A Christmas Letter. Shirley Jump

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СКАЧАТЬ to this stuck-up…whoever he was. No matter how dashing he’d looked walking out of the mist.

      ‘No, you listen,’ she replied firmly. ‘I have every right to be here. I have an appointment with Bertie.’

      He stopped herding her towards the exit and his eyes narrowed further. She had no doubt that a sharp mind went hand in hand with those aristocratic looks. ‘You mean Albert Huntington?’

      Faith took a split second longer than she would have liked to reply. ‘Yes, of course.’ There couldn’t be more than one Albert—Bertie—around this place, could there? That had to be him.

      Unfortunately Mr Tall, Dark and Full of Himself didn’t miss a trick. He spotted her hesitation and instantly grabbed her arm again, started marching her back towards the gate. ‘Nice try, but nobody but the family calls him Bertie—and you’re from the wrong continent entirely to be considered a close relation.’

      Hah. That was all he knew.

      ‘Actually, my father is as English as you are,’ she added icily. ‘And my grandmother—’ the American one, but she didn’t mention that ‘—is an old friend of his. I’m here to give my professional opinion on a stained glass window!’

      He let go of her arm and turned to look her up and down. ‘You’re the expert Bertie’s asked to look at the window?’

      Close enough to the truth. She nodded. ‘I believe it might need some kind of repair.’

      Okay, she didn’t actually know if any restoration work was needed, but why would Gram have sent her here otherwise? It was a pretty good guess, and she really, really wanted to sneak a look at that window at least once before this man frogmarched her off the estate. Not one of Crowbridge’s other windows—and there hadn’t been many—had survived the Blitz. This could be a significant discovery.

      He stopped looking irritated and purposeful, closed his eyes and ran a hand through his dark hair before glancing back in the direction of the castle. ‘I hoped he’d given up on that idea.’ He gave her a weary look. ‘I suppose I’d better take you to meet him, then, Miss …?’

      ‘McKinnon. Faith McKinnon,’ she said, trying to get her voice to remain even.

      ‘I apologise, Miss McKinnon, if I’ve been a little 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 СКАЧАТЬ