straight ahead and nodded dreamily. Marcus was just starting to wonder if he should call somebody when she turned to him and gave him the brightest, most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. It was as if up until that moment Faith McKinnon had been broadcasting in black and white and she’d suddenly switched to colour.

‘You’ve found something?’ he said.

She nodded again, but this time her head bobbed rapidly and her smile brightened further. ‘I think this window might be Samuel Crowbridge’s work after all!’

Ah. That. Marcus breathed out. Nothing about a message, then. Good.

She twisted the laptop his way, showing him the zoomed-in picture of the little bunch of yellow flowers. ‘They’re identical,’ she said triumphantly, ‘and rather stylised. Rose of Sharon, the article says—although they look nothing like the ones in my grandmother’s garden. Anyway, the chances of two different artists representing them this way is highly unlikely.’

He frowned. ‘I thought you said Crowbridge had moved on from that style.’

A quick flick of her fingers over the mousepad and he was looking at the full picture once again.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘but I think I may have found the reason he returned to it.’ She clicked again and now a webpage appeared, dense with text. The painting was now a long rectangle down one side. ‘Crowbridge was commissioned to do three paintings for a rather wealthy patron in the 1850s—Faith, Hope and Charity—but only completed two out of the three before his patron changed his mind.’

Her lips curved into the most bewitching smile, and he couldn’t help but focus on her lips as she continued to explain.

‘Apparently they were modelled on his wife and two mistresses, and mistress number two fell out of favour.’

His eyebrows rose a notch, and he found his own lips starting to curve. ‘You don’t say?’ He glanced back at the screen.

‘Both paintings have been in a private collection for a long time—hardly ever seen, let alone photographed—but one recently went to auction.’ She paused and her lips twitched a little. ‘The original…inspiration for the trio of paintings came to light, and the family—understandably—decided to part with the picture that wasn’t of Great-Great-Grandma.’

He nodded at the screen. ‘Which virtue is she?’

‘Charity,’ she said firmly, and then her gaze drifted to the stained glass. ‘Oh, how I wish there was a photo of the other one…’

She stood up, set the laptop down on the pew in front and walked over to the window.

Even in the dull light of a winter’s afternoon the stained glass picture was beautiful. The pale sun, now on its way to setting, gently warmed the outside of the glass. As Faith drew near patches of pastel colour fell on her face, highlighting her cheekbones. Drawn like a magnet, he stood and walked towards her.

His throat seemed to be full of gravel. He swallowed a couple of times to dislodge it. ‘And how does that relate to our window?’

No. Not our. At least not in the way he’d meant it when he’d said it. It should be his and Bertie’s our, not his and Faith’s our.

He was standing opposite her, with the window on his right, and she turned to face him. The patchwork colours of the window fell on one side of their faces, marking them identically.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, and closed her eyes for the briefest of moments, almost as if she was sending up a silent prayer.

Marcus took another step forward.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Right into him.

‘I think Crowbridge may have taken the chance, years later, to finish his trilogy. But not in oils this time—in stained glass.’

‘I see.’ He looked back, not breaking eye contact, amazed that he could see layer upon layer of things deep in those eyes that had previously been shuttered. ‘So this one here would be…?’

‘Faith,’ she whispered.

No longer did their words seem to echo. They were absorbed by the thick air surrounding the pair of them. Her eyes widened slightly and a soft breath escaped her lips.

Faith. The word reverberated inside his head. But he wasn’t looking at the window. In fact he’d forgotten all about it. His gaze moved from her eyes to her nose, and then lower…

‘Yes,’ he said softly, leaning dangerously closer.

CHAPTER FOUR

SOMEONE was playing drums somewhere. Loudly. They were echoing in Faith’s ears.

‘Uh—’ Her lips parted of their own accord.

Stop it, she shouted to herself silently. What on earth do you think you’re doing? You know this is a really bad idea, and you’re not some brainless bimbo who can’t think straight when an attractive man is around. At least you’ve never been up until now.

Thankfully Marcus came to his senses first, although something inside Faith ripped like Velcro when he abruptly stepped back and turned his focus once again to the kneeling woman in the window, beautiful and serene.

What had happened just then? She blinked a couple of times. Marcus was scowling at her, as usual, and it was as if the last couple of minutes hadn’t happened. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled back.

A muscle at the side of his jaw twitched. ‘What does this mean? For us?’

Faith’s heart stopped. ‘For us?’ she repeated in a whisper.

‘For the family,’ he said, very matter-of-factly. ‘For the Huntingtons.’

Oh, for them. Not her. He hadn’t been including her. Not that she’d expected him to, of course. Or wanted him to.

‘I don’t know. Before I can say anything definitive I’ll have to investigate further.’ She swallowed. ‘I’d need your consent for that.’

He didn’t say anything. And he was looking less than impressed at the idea of her poking around his family’s home and history.

He was going to say no, wasn’t he? She could see it in his face. He was going to tell his grandfather it was too much trouble, too much inconvenience—to protect that lovely old man from the ‘upset’, as he put it. A flash of anger detonated inside her. Her older sister liked to boss people around that way, make their decisions for them. That kind of behaviour had always driven her crazy. She wasn’t going to back down. She didn’t care what he thought. The world had a right to know if this was Crowbridge’s window.

‘There’s some minor damage in the corner, and what repair attempts have been made are very poor. If this window turns out to be what I think it might be I could restore it for you. Free of charge. Payment in kind for letting me investigate further. If I’m right, the PR value for the castle—and your family—would be great. And more publicity means more visitors.’

Then she laid down her ace. ‘And, of course, your grandfather would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that every inch of the window has been investigated and documented.’ She breathed in quickly. ‘I’m stuck here for at least a couple of days anyway, and you said you wanted something concrete for Bertie. Well, this kind of work would be about as concrete as you could get.’

He folded his arms. ‘What would this research involve?’

He said it as if it was a dirty word. Faith’s spine straightened. Any beginnings of the truce they’d been beginning to build were gone. Obviously ripped away when he’d had what must have been a What were you thinking? moment in the split second before his lips had come close to hers. Just like that they were on opposite sides of the battlefield again.

She lifted her chin, even though inside she was cringing. Why couldn’t it have been her who’d pulled away? Now she just felt pathetic and rejected and he had the moral high ground. Of course he wouldn’t go around kissing an ordinary girl like her. She should have known that. Should have backed off first. But she’d been too excited about the window to care…

Well, she was still excited about the window.

Only now she’d gained a much-needed sense of perspective, too. Good. She’d needed that. Thank you, Marcus Huntington, Earl Westerham, and future eighth Duke of Hadsborough. He had actually done her a favour.

It didn’t mean she was going to curtsey or anything.

‘Faith tells me she’s offered to repair the window free,’ his grandfather said over dinner that evening.

Not free, Marcus thought. There was a price. It just didn’t involve money.

He picked up his soup spoon. ‘Surely proper research will take more than the couple of days you’ll be stuck here?’ he asked.

A little bit of her bread roll seemed to get stuck in her throat. ‘A couple of days will tell me if it’s worth pursuing,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Then, if you give me the go-ahead to repair, I guess it’d take a couple of weeks. I’d finish in time for the Carol Service, I promise you. And I won’t intrude on your hospitality any further once the roads are clear. I can commute from the cottage in Whitstable.’

His grandfather made a dismissive noise, letting them know what he thought about that. ‘Nonsense. You’ll stay here. It’s a complete waste of time and petrol to do otherwise.’

Faith opened her mouth and closed it again. Marcus could tell from the determined look on her face she wasn’t happy with that idea, but she was sensible enough to leave that battle for another day. There was no talking to his grandfather when he remembered he was a duke after all, and started issuing orders.

It was clear the old man wasn’t about to have anyone spoil his fun, and he seemed quite taken with their unexpected guest.

And so are you, seeing as you almost kissed her in the chapel.

Ah, but he’d stopped himself in time. And just as well. Because he wasn’t going to choose with his heart again. Love was a see-saw, and Marcus was going to make damn sure he ended up high in the air next time. He would be the one who held the power and could walk away if he wanted to. He’d do what his family had done for generations—choose a sensible girl from a suitable family who would bring some stability and support to the Huntington line.

It was just hard to remember that when Faith McKinnon fixed him with those dark brown eyes of hers and stared at him, peeling him layer by layer, making him feel she could see right inside him. Worse still, he could feel his reluctance to push her away growing. And that was dangerous. Without those walls of his in place he was likely to do something stupid. They were all that stopped him repeating the whole Amanda fiasco.

He reached for the pepper and ground a liberal amount on his soup. ‘So you’re saying that this research of yours won’t disrupt us?’

Her chin tipped up a notch and she looked him in the eye. ‘Less than the snow. I promise you that.’

Touché.

While he didn’t appreciate her defiance, he admired her pluck. Not many people challenged him outright on anything these days.

‘Are you going to take the window away?’ his grandfather asked, echoing what Marcus had been hoping.

Faith shook her head. ‘I need to be close to the whole window to do my research—not just the bit of it I’m repairing. But I own most of the equipment I’d need, and I can order in supplies quite easily when the snow clears. The first phase will be observation and documentation anyway.’ She shot him a hopeful glance. ‘I was wondering if you had a space where I can work on the bottom pane? I’d only need a room with a trestle table and decent light.’

Marcus’s shoulders stiffened. Unfortunately they had the perfect spot.

Bertie knew it, too. He grinned. ‘Of course. Then what?’

‘Then I’ll snip the old lead away and clean the glass before putting it back together.’

Bertie nodded seriously. ‘You will keep your eyes peeled, won’t you? For anything unusual?’

She swallowed and glanced quickly at Marcus. He shot her a warning look. She lowered her eyelids slightly at him, before turning her attention back to his grandfather and acting as if their little exchange had never happened.

‘Of course I will investigate every area of the window carefully,’ she said, her voice losing its characteristic briskness, ‘but none of the usual rules apply, and I haven’t seen writing of any kind.’

Bertie’s face fell. He folded his napkin and placed it on the table.