A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle

FAITH frowned. While Bertie—she couldn’t quite get used to thinking of this gentle old man as a duke—was charming, she didn’t see what his family history had to do with anything.

‘I’m sorry…but how does this connect to the window in the chapel?’

At least she knew that much now. A church window. Next task was to gauge how old it was.

Bertie was staring into the fire again. She had the feeling he’d wandered off into his own memories. Perhaps that was nice, if you had a solid and well-adjusted family as he had, but in Faith’s view the less time she spent thinking about her family the better. They certainly didn’t make her feel all warm and fuzzy and wistful.

When all three McKinnon sisters got together none of them behaved like the mature women they were; they regressed to childhood, resurrecting deeply embedded hurts and resentments, filtering every word through their past history. It was always the same, no matter how hard Gram pleaded, or how hard they tried to make it different each time. And when they added their flaky mother into the mix—well …

Bertie seemed to shake himself out of his reverie. ‘The original window was damaged during a storm almost a hundred years ago, and my father commissioned a new one to be made.’

‘And it needs restoration?’

The old man shrugged. ‘There does seem to be a little irregularity down at the bottom.’

So maybe it was all about establishing the history of the window—just what she was interested in herself. ‘My grandmother says you know who did the design?’

Another shrug. ‘Samuel Someone-or-other. I forget the last name.’ He stopped looking at her and his gaze wandered back to the fire.

‘Crowbridge,’ she said. ‘Samuel Crowbridge.’

And if Gram was right—if Crowbridge really had designed Bertie’s window—it would be the stained glass version of finding King Tut’s tomb. He’d only ventured into making windows late in his life, and none of the few examples remained. At least that was what everybody had thought …

She caught Marcus’s eye. His expression was unreadable, but he seemed to be watching her very carefully, as if he was expecting her to make a sudden move. Unfortunately, as well as the spike of irritation that shot through her at his superior, entitled study of her, there was a fizz of something much more pleasurable in her veins. She looked away.

She turned her attention back to his grandfather. ‘Mr…I mean, Your—’ She stopped, embarrassed at her lack of knowledge about what to call her host. Your Dukeness just didn’t sound right in her head.

‘Bertie is fine,’ the older man said. ‘I never did like all that nonsense.’

Marcus shook his head slightly at his grandfather’s response. Faith knew what she wanted to call him, whether he had a proper title or not. She sat up straighter. The grandson might have the looks—and some weird déjà vu thing going on—but she’d prefer Bertie’s company any day. She could totally understand why Gram had been so taken with him once.

‘Well, Bertie—’ she shot a look at his grandson ‘—if you don’t want the window repaired or evaluated, I’m not sure why I’m here.’ She hoped desperately he’d let her see it anyway—if only for a few moments.

Bertie’s eyes began to shine and he leaned forward. ‘You, my dear, are going to help me unravel a mystery.’

‘A mystery?’ she repeated slowly. She tried to sound neutral, but it came out sounding suspicious and cynical.

He nodded. ‘My mother left Hadsborough three years after my father died. I was always told that he’d married beneath himself, in both station and character, and that she hadn’t wanted to be stuck out in the countryside in a draughty heap of stones with a screaming child.’

Faith felt a familiar tug of sympathy inside her ribcage, but she ignored it, sat up straighter and blinked. She wasn’t going to get sucked in. She wasn’t going to get involved. She was here for the window and that was all.

‘I’m sure you were a cute baby,’ was all she said.

Bertie chuckled. ‘By all accounts I was a terror. Anyway, I was also told my father realised his mistake soon after the wedding. But people didn’t get divorced in those days, you see …’

Faith nodded—even though she didn’t really see. Her own mother had never felt tied by any strings of convention. If it had felt good she’d done it—and it had ripped her family apart. Maybe there was something to be said for doing your duty, sitting back and putting up with stuff, just so everyone else didn’t have to ride the tidal wave of consequences with you.

‘I have a feeling my uncle Reginald didn’t approve of my father’s choice of bride, so my father doesn’t mention her much in these letters, but I get the impression my parents were happy together.’

Faith could feel her curiosity rising. Don’t bite the bait, she told herself. Family squabbles are trouble. Best avoided. Best run away from.

‘And does he mention the window in the letters?’

Bertie grinned. ‘Oh, yes.’ He pulled some yellowing sheets of paper from a leather folder that he’d tucked down the side of his chair and leafed through them. ‘He wrote of his plans to rebuild the window to his brother. He seemed very excited about it.’ The smile disappeared from his face as he stopped and stared at one short letter. ‘He even mentioned it in his final letter.’ He looked up. ‘He survived the Great War, but died of flu the following year. This letter is the last one he wrote from hospital.’

He reached forward and offered the letter to Faith. Knowing it would probably pain him to get up, she rose and took it from him. She walked towards the fire and tried to make sense of the untidy scrawl. This was obviously the last communication of a man gripped by fever. The content was mostly family-related, which Faith skipped through. It wasn’t her business, even if she was starting to feel a certain sympathy for Bertie and his tragic father. She knew all about tragic fathers, be they dead or merely missing from one’s life.

‘Read the last paragraph,’ Bertie prompted.

Faith turned the page over and found it.

It was supposed to be a grand surprise, Reggie, but I don’t suppose I’ll get the chance to do it properly now. Tell Evie there’s a message for her. Tell her to look in the window.

Marcus stood up and strode across to where Faith was standing. He held out a hand, almost demanding the letter. She raised an eyebrow and made a point of reading it through one more time before handing it over.

He shook his head as he read. ‘Grandfather, you can’t put any stock in this. These are clearly the wanderings of a delirious mind.’

Bertie shook his head. ‘It’s all starting to come together…bits and pieces of conversations I’ve heard over the years…strange comments the servants made…I think my father loved my mother a lot more than I’ve been led to believe, and I want to know why she left—why the family would never talk about her.’

Faith withdrew from the warmth of the fire and sat back down on the edge of the sofa. She was more confused than ever. ‘I can understand that, Bertie …’

If anyone could understand it would be her—to have the security of knowing one parent hadn’t deserted you and the other hadn’t deceived you—she would have given anything to return to that wonderful state of bliss before she’d uncovered her own family’s secret.

‘But what does it have to do with me?’

He looked at her intently, his face serious. ‘You know about stained glass, about its traditions and imagery. I’ve stared at that damn window for hours in the last couple of weeks and I’ll be blasted if I can see anything there.’

He leaned forward and lowered his voice, and Faith couldn’t help tilting forward to mirror him.

‘I want you to find the clue my father left for my mother, Faith. I want you to find the message in the window.’

Her heart was hammering. She told herself it was from keeping up with Marcus Huntington’s blistering pace as he escorted her to the chapel. An outsider like her couldn’t be trusted to look at it on her own, of course.

She glanced at the sky above and realised she recognised that particular shade of grey. Snow was on its way. But a bit of snow didn’t worry her. Or even a whole bunch of it. Beckett’s Run had plenty every year. But Beckett’s Run knew how to deal with it. A few flakes and this country ground to a halt. So she wanted to be tucked up in her little holiday cottage with a stiff salty breeze blowing off the North Sea if it really decided to come down. Which meant she needed to get to work fast—something the man striding ahead of her would no doubt appreciate.

The path they’d been following led them through some trees and into a pretty hollow with a clearing. In the centre was a smaller version of a traditional English stone church. The grass under their feet must once have been a lawn, but it now rose knee-high, and the ground was lumpy with thick clumps of rye grass. Shrubs grew wild, bowed down with the weight of their unpruned branches. Some clung to the walls of the chapel to support themselves. Compared to the rest of the estate, this little corner appeared unkempt and uncared for.

Faith wasn’t one for believing in fairy stories. Not any more. And she had the feeling that Bertie, lovely as he was, had the capacity to spin a tall tale or two, but there was something about this little hidden part of the estate that made her wonder if the Huntingtons had deliberately neglected it.

She watched Marcus stride up to the heavy oak door ahead of her and shivered. Twenty-eight years old, and she’d never had a reaction to a man like this before. It was downright freaky.

Pure attraction she could have handled, but this was different. There was more to it. Extra layers below the fizzle of awareness. Pity she was too much of a coward to peel back the top layer and see what lay underneath.

Marcus slid a key into the black iron lock and turned it. He pushed the door open and motioned for her to go inside, stepping back out of the way so there was no danger of them passing within even three feet of each other.

It wouldn’t do her much good to peel back that layer, anyway. He didn’t want her here. The vibe emanated from him in waves, like a silent broadcast,

She turned back to watch him as he pulled the door closed and followed her inside. He caught her eye and immediately looked away.