Chapter 2 The Staff Clocked In

Maribel’s POV

Morning came in gray and honest, which I resented.

I had slept in my clothes on the least suspicious bed I could find, with a chair under the door handle like a person in a bad film. The rain had thinned to a drizzle. Somewhere downstairs, a tap ran and then stopped.

The kitchen smelled like butter.

The scones were still there.

Not one tray. Two. A clean cloth over the second. A kettle that clicked off as I walked in, as if it had been waiting for footsteps. I stood in the doorway and considered throwing the lot into the bin.

Then my stomach made a sound that ruined the dignity of the moment.

I ate one standing up, furious about it.

“I didn’t bake these,” I told the empty room.

“No,” said a man behind me. “You did not.”

I turned so fast I hit the table with my hip.

He stood by the dining-room door as if he had been announced. Three-piece suit. Silver hair combed back. A watch chain. Shoes that had never met last night’s mud. He looked like the inn had invented him to feel better about itself.

“Who are you?” I said.

“Ambrose Whitlock. I keep the front.” He glanced at my socked feet. “I also keep standards, Miss Bellrose, though they appear to be visiting relatives at present.”

“I didn’t hire you either.”

“Correct.”

“Then leave.”

He considered that the way some men consider poor weather. “I cannot. The umbrella stand, however, can be used correctly. Your coat is on a hook now. That is a start.”

I blinked hard.

He did not vanish.

“You’re still there,” I said.

“I generally am.” He moved to the lobby as if the conversation had already been scheduled. “A guest inquiry arrived. You will want to answer it before the house does it for you.”

“The house doesn’t answer emails.”

“You would be surprised what a house will do when neglected.”

I followed him because the alternative was staying in a kitchen that baked without me. The lobby looked cleaner than I had left it. My bag sat neatly by the stairs. A ledger lay open on the desk, the page blank and waiting.

Ambrose tapped the computer with one gloved finger. The screen woke.

“I didn’t plug that in,” I said.

“Someone ought to have.” He folded his hands. “Miss Bellrose, a woman cannot spend her entire life alone in a building this size. It is untidy.”

I stared at him. “Watch me.”

A pause. Then, very dry: “I intend to.”

A knock hit the front door before I could find a better answer.

Mrs. Pell stood on the step with a covered dish and an expression reserved for funerals and failed businesses. Her coat was buttoned wrong. Her pity was not.

“I brought chicken,” she said. “And peas. You look peaky.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s what Honoria used to say.” She peered past me into the lobby. “Place holding up?”

“Yes.”

“She was odd, your grandmother. Kind. Odd. Talked to empty rooms. You’ll sell by winter, I expect. No shame in it. A girl your age shouldn’t be rattling around in all this stone.”

“I’m not selling.”

Mrs. Pell blinked, as if I had refused a law of nature. “Have you thought it through?”

“I thought it through when I drove here in the rain.”

“There’s a man in town who’d take it off your hands. Does up old places. Makes them charming.”

“I heard.” I took the dish because she would not leave without handing it over. “Thank you for the chicken.”

“You’ll change your mind when the roof starts.” She lowered her voice. “Honoria used to set extra places. Said the house got lonely. Don’t you start that. People talk.”

“People already talk.”

“Yes, well.” She looked at the sign creaking in the wind, the painted wren wet and bright. “Lock your doors, love. Storm’s coming back.”

She left footprints on the mat and a smell of nutmeg I did not trust.

I shut the door.

Ambrose was still there.

“Mrs. Pell puts too much nutmeg in things,” he said. “She always has.”

“You heard that?”

“I hear what concerns the reputation of the house.” He nodded at the dish. “The larder, if you please. Not the reception desk.”

“I am not your staff.”

“No,” he said. “I am yours. The distinction is currently theoretical.”

A ping sounded from the computer.

New booking request.

I set the casserole down harder than necessary and opened it.

One night. Next week. A couple from London. Names I did not know. I had not listed the inn as open. I had not updated a single page. The request sat there anyway, polite and impossible.

“I didn’t accept this.”

“You have not declined it either,” Ambrose said. “Vacillation is not a business model.”

“I’m not open.”

“The Wren and Willow is rarely consulted on that point.”

A door slammed upstairs.

I looked at the ceiling. “Wind.”

“If you like.”

Another slam. Then a rattle, like keys in a jar.

I took the stairs two at a time. The landing was empty. One guest-room door stood open on a bed I had not made. The coverlet was smooth. A window I had left cracked was shut.

“Hello?”

A boy’s laugh came from the end of the hall, quick and pleased.

I found him sitting on the linen chest outside the last room, heels kicking the wood. Seventeen, if that. Dark curls. A grin that had never asked permission. He wore a shirt with the collar wrong and looked delighted to be caught.

“You’re loud,” I said.

“You’re slow.” He held up a luggage tag between two fingers. “This was on your bag. I improved it.”

“Give it back.”

“In a minute.” He hopped down. “I’m Pip. Don’t tell Ambrose I was in the teapot. He gets a face.”

“The teapot.”

He tipped an imaginary hat. “Keys like it in there. Warm.”

I pointed at him. “If you’re another cook, I swear—”

“Do I look like I cook?” He wrinkled his nose. “Bea would have me hanged with a tea towel. I move things. Doors. Keys. People’s patience.”

“Move yourself off my landing.”

Pip’s eyes shone. “Can’t. House is more fun now. You talk back.”

He flicked the luggage tag. It landed in my palm. When I looked up, the hall was empty and a door at the far end shut itself with a polite click.

“Pip!”

No answer, unless the faint rattle of the teapot downstairs counted.

I went down, lifted the lid, and found my house keys nestled among wet leaves I had not put there.

Ambrose did not look surprised.

“He was a trial when he was living,” he said. “Death has not improved his filing.”

“There is a boy.”

“There is a Pip. The difference is important.”

“And a woman who bakes. And you.”

“Yes.”

“This is insane.”

“It is an inn,” Ambrose said. “Insanity is only a problem when the guests notice.”

I set the keys on the desk. “No more slamming doors. No more keys in the tea. No more scones I didn’t ask for.”

From the landing came a woman’s voice, light as a turned page.

“You’ll ask for worse than scones before the week is out.”

I looked up.

She stood halfway down the stairs as if she had been posed there. Fair hair. A dress that belonged in a photograph. Pretty in the way old postcards are pretty, a little faded at the edges and sure of the effect. She studied me with bright, interested eyes.

“Rosalind Fairchild,” she said. “Rosie, if you’re going to sigh when you say it. Most people do.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“You do. You just haven’t admitted it.” She came down two steps and stopped, looking me over like a shop window. “Honoria said you were practical. She didn’t say you were pretty when you were angry. That’s useful.”

“Useful for what?”

Rosie smiled, small and certain. “You’re going to be interesting.”

“I’m going to be asleep by nine.”

“No, you aren’t.” She glanced toward the front windows, where the wren sign creaked on its chains. “The house has been airing a room.”

“I didn’t clean a room.”

“I know. That’s why I mentioned it.”

I went past her up the stairs. The second door on the right—yesterday a stale box of dust and a drooping curtain—stood open on fresh sheets, a ewer of water, and a towel folded with military corners. The window was cracked to the wet garden. The bed looked ready for a person who had not yet arrived.

“Who did this?” I asked the hall.

Rosie leaned on the banister. “We did. You were busy not believing us.”

Pip’s voice floated from somewhere I could not see. “I stole the good soap.”

“Put it back,” Ambrose called from below, without raising his voice.

“Won’t.”

I stood in the doorway of the ready room and felt the draft move the curtain. The sign outside complained again, metal on metal, as the wind found it.

“I am not open,” I said, to all of them and to none.

Rosie tipped her head. “Then you should tell the booking page. It doesn’t appear to agree.”

I went back down.

The computer had refreshed itself.

A new reservation sat at the top of the screen, already marked confirmed. I had not touched accept. I had not taken a card. The dates were tonight through three nights more.

Name: C. Thorne.

Nights: 3.

Note from the guest, typed neat as a threat:

I will arrive with the rain.

Ambrose read it over my shoulder and made a small, considering sound.

“Well,” he said. “That will keep us occupied.”

I looked from the screen to the waiting ledger, to the ready room upst

airs, to the sign swinging in a wind that had started to smell like weather again.

The house had taken a booking without me.