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

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.

      She wasn’t the only coward.

      He felt it, too. She knew he did. But he wanted it even less than her physical presence on his territory, and Faith wasn’t going to push it. No point trying to wriggle yourself into somewhere you didn’t belong.

      She followed him inside, blinking a few times to adjust her eyes to the relative gloom. As always when she entered a church her eyes were drawn immediately to the windows at either end. Hardly able to help it, she ignored where her host was trying to lead her and veered off to stare at the multi-paned window at the back of the church near the door.

      Soft light filtered through the glass, filling the dusty interior with colour. She held her breath. Both the glass picture high on the wall and the afternoon sun were beautiful in their own right, but when they met…it was magic.

      Their