As they stepped out into the rapidly cooling evening Tilly remembered what Ryan had said about the packers meeting at Sam’s place. Would he be there? She so hoped he would but, as they walked past the hotel, a rich aroma of something hot and delicious wafting from the kitchens made her stomach rumble.
“What have you eaten today?” Fliss asked.
“Not much,” Tilly admitted. “Ryan said the food’s good at Sam’s. I’m hoping he’s right.”
“They have a pretty good menu, especially if you like Chinese food. The hotel kitchens close early so, if the guests want food late in the evening, they go to Sam’s. It can get quite crowded. Not that we’ll stay late, we’ll have a busy day tomorrow. Here we are.”
Fliss held the door open and Tilly walked into a dimly lit, smoky interior. Laughter broke the hum of conversation and mixed with the clink of glasses and clatter of cutlery. Men stood shoulder to shoulder along the bar, but only one turned to eye the newcomers. He removed himself from the crush and walked towards her, a smile on his face.
“So you couldn’t stay away, huh?” Ryan’s teasing welcome made her return his smile.
“Not when I was told there would be hot food here.” She glanced shyly at him, hoping the light was too dim for him to see the tell-tale flush that warmed her face.
Fliss nudged her in the back. “Stop dawdling, Tilly. It looks like Saul has already got us a table. You can flirt with the locals later.” Her eyes sparkled as she looked from Ryan to Tilly then back again. Her cheeky grin encompassed them both. “Hi Ryan, are you joining us?”
The look in Ryan’s eyes as his gaze swept over her was answer enough for Tilly. A curl of anticipation in her stomach became a warm glow as she took her seat. A chair scraped back when Saul took a seat next to Fliss, then two more young men, dressed much the same as Ryan in open-necked shirts and denim pants, joined them.
“Tilly, meet my fellow packers,” Ryan said. “This is Pete Cobb and Billy Nugent.”
Both greeted her with smiles and firm handshakes.
“I thought Ryan here had to be joking when he said how pretty you were, but gosh darn, Miss Tilly, he ain’t wrong.” Pete’s undisguised admiration caused her to blush even more.
“Knowed you had to be something special ‘cause this ol’ hoss took a bath this afternoon and it’s only Monday,” Billy added, making Tilly giggle while Ryan tried to quiet the pair of them.
Both Saul and Fliss seemed to enjoy the repartee and suddenly, without knowing how it had happened, Tilly sensed she had acquired a whole new group of friends. Suddenly her future looked rosy again. She relaxed back against her chair and pulled off her hat. In a moment of light-hearted freedom she finger-combed her hair, and tossed her curls back into their usual unruly mop.
A sudden spike of awareness made her turn her head and look towards crowd at the bar. A smartly dressed man lifted his glass to her and Tilly, without knowing why, shivered.
“Who is that man at the bar?” she whispered to Fliss.
Fliss glanced up to see who Tilly indicated, and her mouth tightened into grim line.
“That’s Frederic Vanderoosten. He was here last year. Stay away from him, Tilly. He’s nothing but trouble.”
Chapter Four
“Why? What happened?”
Any answer Fliss might have given her got drowned out in a roar of laughter from Saul.
“Yeah, but Norman Luxton’s a newspaperman,” he said to Billy, “probably only telling stories to sell more copies of the Crag and Canyon paper. That’s what they usually do.”
“No, he swore it was true,” Billy countered.
“So what’s the story?” Tilly didn’t miss the fact that Fliss, under cover of all this good-natured bickering, shifted her chair closer to Saul’s and tucked her hand into his. It looked such a comfortable thing to do and made her think about holding Ryan’s hand in a similar fashion. Laughter erupted again as Billy, needing no further encouragement, launched into the story of how the newspaper owner had accidentally started a rock slide.
“West of Peyto Lake he was, out with a group of friends hunting goats. He was crossing from one ridge to another when he got caught in a slide. Said a stranger came out of nowhere and helped him out, otherwise he would have been a goner. The stranger stayed with him until he was in sight of camp and then just disappeared.”
“Right, Billy.” Ryan waded in. “You’d have us believe there are ghosts in the backcountry, would you?”
“Ah, but that’s not the only story,” Pete butted in. “I heard tell that much the same happened to Jim Simpson out in the Athabasca River country. He got lost in heavy timber and a stranger helped him out, too. Took him right back to his camp. He turned around to thank him and there was no one there.”
“Jim Simpson learned most of what he knew from Tom Wilson,” Ryan scoffed. “There’s no way he’d have gotten turned around, heavy timber or not.”
“Who’s Jim Simpson?” Tilly asked.
“You don’t know—” began Pete in astonishment, but Ryan held up a hand and shushed him.
“No reason that Tilly would know about him,” he said reasonably as he turned to her to explain. “Jim Simpson was one of the early packers and outfitters in Banff but the granddaddy of them all, is Tom Wilson. He had his start as a packer with a Canadian Pacific Railway survey team sent out to find a way through the Selkirk Mountains. Back in’97 he hired Jim on as a cook and trained him up until he became an outfitter himself.”
“Yep, and shot hisself a record ram in 1920 too. That horn had a forty nine and a half inch curl on it.” Billy sounded as proud as if he had shot the animal himself.
“So these are the kind of stories you tell around the campfire?” Tilly couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
“Oh, I’m sure there are taller stories than that,” Fliss said, “but they’re probably not suitable for our ears.”
A burst of laughter and several denials followed this, with Billy offering to tell them some good ones while Tilly devoured the pork chops and potatoes that Ryan had ordered up for her.
“And that might be true,” Pete joked. “But what about that Ghost Bride up at the hotel, Fliss? Have you ever seen her?”
“Oh, that’s just an old story, much like you’ve been telling us,” Fliss said in an offhanded fashion.
“Out with it, Fliss,” encouraged Saul. “We should at least let Tilly know what she’s in for if she’s to be working there.”
“All right.” Fliss finally gave in. “So the rumor is that a wedding party was waiting up in the library for the bride. When she arrived, they all went down to the Cascade Ballroom. Somehow, as they were going down the staircase the hem of the bride’s dress brushed against a candle flame. I mean, can you imagine looking down and seeing your dress on fire? She was so frightened she stumbled and fell down the stairs to her death. End of story.”
“Ah, but it’s not quite the end, is it?” Saul’s eyes were alight with wicked humor as he leaned in and crossed his arms on the table. “It’s said,” he continued in a hoarse whisper that raised goosebumps on Tilly’s arms, “that she haunts the stairway and dances on her own in the ballroom. There are ice-cold spots up and down the stairs where she fell. Ask any guest. And some of the staff will tell you the same, too.”
Fliss smacked Saul’s arm as the others at the table laughed. “Take no notice of him, Tilly. It’s nothing more than a silly story.”
But something about the emotion etched on the other girl’s face caught Tilly’s attention. It wasn’t fear exactly but even in the low, flickering lighting of the bar, Tilly saw her expression still and the color fade from her cheeks. Before she could say anything, Fliss picked up her glass, drained her drink and stood up.
“Come on, Tilly.” Fliss grabbed her coat and purse. “It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow. We should go. Will you walk back with us, Saul?”
Fliss’ disappointment when Saul shook his head washed like a wave over Tilly. The gesture seemed so offhande
d Tilly suspected just how together they were. She reached for her own coat but Ryan already held it out for her. She slipped her arms into the sleeves and he settled it on her shoulders, all the while fending off the good-natured joshing from Pete and Billy, who both teased Ryan about being a gentleman.
Stars were already twinkling in the soaring indigo canopy of the sky as Tilly and Fliss walked along in companionable silence. To her left, Tilly heard the distant gurgle and rush of water as the Bow River swept along the chasm below the hotel.
“You can often see the Aurora Borealis here,” Fliss said, looking up. “Sometimes it’s just white, but at other times the sky is as pretty as all get out when the lights are pink, green, and violet. The colors shift and swirl and slide up and down the sky. The packers will tell you that on some nights you can actually hear them, but I don’t believe that.”
“We sometimes saw them from the farm,” Tilly said. “Dad and I used to sit on the porch and watch them.”
“Not your mom?” Fliss asked.
“She died when I was seven, so no. It was just me and Dad.” Tilly drew a veil across her mental picture of the past and returned to the present. “By the way, what was it you were going to tell me about Frederic Vanderoosten?”
“Oh, him.” From her dismissive tone, Tilly took it that the subject of Frederic Vanderoosten displeased Fliss. “There’s a few things about working in hotels that you should know. The male staff has it easier than we do, because they normally only go in and out of guest rooms when they deliver or collect luggage. We are there every day making beds, cleaning bathrooms, picking up clothes. If you are cleaning a single gentleman’s room, make sure he is not in it before you go in. It has been known for a guest to open the door to housekeeping before he is even dressed.”
“Fliss, you don’t mean,” Tilly’s eyes grew round as the implication of Fliss’ words of caution dawned on her, “with no clothes on at all?”
“I’m just warning you for your own good.” Fliss shrugged. “Unfortunately no one warned a couple of new girls last year and there was a great deal of unpleasantness by the end of the season. Needless to say the girls were dismissed, but the culprit got off scot free. If you ask me, he should have been kicked out too.”
“And now he’s back.” Tilly instinctively knew exactly to whom Fliss referred.
“With a fiancée, and she’s no picnic either.”
“You know her?”
Fliss nodded. “Miss Burma Evans, from New York City. Lives in a fancy apartment on Central Park West. Loves shopping on Fifth Avenue, Saks is her favorite store. Give her a chance and she’ll tell you all about it, because Miss Evans’s favorite subject is herself. She and Frederic are getting married here at the end of August but I don’t see how they will stand each other. And watch out for that, Jeffrey Sachs, too. He’s Frederic’s friend and best man. You can’t trust either of them worth a lick.”
They had reached the door of their room but when Fliss opened it, she hung back.
“You go on to bed, Tilly. I’m just going to pop out for my last cigarette. I won’t be long, so there’s no need to leave the light on.”
Fliss turned away and disappeared into the shadows before Tilly could ask her if anything was wrong. Instinct told her there was more to this withdrawal than just having a last cigarette. She entered the room and closed the door. The thin cotton drapes dressing the window were almost not worth drawing, but Tilly shut out the night anyway and turned down her bed.
When she slipped between the sheets and laid her head on the pillow, she realized how much the day had tired her and closed her eyes with some relief. At first the silence seemed oppressive, but then unfamiliar night sounds intruded. On the verge of sleep, the distant clank of a water pipe somewhere in the building jerked her awake. She took a deep breath as she identified the sound. Nothing to worry about there. A sudden burst of laughter and rowdy voices caused her to open her eyes again. A loose floorboard creaked, followed by shuffling footsteps. Was that Fliss? Tilly lay still, listening to each footfall but they passed right by the door. How long did it take to smoke a cigarette anyway?
She turned on her side, her back to the room, hands over her ears. She wasn’t aware of falling asleep but must have done because she was suddenly awake. Not sure what had disturbed her this time, she lifted her head from the pillow and listened.
A stifled sob followed by a sniff emanated from the other bed. Tilly listened for a moment, not sure if she should offer comfort or allow Fliss her privacy. One thing was for sure.
Felicity Jessop was crying her heart out into her pillow.
Chapter Five
“Wake up, sleepy head.”
Tilly groaned. It could not be morning so soon. She stifled a yawn and dragged her unwilling eyes open, blinking at the sight of Fliss, fresh-faced and already dressed. She groaned again and rubbed her eyes.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you when I came in last night,” Fliss said as she brushed out her taffy-colored hair.
Tilly sat up in bed, unwillingly threw back her covers, and put her feet on the floor.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” she lied. “Ugh, have I really got to get up?”
“Don’t be grumpy. I gave you an extra ten minutes because you’re new, but now you’re going to have to get your skates on. Just for this morning I’ll make your bed while you use the bathroom.”
Rushing to wash her face and clean her teeth, Tilly couldn’t help but wonder at what had upset Fliss so badly last night. Could she be homesick? Or had smoking her last cigarette been an excuse for something else? Whatever it was, the only sign this morning that she had cried herself to sleep was a little puffiness beneath her eyes.
Putting all speculation aside, Tilly quickly dressed, listening all the while to Fliss’ instructions and explanations. They hurried through breakfast and changed into their uniforms. Tilly barely had time to admire her surroundings as they headed to the elevator, which whisked them up to the top floor. By the time they had loaded the service cart with linens, towels, and cleaning supplies, Tilly’s head spun.
“You’ll work with me today,” Fliss told her as they stopped outside their first room, “so pay attention because you’ll be doing this on your own tomorrow.”
“What? No. I can’t…I mean I won’t be ready,” Tilly protested. “What if I do something wrong?”
“You’ll just have to make sure you don’t. Now knock on that door.”
Tilly lifted her hand but, before she could bring herself to connect her knuckles with the wooden panel, Fliss reached past her and rapped it hard. The noise echoed in the corridor.
“You don’t have time to waste,” she whispered and then announced in a loud voice, “Housekeeping, Miss Evans. May we come in?”
“If you must,” came a muffled reply.
They entered the still darkened suite and Tilly stopped on the threshold, awestruck by the sight before her.
She had never seen such elegant furnishings and decor, such thick carpeting and lofty ceilings. Surely this accommodation must be fit for a queen. While Fliss half-opened the drapes in the lounge to let in the morning sunlight, Tilly peeped into the bedroom. A swag of fabric hung from a valance on the wall behind the head of the bed, the soft, turquoise folds shimmering where the light from the open door fell across them. Lamps with colored glass shades sat atop the nightstands either side of the bed, whose occupant appeared as no more than a sleepy lump.
A froth of dark hair tumbled across the pillow as the girl stirred and sat up, frowning as she spotted Tilly.
“You’re new,” she accused as she pushed her hair away from her face.
Tilly found herself being observed by a pair of suddenly awake sharp, dark eyes. “Yes, I am. Today’s my first day. Good morning.”
“Would you prefer we come back later?” Fliss asked, but Miss Evans had already gotten out of bed and drawn on a feather-trimmed scarlet satin robe.
“No, do what you have to,” she said in a resigned vo
ice. “I’m awake now anyway.”
Fliss started to pick up and fold the clothes scattered on the floor and Tilly silently followed suit. She watched Miss Evans from the corner of her eye. The girl appeared to be no older than Tilly herself, but there all similarity ended.
Tilly possessed a strong, sturdy build, but the robe draped over Miss Evans’s frame emphasised her lithe and willowy figure. Her long fingers were slim and white and tipped with manicured nails as scarlet as her robe. Tilly suspected they had never been close to a cow or ever scratched a pig’s back as her own work-worn hands had done.
“Tilly, pay attention.” Fliss admonished in a vicious undertone. “I told you, we don’t have time to waste. You’ll never get through your daily quota of rooms if you dawdle. Here, strip this and put on fresh pillowcases.”
Tilly caught the pillow tossed at her and quickly followed Fliss’ deft instructions. If anyone had ever told her that making beds and cleaning bathrooms would be as hard as cleaning stalls, hitching mules, and plowing a field, she would not have believed them. By the end of the day her arms and back ached with exhaustion. Fliss simply laughed at her.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said as they walked back to their room. “Just remember, management won’t cover your costs to go home if you decide to leave. They only do that if you’re dismissed.”
“Either way, that won’t matter, seeing as I don’t have a home to go to.” Tilly flopped onto her bed.
“What do you mean? No home?” Fliss reached for her cigarettes as she sat down on her own bed.
Tilly sighed. “That’s the reason I’m here, Fliss. A job and home all in one. When my dad died, there was no way I could manage the farm on my own. It was already in trouble because of the drought, and the one year when we thought we might just manage something close to a crop, the grasshoppers moved in and it was all gone again. There was no money to keep it going and the bank had no option but to foreclose. Without the manager’s help I don’t know where I’d be.”
Brides of Banff Springs Page 3
