A Convenient Gentleman. Victoria Aldridge

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ