Christmas At His Chateau

When she heard his footsteps she put her tools down and then linked her hands above her head in a stretch that elongated her spine. Marcus stopped where he was, suddenly transfixed by the slight swaying movement as she stretched the muscles on first one side of her torso and then the other. That motion was doing a fabulous job of emphasising her slender waist through her grey polo neck jumper.

Forget stockings and corsets. It seemed that softly clinging knitwear was enough to do it for him these days. Had he been without significant female company for too long? Or was this just a sign that he was getting old, and cardigans and suchlike were going to float his boat from now on? Either way he answered that question it was a pretty sad state of affairs.

Faith stopped stretching and turned round to talk to him, which—thankfully—gave Marcus the use of his vocal cords once again.

‘Is it that time already?’ She pushed up a sleeve and checked her watch, frowned slightly at it, then got up to head off to the large window that filled the opposite wall. The setting sun was hidden by the castle, but it had turned the lake below them shades of rich pink and tangerine. She sighed as he walked across the space to join her.

‘Ready?’ he said.

She turned towards him and nodded. ‘Sure.’

This, too, had become a habit. Just as his feet had fallen into taking him to the studio at the end of the day, he and Faith had fallen into a routine of meeting up and going down to the cellar when the working day was over. After more than a week of evenings dusting and sorting and tidying they’d made progress.

He knew he could have snapped his fingers and had a whole crew descend on the place and sort it out in a matter of days, but he was quite enjoying sifting through the debris of earlier generations bit by bit. A couple of hours of quiet each evening before dinner, when he was free to do something that interested him rather than something that had to be done, was doing him good.

She collected her things, put her coat on and looped a scarf around her neck, before turning the light off and shutting the door. Marcus pulled the key from his pocket and locked it behind them, then they strolled back down the hill towards the castle, its silhouette dark against the sunset.

She filled him in on her progress with the window.

‘It’s strange,’ she said, and frowned. ‘It’s obvious the bottom of the window has been repaired before. Quite soon after its installation, if I’m right about the age of the materials. I wonder what happened to it.’

He made a noncommittal kind of face. ‘Perhaps we’ll find an answer if we ever find some purchase records. Someone must have been paid to do the work.’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Let’s hope.’

They made their way down to the cellar and resumed their clear-out operation. Some of the ratty office furniture, which had obviously been dumped here a decade or two ago, when the estate offices had moved to the renovated stable block, had been cleared out, which left them with a little more space. A pile of sturdy lidded plastic crates stood near the door, and anything that might be useful was put safely inside, away from the dust.

They’d also found a lot of ‘garbage’, as Faith called it, a few treasures and a mountain of paperwork. Most of it, even the grocery ordering lists and letters of recommendation for long-gone parlour maids, they’d decided to keep. It would be the start of a rich family archive, giving glimpses of daily life from the castle over the last fifty years. Faith had suggested having an exhibition, and much to his surprise Marcus had found himself agreeing. In the New Year some time, though, when all this Christmas madness was over.

Faith pulled an old invitation for the Christmas Ball from the nearest pile and lifted it up to show the stuffed badger, who’d been released from his filing cabinet prison and now perched proudly on a wooden plant stand, keeping guard. His beady little orange glass eyes glinted in the light from a single bare bulb overhead.

‘What do you think, Basil? Worth keeping?’

Marcus put down the cardboard box full of cups and saucers he’d been moving. ‘Basil?’

Faith shrugged. ‘Basil the Badger. It seemed to fit.’

Marcus shook his head.

Side by side, they started sorting through piles of assorted papers, books and boxes, stopping every now and then to show each other what they’d found, debating the merits of each find.

It was nice to have someone to discuss things with—even if it was whether to keep a receipt for a peacock feather evening bag or not. It made him realise just how much he’d been on his own since he’d come back to Hadsborough to work. He only discussed the bigger issues with his grandfather, leaving him to rest. The remainder Marcus dealt with by himself.

It had been different in the City. He’d had plenty of friends, an active social life, a woman who’d said she loved him…

Better not to think of her. She was long gone with the rest of them. Everyone he’d counted on had deserted him when he’d needed them most. It seemed the family name had been more of a draw than he’d thought, and once that had been dragged through the mud they’d scattered. Whether it was because he was no longer useful or they thought they’d be painted guilty by association didn’t matter.

But now he was back home, with only an elderly relative for company. The staff kept a respectful distance, not only because he was the boss, but because of the family he’d been born into. He realised he hadn’t had much time to socialise with people who weren’t afraid to meet him as an equal, as a human being instead of a title.

Faith did that. Without being disrespectful or fake. Not many people achieved that balance, and he appreciated it. She wasn’t afraid to share her opinions, but she was never argumentative or rude. She just ‘called a spade a spade’, as his grandmother had used to say. In fact he had some news for her about one of their recent conversations when she’d done just that.

‘It’s been four days since we cut the ticket prices to the Christmas Ball and sent word around the village,’ he said nonchalantly as he dusted off a pile of old seventy-eight records.

‘And relaxed the dress code, of course.’

Faith stopped what she was doing and turned round. Her ponytail swung over her shoulder and he got the most intoxicating whiff of camellias and rose petals.

‘Yeah? Have sales improved?’

He nodded. ‘The locals are snapping them up.’

Her eyebrows rose. ‘See? I told you I understood the community spirit you get in a place like this. People just love to feel involved. You’re not their lords and masters any more, so it wouldn’t hurt to stop hiding away in your castle and mix a little.’

He snorted. ‘I do not hide away in my castle.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh, no? When was the last time you went down to the village pub for a drink, then?’

‘I could name you a time and a date,’ he said, sounding a little smug.

Faith wasn’t fooled for a second. ‘Sock it to me.’

Marcus closed his eyes and smiled as he looked away for a second. ‘Okay, I was seventeen,’ he said as he met her impish gaze, ‘and I escaped down to the village with a couple of my schoolfriends who were staying over. The village bobby had to bring us back at two in the morning, drunk as skunks. I was grounded for a month. So I remember that occasion very well.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt you to get outside the boundaries of the estate once in a while, you know.’

He wanted to argue, to say he did—but hadn’t he just been thinking about being on his own so much? Had he turned himself into a hermit? Surely not.

‘You will come, won’t you?’ he asked.

‘To the village pub? Now, there’s an offer a gal can’t refuse!’ She gave him a wry smile as she took a vinyl record from his hands and inspected it.

‘No,’ he said, ‘to the Christmas Ball.’

She rubbed a bit of dust that he’d missed off the corner of the record sleeve with her fingers. ‘It would be lovely, but I…I can’t. I’m busy with the window, and a ball’s not really my sort of thing.’

‘You said you were making good progress,’ he replied. He looked around the darkening cellar. The sky through the narrow windows at the top of the room was indigo now. ‘An invitation is the least I can give you after all you’ve done to help resurrect the idea.’

If anything she looked sadder. ‘Maybe,’ was all she said.

He didn’t get it. He thought women liked balls and dressing up and dancing. So why had Faith sounded as if he’d asked her if he could gently roast the family rabbit for dinner? Perhaps he’d better change the subject.

He picked the next record up from the pile. ‘What about this Christmas-mad small town you come from? Tell me about your family.’

Faith shrugged and handed him back the first seventy-eight. ‘Gram is the only one who lives in Beckett’s Run now. One sister lives in Sydney, the other travels all over for work, and my mother just…drifts.’

She wandered off to the other side of the room and started nosing around in a cardboard box over there.

Hmm… One minute she was spouting on about community spirit and getting involved, but the first mention of home and family and she was off like a shot. What was all that about?

He decided it was none of his business. He didn’t like people poking around in his family’s affairs, and maybe Faith didn’t either. Instead of pursuing the matter further he concentrated on the pile of records—a few of which he suspected were collectors’ items—and they worked in silence again after that. Not so comfortable this time, however.

He checked his watch again after he’d glanced up to see the sky outside was inky black. Faith saw his movement and stopped what she was doing.

‘Time to call it a day,’ he said.

She nodded from behind her high stone walls. ‘Good. I’m starving.’

He walked over to the plastic crates and put his most recent finds next to the old records in the top one. He snapped the lid back on, then made his way to the door. He tugged the handle, and it turned, but the door itself didn’t budge. He tried again. Not even a groan. The heavy oak door was stuck fast. Old Mr Grey had cautioned him to use the doorstop, and up until this evening he had, but Faith had been the last one in and he’d forgotten to share that vital bit of information with her.

And now they were trapped in here. Alone.

CHAPTER SIX

BEHIND him, Faith groaned. ‘Really? Stuck in the castle dungeons?’

‘They’re not dungeons,’ he reminded her calmly. ‘No leg irons or racks here. It’s just a cellar.’

‘Can we open a window? Yell for help?’

He marched over to the first high window and tugged at the metal loop. Also stuck. However, he had better luck with the next one along. The window was hinged at the bottom, and he managed to pull it open so there was a gap of four or five inches at the top. A small shower of crunchy snow landed on his arm and he brushed it away before dragging a smallish wooden table over to stand underneath. Once he was sure it would take his weight he stood on it, so his face was near to the opening and shouted.

They waited.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Same result.

‘Here… Maybe two voices are better than one.’

Before he realised what she was doing, Faith jumped up and joined him on the table. She wobbled as her back foot joined the other one and instinctively grabbed on to the front of his jumper for support. Marcus looked down at her. Her eyes were wide and her breath was coming in little gasps. His brain told him it was just the shock of almost tumbling down onto the hard stone floor, but his body told him something rather different.

Kiss her, it said.

Faith’s mouth had been slightly open, but she closed it now, even as her eyes grew larger.

Nothing happened. Nobody moved. He wasn’t even sure either of them breathed. He could read it in her face. She’d had exactly the same thought at the same time, and she was equally frozen, stuck between doing the sensible thing and doing what her instincts were telling her to do.

He wasn’t sure who moved first. Maybe they both did at the same time. Her fingers uncurled from the front of his sweater and she dropped her head. He looked away. It seemed neither of them were ready to take that leap.

He turned back to the window and yelled, venting all his frustration through the narrow gap. After a second Faith joined him. When they were out of breath they waited, side by side and silent, for anything—the sound of footsteps, another voice. All they heard was the lap of water against the edge of the path outside and the distant squawk of a goose.

He jumped down from the table, got some distance between them. ‘There’s nobody out there. Too cold, too dark.’

Faith sat down on the table and then slid onto the floor. She stayed close to it, gripping on to the edge with one hand and tracing the fingers of the other over its grainy surface. ‘What about people inside the castle?’

He shook his head. ‘The walls are at least a foot thick. I doubt if the sound even left this room.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s not long until dinner, though. Someone will miss us soon.’

She nodded, but still looked concerned.

Marcus knew she had good reason to. Another hour, at least, and he’d already thought about kissing her once. Thankfully he had a solution to their current predicament that his ancestors wouldn’t have had. He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

Signals in the area could be patchy, especially near the castle. He checked the display on his phone. One minuscule bar of signal, but maybe that was enough. He tried dialling the estate office, just in case anyone was still there. His phone beeped at him. Call failed. The signal indicator on his phone was now a cross instead of any bars. Damn.

‘No signal,’ he said to Faith. It seemed these thick stone walls could withstand any means of escape.

She jumped up onto the table again. ‘Here. Pass it to me.’

Silently he handed his phone over, and she held it up to the window and pressed a button to redial. He held his breath, but a few moments later she shook her head and handed the phone back to him.

‘Try sending a text. I’ve worked in plenty of old buildings, including basements, and sometimes I can get texts even if I can’t receive calls.’

He nodded and tapped in a message to Shirley. She always kept her phone in her pocket. In a home like his, sometimes shouting up the stairs wasn’t enough. Mobiles were usually pretty reliable—but obviously not when most of the room was underground and surrounded by water.

An icon appeared, telling him it was sending, but a minute later his phone was still chugging away. The blasted thing wouldn’t go.

He put the handset up near the window, balancing it on the frame. ‘Better chance of getting a signal,’ he said. ‘Now we just need to wait.’

He stole a look at her. Her mask of composure was back in place. No one would guess that moments ago she’d been flushed and breathless, lips slightly parted… It was as if that moment on top of the table had never happened.

Right there. That was why his warning bells rang—why he shouldn’t think about kissing her. It had nothing to do with her nationality or her background, and everything to do with Faith herself.

The woman who lived behind those high walls of hers—Technicolor Faith—would be very easy to fall for. He felt he’d always known her, had been waiting for her to stroll across his lawn and come crashing into his life. He could feel that familiar tug, that naïve, misguided urge to lay everything he had and everything he was at her feet.

But that ability of hers to disconnect, to detach herself emotionally, was what kept him backing off. At least Amanda had tried; Faith McKinnon would always be just a fingertip out of reach.

Coward.

He ignored the voice inside his head, knowing he was right. He wasn’t going to be that weak ever again. So he decided he needed to do something to fill the rest of the time rather than just stand close to her, staring at her.

Conversation would be good. It would stop him thinking about doing other things with his lips. But Faith had already resisted his attempt to talk about her family, so he needed another subject. Thankfully, he knew her favourite one. If he could get her talking about the window the hour would fly by.

‘You believe Samuel Crowbridge made the window, don’t you?’ he asked.

She trapped her bottom lip under her teeth and then let it slide slowly out again, exhaling hard, as if she didn’t quite want to say what she was about to say. Marcus tried not to watch, tried not to imagine what it would feel like if it were not her teeth but his lips…

‘Yes…yes. I do,’ she said, and that light he’d been both dreading and waiting for crept into her eyes. ‘But believing isn’t enough. I need solid proof.’

‘For yourself? Or for others?’

She looked perplexed. ‘Both. You can’t put stock in dreams and wishes, can you? At some point you have to have hard evidence.’

Marcus frowned. ‘Sometimes one doesn’t have that luxury,’ he said, his tone bare. ‘Sometimes you just have to do without.’

That was what he’d done after his father’s death. No one had really known the truth of what had happened. He’d tried very hard to believe what people had said—that it had just been an accident—but the collapse of the family firm had started him questioning everything about his father, and he hadn’t been able to shake the cynical little voice inside his head.

‘Of course hard evidence is preferable, but it’s not always there. Sometimes you just have to take a leap and hope you’re jumping in the right direction,’ he added.

Faith gave him a weary look. ‘Unfortunately the academic community don’t share your faith in gut instincts.’

‘Have you found anything more about the other painting? Hope, wasn’t it?’

She shook her head. ‘Not much. The family who own it aren’t ones for sharing. I can’t even find a picture of it. They also own any sketches and documents pertaining to the original commission, so it’s unlikely I’ll get any confirmation from that source.’ She opened the rolltop of an old bureau that had previously been blocked by a hatstand, and coughed as the dust flew into the air. ‘That’s why finding something here at Hadsborough is so important. It could be my only chance.’

As she searched a small smile curved her lips. He instinctively knew she was thinking about something that amused her.

‘What?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘A goofy coincidence. It’s just that the names of the three paintings are almost a match for me and my two sisters.’

Marcus’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Faith, Hope and Charity?’

She walked towards him slowly. ‘No, my littlest sister would have gone nuts if that was the case. Mom switched Charity to Grace.’

‘What are the odds?’ he muttered. ‘Are you the oldest?’

She shook her head and leaned against the desk next to him. ‘Mom never was one for sticking to convention. I’m in the middle. We all used to complain about our names, of course. Can you imagine the teasing we got at school?’

He made a wry face. ‘I went to an all-boys boarding school. If that’s not an education in just how abominable children can be, I don’t know what is.’

She nodded in sympathy. ‘Grace complains the most, even though I think she’s got the best end of the deal.’ She gave him a devilish little grin. ‘But when we were younger Hope and I had a way of shutting her up.’

‘Oh, yes?’

She nodded, then smiled to herself at the memory. ‘We used to tease her that Gram had talked Mom out of calling her Chastity, so she could have had it a whole lot worse!’

He couldn’t help laughing, and she grinned back at him before hopping up and sitting at the other end of the table. They weren’t touching. Quite.

She’d forgotten to put those barriers back down, hadn’t she? Even though they’d veered off the subject of the window and onto something more personal. He should say something to kill this moment, move away…

But he didn’t. Just a few more seconds to find out what really lay beneath Faith’s high walls. The chance might not come again, and he’d be safe once she retreated behind them once more. She always did.

‘It sounds as if you’re close,’ he said.

Faith’s smile disappeared. ‘Not really. Not any more. It all changed after…’

He shifted so his body faced hers more fully. ‘After what?’

‘You don’t want to know. It’s too…’ She shook her head and closed her eyes. ‘Your family…they’re so different to mine.’

He guessed she was talking about somebody having misbehaved. ‘You’d be surprised what the rich and powerful get up to just because they can,’ he said, a dry tone to his voice. ‘The second Duke was a bigamist, the third Duke had more illegitimate children than he could count and the fourth Duke lost Hadsborough in a drunken game of dice and won it back again the next night. And those are just the highlights. There are plenty more stories to tell about the Huntingtons.’

Faith shook her head, but she was smiling. ‘Not the same, and you know it. All those things make your family sound dashing and exciting. My family just makes people shake their heads and look sad.’

A stab of something hit Marcus square in the chest. Suddenly Faith wasn’t the only one on the edge of revealing something big.

‘Oh, mine make people shake their heads and look sad, too,’ he said.

‘No, they don’t…’ Faith began, laughing gently, assuming he was teasing. But when she met his eyes the laughter died. ‘They do?’ she said, blinking in disbelief.

They did. And he found that for the first time in over eighteen months he wanted to tell someone about it. Someone who wasn’t connected. Someone who didn’t care, who wouldn’t invest. He suddenly realised that Faith’s walls made her the perfect candidate.

‘I worked for my father until just before he died,’ he said, his voice deceptively flat and unemotional. ‘He’d started up an investment company thirty years before, and things were going really well… At least I thought they were.’ He shook his head. ‘I should have seen it coming. He was always so sure of himself—too sure—as if he thought he was indestructible. It made for great business when the markets were good. He liked to take risks, you see, and they often paid off.’

She nodded, waited for him to continue.

‘But in the last few years, with the way the financial climate had been—’ he made a face ‘—being daring didn’t cut it any more. In fact he lost a lot of people a lot of money. But my father was gripped by the unswerving belief that he could turn it around. He kept risking, kept gambling, kept losing… The company went bust. People lost their jobs.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘I knew what he was like, even though I didn’t know the extent of his recklessness. I should have done more. I should have stopped him.’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Marcus, what your father did. He made his own choices.’

Marcus swallowed. That was what he’d been afraid of.

Not on the business front. People had called Harvey Huntington a swindler, but that hadn’t been true. He’d just had an unshakeable belief in himself, hadn’t thought he could fail so badly. And when he had… Well, the unshakeable man had been shaken to the core. He’d never quite recovered.

‘About a year later they found his car wrapped round a lamp post,’ he added baldly.

Faith gasped and her hand covered her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘The inquest ruled it an accident,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘He’d been drinking, and he never did like to wear his seat belt. But there were rumours…’

Faith’s eyes grew wide. ‘You mean that he’d meant to do it?’

Marcus just looked at her. ‘That’s about the gist of it.’

‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ she said, horrified.

‘I try not to.’

Faith reached over and laid her hand on his arm. He looked down at it. They hadn’t touched since their first meeting, and that one simple, spontaneous gesture completely arrested him. He looked back at her face—really looked at her—and saw warmth and compassion and gentle strength. Instead of climbing back behind her walls, he could feel she was reaching out to him, and it made him ache for her in an entirely new way.