A Christmas Letter: Snowbound in the Earl's Castle

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 entrance had disturbed a hundred million dust motes, and now the specks danced in the light, as if an unseen artist had painstakingly coloured each one a different shade. And not only did the shapes and pictures in the window sing, but some of that colour—that life—pierced the darkness of the sanctuary on beams of light, leaving kaleidoscope shadows where it fell.

She sighed, even though she could tell at a glance that this was not the window Bertie had been talking about. Too old. A nineteenth-century creation featuring Bible characters dressed in medieval garb. Didn’t matter. She was still captivated. These grand scenes always reminded her of the coloured plates from her favourite storybook as a child—noble men and beautiful ladies in flowing, heavy robes, bright lush pastures and an achingly blue heaven above.

‘It’s over here,’ a voice said from somewhere close to the altar.

Faith took one last look at the window and turned, screwing her ‘don’t care’ face back in place as she did so, and walked towards where Marcus Huntington was standing, hands in his pockets.

As she walked down the aisle she looked around. It was obvious someone had been trying to tidy the place up, but there was still a long way to go. Nothing a mop and a bucket and some elbow grease wouldn’t sort out, though.

‘We plan to reopen the chapel this year and have a Carol Service here,’ he explained, then stooped into a smaller niche in a side wall, revealing a much smaller stained glass window. He stepped back to give her access, but turned his intense stare her direction. ‘So…what do you think?’

Faith took a few paces towards the narrow window. It was maybe a foot wide and six feet high, with typical Gothic revival tracery at the top. Her heart began to pump. Could this really be it?

The glass was all rich colours and delicate paintwork: a fair-haired woman knelt praying at the bottom of the picture, her palms pressed together, face upturned, eyes fixed on the blaze of celestial glory at the top of the window. She was surrounded by flowers and shrubs, and a small dog sat at her feet, gazing at her in much the same way she was gazing at the heavens. It was stunning. And unusual. More like a painting in its composition than a church window.

There was something in the woman’s face…Something about her expression of pure joy that made Faith want to lean in and touch her—see if she could absorb some of that emotion by pure osmosis. Truly, the window was enchanting.

She turned round to see what her reluctant host could tell her about it and bumped into something warm and solid. She’d been aware that he’d been standing behind her, but not that he’d stepped in closer.

‘S-sorry!’ she stuttered, finding herself staring into his chest.

‘Well?’ he asked, a hint of impatience in his tone.

She knew she really ought to step back, move away, but her gaze had snagged on a feathery piece of cobweb that was stuck in his hair just above his right temple. For some reason she was suddenly much more interested in reaching up and gently brushing it away than turning round and looking at the coloured glass and lead she’d been so desperate to set eyes on.

What was even more worrying was the fact that she’d almost done it anyway—as if she’d known him long enough to share that easy kind of intimacy. It seemed unnatural not to.

Breathe, Faith. Turn around. Just because he looks like a modern-day Prince Charming it doesn’t mean you should audition for the role of Cinderella. That would be a really dumb idea.

He frowned, followed her gaze, and discovered the cobweb on his own. He brushed it away with long fingers and then did the oddest thing: he chuckled softly. To himself, though. None of the humour was to be shared with her. But it changed his face completely, softening the angular planes, and made him seem younger, less stand-offish. Faith discovered she’d stopped breathing.

No. Don’t you do it, Faith McKinnon. Don’t you believe where there’s no hope. You learned those lessons young. You’re not that soft-hearted girl any more, remember?

She didn’t smile back at him, but turned abruptly and stared at the window again. He moved away, thank goodness, walked closer to the window to inspect it for himself. They remained silent for a few minutes, both focused intently on the gently lit glass picture in front of them.

Marcus came and stood beside her. ‘For a long time all the windows here were boarded up. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a really good look at this before. It’s actually quite beautiful.’

Faith nodded, still staring at the golden-haired woman. ‘If I lived here I’d come to see it every day.’

He folded his arms and looked around. ‘This chapel hasn’t been used by the family for decades. No one has been here much since—’ He stopped short, as if a jagged thunderbolt of a thought had just hit him, and then turned to look at her. ‘Since my grandfather was a small boy.’

She met his gaze. ‘You think there’s a link? Something to do with what your grandfather said earlier?’

He pressed his lips together. ‘There could be any one of a dozen reasons why the family has left this place alone. For a start, I don’t think any of my immediate ancestors were very religious.’

He wasn’t going to budge an inch, was he? On anything. He was right and everyone else was wrong. That chapped her hide. He reminded her so much of her older sister, always issuing orders as if they were divine decrees.

She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You don’t believe him, do you?’

He was silent for a few seconds, and then turned his attention back to the stained glass window. ‘I believe there was some big family ruckus—probably a storm in a teacup—but as for there being a secret message in the window…It seems a little far-fetched.’ He sighed. ‘I think it’s what my grandfather wants to believe.’

Faith chewed the side of her lip. No pressure, then. It was just up to her to confirm or crush an old man’s dreams. She stepped forward again and focused once more on the subject of all the controversy.

‘See anything out of the ordinary?’ he asked.

She tipped her head to the side. ‘It’s difficult to say. Despite the subject matter, it isn’t a very typical design for a church.’

She pulled a sheaf of photographs out of her bag and held them up so she could compare them against the window. They were images of various paintings and sketches of the supposed artist’s other lost windows. ‘It’s similar to Crowbridge’s earlier work, which was heavily influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.’

He nodded. ‘This window certainly has a touch of that style.’

Faith’s brows rose a notch and she swivelled her eyes to look at him. ‘You know something about art?’ What a relief to find he knew about something other than ordering people around, making them feel unwanted.

He gave her a derisive look.

She ignored it and cleared her throat. ‘But his work changed dramatically after the turn of the last century. This window isn’t anything like the paintings he was producing around the time this window was made.’

A lead weight settled inside her stomach. She hadn’t realised it, but she’d been dumb enough to let herself get excited about the window, to let herself hope. She turned away from it, wanting to block the image out for a second.

She should have been smarter than to get sucked in to the fantasy like that. But it was this place…Hadsborough was a like a fairytale on steroids. It was hard not to fall into that trap. She would just have to do better in the future.

‘I can see how an amateur might have made the error,’ she said, looking Marcus in the eye, ‘but I don’t think Samuel Crowbridge made this window.’

‘You know your subject, Miss McKinnon.’

‘Nice of you to notice,’ she replied. Really, the nerve of the man. She didn’t need his validation. ‘And it’s Faith.’

He blinked slowly, as if he’d registered her request and would think it over. Faith didn’t usually have a short fuse, but something about this man, his superior attitude, just drove her nuts.

‘Any sign of this message my grandfather mentioned?’

She shook her head, although she wanted to say, Yes, it’s there in letters three feet high, just to get up his nose. ‘Nothing pops out, but since it’s not a traditional church window the normal symbolic conventions may not apply.’

‘I need to know for sure,’ Marcus said. ‘My grandfather will just keep fretting about it unless you give me something more concrete.’

She thought of the charming old man, sitting by the fire, trying to read his newspaper while he waited for her to give him hope where there was none. But Bertie had asked for her professional opinion, hadn’t he? And she needed to honour that—stay dispassionate, objective. It wasn’t her fault if it had all been a dead end.

Don’t get involved …

Right. That was what she was going to do. Not get involved.