“Where are my clothes?”

“I’ve burned them for you. They were unwearable anyway.”

The fingers that were free clenched into a fist. Caro wondered what it would take to provoke him into dropping the tiny towel.

“Right, then,” Leander said, his voice very soft. Padding wetly, he crossed the floor to the door.

“Where are you going?” she demanded breathlessly.

“Back onto the streets, where I belong.”

“But…but you’ll freeze out there!”

“I’ll be arrested for indecent exposure long before I freeze to death, Mrs. Gray.”

Caro dragged her gaze away from the disconcerting curve of his buttocks to manage a careless shrug and toss of the head. “Well, suit yourself, then. If you want to go ahead and make an…an…absolute spectacle of yourself, it has nothing to do with me….”

“Apart from the fact that you’re my wife, Mrs. Gray, you’re quite right.”

A Convenient Gentleman
Victoria Aldridge

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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VICTORIA ALDRIDGE

lives in Wellington, New Zealand, in what she is assured is a haunted Victorian cottage. She shares it with her husband, whichever of her adult children find themselves otherwise homeless, and two bossy cats. She is a fifth-generation New Zealander, and finds her country’s history—especially that of women—absolutely intriguing.

To Sidney—for everything

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Prologue

The Hawkesbury, New South Wales, Australia, 1863

F or the third night in a row, war raged in the Morgan house.

The skirmishes took place at a number of sites in the huge house—the sitting room, the dining table, and in the kitchen—but all encounters were protracted and very, very loud.

Every farmhand in the cottages behind the main house followed the proceedings with great interest, and a number of wagers were laid on who the eventual winner was going to be. Most of the money was on Morgan. Young Caroline had always been a bit of a tearaway, but her father had always prevailed in the past, hadn’t he? And he was not the man to cross, was Ben Morgan. His eldest daughter would come to heel eventually.

Other, perhaps more knowledgeable, money was on Caroline Morgan. For all that she had her father’s lungs, she was her mother’s daughter, wasn’t she? And who was it who really ruled inside the big Morgan house? The older farmhands nodded and winked to each other. Wait and see, they said.

On the third evening, the two protagonists faced each other across the kitchen table, a pot of cold tea marking the battle line between them. The bread-scented air was virtually crackling with animosity. Emma Morgan, sitting quietly in a chair beside the stove, put down the tiny nightgown she was stitching and looked at her husband and daughter in exasperation.

‘I have had just about enough of you two! When, may I ask, are we going to return to civil conversation in this house?’

Ben Morgan shoved himself back on his chair and glowered at his wife. ‘When your daughter learns some manners and some common sense. But I’d advise you not to hold your breath for either!’

‘Really?’ Caroline tossed her head pertly. ‘You will note, Mother, that you have been my sole parent for the past three days? Which means, Father, that if you didn’t sire me, you’ve no right to order me around like one of your chattels!’

‘Caro!’ her parents chorused in shocked tones, just as they had almost daily since the time Caroline could talk. Emma looked at her daughter with the oddly mingled feelings of love and dismay that she always felt for her eldest child. She was so much her father’s child, with the same fair colouring and striking good looks, and the same volatile personality. Only her green eyes were her mother’s, but surely, Emma thought in despair, her own eyes had never glittered with such ferocity? Sometimes she truly feared for Caro. She possessed a hard, determined core just like her father’s and, while that quality might be considered desirable by some in a man, in a woman it was simply not…feminine.

‘All your father is asking you to do, Caro, is consider Mr Benton’s offer of marriage—’

‘And I’ve told him! How many times do I have to tell him? The answer is no!’

Emma transferred her steady gaze to her husband. ‘She doesn’t want to marry him, Ben.’

‘Then she’s a bloody fool! Benton is his father’s sole heir. When he inherits, he’ll own one of the best farms in the Hawkesbury, and when it’s adjoined to this place—’

‘So you’re selling me off, are you?’ demanded Caro.

‘No, I’m not! I’m just pointing out a few salient facts! There’s nothing wrong with young Benton—’

‘He’s an idiot and his ears stick out.’

‘Caro, they don’t,’ her mother remonstrated gently. ‘Well, not all that much. And he just adores you! And you’ve known him all your life.’

‘Exactly, Mother! Father wants me to marry a boy he can order around, and you want me to marry a boy I think of as a brother! Although if I’d had a brother, Father wouldn’t be in such a hurry to marry us all off!’

Her father looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘A son would have taken over the farm when I’m gone, would have looked after you girls so that there would be no need to find you good husbands.’

‘Then leave the farm to me!’ Caro said wearily, for the umpteenth time. ‘I can run it better than any jug-eared boy you can pick out for me! You know that!’

‘Try to show a little common sense, Caroline,’ her father snapped. ‘A woman can’t run a farm, or any other sort of business for that matter. That’s not what they were made for.’

Caro looked in appeal at her mother. Usually Ben’s daughters fell about laughing at their father’s pronouncements on the female ideal, and took not one whit of notice of them. But for once his firmly held beliefs were holding Caro back from what she wanted more than anything in the world. She loved the huge, fertile lands that had been in the family for three generations. There had been a brief period in her grandfather’s day when the farm had been in the mortgagor’s hands, but under Ben’s sober guidance the Morgan family had grown to be one of Australia’s wealthiest, with extensive interests in both farming and shipping. But Ben was now ancient—why, he’d had his fiftieth birthday the previous month! He was in his dotage, whereas Caro was young and clever and full of innovative ideas. She could easily see herself in charge of everything. Very easily.

‘I suppose you want me to be like Olivia,’ she said truculently. ‘All sweetness and light, and marrying who you tell her to.’

Emma picked up the small nightgown she had been sewing for her first grandchild and held it closer to the light, frowning as she noticed the irregular stitches she had made in her agitation. ‘Your sister always wanted to marry William, Caro. He was her choice, and we’re both delighted that she is so happy. Now she’s settled down, with a baby on the way—’

‘How perfect!’ Caro said sarcastically. ‘Not, of course, that either of you have ever made any comment on the fact that Olivia’s baby is due in January, just seven months after her wedding!’

‘Caro, that is enough!’ Emma rose to her feet and Caro realised that for once she had gone too far, even for her eternally patient mother. ‘That was a spiteful and completely unnecessary thing to say. Go to your room!’

‘Mother—’

‘I said, go to your room! And don’t bother coming out until you have decided to conduct yourself with some degree of civility!’

Caro thought about staying to argue, but her mother was perilously close to tears. And if she made her mother cry, her father’s rage would be truly terrifying. He had never once, that she could recall at least, raised a hand to her or any of her sisters, but there was always a first time for everything. With her head held high, she made a dignified exit, although she could not resist banging the kitchen door so hard behind her that the sound reverberated through the house and woke her sleeping younger sisters.

In the kitchen, her parents looked at each other.

‘Mercenary little baggage,’ Ben said savagely. ‘I swear I’ll throttle that girl one day. A husband is what she needs, to keep the reins on her. Although I’m not sure that Frank Benton would be able to do that for more than five minutes.’

Emma folded her sewing slowly as she carefully edited what she was about to say. She had to be tactful—the faults that her husband and her daughter shared were the ones they found hardest to tolerate in each other.

‘I’m not so sure,’ she said slowly, ‘that marriage is the answer for Caro. Not yet. She needs to see the world a little, to realise that she doesn’t know everything and that she can’t always have her way. I think we should let her go. To England, perhaps. Meg Parkins is visiting Home in a month or two, and taking her daughters with her. I could ask her if Caro could accompany them. I’m sure Meg wouldn’t mind in the least…’

Ben groaned. ‘Not England, Emma! It’s so far away! We wouldn’t see her for years, and you don’t know what could happen to her on the other side of the world.’

She smiled up at him. ‘You always were too soft on them, Ben. That’s why Caro is the way she is. Let her go—you’ll have to some time, you know.’

‘I suppose so.’ He bent over and kissed the top of her head. ‘We should have had sons. They wouldn’t have been this much trouble.’

It was just before dawn when Ben heard the faint clink of the dogs’ chains from the yards in the valley below the house. The dogs weren’t barking, so whoever was moving past them was someone they knew. Damn her, he thought. Stupid little bitch. He carefully removed his arm from around the waist of his sleeping wife and left her warmth to pad out into the chilly hallway.

He was standing on the front porch, moodily buttoning his trousers and staring down the valley to the darkness that was the Hawkesbury River when Mr Matthews loomed silently out of the darkness.

‘She’s gone.’

‘Yeah.’ Ben rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the back of his hand.

‘She ain’t coming back.’

Ben tried to make out his expression in the gloomy light. Mr Matthews had been with him since the days when Ben’s father had lost the farm to the mortgagors. A transported convict who had long since earned his ticket, he was an indispensable and much-treasured family member. Mr Matthews’s only fault, to Ben’s mind, was that Caroline had always been his favourite child and he’d never been able to deny her anything. If she had confided in anyone, it would have been him.

‘She told you that?’

‘Nah. But she wants to run this place real bad. You should have let her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Ben snapped. ‘Anyway, she’ll be back soon enough, when she realises what a pampered life she’s had here. She won’t last an hour out there.’

‘Unless something happens to her, of course,’ Mr Matthews said after a while. ‘Like she gets abducted, or raped, or robbed, or sold to the bars down by the Sydney docks or—’

Ben slammed his hands down hard on the veranda railing. ‘Dammit! All right, then, go after her and make sure she’s all right. And you’d better take some money with you. She won’t have much on her.’

‘She took Summer.’

Ben swore, remembering just in time to drop his voice. ‘That horse is worth a bloody fortune! She won’t sell him…’

‘She will to spite you. And that’ll give her a heap of money. Enough to leave the country with, I reckon.’

Ben thought for a moment and then nodded slowly. ‘You’re probably right. I… Oh, hell, we can’t bring her back in chains. She’ll just run off again. I wish I could bring myself to take to her with a horsewhip.’ He glared at Mr Matthews’s sudden snort. ‘What’s funny?’

‘Nothing. You want me to follow her, then?’

‘Yeah. Only I don’t want to have to pay an arm and a leg to buy the goddamned horse back.’ He turned to go back into the house, but stopped as a horrible thought struck him. ‘Oh. Just one thing, Mr Matthews.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Whatever you do, don’t let her go to Dunedin.’

Chapter One

Dunedin, New Zealand, 1863

D unedin was covered with a light layer of snow, the first Caroline had ever seen. Entranced by the picture-book prettiness of the white-speckled hills, she stood at the dock gates, heedless of the crowd buffeting her. She had seen pictures of snow before of course, in books about Home. But this was much more exciting than England could ever have been. This was a real adventure!

The fact that she had nothing but a single change of clothes in her bag, and twenty-five pounds to her name, simply added an edge to the excitement. Being on board ship for three weeks had been much more boring than she had anticipated: three meals a day, a narrow little bunk to sleep in, nowhere to walk but to the limits of the cabin passengers’ deck. It had been a lot like boarding school, really. But now, for the first time in her life, she was on her own, and she had never been happier.

She felt in the pocket of her coat for the envelope, turning it over in her gloved fingers, not needing to take it out and read it to remember the return address.

Mrs Jonas Wilks, Castledene Hotel, Castle Street, Dunedin.

Dunedin was not as large as she had thought it would be—certainly nowhere as large as Sydney. Built along the shores of a natural harbour inlet, cradled among steep hills, the town that was the hub of the Otago goldrush was still in its infancy. But whereas Sydney had a quiet, settled feel to it after eighty years of colonisation, Dunedin seemed to be teeming with energy.

Fed by the Otago goldfields, the richest since Ballarat and California, Dunedin’s prosperity was obvious. Spanning out from a small central park, called The Octagon, were streets of substantial buildings with ornate façades, between which were empty spaces and busy building sites. Over the lower reaches of the hills spread a canvas town of tents, hundreds of them, which Caro guessed belonged to either transient miners or people unable to find or afford accommodation. There was a vibrancy to the town, almost a sense of anticipation, which thrilled Caro to the bone.

A gust of icy wind blew along the quay, billowing the dresses of the women and loosening a few hats. The half-dozen ships tied up at the docks creaked as the gathering gale plucked at their furled sails and hummed along the ropes. Caro realised that she was growing cold. In fact, she could never recall being so cold in her life. Another new experience to savour!

Pulling the fur trim of her jacket collar up around her chin, she strode along the quay and up the road that lay straight ahead, quite unaware, as always, that she was turning heads as she passed. She had always been hard to overlook, being well above average height for a woman. What was more unusual was the way she bore herself, with a loose-limbed, graceful walk that in a man would have verged on being a swagger. Combined with classically blond beauty and a pair of sparkling eyes, Miss Morgan’s looks had always drawn admiring comment. Most remarkable, however, was that she had always remained blithely oblivious to the fact that her appearance was anything out of the ordinary.

She might as well get her bearings first, she thought, stepping up on to the narrow wooden footpath that ran below the shop awnings. There was only room for three people walking abreast, so she kept politely to the left, holding her bag close to her side so as not to bump into other walkers. Despite the foul weather the streets were busy, and she noted with interest the preponderance of Scottish accents she heard. She passed no fewer than two Churches of Scotland within five minutes’ walk and half the shop names began with ‘Mac’. It was true, then, the description she had heard on the ship of Dunedin being the Edinburgh of the South.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said to a man obstructing the footpath as he loaded up his dray. He looked rough, a miner perhaps, and he had a scowl on his face.

‘Get lost,’ he snarled, not looking up. She waited patiently. Her parents had always insisted on the utmost courtesy to everyone, no matter what their station in life, and she was not going to break that ingrained habit now. She could, of course, step down into the road and walk around the horse and dray, but the snow had turned to sleet, and the icy mud looked most uninviting.

‘Will you be long, sir?’ she enquired after a moment.

‘Long as I need to be.’ He slammed down a box with unnecessary force and turned to hoist up the next one. There were still two high piles of crates to load.

‘I see.’ Caro put down her bag. ‘What if I help you load? That will speed you up, won’t it?’

He turned around then with a curse, which died unspoken on his lips as he saw her wide green eyes, utterly devoid of malice or sarcasm. A slow flush rose over his face as he shuffled ponderously to one side to allow her to pass. He was staring at her in the way lots of men did whenever her parents had taken her into Sydney or Parramatta. She really wished they didn’t—one usually couldn’t get any sense out of them when they looked like that. However, this was New Zealand. Perhaps men were a little more sensible here. She gave him a smile and pulled out the envelope from her pocket.

‘Thank you, sir. I wonder if you could tell me where I would find Castle Street? Is it close by?’

He ignored the envelope—too late Caro realised he might not be able to read and that she might have inadvertently given offence—and waved his arm in the direction she had been heading.

‘Down there. Second on yer left.’

‘Thank you so much.’ She picked up her bag and went to move past him, but he had recovered by now enough to move to block her way.

‘Heavy bag for a young miss,’ he said ingratiatingly. ‘Like a hand with it?’

‘How kind. But you couldn’t leave all these boxes here.’ She looked down at him—he was at least two inches shorter—and added with a touch of asperity, ‘And your poor horses. They must be cold. You’ll want to get them moving, won’t you?’

She flashed him a smile and moved smartly away down the sidewalk before he could detain her any further. Already she could see the signpost for Castle Street, and her heart began to beat a little faster. She wasn’t sure what she would find, or what sort of reception she would get at the Castledene Hotel. Indeed, would Mrs Wilks still live there?

Charlotte Wilks. Aunt Charlotte. Her mother’s sister. Caro had never seen her, knew nothing of her except that there was some sort of scandal surrounding her aunt, and not of the common or garden danced-twice-in-a-row-with-the-same-man sort of scandal that would have had female tongues astir on the Hawkesbury. No, Aunt Charlotte’s sins were too dreadful to name, if her parents’ tense reactions to her occasional letters were anything to go by. Caro didn’t know if her mother had ever written back, but she did know that her father would have sternly disapproved. He always went rather…rigid, she thought, when one of Aunt Charlotte’s letters had arrived, or when Caro had mentioned her name, which she had made a point of often doing. Whatever Aunt Charlotte had done, Ben had never forgiven her, and he never would. He loathed her more than anyone else alive. Caro couldn’t wait to meet her.

She turned the corner into Castle Street and caught her breath in relief. Standing proudly at the end of a cul-de-sac, the Castledene Hotel was a magnificent, double-storeyed building, the finest Caro had seen so far in Dunedin. Her fears that she would find Aunt Charlotte starving in a cobwebby attic somewhere began to evaporate. The last letter from here to Caro’s mother had been posted only three months before, and if Aunt Charlotte could afford to board here, she must be reasonably in funds.

Caro gave a wide berth to the entrance to the public bar—although it was only mid-morning, there sounded as if there were already a number of noisy patrons inside—and pushed open one of the big front doors.

Very nice. She put her bag on the ground and looked around in approval. The entry was most imposing, if very cold, being paved and colonnaded in pale grey marble. Carved kauri staircases swept discreetly up on either side, almost obscured by rich velvet drapes. Immediately in front of her, panelled doors stood ajar, giving a glimpse of tables set with heavy damask and sparkling silver. It was as impressive as any of Sydney’s grand hotels, with only the underlying smell of recently sawn wood betraying its newness.

‘Can I help you, miss?’

Caro turned to the thin, neat-looking man behind the reception desk with a smile. ‘I hope so, sir. I’m looking for Mrs Wilks. Mrs Jonas Wilks. I understand she was a guest here some months ago. Is she still here?’

The man cleared his throat. ‘Indeed, miss.’ She was subjected to a politely swift scrutiny. ‘May I tell her who is calling?’

Caro hesitated. She had thought long and hard about this situation, and had decided that a little vagueness might initially be desirable. After all, what if Aunt Charlotte felt the same about Caro’s family as Caro’s father did about Aunt Charlotte?

‘I’m a relative,’ she said warmly. Then, as the clerk hesitated, she smiled encouragingly. ‘I know she’ll want to see me.’

He disappeared up one of the great staircases, his shoes noiseless on the thick carpet, and she sat down to wait on one of the elegant chairs placed between the aspidistras around the foyer. Despite her care, her walking shoes were covered with a light layer of wet mud, and she glared at them in irritation. They and a pair of boots were the only footwear she had now. At home, in her closet, stood rows of boots and shoes and slippers. And as for her dresses—she thought with regret of the wardrobe she had been forced to leave behind her. While it had seemed a good idea at the time to run away from home virtually empty-handed, to show her father that she didn’t need anything from him to stand on her own two feet, it was now proving to be very tiresome managing with a single change of clothes. She sincerely hoped that her aunt wouldn’t mind her shabby appearance. Caro always liked to make a good impression.

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 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 my aunt invites me to,’ Caro said earnestly. ‘If I can be of any use, that is. I can cook and clean, and I’m sure I could learn to wait, too…’ Her voice faltered as she saw the expressions of the faces of the others. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘No, Miss Morgan,’ Oliver said after a moment. ‘It’s just that a lady like yourself, coming from a privileged home, could hardly be expected to lift a broom or a duster. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Oh, we all had our tasks at home,’ she assured him. ‘Mother didn’t believe in other people doing work we were quite capable of doing ourselves. “Hard work is good for the soul, the figure and the complexion”, she always used to say, and I’m sure my aunt believes the same.’

The Cook spluttered into her tea and Oliver rose creakily to his feet.

‘Well, I’m sure Mrs Wilks will be ready to see you by now, Miss Morgan. I shall take you to her rooms, if you wish.’

‘Oh, please don’t trouble yourself! I remember the way very clearly. And thank you for the tea and scones, Mrs…’

The Cook smiled. ‘Mrs Webb, dear. Now do make sure you call in after you’ve seen your aunt, won’t you? On your way back to Australia,’ she added darkly as the door closed after Caro.

‘Ooh, I thought she were nice.’ Agnes sniffed dejectedly. ‘I hope she don’t go.’

‘She might be nice, but she came down in the last shower,’ Mrs Webb informed her. ‘Gawd help her, she’s still sopping wet! I give her a day before He tries to put one over her…’

‘You mean across her, Mrs Webb,’ interjected Oliver.

‘That, too, Mr Oliver,’ the Cook snapped. ‘Oh, it’s better by far that she leaves here with her virtue than That Man has his way with her. Just look at Madam.’

Oliver leaned forward to prod the embers in the stove. ‘You’re right, of course, Mrs Webb. It will be in her best interests to leave as soon as possible. She won’t be safe here, not with her looks and Madam and That Man…’

They all nodded in sad accord and sat staring at the dying fire, lost in their own thoughts.

Chapter Two

C aro tapped on her aunt’s door and, hearing no response, opened it slowly.

Her aunt was standing before the long mirror, smoothing her pale ringlets over her shoulders. She was dressed now, in an elegant gown of dark blue that enhanced her milky skin and slim figure. Deep ruffles of ivory lace covered any victory of gravity around her neck and décolletage, and provided a perfect frame for her heart-shaped face. There was much more than a passing resemblance to Caro’s beautiful mother, but Charlotte had an air of fragility and wistfulness that was all her own, and Caro felt a surge of protectiveness towards this glamorous relative she barely knew.

‘Come in, darling. Sit down.’ Charlotte waved a lethargic hand in the general direction of the bed. Caro carefully moved aside a few of the dresses and assorted slippers lying in disarray over the eiderdown and sat.

‘Now, you must tell me all about yourself and what wonderful stroke of fortune has delivered you to my door!’ Charlotte perched herself on her dressing-table chair and regarded her niece with tilted head and affectionate smile. ‘Do you know, you were only six months old when I last saw you? What a perfectly beautiful girl you’ve grown into! You obviously favour your father’s side of the family. My darling first husband, Edward—who was, of course, also your grandfather! Just fancy that!—had the same chin as you, you know, with that little dimple. Your fair hair, of course, you got from my side of the family… On the other hand, your father is fair, too, isn’t he? Or…I imagine he’s gone grey by now…’

‘Only a little bit,’ Caro assured her.

Charlotte turned and began fiddling with the hair-brushes on her dressing table. ‘Has he gone bald?’

‘No.’

‘Has he got fat?’

‘No.’

Caro was almost certain her aunt said ‘Damn!’ under her breath, so hastened to add that her mother and her mother’s younger sisters were all happy and in good health. Her aunt, though, didn’t seem to be listening with any great attention. She showed a little more animation when Caro went on to describe her own family, and got her niece to repeat several times the information that Caro had seven sisters and no brothers. For some reason she seemed to find it most amusing.

‘Poor Ben,’ she said, and laughed. ‘I’ll wager he’s not happy about that!’

‘He isn’t,’ Caro agreed. ‘He says he has to take great care about who we marry as a result. That’s what I’m doing here.’

‘You didn’t like his choice, hmm?’ Her aunt watched Caro’s reflection in the mirror pull a face. ‘Ben never did like being thwarted.’ She sighed prettily. ‘I’m living testament to that, my dear.’

‘My parents never spoke of you, Aunt Charlotte,’ Caro said hesitantly. ‘Was there…ah…I mean, I don’t know what happened between you…?’

Charlotte gave a light, brittle laugh and waved her hands dismissively. ‘Darling, it was all a long time ago, and all really rather silly. Your father never did forgive me for marrying his father, you see, and when Edward died on our honeymoon to England, and I had to come back to Sydney, he cut me off without a penny. If it hadn’t been for some very kind friends I would have…well, I would have starved on the streets, darling.’ She gave a little sniff as her eyes filled with bright tears, and she went on bravely, ‘But I survived and married again—to the sweetest man imaginable!—and when he died my heart was broken all over again, and so I came here and married again, and—well—I’ve done all right, haven’t I?’

Immeasurably moved by her aunt’s stoicism, Caro leapt to her feet and embraced her warmly.

‘Of course you have, Aunt Charlotte! Oh, you poor, poor thing! But why would Father have done such a thing to you? I can’t believe that he could have been so cruel!’

Charlotte dabbed at her eyes with a scrap of lace. ‘I couldn’t say. Well, I shouldn’t say this, darling, but…’ she managed a tight, courageous little smile and said in a rush ‘…oh, I rejected him in favour of his father, and I don’t believe he’s ever forgiven me! Isn’t that silly, to hold such a grudge over so many years?’

‘But Mother and Father have always been so happy,’ Caro said in bewilderment, remembering the easy affection she had always witnessed between her parents, the way her mother’s face lit up whenever her father came into a room, the way their eyes would meet over the heads of their children in amused camaraderie. Lovely as Aunt Charlotte probably used to be, Caro simply couldn’t imagine her father ever looking at any woman other than her mother. Charlotte, correctly reading the expressions on her niece’s face, leaned forward to tap her gently on the wrist.

‘It was years ago, darling, before you were born. Why, I’ve almost forgotten about it myself. Except that…well, things would have been very different if your father had been one to let bygones be bygones. But, here I am and here you are and…oh, isn’t this just lovely?’

She clasped Caro’s hands in hers and smiled warmly. She was being so kind that Caro, remembering what the hotel staff had told her about her aunt’s straitened circumstances, felt a twinge of guilt.

‘Aunt Charlotte, I haven’t any money with me,’ she said in a rush. ‘I can’t pay very much for accommodation, but I can work hard at anything that needs doing…’

‘Oh, darling!’ her aunt chided her fondly. ‘Don’t you even think about such a thing! How could I put my own niece to work? The very idea!’

‘But I know that the hotel isn’t doing very well,’ Caro said bluntly. ‘If I can help in any way at all, then that’s what I want to do.’

‘How terribly sweet of you.’ There was a slightly speculative tone in her voice as she put her head on one side and looked assessingly at Caro. ‘You are a very pretty girl, aren’t you? I’m sure we could find you something to do, if you really want to help. In fact, a friend of mine will know what’s best…’

‘Mr Thwaites?’ Caro asked, and was taken aback by the sudden snap of suspicion in her aunt’s eyes.

‘Who’s been talking to you about him? No, don’t tell me—the kitchen staff!’ At Caro’s nod she heaved a dramatic sigh. ‘Harold’s doing all he can to turn this business around. He runs the public bar and bottle shop downstairs, and if it wasn’t for the profits from that we’d be in even more of a pickle. You’d think the staff would show some appreciation for all his hard work, wouldn’t you?’

‘I think they want to be paid…’ Caro ventured.

‘Oh, the silly things! They’ll be paid, of course, as soon as the business gets back on its feet—and it will, in a few weeks! In the meantime, they’ve got a roof over their heads, and food to eat. I don’t know what they’re complaining about.’ She got fluidly to her feet. ‘Anyway, darling, I’m being a dreadful hostess, aren’t I? I’ll show you to your room—you have a choice, you know. Isn’t it fun?’

Chatting all the time, her hands fluttering like animated, delicate little birds, her aunt took Caro down to the far end of the hall, and flung a door open dramatically.

‘Here you are, darling! Now make yourself at home. We’ll be dining downstairs around six, I imagine.’

She floated off back down the hallway, leaving Caro staring into a darkened room. The drapes had been pulled, presumably against the cold, and after some groping in the dark Caro drew them back to reveal a surprisingly luxurious little bedroom. Plush rugs lay over the polished floorboards, and the large bedstead and matching washstand were of carved mahogany. Yet every surface had a layer of dust, and the sheets on the bed might have been of the finest quality cotton, but they were unmistakably damp.

The room overlooked the avenue, giving an interesting view of the traffic below. It had stopped snowing and so Caro opened the big, double-hung window as wide as possible. Finding it a positive pleasure to have something to do, she went in search of clean linen and cleaning materials and found both in a cupboard in the hallway. It took almost an hour until every surface was dusted and polished to her satisfaction; by the time she had finished, the pale winter light filtering between the lace curtains had all but gone. Closing the window against the encroaching dark, she lit a small fire in the grate and was soon able to put a warming pan filled with hot coals between the clean sheets to dry them out.

Hands on hips, she surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction. The room looked cosy and welcoming now, and smelt warmly of beeswax polish, just like home. She thought of all the other rooms in the hotel, no doubt waiting to be cleaned, and found herself viewing the prospect with pleasure.

In the hallway she found her bag, sitting forlornly where someone—she suspected Oliver—had left it. It did not appear that the staff here were inclined to be in the least bit helpful. While she unpacked her single change of clothes, Caro thought about that.

The staff had told her that her aunt had no business sense and, as utterly charming as Aunt Charlotte was, Caro could see how that could be true. It would take both business acumen and hard work to keep an hotel this size running, but why the hotel should have run out of funds was a complete mystery to her. There had obviously been a fortune spent on establishing the place, with no cost spared in the furnishings or decor. In a town as thriving as Dunedin, with an all-too-evident accommodation shortage, the hotel should have been fully booked every night. So why was there no food in the kitchen and no guests in the rooms?

Caro had always taken an active interest in the bookkeeping side of her father’s businesses and Ben had been too intrigued by her persistence to really discourage her. She now possessed a sound grasp of the principles of good business, and she had never been afraid of hard work. What better way to repay Aunt Charlotte’s hospitality than by restoring her business to its full health?

The clock in the civic building down the street chimed six o’clock, but for Caro the few unbuttered scones in the hotel kitchen were far too many hours ago, and her stomach rumbled hungrily. Her aunt had said that they would be dining—presumably in the hotel dining room—but the staff had told her that there was no food left. She decided that now was as good a time as any to discover the truth of the situation.

She changed into her second dress, of serviceable green wool, and pulled a shawl around her shoulders against the chill; she had allowed the fire to burn down and the air was now so cold that she could see the mist of her breath.

The foyer of the hotel was deserted, and when she looked through into the dining room it looked as if nothing had been cleaned or moved since the morning. The great chandeliers hung unlit and palely gleaming in the crack of light showing from beneath the kitchen door, but the place was eerily quiet. A single lamp shone forlornly on the registration desk. Caro revised downwards her chances of a gracious meal in the dining room that night.

There was a muffled roar of laughter from somewhere beyond the hotel walls and she remembered the public bar that she had passed earlier in the day, the one that Aunt Charlotte had told her that Mr Thwaites ran. Well, that at least sounded like a thriving business. They would probably have a fire going there. Maybe even something to eat! It was snowing again and she stood for a captivated moment on the veranda, watching the fluffy flakes twirling delicately in the air. Light from the long windows of the bar streamed out over the ground, illuminating the white layer of snow, giving a fairytale appearance to the otherwise mundane street.

She knew she had made a mistake the moment she set foot over the doorstep. The bar was much bigger than she had thought, and filled with men. Dozens of them. One by one they stopped laughing and shouting and put their drinks down to stare at her. The heat and smell of alcohol hit her face like a blow.

However, it was too late now to back down.

She wove her way between the tables, ignoring outstretched hands that would have detained her, to the bar, where a scruffy-looking individual in shirtsleeves was wiping out glasses.

‘Sorry, lass, can’t serve you,’ he said shortly before she even reached the bar.

‘Aw, go on with you, Bill,’ someone very drunk bellowed behind her. ‘She looks like she needs a little servicin’!’

The coarse male laughter gripped Caro’s insides with terror, but not for the world would she have shown it. She rested the tips of her fingers lightly on the bar to stop their trembling.

‘I’d like to see Mr Thwaites if he’s here, please,’ she said quietly enough, but as for the anticipatory hush in the room she may as well have shouted the words.

The bartender’s eyes travelled down assessingly and up insultingly. ‘’Fraid you can’t, lass.’

‘Is he here?’ she persisted, dreading the thought of having to brave the male barrage alone on her way out.

‘Maybe.’ He lifted his lips in something between a smirk and a sneer.

‘Then I’d like to see him, please.’

‘’Ere, me darlin’.’ A red-faced little man nudged her elbow as he fumbled with his trousers. ‘Why don’t you see me instead, eh?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ she began blankly, wondering what conceivable interest the little man thought she would have in his belt. A second before his trousers dropped to his knees a tall body interposed itself between them.

‘I think, madam, you should leave.’

She looked up to an unshaven, weary face of indeterminate age.

‘I’m here to see Mr Thwaites,’ she said tersely, resenting the light pressure being exerted on her upper arm. She was not used to being manhandled.

‘Then I suggest another time, madam. In the morning, perhaps.’ He turned her around to face the door, raising his elbow as he did so and accidentally jabbing the throat of a man who was about to lunge at her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said politely as his victim staggered back with a yelp. ‘Very careless of me.’

There was a grumbled chorus of disappointment as she was marched to the door, but no one impeded their progress. Within seconds she was back out on the veranda, rigid with rage and the cold.

‘I’m not going to thank you, you know!’ she snapped.

‘I wouldn’t dream of presuming that you would, madam.’

‘I only went in there to see someone,’ she went on, cross with herself that she had to somehow justify what was now apparent as recklessness.

‘I think you were about to see quite a lot for a young lady,’ he said evenly. Despite her humiliation and anger his voice intrigued her, with its clipped perfect enunciation that she had only ever heard before in the Governor-General’s residence in New South Wales. Her mother would have been most impressed.

But not if she had seen him. His clothes were old and worn, his hair was unkempt and—Caro could not help but wrinkle her nose—he smelt, mostly of drink. I should feel sorry for him, she reminded herself, but that was impossible. Someone who looked like a tramp had no right to the irritating mannerism of sounding apologetic when he plainly was not. She met his gaze squarely and then rather wished she hadn’t. There was a deadness in his brown eyes that chilled her. She found herself wondering if he was really even seeing her.

‘Well, I suppose I should thank you,’ she began indifferently, but already he had turned on his heel and returned to the bar with only the most cursory of nods. Incensed by his rudeness, she thought for a moment about following him back in and telling him what she thought, before common sense prevailed. Drawing her shawl tightly against the cold, she turned back into the hotel.

The foyer was still dimly lit, but no longer deserted. Charlotte was there, talking in rapid, hushed tones to a tall, well-dressed man in his thirties who was leaning nonchalantly against the desk, apparently listening to her with only half his attention. His pale eyes swept over Caro with the appreciation of a connoisseur as she made her entrance in a flurry of snowflakes.

‘Well, well, well. Now, you must be the niece,’ he said softly as he straightened up. ‘There’s no mistaking the resemblance.’

‘Oh, Caroline, there you are!’ Her aunt seemed flustered, her fingers working nervously at the fine silk shawl clutched around her shoulders. ‘Come and meet Harold, darling.’

‘Miss Morgan,’ he murmured, extending his hand. ‘What an unexpected pleasure. Although I’d never expect Charlotte to have a niece who wasn’t utterly lovely.’ Caro was well used to flattery, and this man was obviously a close friend of her aunt’s, but still she hesitated before offering her hand to him. When he brought it to his lips she had to make a real effort not to flinch away. She wasn’t sure why she should react to him so—perhaps it was his boldness or air of absolute confidence. He seemed to mistake her unease for shyness and he held her hand for much too long, amusement lighting the etched lines of his face. The word ‘dissolute’ flashed into Caro’s mind.

‘Where have you been?’ Charlotte said to the man beside her with just a trace of reproach in her voice. ‘I couldn’t find you in your room when that dreadful Oliver was threatening me…’

‘Come now, Charlotte,’ Harold said in tolerant amusement. ‘He merely told you he was leaving your employment.’

‘But it was the manner in which he told me! He was so rude, Harold—you’ve no idea!’ She pouted prettily.

‘You should try paying your staff, my dear—then I can guarantee they won’t be rude to you.’

‘Oh, don’t preach so. You know I hate it.’ She looked up at him appealingly. ‘Now what shall I do? There’s only the cook and that silly chit of a girl left now—and goodness knows how long they’ll stay. I’ll have to shut the hotel down soon!’

He shrugged as if Charlotte’s problems were entirely trivial. ‘Let’s talk about it over dinner, shall we?’

‘I’m sure I could find something in the kitchen,’ Caro began uncertainly, but Harold and her aunt turned to her with looks of genuine surprise.

‘We’ll eat elsewhere, tonight,’ Harold said firmly. ‘We can’t have you cooking, Miss Morgan. That would never do.’ He held out an arm to each of them. ‘Come along, ladies.’

Charlotte snuggled into his side with alacrity, but Caro held back. That they should dine out elsewhere when her aunt owned this huge hotel and could not afford to even pay the staff seemed completely nonsensical. However, Harold remained where he was, arm outstretched, his smile not faltering, and it seemed churlish to refuse him.

‘I’ll just get my coat,’ she said hurriedly and ran upstairs so that she would not have to take his arm. In her room she stood for a moment, struggling to regain her composure. Encountering Mr Thwaites so soon after the unpleasant episode in the bar had left her head whirling. She didn’t like him, and she didn’t understand the relationship between him and her aunt. She thought for a moment about excusing herself from dinner, but a low growl from her stomach reminded her that her last meal had been well over twelve hours ago. At least if she went she would be fed. She changed into her stout boots, buttoned her coat up to the neck and went downstairs.

The snow was still falling thickly when they stepped outside and a bitter wind had sprung up, making visibility past a few yards impossible and piling the snow in drifts along the side of the road. The Castledene bar was doing a roaring trade judging from the raucous sounds coming from within. Despite herself, Caro edged a little closer to Harold as they passed.

Along an almost-deserted Princes Street he led them to another hotel, nowhere as near as grand as the Castledene, but where they were welcomed into a very pleasant dining room by a neatly uniformed maid.

‘Somewhere close to the fire, please,’ said Charlotte with a shiver in her voice. It was then that Caro realised that her aunt had not put on a coat, but was still wearing only the silk shawl over her evening dress. As they took their seats at a table close to the fireplace, Charlotte removed the by-now sodden shawl and Caro’s jaw dropped. Her aunt’s pale-blue satin gown was beautifully cut and obviously very expensive, but the sleeves were almost non-existent and Caro was sure that with one deep breath her aunt would reveal far more than could ever be deemed socially decent. The waiter, on his way over to them with the menu, collided into another diner’s chair in his stunned state.

‘Aunt Charlotte,’ she whispered urgently.

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Aren’t you cold?’

‘Frozen rigid, darling. I need a drink!’

Harold chuckled and summoned the red-faced waiter with a flick of his wrist. ‘Your aunt always drinks champagne with dinner. What’s your preference, Miss Morgan? Or may I call you Caroline?’

‘I don’t drink, thank you,’ Caro said a little too tersely. She was aware that he was looking at her oddly, but she was still too shocked by her aunt’s appearance to care if he thought her over-prim. Mind you, she thought twenty minutes later, anyone would appear prim next to Aunt Charlotte. The first bottle of champagne was swiftly dispatched and the second took only a little longer as Aunt Charlotte, it seemed, had mastered the art of elegant gulping. By the time the soup dishes had been cleared and plates of steaming-hot ham and potatoes set before them, the third bottle of champagne had been opened. A pang of unease went through Caro as she realised that Harold drank only a little himself, and appeared to be quite happy to encourage Aunt Charlotte’s excesses.

She sipped the glass of water she had ordered for herself and looked around the dining room with critical eyes. It was comfortable, certainly, and warm. The service had been attentive enough—overly attentive, in fact, as the waiter had missed few opportunities to ogle down the front of her aunt’s dress—and the food was adequate. But if this was one of Dunedin’s best restaurants, then the Castledene, cleaned and polished, with the chandeliers dusted and lit, would be in a class of its own. When she had pestered her father to take her on one of his business trips to Sydney—which she frequently had—he had always treated her to lunch in one of the substantial hotels of the town. It was here that she had leaned to appreciate fine dining, surroundings and service. Why shouldn’t Dunedin have the same? After all, it was said that there were fortunes made daily in this town and the Castledene had plainly been built to take advantage of those fortunes.

It was just a matter of restoring the Castledene to its earlier glory. As she watched Aunt Charlotte push her untouched plate away and reach for her glass again, Caro began to understand why the hotel had fallen on hard times in the first place.

As if reading her thoughts, Aunt Charlotte looked archly over the top of her glass.

‘Not drinking, darling?’ Her voice, soft and musical as ever, was distinctly slurred.

‘I don’t like alcohol, Aunt Charlotte,’ Caro said carefully.

‘Hmph! Like your mother, are you? Emma didn’t like drinking. Not like your father. Ben used to like a drink.’ She gave a laugh and slumped back in her seat. One pink nipple popped up out of her dress and she gave no sign of noticing as Harold considerately tucked it back into her bodice. ‘Oh, yes,’ she went on, ‘your father could put it away, all right. Oh, the things I could tell you about your father—’

‘But you’re not going to, my dear, are you?’ Harold cut in smoothly, much to Caro’s relief. ‘Let me fill up your glass.’ He turned the full charm of his smile on to Caro. ‘Now, Miss Morgan. What do you think of Dunedin?’

Caro laid her knife and fork down precisely on her plate. ‘Apart from the cold, which is quite a novelty, I like what I’ve seen so far, Mr Thwaites.’

‘Good, good.’ He topped up Charlotte’s glass and looked askance at Caro. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like just a drop, Miss Morgan?’

‘Thank you, no,’ Caro said firmly. ‘But what I would like is to talk to you about the Castledene.’

He sighed dramatically. ‘What a dreary subject for a chill night, Miss Morgan. Surely we can find a more convivial subject on which to converse?’

‘It seems to me that it’s a subject we must discuss, and urgently, too.’ She looked pointedly at her aunt. ‘Don’t you agree, Aunt Charlotte?’

‘About what, darling?’ Her aunt smiled fuzzily at her and Harold leant over to speak in a stage-whisper in her ear.

‘Your niece wants to talk about business, Charlotte.’

‘Oh, do you? How tiresome,’ Charlotte pouted. ‘I don’t.’ She giggled and Harold propped her up carefully as she began to slide to one side.

Caro took a deep breath and began patiently, ‘Aunt Charlotte, the hotel has been forced to close down…’

‘No it hasn’t, silly,’ her aunt murmured into her glass.

‘Yes, it has,’ Caro corrected her. ‘You’ve lost staff, you can’t afford to pay the staff you have, there’s no money to stock the kitchen and feed the guests. You’re trading insolvently, Aunt Charlotte!’

Her aunt blinked at her. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling.’

She plainly hadn’t. Caro turned her attention to Harold who, despite his languid pose, had in fact been watching her sharply. ‘Mr Thwaites, the bar seems to be doing very well. How much rent do you pay my aunt for it?’

‘That, my dear, is between your aunt and myself,’ he said courteously enough.

‘Well, whatever it is, it’s obviously not enough!’ Caro retorted. ‘That bar was full of men this evening, all buying considerable amounts of alcohol—’

‘Which is an expensive commodity in this country,’ he broke in. ‘Besides which, may I ask how you know how well the bar is patronised, Miss Morgan? You would never cross the threshold of such a place, surely?’ As she hesitated, she saw the gleam of amusement in his eyes. ‘That was not wise, Miss Morgan. Anything could happen to you in a public bar. I’d advise you not to do anything so foolhardy in the future.’

He was probably right. For one disconcerting second she remembered the cold, dead eyes of the stranger in the bar. But far too much was at stake for her to be deterred by Harold’s veiled threats and she plunged on regardless.

‘Tomorrow I’d like to see the books for the hotel and I intend doing a thorough inventory.’ He shrugged, so she added provocatively, ‘And that includes the bar, too.’

His expression grew decidedly chilly. ‘The bar is run as a separate business, Miss Morgan. You’re not to set foot in it.’

‘Oh, stop it, stop it,’ Charlotte waved her hands at them helplessly. ‘Don’t argue. You know I hate people arguing…’

‘You’re quite right.’ Harold said soothingly, even while sending Caro a look of pure malice. ‘We don’t want to upset you, do we, Miss Morgan?’

Caro looked at her aunt and was instantly contrite. Under her makeup Charlotte was very pale, and the champagne glass was shaking in her hand. Caro helped her aunt to her feet and, when the waiter brought their coats, insisted on Charlotte wearing her own warm coat back to the Castledene. Charlotte protested briefly about how unbecoming the garment was to her, but was either too drunk or too unwell to complain for long. Caro felt her aunt’s feverish, bird-like frame as she buttoned up the coat for her and felt an overwhelming sense of protectiveness. Poor Aunt Charlotte, in appearance so much like Caro’s mother, but with none of the quiet contentedness that was part of Emma’s personality. And while Caro was firmly of the opinion that a woman should be able to look after her own interests, it was all too clear that Charlotte was relying far too much on the highly dubious goodwill of Mr Thwaites.

Resolving to tackle Harold again first thing in the morning, Caro followed his and her aunt’s unsteady progress back through the streets of Dunedin. It had stopped snowing, but the sidewalks were slippery with snowdrifts. On the corner of Castle Street Charlotte collapsed and Harold had to carry her the rest of the way. Caro followed him upstairs and into her aunt’s room, where she hurriedly lit the lamps while he deposited her aunt on the bed.

‘I’ll take care of her now,’ she said pointedly as he removed her aunt’s slippers, silly, frippery little things that they were. He stepped back with a sardonic smile.

‘As you wish. I’ll be in the bar if you need me. I take it you remember where that is, Miss Morgan?’

As he left Charlotte struggled to sit up, protesting that she was perfectly capable of seeing to herself. Calmly ignoring her, Caro set and lit the fire, and soon had the room in order and Charlotte tucked up warmly in bed with a bedpan.

‘Shall I see if there’s any milk in the kitchen?’ Caro asked, perching herself on the edge of the bed. Propped up against the pillows, her aunt wrinkled her nose in disgust.

‘Ugh! Yes, I remember Emma used to make me hot milk and honey before I went to bed at night to help me sleep.’ She held out a fine-boned hand to Caro. ‘I miss your mother, Caroline. She’s an angel…’

Caro fought back the pang of homesickness. ‘I miss her, too,’ she confessed.

Charlotte sighed and her eyes drooped. Her hand in Caro’s felt far too hot for comfort, despite her complaints of the cold. ‘Twenty years apart. Such a long time, and because of such a silly quarrel…’

She was asleep in seconds. Caro waited for a while, but her aunt seemed comfortable enough, so she tiptoed back to her own room. The meagre fire she had lit for herself had long since died out and when she pulled back the curtain the room was flooded with cold moonlight. She undressed swiftly without a lamp and pulled on the old, comfortable nightgown that always reminded her of home. Then, shivering, she slipped between the cold sheets, finding the still-warm bedpan with grateful toes.

She was so tired that she had expected to fall asleep immediately, but instead she lay staring blindly at the ceiling, missing the creaking of ship’s timbers beneath the wind and the waves. The silence here unnerved her, and although there was an occasional burst of noise from the bar below the sound was so muffled by the snow on the windowpanes as to be almost imperceptible. It was hours later when she heard the creaking of the stairs and the sound of quiet footsteps coming down the hall. Feeling suddenly very alone she sat up, pulling the blankets around her protectively. Too late she remembered that she hadn’t locked the door.

The footsteps stopped outside her room. Scarcely daring to breathe, she silently padded to the door and felt for the key. There wasn’t one. She gripped the doorhandle tightly, resisting the pressure as she felt it being turned on the other side.

‘Caroline?’ Mr Thwaites whispered hoarsely. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Not at this hour, I wouldn’t think, mate,’ snarled a familiar voice beside him.

‘Mr Matthews?’ Caro whispered incredulously.

‘Yes.’

She wrenched open the door and looked down at the little, whiskery, beloved face. Harold Thwaites seemed to have vanished silently into the shadows.

‘Oh, I’m so pleased to see you!’ She flung her arms around Mr Matthews and hugged him tight. He tolerated it for a full five seconds before pushing her away.

‘Enough of that!’ he said gruffly.

She drew him into the room and stared at him incredulously in the moonlight.

‘I can’t believe it! Oh, this is wonderful! When did you arrive in Dunedin?’

‘This evenin’. I shipped out from Sydney same day as you.’ He looked disparagingly around the room. ‘You ready to come home now?’

She sank down on the edge of her bed. ‘No,’ she said mulishly.

‘You’ve made your point, girl. Your ma’s beside herself, your pa wants you home safe again—’

‘But I can’t go home!’ she burst out. ‘Not now! Aunt Charlotte’s not well, and the hotel needs rescuing and Mr Thwaite’s cheating her, I just know it and—’

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ He held up a hand in protest. ‘Just slow down and tell me what you’re talking about.’

So she did, and he stood listening intently, nodding from time to time in what she hoped was agreement. His silence when she had finished, however, was ominous.

‘Well,’ she said after a moment. ‘You can understand why I can’t go home.’

He scratched his head. ‘I can understand why you won’t go home, girl. But why you should stay here beats me. You don’t owe your aunt nothing!’

‘But I do! She’s so sweet and helpless…’ She ignored Mr Matthew’s derisive snort and added, ‘I’m not leaving Dunedin until she’s out of trouble and that’s that. Now, do you have any money?’

‘What?’

‘Money. Did Father give you any before you left Sydney? I’m sure he would have.’

He looked shifty. ‘Can’t say that he did…’

‘Yes, he did. He would have given you enough to get us both home, if nothing else.’ She held out her hand. ‘That will at least pay some of the staff wages. It may even be enough to open the dining room again,’

Mr Matthews stepped back, his eyes widening in panic. ‘Your pa’d skin me alive if I gave your aunt so much as a penny! I’d never dare set foot in his house again!’

His consternation was so real that Caro uncharacteristically stopped arguing and lowered her hand. ‘Oh, this family feud is so ridiculous! Well, I’ll just have to think of something else.’ Somewhere in Dunedin a clock chimed three o’clock and she struggled to stifle a yawn.

‘Tomorrow,’ Mr Matthews said. ‘We’ll think of something tomorrow, girl. Now you get back into bed and keep warm.’

She couldn’t stop the next yawn. ‘I’ll find you a room along the hall…’ But he told her in no uncertain terms that he was perfectly capable of finding a room to ‘bunk down in’ and left her after several more admonitions that she return to bed directly. The bed was cold, and her feet felt like ice, but Caro was so happy she scarcely noticed. Mr Matthews was sleeping across the hallway and everything was right with the world. She fell asleep almost immediately with a smile on her face.

Chapter Three

‘A h, here it is!’ Caro hauled the heavy book up from under the registration desk, thumped it down triumphantly and blew the light layer of dust off the leather cover. The motes danced in the pale winter light pouring in through the long front windows of the Castledene Hotel.

Outside had dawned the loveliest imaginable spring day. The previous day’s snow still clung to the hilltops, but Caro had gone for an early-morning walk around the outskirts of Dunedin, with Mr Matthews puffing behind all the way, and she had returned with a clutch of bright daffodils. They sat now in a fine crystal vase on the registration desk, lending an air of cheerful welcome to the otherwise formal entry hall.

‘Oh, dear.’ She looked across to where Mr Matthews sat glowering at his feet. ‘Nothing has been entered in these books for over four months.’ Mr Matthews, who had a profound suspicion of anything on a page, merely shrugged. ‘I wonder who’s been keeping record of everything bought or sold since then?’ she murmured to the empty air. ‘I would have thought that would have been Oliver’s job.’

‘Or yer aunt’s,’ Mr Matthews said shortly.

Caro glanced up at her aunt’s door at the top of the stairs. She had looked in on her earlier, but Charlotte had been still sleeping restlessly and Caro hadn’t liked to disturb her.

‘She’s not well, Mr Matthews.’

He snorted rudely. ‘Never has been, that one. Never been sober, neither.’

‘Don’t be horrible!’ Caro said indignantly. ‘I meant, she’s not well physically. She’s not strong, and only recently widowed, and I don’t think she’s ever had to run a business before.’

‘Neither have you,’ he retorted. ‘What do you know ’bout books and figures and all that? Never noticed you paying any attention to your ’rithmetic lessons when your ma was trying to learn you.’

‘But the figures that relate to running a business make sense, don’t you see?’ Caro jabbed her finger at the offending blank space in the ledger book. ‘Without that information, I can’t tell how much it costs to run this establishment. And I’d really like to know how much Mr Thwaites is—or isn’t—paying for the lease on the bar.’

‘None of your bleedin’ business, I say.’

Caro closed the ledger book with a slap. ‘It is, Mr Matthews, because I’m my aunt’s closest relative in this town. Come on.’

‘Oh, Gawd help us.’ He got creakily to his feet. After weeks of inactivity on the ship from Sydney and a night spent sleeping outside Caro’s door, he had found the brisk walk around Dunedin exhausting. ‘Where’re you going now?’

‘To the bar. There’s bound to be a ledger kept there.’

His eyes widened in alarm. ‘A public bar? Now look here, girl…’

But she wasn’t listening as she strode out the front door and along the veranda to the bar. With Mr Matthews audibly following her, she wasn’t in the least bit afraid. In fact, the bar was deserted apart from a bartender—a different one from the unpleasant man the previous night—and a couple of comatose bodies slumped on the tables. Although she would not have admitted it even to herself, Caro was relieved that there was no sign of Mr Thwaites. The air was fuggy from tobacco smoke and beer and she left the door open behind her to allow in some fresh air.

‘Good morning,’ she said firmly to the bartender. He opened his mouth, caught the look on Mr Matthews’s face and closed it again.

‘Mornin’, miss,’ he said after a moment.

‘I’m Caroline Morgan, Mrs Wilks’s niece. My aunt is indisposed, so I will be in charge of the Castledene for a while.’ She smiled engagingly at him. ‘Could I see your books, please?’

‘Books, miss?’

‘Yes. Your ledgers. Please.’ Her smile did not falter.

‘Don’t think I’m allowed to do that, miss…’

‘I’m sure you are,’ Caro said with steely charm.

The bartender looked from her to Mr Matthews, whose whiskers were literally bristling with belligerence. The little man had to be one of the ugliest people the bartender had ever seen, in contrast to the stunning beauty of the tall and very pushy blonde facing him across the bar. Completely unnerved, he stepped back.

‘I don’t think…well, I couldn’t let them leave the premises…’

‘That’s quite all right.’ Again there was that quick, enchanting smile before the girl took the ledgers firmly from his grasp and bore them off. In the middle of the bar room she stopped and frowned at the slumped figures at the two tables.

‘I think these people should go home, Mr Matthews. The place looks so…so cluttered, don’t you think?’

Mr Matthews grumbled something, seized the legs of the closest man and hauled him out the door. While he was gone, Caro moved closer and peered at the remaining unconscious customer. Arms splayed out on the table, his face turned to one side, he was still recognisable as the man who had come to her rescue the previous night. She shook him, gently at first, and then harder until his impossibly long lashes fluttered open.

‘Sir? The bar is closed now, sir.’

It took a visible effort for him to raise his head off the table, and it was only by using his arms as leverage that he was able to sit upright. The cold, dead eyes that had looked at her so clearly the previous night were half-closed and he looked to be in some kind of private agony.

‘Come on, mate! On yer way!’ Mr Matthews said testily behind Caro and she held up her hand to stall him.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, keeping her voice devoid of sympathy.

After a moment the man nodded, very carefully. ‘Yes, madam. I believe that I am.’

Again, the perfect vowels struck her as strangely exotic and behind her she heard Mr Matthews’s expelled breath of surprise. Slowly, with great precision, the man lifted his hand and felt inside his jacket. Then his face crumpled and his eyes screwed tight.

‘No…!’

‘Been fleeced, have yer, mate?’ Caro was surprised by Mr Matthews’s completely out-of-character sympathy. The man took a steadying breath and nodded. ‘Stay off the booze next time,’ Mr Matthews advised. ‘Then you can keep a hold on yer wallet.’

‘Thank you for the advice.’ There was not a trace of sarcasm in the man’s voice. He manoeuvred himself to his feet and stayed there, propped up against the wall as the room was obviously swimming around him. He didn’t look at all well.

‘Have you got somewhere to go?’ Caro was surprised to hear herself ask.

‘Yes, thank you, madam.’

She didn’t believe him.

‘Mr Matthews, please give me a pound note,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the man for a second. He was so pale she thought he was going to faint. With only an insignificant mutter of discontent, Mr Matthews did as he was told.

‘Here.’ She tucked the note briskly into the man’s jacket pocket. ‘Please get yourself a meal and somewhere to sleep tonight.’

For a moment he met her eyes and the anger she saw there shocked her to the core. Then he looked away, a faint flush rising to his cheeks.

‘Thank you,’ he said emotionlessly.

She watched him walk stiffly to the door and out into the sunshine.

‘You’ll have us both in the poorhouse if you keep giving money to drunkards,’ Mr Matthews grumbled as Caro propped the ledger open on the vacated table. She ignored him, as she was certainly not about to tell him what had transpired in the bar the previous night. It pleased her that she had paid her debt to the man, but she still felt unsettled by the expression she had seen in his eyes. He hadn’t even had the grace to be grateful.

Ten minutes of perusing the accounts confirmed Caro’s worst suspicions. Mr Thwaites was making very healthy profits, indeed, from the bar, but if he was paying any rent to the Castledene Hotel, it was not shown in the books. She sighed and sat back to study the gleaming rows of bottles lined up on the wall above the bar.

‘This is dreadful, Mr Matthews. My aunt is facing destitution, the hotel has had to shut down, yet the bar is taking in hundreds of pounds every night! I’ve got to find out why none of the profits are going to keep the hotel and why the hotel got into financial trouble in the first place. It appears to have been profitable until my aunt’s husband died.’

‘Well, I’d ’ave thought that was bleedin’ obvious.’ Mr Matthews rubbed his bristles thoughtfully. ‘Yer aunt’s spent the lot on men and fripperies and booze. Always has, always will. When yer grandfather—yer aunt’s first husband—died, yer pa gave her enough to keep most women for years. She was back with her hand out in a fortnight and cut up rough when he wouldn’t give her another penny.’

‘But she’s my mother’s eldest sister—and she was his widowed stepmother! Surely he had an obligation to care for her, Mr Matthews?’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘There was more to it than that, girl. Things you don’t need to know nothin’ about.’

‘You mean about Aunt Charlotte choosing my grandfather instead of my father?’ Caro said tartly. ‘I know all about that, Mr Matthews, my aunt told me. While I’m pleased that she did turn him down, of course, because he married Mother instead, I think Father was petty and mean to send her away without a penny. The least I can do is try to help her out now.’ There was an ominous silence. ‘Well?’ she prompted after a moment. ‘Don’t you agree?’

Mr Matthews shook his head slowly. ‘Darned if I don’t know whether to weep or to put you over my knee and paddle yer behind. All I can say, girl, is don’t believe a word yer aunt tells you. From what you tell me, she ain’t changed one bit in the last twenty years.’

‘Then what did happen?’ Caro demanded.

‘Not for me to tell you.’

‘Then kindly mind your own business.’ She shut the ledger and returned it to the cringing bartender with a brilliant smile. ‘Now, I must go and see if Aunt Charlotte has improved.’

But Aunt Charlotte hadn’t improved at all. She lay shivering and as pale as the satin pillows of her bed, giving anguished little cries as Caro tried to open the curtains.

‘Oh, the light, Caroline! Oh, I can’t bear it! Please, go away, darling. I just want to die!’

‘I’ve brought you a jug of water, Aunt Charlotte— Mother always makes us drink lots of water when we’re feverish.’ Caro sat down on the bed and, despite her aunt’s protestation that it had been years since she had drunk plain water, she persisted until Charlotte had completely emptied a glass. She then dampened a cloth for her aunt’s forehead and tiptoed silently around the room, tidying and straightening, until Charlotte was asleep again. After leaving a window open to let in some of the crisply fresh air, Caro left, closing the door carefully behind her. There was so much she wanted to ask her aunt, but this was clearly not the time.

There had been no staff in the kitchen in the early morning and there were none there now. Mr Matthews stood alone at the kitchen table, preparing one of the delicious soups he always seemed able to produce from nothing at all, grumbling away to himself all the while. Caro sat and watched him, her chin propped on her fists, her forehead furrowed with thought.

‘You’ll get wrinkles,’ he advised her after a while.

‘Mmm. Mr Matthews, I’m going to have to go to the bank.’ He sucked in his breath with horror, but she plunged on. ‘Aunt Charlotte’s in no condition to do so and Mr Thwaites won’t lift a finger to help and there’s no other way to get the money we need to start up the hotel again.’

‘How much’re we talking about here?’ he asked in alarm. ‘I’ve got a little bit on me, not much, mind, and yer pa’d kill me if he knew…’

‘By the time I’ve paid the staff wages, provisioned the kitchen, bought firewood, had the chimneys cleaned… I’d say five hundred pounds at the very least.’

‘I ain’t got that much.’ He slumped into a heap of misery. ‘But you don’t want to go off to a bank. Nasty, thievin’ places, banks. Have the shirt off yer back in two seconds, they will.’

‘My father always dealt with them satisfactorily.’ Caro recalled visiting the bank with her father on occasion. She remembered the dark panelled walls, the heavy-handed pleasantry of the manager as he plied her with compliments and pressed a glass of the best whisky on Ben… Why, it had been rather fun. It couldn’t be that bad going on her own account, surely?

‘Yer father never borrowed ’cept on what he knew were a good business deal. And he were a man. They’ll never lend to you,’ Mr Matthews predicted darkly, realising his mistake only when Caro’s chin came up.

‘Well, we’ll see about that!’

There were banks on every street in Dunedin, but it was the work of a minute to look through the ledgers and find out which one her aunt dealt with. It took somewhat longer before Caro was satisfied with the image she wished to present to the bank manager. The better of her woollen gowns was perfectly presentable, but her coat and bonnet were too plain to give her any confidence. She crept into her aunt’s room and managed to extract a particularly fetching bonnet in pale blue, together with a matching short walking cape, without waking Charlotte.

She was pleased when she looked at her reflection in the mirror. While Aunt Charlotte’s taste ran to the somewhat flamboyant, the bonnet Caro had chosen was a study in understated elegance once she removed the peacock feathers. Just right, she thought, for impressing bank managers with her innate good taste.

Her sublime confidence lasted all the way down Princes Street, past St Andrew’s Church and down Carlyle Street. It began to falter a little during the half-hour she was kept waiting at the counter for the bank manager to see her, and by the time Mr Froggatt spared the time to show her into his office, she was decidedly tense.

Mr Froggatt was a big, squarely built Northerner, and not one to waste time on niceties.

‘Come to pay off the overdraft, have you?’ he boomed loudly enough for any passing customer to overhear.

‘Overdraft?’ Caro said blankly.

‘Aye, overdraft.’ The bank manager viewed her through narrowed little eyes.

Caro swallowed hard and flashed him her most engaging smile. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about an overdraft, Mr Froggatt. I’ve come to see you about a business proposition. One I think you’ll be very interested in.’

‘Oh, aye?’ he responded drily, completely unmoved by her loveliness. ‘And what that might be? Nothing involving this bank lending further to the Castledene Hotel, I trust?’

She leaned forward to hide her shaking hands. ‘There’s no value to the bank in foreclosing on a business that should and could do very nicely on a small injection of capital, Mr Froggatt.’

He leaned back in his chair to distance himself, splaying his powerful hands on the desk as he bellowed, ‘There’ll be no more money lent to the Castledene Hotel, I say. No more, until the five thousand pounds already outstanding has been repaid in full, with interest. Am I understood, Mrs…?’

Five thousand pounds? It took all Caro’s resolve not to fly from the office there and then. She took a deep breath. ‘My name is Miss Caroline Morgan. I’m Mrs Wilks’s niece, from Sydney.’

He was instantly alert. ‘Are you, indeed? And would your father be Mr Morgan, of the Morgan Shipping Line?’

The word stuck in her throat. ‘Yes…’

‘Ah.’ Something that Caro hoped might have been a smile flickered far too briefly over the impassive features. ‘Yes, Mrs Wilks has spoken of your father several times and I understand he’d be prepared to stand for the losses incurred by your aunt. Are you here on his behalf?’

Thinking that she could cheerfully strangle Aunt Charlotte, Caro shook her head. ‘No, Mr Froggatt, I’m here on my aunt’s behalf. She’s not well, you see, and I’d like to put the hotel back on a sound financial footing.’ She spoke rapidly, before he could interrupt, outlining her plans for the resurrection of the hotel, speeding up when it looked as if he was about to raise an objection. To her relief he heard her out. When she finally ran out of words, he sat back, his shrewd eyes summing her up in a most demoralising manner.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Morgan. You’ve put forward some convincing arguments, but the answer has to be no.’ He almost sounded apologetic.

‘But why?’ She tried not to wail the words. ‘In a town expanding as fast as Dunedin, it would be impossible to run a failing business, if one were prudent!’

‘Mrs Wilks is not prudent,’ he pointed out patiently.

‘But I am!’

‘But you, Miss Morgan, are a young unmarried female.’

‘And?’

‘And the bank does not lend to young, unmarried females, no matter how…prudent they may be. That is the bank’s policy, it is a sound policy, and it will not be changed, Miss Morgan. I’m sorry.’

She took a deep breath. ‘And if I were married?’

‘But you are not married, Miss Morgan.’

‘I am engaged,’ she said brightly.

‘Then I offer my congratulations, Miss Morgan. But you are not married.’

‘I will be next week,’ she said recklessly, prompted by the dreadful vision of the Castledene Hotel falling into ruin. ‘I shall be a married woman then!’

‘Then, given the standing of your father, we might revisit the possibility of extending the period of the loan,’ Mr Froggatt said cautiously. ‘May I ask the name of your intended?’

‘My what?’ Caro said blankly, her mind whirling at what she had got herself into.

‘Your fiancé. The young man to whom you are affianced.’

‘Oh, him!’ she said quickly, trying not to panic at the note of suspicion in the banker’s voice. ‘You wouldn’t know him. He’s not long arrived from England. He doesn’t know anyone here. Well, he knows me, but he doesn’t know anyone else…’

‘My congratulations, then, Miss Morgan. I shall look forward to meeting him when you’ve tied the knot.’ He stood, terminating the meeting. ‘Until then, Miss Morgan.’

Somehow she managed to hold herself together until she returned to the hotel. She ran into the kitchen, took one look at Mr Matthews sitting huddled on the kitchen stool and burst into tears.

‘Mr Matthews, I’ve got to get married!’ she wailed.

In a trice he was at her side, pressing her down on to a chair, patting her shoulder in helpless sympathy. ‘Oh, girl, girl. These things happen. Don’t you fret…’

She wiped her nose on her sleeve, struggling for control. ‘But I have to get married immediately! Within the week!’

He sat beside her, finding a large handkerchief from a pocket and dabbing ineffectually at her eyes. ‘Now, it won’t have to be that soon, you know. It kin happen to the best of us. Why, me and my missus—’

‘You have a wife?’ Caro was so amazed by this information that she almost forgot her own problems for a second.

‘Had a wife. Might still have one. Dunno. England…’ His voice trailed off and she dared not ask further questions. Mr Matthews had once, a very long time ago, been a convict, and no one in the family ever spoke about his origins, respecting him as deeply as they did. He took back the handkerchief and harrumped loudly into it. ‘All I’m saying, girl, is it’s not the end of the world. When did it happen?’

‘Just now, at the bank.’

‘At the bank?’

‘Yes. Mr Froggatt the banker…’

‘The banker?’

She nodded miserably and Mr Matthews sat looking positively stricken.

After a while he cleared his throat. ‘Didn’t realise you wanted the loan this bad, girl.’

‘Oh, I do. That’s why I have to get married, you see.’

‘Yes, but you didn’t have to… Oh, blasted bankers!’ He slammed his fist down on the table. ‘I’ll do fer him, I will. And when yer pa finds out…’

Caro gave a final sniff. ‘Father doesn’t have to find out, Mr Matthews.’

‘Well, how’re you going to hide a baby, girl? Be sensible!’

‘What baby?’

‘Ah.’ He stared at her puzzled face and after a moment said carefully, ‘I think you’d better tell me what happened, girl. Slowly, this time.’

So she told him, stalking up and down the kitchen in indignation as she spoke, oblivious to the look of dawning relief on Mr Matthews’s face. He was smiling by the time Caro finished, which cheered her up no end.

‘So, you think it’s a good idea, Mr Matthews?’

‘What?’ He sobered up swiftly. ‘No. No, it’s a real bad idea. You can’t do it.’

‘But I have to. I have to find a husband in the next day, if I’m to get a special licence. The problem is, how?’

‘The problem ain’t how to get married quick, girl—the problem is the forty years after! You can’t just go and get a man off the streets…’

‘Yes, I can!’ She stared at him as if he was a genius. ‘That’s exactly what I can do! I’ll marry…oh, someone, I don’t care who, but someone who needs the money… That drunk in the bar this morning, for instance! All I have to do is pay him off out of the money the bank will give me, and then later I can get the marriage annulled! I mean, I don’t ever want to get married, but I might, one day, and no one need ever know… Oh, it’s a wonderful scheme! Thank you for thinking of it!’

Mr Matthews slumped on his stool, clutching his chest. His heart was surging in a way that terrified him. ‘You can’t…’ he said weakly, but she wasn’t listening.

‘Now, I want you to go and find that man and offer to pay him…well, I’ll leave that up to you, but don’t make it too much. I’ll go to the Town Hall this afternoon and arrange for a special licence and then… Oh, I’ve got so much to do!’

She spun around at the door and raised a cautionary finger. ‘And you will check his name, won’t you, Mr Matthews, please. I don’t want to be saddled with a name like Ramsbottom, or Piggot or…or Froggatt!’ She laughed gaily and the door slammed behind her.

Mr Matthews sat alone in the kitchen and listened to his charge’s feet exuberantly pounding up the stairs. Bleedin’ heck, he thought. What am I going to tell her pa?

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