A Christmas Letter. Shirley Jump

frozen, stuck between doing the sensible thing and doing what her instincts were telling her to do.

      He wasn’t sure who moved first. Maybe they both did at the same time. Her fingers uncurled from the front of his sweater and she dropped her head. He looked away. It seemed neither of them were ready to take that leap.

      He turned back to the window and yelled, venting all his frustration through the narrow gap. After a second Faith joined him. When they were out of breath they waited, side by side and silent, for anything—the sound of footsteps, another voice. All they heard was the lap of water against the edge of the path outside and the distant squawk of a goose.

      He jumped down from the table, got some distance between them. ‘There’s nobody out there. Too cold, too dark.’

      Faith sat down on the table and then slid onto the floor. She stayed close to it, gripping on to the edge with one hand and tracing the fingers of the other over its grainy surface. ‘What about people inside the castle?’

      He shook his head. ‘The walls are at least a foot thick. I doubt if the sound even left this room.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s not long until dinner, though. Someone will miss us soon.’

      She nodded, but still looked concerned.

      Marcus knew she had good reason to. Another hour, at least, and he’d already thought about kissing her once. Thankfully he had a solution to their current predicament that his ancestors wouldn’t have had. He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket.

      Signals in the area could be patchy, especially near the castle. He checked the display on his phone. One minuscule bar of signal, but maybe that was enough. He tried dialling the estate office, just in case anyone was still there. His phone beeped at him. Call failed. The signal indicator on his phone was now a cross instead of any bars. Damn.

      ‘No signal,’ he said to Faith. It seemed these thick stone walls could withstand any means of escape.

      She jumped up onto the table again. ‘Here. Pass it to me.’

      Silently he handed his phone over, and she held it up to the window and pressed a button to redial. He held his breath, but a few moments later she shook her head and handed the phone back to him.

      ‘Try sending a text. I’ve worked in plenty of old buildings, including basements, and sometimes I can get texts even if I can’t receive calls.’

      He nodded and tapped in a message to Shirley. She always kept her phone in her pocket. In a home like his, sometimes shouting up the stairs wasn’t enough. Mobiles were usually pretty reliable—but obviously not when most of the room was underground and surrounded by water.

      An icon appeared, telling him it was sending, but a minute later his phone was still chugging away. The blasted thing wouldn’t go.

      He put the handset up near the window, balancing it on the frame. ‘Better chance of getting a signal,’ he said. ‘Now we just need to wait.’

      He stole a look at her. Her mask of composure was back in place. No one would guess that moments ago she’d been flushed and breathless, lips slightly parted…It was as if that moment on top of the table had never happened.

      Right there. That was why his warning bells rang—why he shouldn’t think about kissing her. It had nothing to do with her nationality or her background, and everything to do with Faith herself.

      The woman who lived behind those high walls of hers—Technicolor Faith—would be very easy to fall for. He felt he’d always known her, had been waiting for her to stroll across his lawn and come crashing into his life. He could feel that familiar tug, that naïve, misguided urge to lay everything he had and everything he was at her feet.

      But that ability of hers to disconnect, to detach herself emotionally, was what kept him backing off. At least Amanda had tried; Faith McKinnon would always be just a fingertip out of reach.

      Coward.

      He ignored the voice inside his head, knowing he was right. He wasn’t going to be that weak ever again. So he decided he needed to do something to fill the rest of the time rather than just stand close to her, staring at her.

      Conversation would be good. It would stop him thinking about doing other things with his lips. But Faith had already resisted his attempt to talk about her family, so he needed another subject. Thankfully, he knew her favourite one. If he could get her talking about the window the hour would fly by.

      ‘You believe Samuel Crowbridge made the window, don’t you?’ he asked.

      She trapped her bottom lip under her teeth and then let it slide slowly out again, exhaling hard, as if she didn’t quite want to say what she was about to say. Marcus tried not to watch, tried not to imagine what it would feel like if it were not her teeth but his lips …

      ‘Yes…yes. I do,’ she said, and that light he’d been both dreading and waiting for crept into her eyes. ‘But believing isn’t enough. I need solid proof.’

      ‘For yourself? Or for others?’

      She looked perplexed. ‘Both. You can’t put stock in dreams and wishes, can you? At some point you have to have hard evidence.’

      Marcus frowned. ‘Sometimes one doesn’t have that luxury,’ he said, his tone bare. ‘Sometimes you just have to do without.’

      That was what he’d done after his father’s death. No one had really known the truth of what had happened. He’d tried very hard to believe what people had said—that it had just been an accident—but the collapse of the family firm had started him questioning everything about his father, and he hadn’t been able to shake the cynical little voice inside his head.

      ‘Of course hard evidence is preferable, but it’s not always there. Sometimes you just have to take a leap and hope you’re jumping in the right direction,’ he added.

      Faith gave him a weary look. ‘Unfortunately the academic community don’t share your faith in gut instincts.’

      ‘Have you found anything more about the other painting? Hope, wasn’t it?’

      She shook her head. ‘Not much. The family who own it aren’t ones for sharing. I can’t even find a picture of it. They also own any sketches and documents pertaining to the original commission, so it’s unlikely I’ll get any confirmation from that source.’ She opened the rolltop of an old bureau that had previously been blocked by a hatstand, and coughed as the dust flew into the air. ‘That’s why finding something here at Hadsborough is so important. It could be my only chance.’

      As she searched a small smile curved her lips. He instinctively knew she was thinking about something that amused her.

      ‘What?’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘A goofy coincidence. It’s just that the names of the three paintings are almost a match for me and my two sisters.’

      Marcus’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Faith, Hope and Charity?’

      She walked towards him slowly. ‘No, my littlest sister would have gone nuts if that was the case. Mom switched Charity to Grace.’

      ‘What are the odds?’ he muttered. ‘Are you the oldest?’

      She shook her head and leaned against the desk next to him. ‘Mom never was one for sticking to convention. I’m in the middle. We all used to complain about our names, of course. Can you imagine the teasing we got at school?’

      He made a wry face. ‘I went to an all-boys boarding school. If that’s not an education in just how abominable children can be, I don’t know what is.’

      She nodded in sympathy. ‘Grace complains the most, even though I think she’s got the best end of the deal.’ She gave him a devilish little grin. ‘But when we were younger Hope and I had a way of shutting her up.’

      ‘Oh, yes?’

      She nodded, then smiled to herself