Читать книгу A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle - Shirley Jump, Donna Alward - Страница 9

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.’

He gave her a look that told her she didn’t know much about anything. ‘A place like this eats money,’ he said carefully. ‘I know it might not look like it from the outside, but even Hadsborough feels the pinch of tough economic times.’ He shook his head. ‘People are worried about getting stuck on the motorway in the snow, or stranded at the station if trains get cancelled.’

She picked up a dusty newspaper and looked at it. ‘Can’t they just put on some snowboots and walk?’

‘Most of the guests aren’t local. The ball is a very exclusive event, and people come from all over the south of England.’

He mentioned a ticket price that made her eyes water.

‘No wonder people are wary about spending that much and then not even getting here.’ She replaced the newspaper on its pile. ‘You know what? You should drop the ticket price and get the locals to come—have a party for the villagers. I know it won’t raise as much money, but there’s a whole heap of other stuff you could do quite cheaply—’

Marcus stood up ramrod-straight. ‘Miss McKinnon, I’m very grateful for your…input…but my family has been running this estate for three hundred years. Maybe you should concentrate your opinions on your own area of expertise.’

She blinked. Well, that told her, didn’t it?

But she found she wasn’t going to sigh and ignore it, as she would have done if one of her sisters had delivered such a stinging put-down. She found she couldn’t just walk away from Marcus Huntington when he issued a challenge.

‘Actually, when it comes to Christmas I’m something of an expert.’

His face was deadpan. ‘You do surprise me. I hadn’t pegged you as the reindeer jumper and flashing Santa earrings type.’

‘Well, I didn’t reckon you’d be quite so up your own butt when I first met you, but it seems you’re not the only one who can be wrong.’

His expression was thunderous for a moment, but all of a sudden he threw back his head and laughed. It was a rich, earthy sound, most unlike his clipped speaking voice, and it made him seem like a completely different man. Faith wasn’t sure if she wanted to march over there and slap him, or if she should just let go of the tension in her jaw and join him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, when he’d finally regained his composure. ‘You’re right. I was being horrendously pompous.’ And then he spoilt his apology by bursting out laughing again. He dragged his hand over his eyes then looked at her. ‘You’re very direct, aren’t you?’

This time Faith joined him. Just a little chuckle. It was hard not to when she saw the warmth in those normally intense blue eyes.

‘So where does all this Christmas expertise come from?’ he asked.

‘I grew up in a small town that takes the holidays very seriously,’ she replied. ‘Anything that’s fixed down—and a few things that aren’t—are in danger of being draped with fairy lights and tinsel during the week-long festival each year, running up to Christmas Eve.’ She shook her head gently, smiling. ‘I pretended I hated it when I was a teenager.’ The smile faded away. ‘I suppose I kinda miss it.’

Wow. She hadn’t expected those words to come out of her mouth. She suddenly remembered those plane tickets burning a hole in her purse upstairs in the turret.

‘When were you last home for Christmas?’ he asked.

‘Five years ago.’

That was a long time, wasn’t it? Suddenly a pang of something hot speared her deep inside. She brushed it away. She didn’t do homesickness. It was probably something to do with the fact that Marcus had stepped closer, and the fact that he’d stopped glaring at her and was looking down at her with a mixture of understanding and curiosity. Which meant it was her cue to step away.

‘Anyway,’ she said brightly, shuffling backwards, ‘I’m sure there’s something you could do here that wouldn’t cost the earth and would generate some income.’

Marcus gave her another one of his dry half-smiles. ‘As long as it doesn’t involve putting a light-up Santa and sleigh on the castle roof I’ll keep an open mind.’

She nodded. ‘Good. Now, where do you think is the best place to start sorting through this junk?’

‘Please, Faith,’ he said, but the smile didn’t fade completely, making her feel like a co-conspirator rather than an adversary, ‘this isn’t all junk—some of it is history.’

He’d called her Faith instead of Miss McKinnon. Wonders would never cease.

She smiled. ‘Okay…Which bits of this history do you think we should put in a garbage sack first?’

Marcus started to open his mouth.

‘Kidding!’ she added quickly. ‘Really, you are too easy sometimes.’

Marcus shook his head and turned away to investigate a pile of tattered copies of Punch! Even though his back was turned she could sense he was closer to smiling instead of scowling—which made things more comfortable on quite a few fronts—and they worked side by side for the next half an hour in something approaching comfortable silence.

Then Marcus checked his watch and showed her the time. ‘Not long until dinner,’ he said.

They both straightened, dusted themselves off and looked at each other.

Clunk. It happened again. That feeling of coming to rest, slotting in. Faith held her breath.

‘And we’ll carry on tomorrow?’ she asked, letting the air out in one go.

He nodded. ‘It depends what the weather does, but I can’t see those supplies you ordered getting through for another couple of days at least.’

‘In that case I have one request,’ she said.

Marcus’s brows drew together. He didn’t much like being told what to do, did he? Didn’t like being indebted to anyone in any way. The humour drained from his face, and once again she was reminded of a sleek hunting animal.

The easy banter they’d shared for a few minutes had lulled her into a sense of false security—made her think she could make him less of a threat. She’d been wrong. Just ask its prey how tame the hound was; it knew the wildness that lay underneath the groomed and elegant coat. It didn’t attempt to befriend it; it took one look and ran. A lesson she should not forget.

She folded her arms across her chest. ‘The badger stays,’ she said, doing her best to appear composed and in control under his gaze. It would be a good reminder for her every time she was tempted to do something dumb. A stuffed and glassy-eyed chaperone. One that obviously hadn’t run when it should have done.

The intensity of his gaze didn’t waver, but his lips curved into a grudging smile and he nodded.

Unfortunately his change of expression didn’t help matters one bit. Faith felt that smile down to her toes. Nope. Not safe at all, that smile.

As he opened the filing cabinet drawer and lifted the badger out she drew in a shaky breath.

She needed help. Big time. Because if he kept looking at her like that the woman in Bertie’s window wouldn’t be the only one on her knees asking for heavenly assistance. Faith would be right there beside her.