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

Faith intended to do.

      The brightness behind Faith’s lids reminded her of where she was, and why, before she opened her eyes the following morning. She blinked and rolled over to face the window. Snow was piled high on the thin stone ledge. Not good news if she was planning to escape to her little seaside hideaway today.

      The bed had been comfy, but she’d had a metaphorical pea under her mattress. Or in her head, to be more accurate—a brooding presence that had been at the fringes of her consciousness all night. As if someone had been looking over her shoulder while she slept.

      It was hardly surprising. She’d been aware of his appraising eyes on her all the way through dinner last night, and it had stopped her enjoying what must have been amazing food. Suddenly she’d got all self-conscious about which silver-plated fork to pick up and what she should do with her napkin.

      He didn’t know what to think of her, did he? Wasn’t sure if she was friend or foe.

      She’d wanted to jump up and shout, Neither! It felt wrong to have been admitted into not only their home but their daily life. I agree. I shouldn’t be here.

      Well, hopefully, if the weather had been kind overnight, she wouldn’t be for much longer.

      She got out of bed and shuffled over to the window, the comforter wrapped around her, and groaned. It was still snowing hard. Enough for her to know she wasn’t going anywhere today, and possibly not tomorrow—not unless the Huntingtons had a snow plough tucked away in one of their garages.

      Faith sighed as she watched the scene outside her window. She hadn’t seen snow this thick for years—not since she’d last gone home for the Christmas holidays. A little jab of something under her ribcage made her breath catch. Homesickness? Surely not. The bust-ups at Christmas were one of the reasons she’d avoided December in Connecticut ever since.

      She glanced at her coat, hanging on the back of the door, remembering how Gram’s letter was still stuffed into one of the pockets. She still hadn’t read it properly. Now she felt guilty. She stared at her coat. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy Gram’s lively and warm narrative, but she knew there was always a price to pay for the pleasure.

      Gram’s letters always seemed so innocent—full of quirky anecdotes about town life—but in between the news of whose dog had had puppies, complaints about the mayor and Gram’s book club gossip was a plea.

      Come home.

      Faith knew she should, and she planned to some time soon, but she really didn’t want to this Christmas. She was too busy, too exhausted. And if both her sisters and her mother turned up there’d be more than enough noise and drama and no one would need Faith there to keep up the numbers. She’d given up trying to be family referee a long time ago, so there was no reason for her to be there.

      She walked over to the door and retrieved the crumpled lilac letter. She stared at it for a moment, steeling herself for the inevitable tug on her heartstrings, and then she pulled the pages from the envelope and read.

      It was the same old news about the same old town, but it still made her smile.

      When she’d finished she reached into her purse and took out the other item that had been in the envelope. Gram had got tired of hinting about her girls coming home and had just gone for the jugular: she’d sent plane tickets to each of the McKinnon sisters, and she’d also requested a ‘favour’ from each of them. So one sister was travelling from Sydney to Canada, the other had been summoned back to Beckett’s Run, and Faith had wound up here, at Hadsborough.

      Crafty old woman, Faith thought, frowning. Gram was counting on the fact the sisters wouldn’t refuse her—the favour or the trip home.

      But Faith didn’t think she could face it. It would be easier to hide away in her rented cottage until her next job in York. But if she was going to do that she needed time to work up the courage to tell Gram no.

      She sighed and pulled yesterday’s sweater from her bag. Yesterday’s jeans, too. But before she went downstairs she had some internet research to do. Today she was not going to get caught out by Marcus Huntington.

      It was still snowing hard when Marcus made the short walk from the estate office in the old stable block back to the castle. He prised his boots from his feet and left them by the kitchen door, then shook the ice off his coat before hanging it on a hook.

      He’d almost forgotten about their unexpected guest until he walked into the drawing room and discovered Faith McKinnon sitting on the sofa she’d occupied yesterday. This time, instead of perching on the edge of the seat, she was sitting back against the comfy cushions, her legs crossed, drinking tea out of their Royal Doulton.

      When she heard him approach she turned to look at him and put her teacup back on its saucer on the small mahogany table. The warmth that had been in her eyes faded.

      ‘Good morning, Lord Westerham,’ she said evenly.

      Ah, she’d done her homework, had she? Discovered that as Bertie’s heir he had the use of one of his grandfather’s lesser titles. Not only that, she’d worked out the proper form of address for a courtesy earl. He wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or irritated. It would depend on whether she was trying to be polite or to butter him up. He could accept the former, but he detested the latter, and he didn’t know enough about her or her motives to guess which was true.

      ‘I’ve been talking to the landlord of the Duke’s Head in Hadsborough village,’ he said, looking at his grandfather. ‘He says the snow is drifting and it’s already more than a foot deep in some of the lanes.’

      ‘But the snow ploughs will be here soon, right?’ Faith stopped abruptly, as if she hadn’t meant to blurt that out.

      He gave a rueful smile. ‘Oh, they’ll be here—eventually.’

      ‘And by “eventually” you mean …?’

      Bertie reached over and patted her arm. ‘They’ll concentrate on the motorways and the main roads first,’ he said. ‘We don’t get much traffic in this neck of the woods. But don’t you worry…They’ll be here in a few days.’

      ‘That’s crazy! At home in Beckett’s Run the roads would be clear by the next morning.’

      Marcus stepped forward. ‘Unfortunately this isn’t Beckett’s Run.’

      She looked up at him, the look on her face telling him she was all too clear on that point. He met her gaze—the challenge she gave without even opening her mouth. And that was when it happened again. That strange feeling of everything swirling round them coming to rest. And this time they hadn’t even been touching.

      Faith was sitting stock still, her face deadpan, but he saw the flash of panic in her eyes before the shutters came down.

      ‘Sorry, my dear,’ his grandfather said, looking less than crestfallen at the prospect of having an unexpected house guest. ‘It seems as if you’re stuck with us for a while yet.’

      Faith tore her gaze from Marcus’s and fixed them on Bertie. ‘In that case,’ she said, in a very brisk and businesslike fashion, ‘is there somewhere I can plug my laptop in? I might as well get on with that research.’

      She was meticulous. He’d give her that. Marcus watched as Faith wrote carefully in a large notebook with a pencil. She’d been at it since he’d returned just after lunch, pulling up research on her laptop and then recording it in her notebook in a clear, neat hand. He had the feeling she wasn’t the kind to scribble away furiously, no matter how excited she got.

      He looked out of the window. The low sun was a pale glowing disc in a gunmetal sky. It had been snowing too hard most of the day for their guest to venture to the chapel, but now the weather had lost its fervour and flakes drifted lazily towards the ground. The forecasts had predicted clear skies tomorrow. He hoped they were right.

      ‘Haven’t you got other things you need to do?’ Faith asked quietly as she reached for the mouse once again.