for friendship alone. They had an agreement and he was honouring it.
They were both back safely behind their respective walls of polite friendliness. That should have been enough, but it wasn’t helping. Walls that were three feet thick were a great idea, but if those walls were transparent…
It made the whole thing worse. Now he could see Technicolor Faith all the time, but he knew he couldn’t—shouldn’t—reach out and touch her. Even so, he could feel his resolve slipping a little more every day. It had started with his wanting to keep her safe, to protect her, and now he was starting to want to give her other things. Things he hadn’t realised he still had left to give. Maybe he didn’t. And they were things Faith McKinnon didn’t even want.
He just had to keep it all together for another ten days. That was all.
Late Friday morning he was passing the studio and decided to stick his head in. He found her not hunched over the table, as usual, but sitting back on her stool, hands on hips, staring at the last remaining pieces of dirty glass that she had been cleaning.
‘Problem?’ he said as he came and stood behind her, trying to see what was so perplexing.
She shook her head. ‘Not a problem…just some interesting irregularities.’
‘Not anything to do with a message?’ He shaved the words I hope off the end of that sentence.
‘No.’
He pulled up another stool and sat down next to her. ‘Talk me through it.’ This was safe enough territory.
She pushed her stool back, stood up and walked over to a second table, where she plucked a large photo of the window from a pile of papers and brought it back to show him. Marcus did his best to concentrate on what was in front of his eyes instead of the faint smell of rose gardens that always seemed to cling to her. What was it? Perfume? Shampoo? Whatever it was, he was finding it very distracting, even though he’d never really had a fondness for the blasted flowers.
She pointed to the top of the photograph. ‘See the lead there? It’s very fine and it was beautifully crafted. The work of a master glazier. No doubt about it.’
His gaze followed her slender finger down to the bottom of the picture.
‘But here…nowhere near the skill. It’s as if it’s been repaired by a local craftsman just trying to do his best.’
Marcus’s eyebrows drew together. ‘Maybe the workman wasn’t up to the job.’
She nodded. ‘Probably. But it’s not the fact that the window was repaired, but where and how that’s interesting. A breakage results in a certain pattern—either a crack in just one piece of glass, or a wider area of damage radiating out from the point of impact. See this bit down here…?’ She pointed to a long, wide section at the bottom of the pane. ‘It’s just the glass inside that border that’s been replaced. All of it. You can see it quite clearly now it’s been cleaned.’
She got up and looked at the disassembled window laid out on the end of the table. ‘The new glass is of much poorer quality.’
Faith carefully lifted two small pieces of dark green glass and held them up to the light. One was a beautiful clear emerald, the other was slightly muddier in colour, and the newer glass had a large ripple down the centre. She returned the fragments to the template. ‘It’s as if someone replaced that whole section—a long, thin rectangular section. Not the sort of shape that would come from usual damage.’
‘And that’s significant?’
She frowned and gave him a serious look, one that made him think he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.
‘I can’t quite get it out of my head that someone has removed something from the window.’
He pulled in air through his teeth. ‘Something like a message?’
For a second she said nothing, but then she pushed out a breath, stood up and ran a hand through her hair. She smiled at him, a weary little twist of her lips. ‘Ignore me. I think I’m starting to let the magic and the mystery of this place seep into me.’
He stared at the window. Now she’d mentioned it he could see the long, thin rectangle, could imagine a phrase or word being in the place where there was now plain green glass.
‘I don’t think we should tell my grandfather about this. Not yet.’
If ever.
She nodded her agreement. ‘There’s nothing to tell, anyway. Even if there had been something else in the window, we have no way of knowing what it was.’
That was that. He should feel relieved.
He tilted his head, trying to make it look very much as if he concurred, but he couldn’t quite get rid of the niggling worry that Faith had stumbled onto something.
Marcus was having an in-depth discussion with Oliver, his events manager, about preparations for the Christmas Ball when Faith came skidding into the long gallery. Her face was aglow and her eyes were shining. He knew she had something to tell him about the window. Even so, he couldn’t help but smile.
She grinned back.
Oliver coughed. ‘About the florist, My Lord?’
Marcus kept looking at Faith. He waved a hand in the other man’s direction. ‘I’m sure you’re more than capable of dealing with her,’ he said. He only half noticed the man’s raised eyebrows as he looked between Faith and himself.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Oliver’s low voice muttered beside him, but Marcus was focused on the laughter behind Faith’s eyes.
‘What?’ he said, walking towards her.
Her smile flashed wide, reminding him of how the night sky brightened after a firework exploded.
‘I found it!’
For a moment his stomach dropped.
‘The proof I need,’ she added, her expression dimming slightly in reaction to his non-reaction.
Proof?
It was as if she’d heard the question that had fired off inside his head. She stepped forward, her hand held up in a calming gesture. ‘Samuel Crowbridge proof,’ she explained.
He paused for a moment. While he was truly relieved her news had nothing to do with his grandfather’s wild goose chase, he realised he was a little disappointed, too.
‘How?’ he said.
She glanced over her shoulder, looked at the door that led to the main hall—the route out of the castle and back to the studio. ‘Have you got a minute?’
Marcus turned round to take his leave from Oliver and discovered the man had disappeared. Oh, well.
Faith looked about her as she headed for the door. ‘It’s looking awesome in here,’ she said.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ he replied.
And looking lovely it was. Christmas at Hadsborough had always been special when he was younger, but in recent years it had become a chore. Looking at it now, through Faith’s eyes, he realised she was right. There was a fourteen-foot Christmas tree in the hall. Crimson candles in all shapes and sizes were dotted around—some in wrought-iron stands, some in hurricane lamps—and greenery was everywhere: holly and ivy and fir branches, draped over mantelpieces, over the door frames, wound round the banister of the staircase and dripping from the minstrels’ gallery over the banqueting hall.
There was a noise in the hallway and a few moments later a walking display of red flowers entered the room. Underneath the foliage was a very human pair of legs: sturdy calves finished off with even sturdier shoes. Marcus recognised those shoes. And now he caught on to what