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

the extra emphasis in his grandson’s words he gave no sign he’d registered it. He carefully folded his paper, placed it on the table next to him, rose unsteadily to his feet and offered his hand to the stranger in their drawing room.

      ‘Miss McKinnon,’ he said, smiling. ‘Delighted to meet you.’

      The old charmer, Marcus thought.

      Faith McKinnon smiled politely and shook his hand. ‘Hi,’ she said. If she was charmed she didn’t show it.

      ‘Thank you for coming at such short notice,’ his grandfather said as he lowered himself carefully back into his chair. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you resemble your grandmother.’

      The blank, businesslike expression on Faith McKinnon’s face was replaced with one of surprise. ‘Really? Th-thank you.’

      Marcus frowned. She’d been telling the truth, then. Yet the reliable hairs at the back of his neck had informed him she’d been lying about something.

      Why was she puzzled that someone had said she resembled a family member? He glanced at the portrait of the third Duke over the mantelpiece and raised his fingers absentmindedly to touch the bridge of his nose. There was no escaping that distinctive feature in the Huntington family line. They all had it. Genetics had branded them and marked them as individual connections in a long chain. And, as the only direct heir, Marcus was determined not to be the weak link that ended the line.

      He turned to his grandfather. ‘Miss McKinnon tells me you knew her grandmother?’

      Before his grandfather could answer their guest interrupted. ‘Call me Faith, please.’

      Bertie nodded and smiled back at her. ‘Mary and I were sweethearts for a time when I was in America after the war,’ his grandfather said. ‘She was an exceptional woman.’

      Marcus turned sharply to look at him. Sweethearts? He’d never heard this before—never heard mention of a romance before his grandmother. It made him realise just how silent his family stayed on certain matters, that maybe he didn’t know everything about his own history.

      ‘Please do sit down, Miss McK…Faith,’ his grandfather said.

      She chose the edge of the sofa, her knees pressed together and her hands in her lap. Marcus would have been quite content to remain standing, but he felt as if he was towering above the other two, somehow excluded from what they were about to discuss, so he dropped into the armchair opposite his grandfather, crossing one long leg over the other. But he couldn’t get comfortable, as he would have done if it had just been him and his grandfather alone as usual.

      ‘So, Grandfather…what has all this got to do with the window?’

      At the mention of the window Miss McKinnon’s eyes widened and she leaned forward. ‘Gram said you need help with it?’

      Marcus kept on watching her. Her voice was low and calm, but behind her speech was something else. As if his words had lit a fire inside her. Interesting. Just exactly what was she hoping to gain from this situation? He wouldn’t have pegged her for a con artist or a gold-digger, but they came in all shapes and sizes. Stepmothers one and two had proved that admirably.

      His grandfather nodded. ‘It’s in a chapel on the estate here. I wouldn’t have thought any more of it, except that a few months ago my father’s younger brother died, and his widow found some letters my father had written to him in his personal effects. She wondered if I’d like to see them.’

      Marcus squinted slightly. Yes, that would make sense. Now he thought about it, he realised it had been around that time that Grandfather had started muttering to himself and begun hiding himself away in the library, poring over old papers.

      Bertie stared into the crackling fire in the grate. ‘My father died when I was very young, you see, and she thought I might get more of a sense of who he was through them.’

      Marcus resisted the urge to scowl. After his recent heart surgery, and with his soaring blood pressure, the doctors had said his grandfather needed rest and quiet. No stress. They had definitely not prescribed getting all stirred up about a family mystery—if indeed there was one. It would be best to leave it all alone, let time settle like silt over those memories until they were buried. There had been enough scandal in the present. They didn’t need extra dredged up from the past.

      Pursuing this thing with the window was a bad idea on so many levels. That was why he intended to get the facts out of his grandfather quickly and show this Miss McKinnon the blasted window, if that was what she really wanted. Because the sooner she was off the estate and he could get things back to normal the better.

      CHAPTER TWO

      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