bit her bottom lip. ‘My aunt, Mrs Wilks—’
‘Your aunt, miss?’
There was a wealth of frosty disapproval in the question. Caro drew herself up to her full and impressive height and looked down at the top of his head.
‘Mrs Wilks, who is a guest of this hotel—’
‘Oh, no, miss—she’s not a guest.’ Oliver looked up at her searchingly, seemed to come to a conclusion and suddenly there was a glimmer of a smile in his eyes. Whether it was malicious or not, Caro couldn’t tell. ‘She’s the owner, miss.’
‘The owner,’ Caro repeated blankly.
‘Yes, miss. Since Mr Wilks died six months ago and left the hotel to his widow.’ He shut the registry book carefully. ‘What can I do for you, miss?’
‘Ah…Mrs Wilks suggested perhaps a hot drink while I wait…’
‘Certainly, miss. Please come with me.’
She followed his stiff, black-clad back as he led her through the doors into the dining room. Her first impression of opulence was tempered a little when she saw the dining tables at close quarters. The tablecloths were stained, and the silver looked to be in dire need of a good polish. A general air of neglect lay over the room, from the crumbs lying unswept on the floor to the spiders in the chandelier above. Automatically Caro righted a spilled glass as she passed.
The kitchen was no improvement on the dining room: dirty pots and pans covered the benches and food scraps filled buckets by the door. The huge ovens were lit and had their doors open. The heat was welcome, but not the smell of rotting food wafting on the warm currents of air.
The two women sitting toasting their feet by the ovens looked up as Oliver banged the door shut.
‘Who’s this, then?’ demanded the older of the women. She was a tall, hatchet-faced woman with heat-reddened cheeks. Her rolled-up sleeves and voluminous apron marked her as a cook. The other, who was little more than a girl, smiled shyly at Caro and wiped her nose on a sooty shirtsleeve.
Oliver motioned Caro politely enough towards a chair by the table and moved to rub his hands together before the fire.
‘This, ladies, is Mrs Wilks’s niece. Miss…?’
‘Miss Morgan. Caroline Morgan.’ She waited for him to introduce the other women, but when no introduction came, she sat down in the indicated chair. It looked as if she was not going to be offered a cup of tea, either, but there was a teapot and pile of cups sitting on the table. The teapot was still warm and so Caro helped herself, discarding several cups until she found one that bore no obvious marks of recent use.
The silence dragged on, but Caro was determined that it was not going to be she who broke it.
‘You’re one of the rich relations, aren’t you?’ said the Cook at last, her voice fairly dripping with sarcasm. ‘Come to bail Madam out, I hope.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Caro said politely.
The Cook’s chin came up pugnaciously, and the girl with the sooty dress gave a nervous giggle.
‘You’re one of them Australian relations Madam tells us about. The ones that kicked her out of her home in Sydney when she were first widowed and left her penniless on the streets.’
Caro frowned. ‘I don’t think that was us. I can’t imagine my mother ever doing that to anyone, let alone her own sister.’
The Cook nodded slowly. ‘Well, she did. Leastways, according to your aunt, your father did.’
‘Oh.’ Caro put her cup down carefully. ‘My father. Yes, I suppose he could have done. He’s very unfair like that.’
She tried to imagine what poor Aunt Charlotte could possibly have done to infuriate her father so. Probably very little. Really, Caro thought, she and Aunt Charlotte had a lot in common—both forced out of their home by Ben’s total lack of reason. It was extraordinary that Charlotte had found it in her heart to welcome Caro as she had!
‘So,’ said the Cook, ‘you brought any money with you?’
‘No,’ Caro said blankly. ‘Well, I’ve got twenty-five pounds…’
As her aunt’s three employees all sat back in their chairs with various sounds of disgust and dismay, Caro gained the distinct impression that she was proving a great source of disappointment.
‘I suppose,’ Oliver said heavily, ‘it would have been too much to hope for, that you might have been the answer to our prayers.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Caro said sincerely. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been the answer to anyone’s prayers.’
From behind the Cook’s forbidding exterior came an unexpected chuckle. ‘Never mind, dear. Miss Morgan, was it? Not your fault if Madam’s living beyond her means now, is it? Agnes—’ she elbowed the young girl off her chair with a degree of viciousness that Caro took to be habitual ‘—Agnes here will fetch you a fresh pot of tea. And some of those scones I made yesterday, too.’
Agnes wiped her nose on her sleeve again and scurried around the kitchen, setting out a fresh pot of tea and a plate of rather stale but nicely risen scones.
‘Got no butter, Miss Morgan,’ the Cook commented as she saw Caro look around her for a butterdish. ‘Got nothing very much of anything, come to mention it. No more tea leaves than are in the jar, no meat, no milk, no cheese…’
‘No wages,’ Oliver chipped in glumly.
‘But that’s dreadful!’ Hungry as she was, Caro forgot all about butter for her scones. ‘Is no one paying you? Not my aunt?’
Her aunt’s employees looked at each other and then moved their chairs closer to where she sat.
‘Mrs Wilks is a most attractive woman…’ Oliver began.
‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ the Cook said darkly. ‘She’s got not so much as a pinch of business sense!’
‘…but she is being poorly served by her business adviser,’ Oliver went on doggedly, ignoring the Cook’s rude snort of derision. ‘When the late Mr Wilks left this hotel to her, it was in fine shape, Miss Morgan. Dunedin’s finest hotel, it was called, and rightly so. But since he died…’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Things are not good, Miss Morgan. Not good at all. We served the last of the meals in the dining room last night, there are creditors at the door day and night, Mrs Wilks can’t and won’t see them, we haven’t had a paying guest under this roof for a week now…’
‘There’s a non-paying guest I’d like to see the back of,’ the Cook snapped. She fixed Caro with a piercing stare. ‘Did you see him up there?’
‘Who?’ Caro was by now thoroughly bewildered.
‘Mr Thwaites. Up there. With her.’ Caro shook her head and the Cook slumped back in her chair. ‘Hmmph. Well, I dare say you’ll meet him soon enough if you stay on. You are staying on, are you?’
‘If
