Читать книгу A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle - Shirley Jump, Donna Alward - Страница 12

DINNER was quiet. Faith had spent a lot of it looking in his direction without actually looking at him. She didn’t avoid his gaze entirely, but when she did meet his eyes her expression was blank, empty. Disconnected.

Marcus felt a tug of guilt deep down in his gut, even though in the moments before their lips had touched she’d tipped her head back and all but invited him to kiss her. He hadn’t meant to make her feel like this.

When instead of joining him and his grandfather in the drawing room after dinner she excused herself and headed upstairs, Marcus followed. His grandfather’s eyes glittered as he left the room. Sly old fox.

Marcus caught up with her on the wide stone staircase. ‘Faith!’ he called softly.

She stopped, but didn’t turn.

He closed the gap.

She started to move again, but he reached for her, hooking the ends of his curled fingers into hers, and that was all it took to stop her. She stared into the distance, even though the thick wall was only ten feet in front of her.

He gently moved the tips of his fingers, feeling the smaller, sensitive pads of hers beneath his own. Her head snapped round and she looked at him.

He saw it all, then—the tug of war happening behind her eyes. Something in her expression melted, met him.

‘We need to talk,’ he said.

She didn’t nod, didn’t say anything, but he saw the agreement in her eyes. However, now he had her where he wanted her he wasn’t sure what to say. Sorry? He realised he didn’t want to—because he wasn’t. Those few stolen moments in the cellar had tasted like freedom.

He took a leap, giving her more honesty than he’d planned to. ‘I’ve wanted to do that since almost the first moment I met you,’ he said.

Faith let out a heavy breath, her eyes still locked on his. Once again he felt that sense of accord, harmony—and a hint of wry acknowledgement.

She shook her head and looked at their linked fingers before returning her gaze to his face. ‘You? Me? I don’t know what this is …’ She pressed her free hand to her breastbone. ‘But it can’t go anywhere, even if we want it to.’

God, he wanted it to. The force of that realisation hit him like a thunderclap. It didn’t help that he knew she was right. Neither of them wanted this, were ready for this.

He let go of her hand. Her eyes shimmered with regret, and a little sadness. He breathed out hard.

‘It’s only a couple of weeks,’ she said, ‘and then I’ll be gone. Can we try to keep it professional until then—or at the very least platonic?’

He heard the hidden plea, knew she was balancing on a knife-edge, just as he was, torn between doing what was right and what felt right. Suddenly he had the overwhelming urge to protect her, save her. It washed over him in a warm wave, starting at his toes and ending at his ears, and then settled into a small hard rock inside his chest.

He nodded. ‘Goodnight, Faith,’ he said, his voice low.

Her eyes filled with silent gratitude. ‘Goodnight, Marcus.’

It was only as he watched her walk up the stairs that he realised he was protecting her from himself.

Faith did her best to keep busy the next day. She got to the studio early, determined to remove the last of the glass from the old lead. Each fragment she removed was placed on the carefully drawn template she’d made. It was slow work, but absorbing, and it kept her mind off things she didn’t want to think about. However, as the hand on the clock moved closer to four her heart-rate refused to settle into its normal rhythm.

Would he come?

At four-fifteen she had her answer. There was a rap on the door, but this time, instead of opening it a split-second later, he waited for her reply. Marcus was good with boundaries, she realised. He wouldn’t overstep their agreement, and she knew she wouldn’t have to remind him of it even once in the coming fortnight. So why didn’t that make her feel any happier?

‘Come in,’ she called, feeling her own boundaries crumble a little further, like the scattering of grit and pebbles just before a rock-fall. Mentally, she shored them up as best she could.

‘Hello,’ he said.

His expression was shuttered, wary. It was almost the way he’d looked at her on that first morning, except…She had the oddest feeling that although the walls were back it wasn’t that he was pushing her away, but holding himself back.

She cleared her throat. ‘Hi.’

Platonic, she’d said. And Marcus had wanted to be informed of any interesting developments regarding the window. She could do this. She could do platonic and professional. She’d never had any problems with it before.

‘Come and see.’ She indicated the half pulled apart window on the table in front of her.

He nodded and, just as he’d done for the whole of the previous week, asked thoughtful, intelligent questions. She answered him clearly, adding in interesting facts, which had also become her habit. Anyone watching them would have thought nothing had changed, that what had happened in the cellar had stayed in the cellar.

Faith knew better.

The whole time they talked there was an undercurrent that hadn’t been there before, pulsing away beneath the surface.

And they didn’t deny it—to themselves or each other—but by tacit agreement decided to leave it be. It was frustrating, but it was honest. She didn’t think she could have lied to him anyway. Somehow he could see inside her. It wasn’t that she’d let her barriers fall—they were still tightly in place—but that to him, and only him, they were like the glass on the table in front of her.

‘I’ve asked Shirley to rustle up some help with the cellar,’ he said. ‘She’s sending a couple of the part-time cleaning staff down. There should be waiting for us by the time we get there.’

She nodded, knowing this was a good idea—a fabulous idea—even as her heart sank. It was a good idea to give Basil some back-up.

‘Hope they like dust,’ she said as she grabbed her coat, ‘and badgers …’

Marcus’s father had always accused him of being a contrary child with an iron will, and now that resolve served him well. Even so, the cellar-cleaning crew became his safety net over the next few days, stopping him giving in to the urge to ‘lose’ the doorstop one evening and do something stupid.

It didn’t help him forget, though. He couldn’t erase the memory of that kiss, that sweet, soft, unfinished kiss.

From the way Faith’s gaze would snag with his, the way she’d colour and look away, he guessed she was suffering the same way. But she’d asked for friendship alone. They had an agreement and he was honouring it.

They were both back safely behind their respective walls of polite friendliness. That should have been enough, but it wasn’t helping. Walls that were three feet thick were a great idea, but if those walls were transparent …

It made the whole thing worse. Now he could see Technicolor Faith all the time, but he knew he couldn’t—shouldn’t—reach out and touch her. Even so, he could feel his resolve slipping a little more every day. It had started with his wanting to keep her safe, to protect her, and now he was starting to want to give her other things. Things he hadn’t realised he still had left to give. Maybe he didn’t. And they were things Faith McKinnon didn’t even want.

He just had to keep it all together for another ten days. That was all.

Late Friday morning he was passing the studio and decided to stick his head in. He found her not hunched over the table, as usual, but sitting back on her stool, hands on hips, staring at the last remaining pieces of dirty glass that she had been cleaning.

‘Problem?’ he said as he came and stood behind her, trying to see what was so perplexing.

She shook her head. ‘Not a problem…just some interesting irregularities.’

‘Not anything to do with a message?’ He shaved the words I hope off the end of that sentence.

‘No.’

He pulled up another stool and sat down next to her. ‘Talk me through it.’ This was safe enough territory.

She pushed her stool back, stood up and walked over to a second table, where she plucked a large photo of the window from a pile of papers and brought it back to show him. Marcus did his best to concentrate on what was in front of his eyes instead of the faint smell of rose gardens that always seemed to cling to her. What was it? Perfume? Shampoo? Whatever it was, he was finding it very distracting, even though he’d never really had a fondness for the blasted flowers.

She pointed to the top of the photograph. ‘See the lead there? It’s very fine and it was beautifully crafted. The work of a master glazier. No doubt about it.’

His gaze followed her slender finger down to the bottom of the picture.

‘But here…nowhere near the skill. It’s as if it’s been repaired by a local craftsman just trying to do his best.’

Marcus’s eyebrows drew together. ‘Maybe the workman wasn’t up to the job.’

She nodded. ‘Probably. But it’s not the fact that the window was repaired, but where and how that’s interesting. A breakage results in a certain pattern—either a crack in just one piece of glass, or a wider area of damage radiating out from the point of impact. See this bit down here …?’ She pointed to a long, wide section at the bottom of the pane. ‘It’s just the glass inside that border that’s been replaced. All of it. You can see it quite clearly now it’s been cleaned.’

She got up and looked at the disassembled window laid out on the end of the table. ‘The new glass is of much poorer quality.’

Faith carefully lifted two small pieces of dark green glass and held them up to the light. One was a beautiful clear emerald, the other was slightly muddier in colour, and the newer glass had a large ripple down the centre. She returned the fragments to the template. ‘It’s as if someone replaced that whole section—a long, thin rectangular section. Not the sort of shape that would come from usual damage.’

‘And that’s significant?’

She frowned and gave him a serious look, one that made him think he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

‘I can’t quite get it out of my head that someone has removed something from the window.’

He pulled in air through his teeth. ‘Something like a message?’

For a second she said nothing, but then she pushed out a breath, stood up and ran a hand through her hair. She smiled at him, a weary little twist of her lips. ‘Ignore me. I think I’m starting to let the magic and the mystery of this place seep into me.’

He stared at the window. Now she’d mentioned it he could see the long, thin rectangle, could imagine a phrase or word being in the place where there was now plain green glass.

‘I don’t think we should tell my grandfather about this.

Not yet.’

If ever.

She nodded her agreement. ‘There’s nothing to tell, anyway. Even if there had been something else in the window, we have no way of knowing what it was.’

That was that. He should feel relieved.

He tilted his head, trying to make it look very much as if he concurred, but he couldn’t quite get rid of the niggling worry that Faith had stumbled onto something.

Marcus was having an in-depth discussion with Oliver, his events manager, about preparations for the Christmas Ball when Faith came skidding into the long gallery. Her face was aglow and her eyes were shining. He knew she had something to tell him about the window. Even so, he couldn’t help but smile.

She grinned back.

Oliver coughed. ‘About the florist, My Lord?’

Marcus kept looking at Faith. He waved a hand in the other man’s direction. ‘I’m sure you’re more than capable of dealing with her,’ he said. He only half noticed the man’s raised eyebrows as he looked between Faith and himself.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Oliver’s low voice muttered beside him, but Marcus was focused on the laughter behind Faith’s eyes.

‘What?’ he said, walking towards her.

Her smile flashed wide, reminding him of how the night sky brightened after a firework exploded.

‘I found it!’

For a moment his stomach dropped.

‘The proof I need,’ she added, her expression dimming slightly in reaction to his non-reaction.

Proof?

It was as if she’d heard the question that had fired off inside his head. She stepped forward, her hand held up in a calming gesture. ‘Samuel Crowbridge proof,’ she explained.

He paused for a moment. While he was truly relieved her news had nothing to do with his grandfather’s wild goose chase, he realised he was a little disappointed, too.

‘How?’ he said.

She glanced over her shoulder, looked at the door that led to the main hall—the route out of the castle and back to the studio. ‘Have you got a minute?’

Marcus turned round to take his leave from Oliver and discovered the man had disappeared. Oh, well.

Faith looked about her as she headed for the door. ‘It’s looking awesome in here,’ she said.

‘I’m glad you like it,’ he replied.

And looking lovely it was. Christmas at Hadsborough had always been special when he was younger, but in recent years it had become a chore. Looking at it now, through Faith’s eyes, he realised she was right. There was a fourteen-foot Christmas tree in the hall. Crimson candles in all shapes and sizes were dotted around—some in wrought-iron stands, some in hurricane lamps—and greenery was everywhere: holly and ivy and fir branches, draped over mantelpieces, over the door frames, wound round the banister of the staircase and dripping from the minstrels’ gallery over the banqueting hall.

There was a noise in the hallway and a few moments later a walking display of red flowers entered the room. Underneath the foliage was a very human pair of legs: sturdy calves finished off with even sturdier shoes. Marcus recognised those shoes. And now he caught on to what Oliver had been trying to warn him about.

Janet Dixon. Florist and one-woman tornado.

Her severe salt-and-pepper hairdo appeared from behind the display and she looked around the room approvingly, as if she deemed it good enough for her arrangement.

Faith walked over and touched the papery petal of one of the fire-red poinsettia. ‘My grandmother loves these,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Just right for the festive season, they are,’ Janet replied. ‘Bringing wishes for mirth and celebration.’

Faith smiled. ‘I’ll tell Gram. She’ll like that.’

‘Oliver is around somewhere if you need assistance,’ Marcus said, then cupped Faith’s elbow in his hand and steered her from the room. ‘Quick!’ he whispered in her ear. ‘She does all the flowers for the castle, and she’ll tell you about every petal in great detail if you stand still long enough.’

Faith chuckled softly and began to jog towards the exit. Marcus kept pace, grinning.

When they reached the oval lawn in front of the castle they slowed to a walk. The day was crisp and sunny and he breathed in the country air. It smelled like December. Like Christmas. And there was the perfect amount of snow for the ball that night—enough to cover the grassy areas and make the castle look magical, but the paths were clear and the roads gritted.

Quite suddenly he stopped and turned to Faith. ‘Come tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a wonderful evening. You’ll be sorry if you miss it.’

I’ll be sorry if you miss it.

Her nose wrinkled and she grimaced. ‘I don’t have anything to wear.’

He had an answer for that. One she’d supplied. ‘We relaxed the dress code for those that want to, remember? On very good advice.’

She made a soft scoffing noise. ‘There’s relaxing and then there’s relaxing. I’m not sure you lowered it enough for jeans and a T-shirt with a few sequins, and that’s the best I can do.’

He started walking again. ‘Well, if that’s the only problem I’m sure we can sort something out.’ There were wardrobes full of ballgowns in the castle. Surely one would fit Faith? He glanced her way. ‘That is the only problem, isn’t it?’

Faith said nothing, just kept walking towards the studio, eyes straight ahead. She was glad Marcus couldn’t see her face, if only for a few moments. She needed time to let the emotion show, let those stupid feelings free, before clamping everything down again.

She’d been so elated when she’d run into the castle to tell him of her discovery, but now all that was squelched beneath the slow and persistent ache in her chest. She couldn’t go to a ball. Who did she think she was? Cinderella? Real life didn’t work out that way. That was why they called them fairy stories. And she was doing her best to remember that, she really was.

You don’t belong here, she told herself. You will never belong here. Don’t set yourself up for more pain by buying into the dream.

She opened the studio door when she reached it and walked inside, back to her work table. Something solid here, at least. This wasn’t clinging on to fantasies and false hope. She had proof.

She picked up the piece of glass that made up the kneeling woman’s lower leg and bare foot, walked over to the large picture window and held it up. She knew the moment Marcus joined her because the air beside her warmed up.

Holding the fragment carefully between thumb and finger at the edges, she pointed to the edge with a finger from the other hand. ‘I found this while I was cleaning the glass—getting rid of the dirt and grime and removing the old grout.’

Marcus leaned closer, inspecting the glass, and Faith braced her free hand on the window, hoping it would stop her quivering. So much for everything staying platonic. Somehow the look but don’t touch agreement she’d manoeuvred him into had intensified everything, done the opposite of what she’d hoped.

‘There’s writing,’ he said, ‘scratched into the glass.’

She nodded. ‘It’s not unusual to find names and dates on fragments of window—little messages from the craftsmen who made or repaired it. Sometimes they are high up in cathedral windows, where nobody would ever see them, just the maker’s secret message that no one knows to look for.’

He looked at her. ‘So you did find a message in the window?’

‘Yes, I did. Just not the one we were looking for.’

We? Not we. You. It wasn’t her quest. She needed to remember that.

She recited what she knew was engraved on the piece of pale glass showing half a foot and some elegant toes. ‘“S.C. These three will abide. 1919.”’

‘“These three will abide”?’

She smiled softly to herself. ‘It’s about One Corinthians, Thirteen, I think. A favourite at weddings.’ She looked around the room. ‘I wish I had a Bible to check it out, though. Don’t happen to have one to hand, do you?’

He shook his head. ‘But I know a place nearby where we can lay hands on one.’

Faith stopped to look at the window in the chapel while Marcus rummaged in the tiny cluttered vestry for a Bible. Even with her knees and lower legs missing, and the bottom section of the window boarded up, the woman captured in stained glass was exquisite.

The expression on her upturned face was pure rapture. All around her flowers bloomed—daisies in the grass, roses beside her in the bushes, climbing ivy above her head, reaching for the stars in the night sky. Faith could see why Crowbridge hadn’t been able to give up on the idea of making his vision come to life, no matter what the medium.

Marcus returned from the vestry with a worn black leather Bible and began to hunt through it. While he was occupied leafing through the tissue-thin pages, Faith allowed herself to do what she normally resisted—let her eyes rove over him. How was it fair for a man to be so beautiful?

Finally he placed a long finger in the centre of a page and smiled before looking up at her.

This time when their eyes met she didn’t get that earth-shifting-on-its-axis sensation. No, this was much more subtle, and probably much more dangerous. She felt a slow slipping, like the motion of a sled at the top of a snow-covered hill as gravity got hold and it started to move. Once it gathered momentum there’d be no stopping it.

He read out a verse, and the old-fashioned language of the King James Version sat well on his tongue. ‘“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”’

Faith’s heart skipped a beat in the pause before he moved on to the next verse.

Know even as also I am known …

She felt as if those words had been waiting all those centuries for here and now—for her and the man reading them to her. Because that was how she felt with him: she knew him, even though they’d only met just over a fortnight ago. How was that possible?

Everyone else, even her family—especially her family—looked at her through tinted glass, only getting glimpses, never seeing or understanding the whole. Somehow this man managed to do what no one else could. But she liked her tinted glass, liked her separateness. At least she had up until now. ‘It’s the next one,’ she said. ‘Read the next one.’

He looked down again. ‘“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”’

She blew out a breath. These three will abide. ‘That reference makes it even more sure. He was finishing his trio of pictures. The other two weren’t complete without this one.’

A sharp pang deep inside her chest cavity caused her to fall silent. That was how she and Hope and Grace had been once upon a time—the terrible trio, Gram had used to call them, with a glimmer in her eyes that was reserved only for grandparents. But they hadn’t been that way for a long time, and Faith suddenly missed them terribly, even though she hadn’t let herself feel that way in years.

If only she could believe that, just like Crowbridge’s pictures, her sisters weren’t complete without her. But the truth was that they and Mom and Dad were fully related to each other, were a complete family unit on their own; she only had one foot in and one foot out. A cuckoo. One who didn’t fit in, who shouldn’t even try.

‘That’s good, then,’ Marcus said beside her.

He was closer now, within touching distance. He could reach for her if he wanted to. And she sensed he did. She closed her eyes and walked away, saw the open door of the vestry and headed towards it. She needed distance, space. Because letting Marcus take care of her, look out for her, even for just a few moments, was almost as dumb as going to the ball that evening. She couldn’t let herself get sucked into this vision of a fairy tale—this place, this man. The ball always ended badly for Cinderella, so she’d much rather be Rapunzel, safe in her turret …

No, she meant tower. Safe in her tower.

She entered and discovered where most of the debris from the tidy chapel had ended up. It was like the cellar all over again.

Bad idea. She didn’t need reminders of the cellar right now. Or, to be more precise, of what had happened in the cellar.

She turned to go, but Marcus was already blocking the door, watching her. She glanced around frantically, looking for something to distract her, to start a conversation. There was a pile of old papers on the desk. She picked them up. On top was a note from the clean-up crew leader.

Found these in a trunk up in the tower. Thought someone might want to look through them.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered. ‘Clear up one dusty dumping ground and then someone finds another one to be dealt with.’ She handed him the papers. ‘Sorry, Your Lordship, but this bunch is all yours.’

He took it from her after giving her a small salute. That made her smile. While he leafed through the papers, many of them torn or mildewed, Faith wandered out to look at the window once again. He followed, still flicking through the stack.

‘Look …’ He pulled a faded and yellowing piece out of the pile. ‘Someone else has done a sketch of the window.’

She walked over and took the piece from his hands, mildly interested. Even folded into quarters Faith recognised the pattern of lines. She’d been working with them all week. But when she unfolded it her hand flew to cover her mouth. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

She shook her head, an expression of total disbelief on her face. Her mouth moved once or twice but no sound came out.

‘Faith?’

She held up a hand and took a deep breath. ‘Marcus, this is the cartoon!’

He frowned, and she knew he was thinking of comic books and kids’ TV shows.

‘The original drawing that the glaziers worked from!’ she explained as she turned it round in her hands and checked the corners and edges. ‘Yes! Look, there’s his signature—Samuel Crowbridge!’

Marcus squinted at the drawing, but he hardly had time to focus on it before she danced away with it, spinning round and then running to the window to hold it up and compare.

‘That’s two pieces of evidence in one day!’ she yelled over her shoulder. It was more than she could ever have hoped for.

But then she stopped smiling, stopped talking, and her eyes grew wide again. She ducked down and spread the cartoon on the floor, smoothing it out gently. She was staring at the drawing, but her brain was refusing to compute. It kept telling her eyes the information they were sending it was wrong. Return to sender.

Marcus walked over and stood behind her to take a look.

And so he should. Right at the bottom, roughly where the rectangle they’d been discussing earlier was, were some words. She looked up at him.

‘This isn’t in the window now. Somebody changed it.’ She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. ‘Somebody took it out.’

Marcus wasn’t moving. His eyes were blinking and his mouth was slightly open. ‘“Proverbs Four, Verse Eighteen,”’ he finally read, his voice hoarse. ‘Why would someone want to take that out?’

Faith swallowed. ‘Because to someone it meant something.’

But that would make it…That would make it …

‘Bertie was right after all,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Once upon a time there was a message in this window.’