A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle

‘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 hyper-drive 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.

She reached over and covered her hand with his. ‘I promise I will try to keep an open mind,’ she added, ‘but only if you promise to do the same.’

He nodded, and then smiled at her gently. ‘Thank you, Faith. If anyone can unravel this secret it will be you.’

She withdrew her hand and sat back in her chair. ‘I’ll do my best, Bertie,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘but you have to face the possibility that what you’re looking for may not be there.’

‘Holy cow!’ Faith said.

‘Quite,’ was Marcus’s dry response.

She’d never seen so much junk in her life. She’d thought Gram’s attic was bad. But Gram and Grandpa had only lived in their house fifty years. The Huntingtons had lived at Hadsborough for more than four hundred, and it seemed that no one had ever, ever thrown anything away. They’d just stuffed it in the unused vaults under the castle.

They both stood in the doorway and just stared.

Marcus, who had been holding the door open, nudged a little doorstop under it with his foot and walked a couple of paces into the room.

A retired servant, whose sons still worked for the estate, had tipped Marcus off about this place. There had to be at least a couple of centuries worth of debris here, so they were sure to stumble upon something to help her.

She needed to find something that would link Samuel Crowbridge to this window. If she announced her suspicions to the academic community without proof someone could hijack it, find the evidence she lacked, and it wouldn’t be her find any more.

‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ she said wearily.

The rooms weren’t totally below ground, but with snow piled high against the long, horizontal windows just below the ceiling they might as well have been.

‘I was told the cellar wasn’t in use,’ Marcus said.

‘It isn’t,’ she replied. ‘By the looks of it the last of the junk was stuffed in here at least a decade ago.’

His eyebrows rose as the said the word junk.

‘You know what I mean.’

He strolled over to an old, but definitely not antique filing cabinet and peered inside the bottom drawer. The rusty runners squeaked painfully as he pushed it closed again.

‘Stuffed badger,’ he said, a faint air of bemusement about him.

‘A real one?’

He nodded.

She walked over to the filing cabinet to take a look for herself. It wasn’t a very big one, but sure enough a ratty-looking stuffed animal with glass eyes sat morosely at the bottom of the deep drawer, staring at the painted metal sides. She did as Marcus had done and shut the drawer, then she turned to look at him and said, quite seriously, ‘Of course it is. That’s where I keep mine—amongst the filing. You never know when it’s going to come in handy.’

That earned her a smile. Sort of.

Good. If she could get him to lighten up a bit it might help her sanity. For some reason he was on red alert around her, and she sensed it was more than just her intrusion into his family. She had the feeling she was his own personal brand of dynamite.

Which means he should handle you with care …

She slapped the masochistic part of herself that had come up with that dumb thought. He wasn’t going to be handling her anywhere. At all. Ever. She needed to get that into her thick skull.

Which was easier said than done. Especially as the more he glowered at her the more her pulse skipped. What was wrong with her? Really? Why did something inside her whisper that she should stop running in the opposite direction and just give in?

And when she was aware of him watching her—which was always—her skin tingled and her concentration vanished. She did her best to ignore the prickling sensation up her spine when he was near, but it seemed to be getting stronger all the time.

There it went again—like a pair of fingers walking up her back.

She decided to search the other side of the room from him, just to see if a little extra distance would help.

It didn’t.

‘Do you think there’s any order to this stuff?’ she called out as she lifted the top ledger in a dusty pile and inspected the front page: Meat ordering: 1962-65. Fascinating for the right person, probably, but not what she was looking for. She put it down again and inspected the rest of the stack. They were various household accounts from the fifties and sixties—all decades too late to help her.

‘We could spend weeks searching this place,’ she said as she came across Marcus again behind a stack of crates. ‘Just rummaging could be pointless. What we really need to do is sort it all out, clean the room and put it in some order.’

He nodded. ‘But you’re supposed to be working on the window. You haven’t got time to clean my cellar for me.’

Ah, the ticking clock inside his head—counting down to the moment when she would leave. Even now it made itself apparent.

She nodded up to the snow packed against the windows. After a brief reprieve the snow had returned with a vengeance. ‘At the moment I can’t even get to the chapel, and I need to find some documentary back-up,’ she replied. ‘I’m stuck here twenty-four-seven and you haven’t got cable. What else am I going to do with my time?’

Marcus just shook his head and wandered off, muttering something about the sheer stupidity of trying to lay cable in a moat and how satellite dishes would spoil the roofline. Faith let her mouth twitch. This getting Marcus to lighten up thing was almost fun, and it had the added bonus that if she managed to keep him from glowering at her she might start acting sensibly for a change.

He was saved from answering her by a rap on the open cellar door. A man she didn’t recognise poked his head in, and he and Marcus talked in hushed voices. Faith decided not to eavesdrop and took herself to the far side of the cellar and leafed through a stack of old papers. He reappeared a couple of minutes later, looking frustrated.

‘Problems?’ Faith asked.

He huffed. ‘Nothing to do with the window. We host a Christmas Ball every year and ticket sales have ground to a halt. My events manager says the forecast for ongoing snow is to blame.’

‘When is it?’

‘A week on Saturday.’ A grimace of annoyance passed across his features. ‘I really don’t want to cancel it. We’ve already laid out a lot of money, and no ball means no revenue and plenty of lost deposits.’

‘But you can cover that, right? It’s not like you’ll be going without your Christmas lunch because of it.’