She started as she realised that the clerk was standing beside her. Waves of disapproval were almost tangibly emanating from him, and she wondered what she could possibly have done to have earned his censure.
‘This way, miss,’ he said abruptly. ‘You can leave your bag behind the reception desk.’
She followed him up the staircase and along a wide hallway. Her mittened hands were trembling slightly and she clasped them together tightly in front of her waist. The clerk rapped quietly on a door and stood back to admit her.
The hotel room was large, with long windows that let in what winter light there was. A fire burned brightly in the hearth, illuminating a clutter of silver-topped bottles and jars on the dressing table. The air was scented with an odd, but not unpleasant, mix of rosewater and tobacco. Clothes and shoes were flung carelessly over the big bed and on the floor, as if someone had simply stepped out of them and left them lying there. Caro bent and picked up a dress that had impeded the opening of the door. The gentle scent of roses escaped from its folds of soft lace as she smoothed it out and looked around the room for the owner. The room, for all its mess, was charming and utterly feminine.
‘Mrs Wilks?’
There was reluctant movement under the pile of clothing and linen on the bed.
‘Who is it?’ a woman’s voice asked croakily. She sounded cross, too, and it only then occurred to Caro that there would be only one reason why someone would still be in bed in the middle of the day.
‘I’m sorry if you’re not well, Mrs Wilks.’ Caro backed towards the door. ‘I’ll call later.’
The bedclothes were pushed back and a scowling face appeared. Caro’s mouth dropped open. For a few seconds it looked exactly as if her mother were lying there, blinking sleepily at her, except that her mother’s hair was red, not yellow, and her mother’s nightgowns were considerably more modest than her aunt’s. Then Mrs Wilks propped herself up on one elbow and Caro swiftly averted her eyes. Her aunt’s nightgown was not immodest, it was non-existent.
‘You,’ her aunt said flatly after a moment, ‘have to be one of Ben’s children.’
‘I’m Caroline,’ Caro said carefully. ‘The eldest.’
‘Mmm.’ Her aunt eyed her balefully. ‘So what are you doing here? I suppose it’s too much to hope that your father has at last decided to act like a human being and apologise for everything he’s done to me?’
This was much, much worse than Caro had dared dread. She took a deep breath and said somewhat shakily, ‘I don’t know, Mrs Wilks. He…he doesn’t know I’m here…’
‘Really?’ Her aunt sat bolt upright and again Caro had to avert her eyes. ‘You mean you’ve run away from home?’
‘Yes…’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Because…because my father is unreasonable and unfair and…and…’ Her voice gave out through a combination of nerves and sudden, unexpected homesickness. There was a rustle of silk as her aunt mercifully pulled on a pink gown and then enveloped her in a soft, rose-scented hug.
‘You poor darling. He’s a brute of a man, I know. An unfeeling, callous bastard! Oh, what you and my poor sister must have had to put up with all these years…’
This was not strictly fair, but as Caro carefully extracted herself to say so, her aunt smiled at her with all the charm that had seen her through forty-four years and hundreds of men, and Caro felt herself melt into an adoring puddle. With her long, tousled hair tumbling over her pale-blue silk dressing-gown, and her eyes glowing with warm sympathy, her aunt looked like just like an exotic version of her beloved mother. Only the lines of experience and worldliness around Charlotte’s eyes and mouth were different, giving her a wistful, rather vulnerable look.
Charlotte watched the awestruck look on her niece’s face with satisfaction.
‘It’s lovely to meet you at last, Caroline.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Wilks…’
‘Aunt Charlotte, please, darling!’ She glanced swiftly over her shoulder at what looked to be a dressing-room door, and added, ‘Now, why don’t you go and tell Oliver downstairs that you want something hot to drink—your poor face is frozen!—and I’ll get dressed. Just give me half an hour, hmmm?’
Out in the hallway again, Caro hesitated. Who was Oliver? She raised her hand to knock on the door, but the sound of murmuring voices from inside her aunt’s bedroom made her pause. Perhaps her aunt was given to talking to herself. Caro shrugged her shoulders and went back downstairs.
The man who had first greeted her looked up from the papers on the registration desk. ‘Yes, miss?’
She had not imagined it before—his tone was distinctly chilly. ‘Are you Oliver?’
‘Yes, miss.’
Caro 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