CHAPTER SEVEN
Snowbound in the Earl’s Castle
Fiona Harper
A fairy-tale Christmas for Faith?
Forthright Faith McKinnon is driving English aristocrat Marcus Huntington crazy! Ever since she turned up at his castle to research a valuable stained-glass window, Marcus can’t stop thinking about her. Faith might try to hide her true self behind a facade of feistiness, yet to Marcus she’s as transparent as the glass she studies. What’s more, the vulnerable woman in hiding is frighteningly appealing.
Marcus and Faith don’t believe in fairy tales, but being snowed in together over Christmas feels like magic. And the best gift of all would be discovering that happy-ever-afters really can come true….
For Donna Alward and Shirley Jump.
You girls rock!
And for my editor, Lucy Gilmour, who always
rescues me when I’ve written myself into a corner.
THESE were the kind of gates made for keeping people out, Faith thought as she tipped her head back and looked up at twenty feet of twisting and curling black iron. Neither the exquisite craftsmanship nor the sharp wind slicing through the bars did anything to dispel the firm message that outsiders should stay on her side of the gate.
Too bad. She needed to get into the grounds of Hadsborough Castle and she needed to do it today.
She glanced round in frustration to where her Mini sat idling, her suitcase and overnight bag stuffed in the back, and sighed. She’d had other plans for today—ones involving a quaint little holiday cottage on the Kent coast, hot chocolate with marshmallows and a good book. The perfect winter holiday. But that had all changed when she’d found an innocent-
looking lilac envelope on her doorstep yesterday morning. The cheerful snowman return address sticker on the back hadn’t been fooling anyone. She’d known even before she’d ripped the letter open that its contents would cause trouble, but the exact brand of nuisance had been a total surprise.
She stared out over the top of her Mini to the rolling English countryside beyond. The scene was strangely monochrome. Fog clung to the dips in the fields and everything was tinged with frost. Only the dark silhouettes of trees on top of the hill remained ungilded.
It was strange. She’d grown up in the country back home in Connecticut, but this landscape didn’t have the earthy, familiar feel she’d been expecting when she’d driven out of London earlier that morning. Even though she’d adopted this country almost a decade ago, and her sisters now teased her about her so-called British accent, for the first time in ages she was suddenly very aware she was a foreigner. This misty piece of England didn’t just feel like another country; it felt like another world.
She turned round and tried a smaller gate beside the main pair, obviously made for foot traffic. No good. Also locked. A painted board at the side of the gate informed her that normal castle opening hours were between ten and four, Tuesday through Saturday. Closed to visitors on Mondays.
But she wasn’t a tourist. She had an appointment.
At