Room for Love

by Sophie Pembroke

  “So I can see,” she said, adding, patch drawing room chairs when her left hand found a hole in the leather of her seat.

  “More than just the cosmetic,” Nate clarified. He pulled open the file drawer in the desk beside him, and handed her a thick wodge of paper. “This is a survey of the inn your gran had done last year.”

  “You’ve seen this?” Carrie asked Nate, leafing through the pages.

  Nate nodded, his face sympathetic. And not without cause, Carrie thought. It looked like the surveyor hadn’t found a single part of the inn that didn’t need something done to it.

  “New windows, rotting terrace... Possible roof issues?” Carrie sighed. “Well, this is going to be fun.”

  Nate winced. “Yeah. Looks like your redecorating might have to wait.”

  Carrie couldn’t quite decide if he sounded pleased. “It all needs doing, sooner or later.” Nate might not like the idea of updating the inn, but if Carrie managed to convince Anna to pay for the structural work, she would definitely want to redecorate, too.

  “There are some other papers, too,” Nate said, his voice softer. He held a small pile of letters out before him, and Carrie reached across, feeling some resistance when she tugged them out of his hands.

  On the top sat an envelope marked ‘Carrie.’ She’d have recognized the handwriting anywhere in the world. But here at the Avalon, there was only ever one person it could be from.

  Carrie swallowed around the lump that had taken up residence in her throat and wondered how long it would take her to work up the courage to open it.

  Nate braced his hands against the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet. Carrie glanced up. He looked even more absurdly tall when he was the only one standing.

  “Well, you don’t need me here for this,” he said, just as Izzie stuck her head around the door from the bar, saying, “Nate? Jacob’s got some kind of childcare crisis, and he’s supposed to be giving me a lift home. Can we...”

  “Yeah, sure,” Nate said, with a wave of his hand. “I’ll walk you out. I need to talk to Jacob about menus for next week, anyway.” He stopped by the door and turned back to where Carrie waited patiently for him to realize his mistake. “If that’s okay with Carrie. I mean, Miss Archer.”

  It was fun to see a grown man truly flustered, Carrie decided. And it took her mind off what they needed menus for next week. She’d find out soon enough. “Fine. I’ll see you both tomorrow, Izzie.”

  The receptionist disappeared into the bar, but Nate still hovered in the doorway. “I don’t know if Nancy mentioned, but I live on-site,” he said, with such a meaningful look that for a moment she wondered if he was hitting on her. “I’ve got the summerhouse, down by the woods. So I’ll be around later if you want to discuss anything.”

  Carrie glanced at her papers as he left. Apparently there was more bad news still to come.

  * * * *

  Cyb wasn’t sure she liked the Red Lion very much. She’d never had cause to go there before. Why would she, when the Avalon Inn was so friendly? Even when her Harry was alive, they’d gone away to hotels, or nice restaurants, and to the theatre. Never to a sticky pub on the High Street. And didn’t it used to be a hardware store? Surely she remembered Harry buying a new broom there, once. He wouldn’t recognize it now. Of course, he’d been gone a very long time. He might not recognize her either.

  No, Coed-y-Capel had changed in fifty years, and Cyb wasn’t all that interested in living in it now. Much better to remember how things were, and recreate them as best as possible at the Avalon.

  “Now, then,” Stan said, getting to his feet on the beer-stained floorboards. What kind of a place couldn’t even afford a nice carpet? Cyb tried to pay attention to Stan, as she always did, but really, with all the flashing lights and the pounding music, who could stay focused? “I call to order the first official meeting of the Avalon Inn Avengers.”

  Across the table, Moira raised her hand just enough to get Stan’s attention and said, “Can I just be very clear on one point? The Avalon Inn Avengers is a stupid name.”

  Stan’s face reddened, but he had good manners so he didn’t shout. Cyb liked that about Stan. He always looked like he might bellow, but he never did. A good quality in a man. “Your opinion is noted, Moira,” he said instead. “But until such time as we have a better suggestion, or until the group is no longer necessary, we will stick with what we have. Yes?”

  Moira nodded but Cyb thought she might have been smiling, just a little bit. Moira didn’t really appreciate Stan. Not the way she did.

  “It is clear to me,” Stan said, leaning his hands against the table, “that our way of life, our inn, is being threatened. I’d hoped Nancy’s granddaughter would have better sense than to change what has worked for decades. But from what I saw today...”

  “What exactly did you see today?” Moira asked. “I noticed you’d sloped off when Cyb and I headed home earlier.”

  Stan bristled. “I thought somebody should take responsibility for keeping an eye on what was going on at the inn.”

  “You mean you followed Carrie and Nate around on their tour.”

  “Not exactly.” Stan’s gaze darted away. “But I can report that she didn’t look happy with what she saw.”

  Of course, Stan wasn’t perfect. He did get worked up about things, sometimes, when it really wasn’t necessary. A sign of a passionate nature, though, she supposed.

  “Carrie seemed perfectly darling to me,” Cyb said, without really thinking, and felt her cheeks getting warm as Stan turned his stern gaze on her. “Of course, we only just met...”

  “Exactly. Who is to say that tomorrow she won’t close the inn and start making it all...froofy.” Stan waved a hand on the last word, as if to say you know what I mean. Cyb thought she did, anyway.

  She usually did–even when Stan was blustering and fussing, she knew it was all for show.

  Moira, however, obviously felt the need to question. As usual. “Froofy?”

  Stan sat down with a sigh and turned his full attention to the dissenter. “Tell me, Moira. Do you want to lose your Bridge nights? Or our dances? Or your garden patch?” Cyb sucked in a breath at that. Stan really was bringing out the big guns if he was threatening Moira’s garden. But he wasn’t done. “Do you want your grandsons to lose their jobs and for Nate to go back to London?”

  “Nancy said she’d take care of all those things,” Moira said, but even she looked doubtful now. “She said she’d make sure we’d all get to stay.”

  “Nancy said,” Stan echoed. “And I’m sure she did her best. But the inn is Carrie’s now. How much do you think she’ll respect her grandmother’s wishes?”

  “Sorry I’m late,” Izzie said, slipping into an empty chair at the table. Cyb hadn’t even noticed her enter the pub. She, at least, looked like she belonged there, with her blue jeans low on her hips and her blond hair swinging across her shoulders. Cyb had looked like that once. Without the jeans, though, of course. “Jacob had to get home so the childminder could leave, so I just got him to drop me off by the park and walked in from there.”

  Moira jerked half out of her chair at her grandson’s name. “Does he need me to...”

  Izzie shook her head. “He’s fine. Just worried about leaving a bad impression with Miss Archer.”

  “Why didn’t he call me?” Moira asked. “He knows I would have gone and got Georgia.”

  Looking awkward, Izzie shrugged. “He just didn’t want to bother you again, I think.”

  Something else new, that. A single father raising a little girl, and on a chef’s wage. Nancy couldn’t have been paying him much. If Moira didn’t have Georgia three days a week, he probably couldn’t even afford the childminder for the other two.

  It wouldn’t have been like that in the old days.

  “Never mind that, Izzie-girl.” Stan leaned far enough across the table to make the poor girl actually move her chair back a little. Stan forgot sometimes how intimidating he could be to pe
ople who didn’t know him like Cyb did. “Tell us what’s going on up there.”

  “I thought Nate was coming with you,” Moira said, wrinkling her forehead. Cyb really should remind her to stop that. It wasn’t as if they didn’t all have enough wrinkles already without willfully making things worse.

  Izzie gave a secretive grin. Or, rather, the sort of grin Cyb knew meant she was about to share a good secret. “He was. He walked us to the gate, but then he said he had to get back and do some job or another urgently.” The grin got wider. “And I heard him tell Miss Archer he’d be around later. If she wanted to talk. Even told her where his room is.”

  The table fell silent. Cyb tried to imagine good, honest, Nate ‘putting the moves’ on anybody, and failed. Of course, Harry always said she hadn’t much of an imagination. It wasn’t that Nate wasn’t good looking, of course, although far too tall really, which couldn’t be helped. No, the issue was, he really only cared about three things: his garden, his grandmother, and Nancy. Cyb knew Izzie had been excited when he’d first arrived, but he hadn’t shown any interest at all. And Izzie, with her blond hair and big blue eyes was far prettier than Carrie Archer. Unless...

  “He must have a thing about redheads,” Cyb said absently, and Stan glared at her. Not a lot of time for romance, Stan. Which was a shame, really.

  “We’re not here to discuss Nathanial’s courting habits,” he said, his tone curt. “Now, what was Carrie doing?”

  Izzie shrugged. “Looking through papers in the drawing room. I think they’re the ones Nancy left.” She paused. “She didn’t look very happy with them.”

  Silence again. Even Cyb knew what those papers said.

  Moira let out a loud sigh. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Perhaps there were other papers, too. Financial ones. Not just the ones about us.”

  “I’m not sure that’s any better,” Stan said, his voice ominous. “No, Moira, I don’t like it. We need a battle plan. And for a battle plan to work, we need to have better intelligence.” He turned to Izzie. “Izzie-girl. You’re our eyes and ears backstage at the inn. I need you to watch everything, listen to everything, and report everything back to me. Everything. You got that?”

  Izzie’s blue eyes were wider than ever as she nodded. Cyb wondered if Stan had really thought this through. Even she could see he’d probably get more reports about Nate’s possible attempts to seduce Carrie than anything else.

  “Good. Then, with that sorted, I call to a close this meeting of the Avalon Inn Avengers.” Stan banged his empty pint glass on the wooden table, and Cyb sighed. Perhaps Moira was right. They really should have spent some of the meeting trying to come up with a better name.

  Chapter 2

  Carrie sat staring at the envelope in front of her long after Nate had shut the door behind him. Then, using only the tips of her fingers, she removed it from the pile and leaned it against the lamp on the table beside her.

  It contained Nancy’s final words to her. It was only right to save it until last.

  Instead, she started in on the stack of papers below it. They didn’t make for any happier reading.

  First came a financial summary, which was every bit as bad as Carrie had been led to believe by Nancy’s lawyer. Mortgage documents lay beside insurance policies and details, along with notes on why none of them would pay out for the things that needed fixing. There were some builders’ quotes for most of the work detailed in the survey and, underneath, a letter of refusal from the bank, not sounding very sorry at all that they couldn’t extend Nancy’s existing loan with them to cover it. Carrie sighed, pulled out her notepad and jotted down the contact details for Nancy’s accountant, builder and bank. Time for the next folder.

  This one, labeled in Nancy’s sprawling hand, boded a little better. “Current bookings,” Carrie read aloud, and smiled. If people were willing to stay at the Avalon when there was a good chance it might fall down around their ears, just wait until Carrie had finished with it.

  Flipping the folder open, she started reading, her smile slipping with every word.

  It wasn’t a long list, but what there was would take up a great deal of the inn’s resources, with very little recompense. It also explained why Nate’s Seniors had been lined up in the lobby earlier. They were waiting to see which way she was going to jump.

  “Bridge night, every Wednesday evening, in perpetuum. Dance night–themed–every Monday evening, in perpetuum. Sing songs, in bar, at will and as needed. Who makes bookings this way?”

  Carrie slammed the file shut. Not one decent, proper booking in the lot. There wasn’t even any information on what the groups paid for the use of the Inn.

  “Oh God, what if she wasn’t charging them at all?” Carrie let out a moan, and dropped the folder to the floor.

  How was Carrie supposed to turn an old people’s home into a designer wedding venue?

  She leaned back in her chair, rubbing circles at her temples with her index fingers, and considered. The most important thing was keeping the inn. To do that, she needed money, and apparently the banks weren’t likely to provide it. So it had to be Anna. And for Anna to invest, she had to be convinced that the Avalon was worth her while.

  “It’s my inn, now,” Carrie reminded herself. “So I’m going to have to run it my way.”

  It might upset the Seniors, might even upset Nate and the rest of the staff. But the Avalon had been losing money for months. If they wanted to keep it going at all, there were going to have to be some big changes.

  “Maybe they can have a dance night once a month. And move the Bridge club to lunchtimes.” That sounded fair. A compromise. At least, to start with. Carrie was pretty sure she could phase them out, after the first few months. There had to be other, more suitable inns around willing to accommodate them.

  Feeling better for having one thing decided, Carrie glanced up at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, and realized the evening was almost gone. She should think about going to bed.

  Except…she remembered her bag, lying on Nancy’s brightly colored patchwork bedspread.

  It made sense for her to stay there, Carrie knew. The bedrooms would be needed for guests, and before that, for decorating. Nancy’s attic was the only room in the whole place not required to earn its keep.

  But did she really have to sleep there tonight? Did she really have to deal with the memories, and the guilt, and the scent from the bottle of Nancy’s perfume still on the dressing table, so soon? Couldn’t it wait, until she’d cleared out the room, packed away all the history?

  Of course it could. There were a dozen empty bedrooms in the inn, after all. One of those would do for one night. Or even longer.

  Decision made, she gathered her papers together and stood, planning to head into the reception. But glancing back at her chair, she spotted Nancy’s letter leaning against the lamp, circled by the glow of its light.

  “What if I’m not ready yet?” she whispered to the empty room, already knowing the answer. It didn’t matter.

  It didn’t matter because Nancy had written the letter for her. And how could she begin to work on the Avalon without knowing what Nancy wanted her to do? It was her inn now, but it would always be Nancy’s first.

  Carrie dropped into her seat, hearing the leather sigh beneath her, and fumbled with the envelope, eventually pulling out three thin sheets of writing paper, all covered in Nancy’s sprawling purple ink.

  The first page was, as she’d expected, a message of love from her grandmother. The second bore an entreaty to treat the Seniors well, and to trust the staff Nancy had put in place. Nate will help you, if you let him. Trust him. He’s a good man now. Carrie’s mouth twisted up into a half smile. Nothing unexpected there, either, given that Nancy had included the Seniors’ bookings with the most important Inn documents. And she had always loved her staff.

  The third page was about the Avalon itself. And about Carrie.

  I know you love this place every bit as much as I do. And I know you�
��ll want to make it your own. Just remember, the Avalon is, and always has been, a home, first and foremost. Make it earn its keep, certainly. But never lose that love.

  Carrie folded the pages and returned them to the envelope, blinking against threatening tears. How could Nancy think the Avalon would ever be anything but home to her?

  She just needed it to be profitable, too.

  It was even later, now, and Carrie knew if she didn’t sleep soon, she’d never get half of what she needed done the next day. So she gathered up the files, tucked Nancy’s letter into the back of her notebook and headed into reception.

  With everyone gone, an eerie silence shrouded the inn. Carrie didn’t think she’d ever been all alone there before. There was always Nancy, or the staff, or the guests, or Puss.

  Which begged a question in itself. She could understand the absence of everyone else, but where was old Pusscat the Fourth? Nancy would have written if something had happened to him, which meant either no one had been looking after him since Nancy died, or else that he was skulking around somewhere, and she just had to find him. She could always rely on Pusscat for company on cold nights. Even if he did like to sleep on top of her head.

  Nate would know, she realized. He knew everything that went on around here, it seemed, and Nancy had trusted him. If anyone knew where Puss had got to, it would be him. Besides, if she went to find Nate, and Puss, she could put off fetching her suitcase from Nancy’s room for another half an hour or so, which was no bad thing at all.

  The autumn night was drawing in fast, the evening breeze chilly through the open doorway. Carrie dumped her files on the reception desk and grabbed a coat from the rack tucked away beside the front door, only realizing once she’d shut the door behind her that it was one of Nancy’s old knitted cardigans. It came down to Carrie’s knees, and the waist tie wrapped around twice, but the soft wool and the scent of roses comforted her enough to ignore even the garish cerise color.