A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle. Shirley Jump

abrupt …’

      A little? And he didn’t look that sorry to her. If anything he’d clenched up further. Her younger sister would have described him as having a stick up his—

      ‘I’m sure you can understand how difficult it is to have your home invaded,’ he added, but Faith still wasn’t quite sure she was off the ‘invader’ list.

      ‘People think that because we open our home to them for a few days each week it is somehow public property.’

      She nodded. She knew all about invading families, about being a cuckoo in the nest, but she wasn’t going to tell this man that. It certainly wouldn’t endear her to him any further.

      ‘Bertie isn’t in the best of health at the moment,’ he added gravely. ‘I’ve been trying to make sure he doesn’t get too upset.’ He led the way back through the thinning mist round the edge of the lake. ‘Difficult, though,’ he added, ‘when he’s obsessed with this damn window.’

      He strode ahead, and Faith followed him up a short incline and onto the first, plainer stone bridge, through a large arch under the gatehouse and onto an oval lawn that filled more than half of the first castle island. She tried not to let her eyes pop out of her head.

      Wow.

      The castle was even better close up than it had been rising through the mist. A gravel pathway encircled the lawn and led up to a vast front door covered in iron studs.

      This Bertie had his office in the castle itself? Nice.

      As her guide opened the front door and stood aside to let her pass, he surprised her by allowing one side of his mouth to hitch up in the start of a smile as he checked his watch.

      ‘I imagine Bertie will be finished with his morning tea by now. I’ll take you through to the drawing room.’

      Faith looked at him sharply. ‘You mean Bertie lives here?’

      The almost-smile disappeared. ‘Of course he lives here. It’s his home.’ He shook his head. ‘You Americans really do have some funny ideas, you know …’

      Faith held her breath. She would have liked to challenge him on that last comment, but two things stopped her. First, it would have given her lack of knowledge about this Bertie away. Second, she was too busy making sense of all the mismatched pieces of information running round her head.

      Gram had left a heck of a lot out of her letter, hadn’t she?

      She cleared her throat. ‘Does Bertie have a full title?’

      He gave her the patronising kind of look that told her he thought she’d finally started asking sensible questions. ‘Albert Charles Baxter Huntington, seventh Duke of Hadsborough.’

      Faith blinked slowly, trying to give nothing away.

      Act like you knew that.

      A duke? Gram had had a fling with a duke? She’d thought from the tone of the letter that he’d been a fellow academic or master craftsman working on a project. She hadn’t even considered that Bertie might own the window. And the building it inhabited. And this castle. And probably most of the land for miles around. Part of her was shocked at her conservative grandmother’s secret past. Another part wanted to punch the air and say, Go, Gram!

      Faith’s throat was suddenly very dry. ‘And that would make you …?’

      He frowned, then held out his hand, doing nothing to erase the horizontal lines that were bunching up his forehead. ‘Marcus Huntington—estate manager of Hadsborough Castle …’

      Faith looked at his hand and swallowed. Hesitantly, she pulled her hand from her mitten and slid it into his. Since he hadn’t been wearing gloves she’d expected his skin to be ice-cold, but his grip was firm and his palm was warm against hers.

      She looked down at their joined hands. This felt right. As if she remembered doing this before and had been waiting to do it again. Worse than that, she didn’t want to let go. She looked back up at him, hoping she didn’t look as panic-stricken as she felt. That was when her heart really started to thump.

      He was staring at their hands, too. Then he looked up and his eyes met hers. She saw matching confusion and surprise in his expression.

      He cleared his throat. ‘Bertie’s grandson and heir.’

      Marcus pulled his hand away from hers, ignoring the pleasant ripple of sensation as her fingertips brushed his palm. Not the cliché of an electric shock racing up his arm. No, something far more unsettling—a sense of warmth, a sense of how right her hand felt in his. And that couldn’t be, because everything about this situation was wrong. She was not supposed to be here, trespassing on his family’s lives and stirring up trouble.

      But it hadn’t been just the touch. It had started before that, when he’d caught her walking down by the lake. There was something about those small, understated features and those direct, reasonable brown eyes that totally caught him off guard.

      And if there was one thing he hated it was being off guard.

      However, when she’d slid her hand into his, and all the ear-pounding had stopped and his senses had calmed down and come to rest …

      If anything that had been worse.

      He couldn’t let himself fall into that trap again, so it was time to do something about it. Time to find out what Faith McKinnon wanted and deal with her as quickly as possible.

      ‘If you’ll follow me …?’

      He turned and led the way through a flagstone-paved entrance hall, its arches and whitewashed walls decorated with remnants of long-ago disassembled suits of armour, then showed her into the yellow drawing room—the smallest and warmest reception room on the ground floor of the castle.

      Gold-coloured damask covered the walls, fringed with heavy brocade tassels under the plaster coving at the top. There were antique tables covered in trinkets and family photographs, a grand piano, and a large squashy sofa in front of the vast marble fireplace. Off to one side of the hearth, in a high-backed leather armchair, reading his daily newspaper, was his grandfather. He looked so innocent. No one would guess he’d ignited a bit of a family row with this window obsession.

      Marcus wasn’t exactly sure what the kerfuffle was about—something that had happened decades earlier, in a time when stiff-lipped silence had been the preferred solution to every problem—but his great-aunt Tabitha had warned him that Bertie was about to open a Pandora’s box of trouble, and nothing any of them learned about whatever the family had been keeping quiet for more than half a century would make anyone any happier.

      Disruption was the last thing he needed—especially as he’d spent the last couple of years getting everything back on an even keel. Bertie might live at Hadsborough now, but in his younger years he’d all but abandoned his duty to explore the world.

      Unfortunately he’d passed his laissez-faire attitude down to his only son, and before his death Marcus’s father had just seen the castle as somewhere impressive to bring his business friends for the odd weekend. He’d also failed to keep hold of three wives, and the resulting divorce settlements had crippled the family finances further. But that was just the tip of the iceberg where his father had been concerned. It had taken centuries to build this family’s reputation, and his father had managed to rip it to shreds within twelve months.

      So Marcus had left the City and come to Hadsborough to be by his grieving grandfather’s side. It was his job to claw it all back now. The Huntington family legacy had been neglected for too many generations. Taken for granted. These things couldn’t just be left to run their own course; they needed to be managed. Guarded. Or there would be nothing left—not even a good name—to pass on to his children when they came along.

      ‘Grandfather?’

      The old man looked up from his paper, the habitual twinkle in his eye. Marcus nodded towards their guest.