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.
It wasn’t normally a problem in her line of work. The people intimately connected with the windows she worked on were long dead, shrouded in the mystery of another century. So this window was a little different, had a sad story to go along with it. That shouldn’t change anything. It didn’t.
‘I could do some further research,’ she said. ‘I should be able to send you a report in a couple of days, but I don’t think it’s going to turn up anything new.’
He breathed out, looking slightly thankful. ‘Maybe that’s for the best.’ He glanced over his shoulder to the open door. ‘Thank you, Miss McKinnon.’
Still with the ‘Miss McKinnon’. He used her name like a shield.
She took one last look at the window. It really was beautiful—so unusual. And apart from the bad repair job down at the bottom it was in good condition. It was sad to leave it that way, especially when it wouldn’t be a long job—not like the one she’d just finished…
Marcus moved towards the door. ‘We’d better go back and talk to the Duke,’ he said, not bothering to look over his shoulder.
Right. And then it would be time to get back to where she belonged—her own world, her own life.
MARCUS stayed silent when they reached the drawing room, while Bertie insisted Faith have another cup of tea before she continued on her journey. She perched on the edge of the sofa again, and began to explain carefully what she’d found.
He noticed that she worked up to breaking the bad news, and he was grateful to her for that. He was pleased she hadn’t just blurted it all out as soon as she’d walked into the room. As far as he’d seen Faith McKinnon had a gift for bluntness. It was reassuring to know that a little sensitivity lay underneath.
He brushed beads of moisture from his shoulders as he stood by the fireplace. Fine flakes of snow, almost dust-like, had fallen on them on their walk back from the chapel and now melted from the warmth of the flames. He looked out of the window over the lake. Snow. That was the last thing they needed right now. Hadsborough lay in a dip in the land, and it was always much worse here than in the nearby towns and villages. Still, it was ten years since they’d had anything but a few inches. He was probably worrying for nothing.
He found himself doing that a lot these days. Churning things over in his mind. Wondering in the middle of the night if there was anything he had missed. It was as if he tried to outrun his own personal cloud of doom all day by keeping busy, and then it would settle over him while he slept, poisoning his dreams.
Some nights, in a half dream-state, he’d travel further into the past, endlessly trying to relive moments that would never come again. He’d try to make the right decision this time, hoping he’d prevent the coming tragedy, that he could save his father from both disgrace and the grave, but when the sun rose in the morning all his nocturnal fretting hadn’t changed anything.
He should have done more. Foolishly trusting his father, he’d seen it all happening and yet stood by, believing his father’s assurances when he should have doubted them. But he wasn’t going to make that mistake again; he had his eyes open now.
And not just when it came to family; when it came to everything.