A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle

Faith shrugged and handed him back the first seventy-eight. ‘Gram is the only one who lives in Beckett’s Run now. One sister lives in Sydney, the other travels all over for work, and my mother just…drifts.’

She wandered off to the other side of the room and started nosing around in a cardboard box over there.

Hmm…One minute she was spouting on about community spirit and getting involved, but the first mention of home and family and she was off like a shot. What was all that about?

He decided it was none of his business. He didn’t like people poking around in his family’s affairs, and maybe Faith didn’t either. Instead of pursuing the matter further he concentrated on the pile of records—a few of which he suspected were collectors’ items—and they worked in silence again after that. Not so comfortable this time, however.

He checked his watch again after he’d glanced up to see the sky outside was inky black. Faith saw his movement and stopped what she was doing.

‘Time to call it a day,’ he said.

She nodded from behind her high stone walls. ‘Good. I’m starving.’

He walked over to the plastic crates and put his most recent finds next to the old records in the top one. He snapped the lid back on, then made his way to the door. He tugged the handle, and it turned, but the door itself didn’t budge. He tried again. Not even a groan. The heavy oak door was stuck fast. Old Mr Grey had cautioned him to use the doorstop, and up until this evening he had, but Faith had been the last one in and he’d forgotten to share that vital bit of information with her.

And now they were trapped in here. Alone.

CHAPTER SIX

BEHIND him, Faith groaned. ‘Really? Stuck in the castle dungeons?’

‘They’re not dungeons,’ he reminded her calmly. ‘No leg irons or racks here. It’s just a cellar.’

‘Can we open a window? Yell for help?’

He marched over to the first high window and tugged at the metal loop. Also stuck. However, he had better luck with the next one along. The window was hinged at the bottom, and he managed to pull it open so there was a gap of four or five inches at the top. A small shower of crunchy snow landed on his arm and he brushed it away before dragging a smallish wooden table over to stand underneath. Once he was sure it would take his weight he stood on it, so his face was near to the opening and shouted.

They waited.

Nothing.

He tried again.

Same result.

‘Here…Maybe two voices are better than one.’

Before he realised what she was doing, Faith jumped up and joined him on the table. She wobbled as her back foot joined the other one and instinctively grabbed on to the front of his jumper for support. Marcus looked down at her. Her eyes were wide and her breath was coming in little gasps. His brain told him it was just the shock of almost tumbling down onto the hard stone floor, but his body told him something rather different.

Kiss her, it said.

Faith’s mouth had been slightly open, but she closed it now, even as her eyes grew larger.

Nothing happened. Nobody moved. He wasn’t even sure either of them breathed. He could read it in her face. She’d had exactly the same thought at the same time, and she was equally 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.’