Royal Families Vs. Historicals

The cottages were coming on really well. Lotty felt proud when she looked around her and remembered what a desperate state they had been in when she first arrived. She didn’t mind getting dirty and tired. She could see the cottages being transformed in front of her eyes. She was doing something, not just having things done for her. Lotty sat on the doorstep with Corran and the dogs on those afternoons, and she watched the hills and drank tea and felt completely happy.

Every now and then the cold finger of reality would poke her in the stomach, reminding her that time was passing and this wasn’t for ever, but Lotty’s heart shrank back from dealing with it. One more week, she said to herself every time. One more week, and then she would face the prospect of leaving.

It was getting harder and harder to remember this wasn’t her real life. Montluce felt very far away. Corran had offered her the use of his computer after she had told him she’d used the internet café in Fort William, so she had been able to check her email over the past month, but increasingly she found herself putting it off. She’d had a stiff message from Dowager Blanche, who was obviously hurt and angry, which made Lotty feel horribly guilty, as it was no doubt intended to, and she didn’t want any more like that.

Caro’s messages were much more entertaining. Lotty enjoyed seeing palace life through her friend’s eyes. It made her realise how absurd all the formality she had taken for granted for years was. Lotty was glad Caro seemed to be having a good time, although she was suspiciously cagey about her relationship with Philippe. It sounded as if the people of Montluce had taken her to their hearts too.

Lotty even allowed herself a little fantasy that Caro would get together with Philippe. If the two of them married, Caro could be first lady of the realm and Lotty would be free. Then Lotty felt selfish. How could she wish the restrictions of royal life on her free-spirited friend? Besides, she couldn’t see her grandmother accepting Caro as the future Crown Princess. The Dowager Blanche had firmly traditional views on who might or might not be acceptable to marry into Montluce’s royal family. A commoner like Caro was unlikely to go down well.

Then there was Philippe to think about too. Lotty knew how difficult going back to Montluce even for a short time would be for him. He would be putting a good face on it, but his relationship with his father was too bitter for him to want to stay in the country a moment longer than necessary.

No, Caro and Philippe had done enough for her as it was. She couldn’t expect them to take over her life on a permanent basis. She couldn’t run away from her obligations for ever. She would have to go back to Montluce and do her duty, the way she had been raised to do.

But not yet, her heart cried. Not yet.

‘Oh, I nearly forgot.’ Corran drew a glossy magazine from the bottom of the carrier bag. ‘Mrs McPherson sent you a present.’

‘A present?’ Surprised, Lotty set the two mugs of tea on the table and took the magazine. ‘Really? For me?’

‘She seemed to think you’d like it. I can’t imagine why,’ he said austerely as Lotty turned the magazine over to reveal the distinctive cover of Glitz. ‘It’s full of vacuous celebrities as far as I can see. Why would anyone care about all that trivial gossip?’

‘It’s called being interested in people,’ said Lotty, who had been known to flick through a magazine in her time too.

She fanned the pages. ‘Besides, it’s not all gossip. There’s also important stuff in here about shoes and frocks and make up. We’re not all riveted by breeding programmes for Highland cattle, you know.’

‘I forget you’re interested in that kind of stuff,’ said Corran, drinking his tea morosely.

‘I wonder why Mrs McPherson thought I would be?’ Lotty said, still puzzled.

He shrugged as she pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘You seem to be her pet. I had to spend half the afternoon listening to her rabbiting on about scones and how wonderful everyone thinks you are now. Although she did say something about Montluce, now I come to think about it. She seems to know more about you than I do.’

Lotty looked at him sharply, unsure what to make of the faint undercurrent of…resentment? jealousy? bitterness?…she heard in his voice.

‘Well, it was kind of her to think of me,’ she said, careful to keep her expression neutral.

‘Yes, except then I felt obliged to pay for it,’ grunted Corran. ‘It’s probably a tried and tested sales technique of hers: make me feel guilty for not thinking of bringing you a present myself.’

‘Oh, so it’s a present from you, in fact?’ said Lotty with a half smile.

‘I don’t think it counts as a present if you’ve been blackmailed into buying it!’

She laughed. ‘Well, thank you, anyway,’ she said, opening the magazine out on the table and licking a finger so that she could leaf idly through the pages one by one. ‘A little frivolity makes a nice change.’

Corran was leaning against the kitchen counter, eyeing her morosely over the rim of his mug as she looked through the magazine, a tiny smile curling the corners of her mouth, long lashes downswept over the grey eyes. His gaze rested on the heart-shaking line of her cheek, and an ache for something he couldn’t name lodged in his chest.

The truth was that Betty McPherson had made Corran feel bad. He hadn’t thought of Lotty missing things like shopping and gossip, but of course she would. There was little scope for fashion at Loch Mhoraigh, but she still managed to look elegant and feminine. She was clearly someone used to a comfortable life, surrounded by fine things. Sooner or later, she would start to hanker for proper shops and things to do in the evening, he reminded himself.

True, she hadn’t complained about their absence yet, but she hadn’t been there that long.

It just felt like forever. Corran struggled to remember what it had been like without her now, and when he tried to imagine the future when she was gone, he just came up with a terrifying blank.

He was going to have to try harder.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ELLA hadn’t complained either at the beginning, he remembered. She had claimed at first that he was all she wanted but, once they were married, it turned out that she wanted a lot more than that. Corran wasn’t enough at all. Every day, there had been something that he didn’t do or didn’t feel or didn’t provide.

His mouth twisted, remembering that time. Ella had been constantly discontented, it seemed. She was disappointed that he spent so much time at work, resentful that he didn’t surprise her with bunches of flowers or mini breaks in Paris or little pieces of jewellery and hurt that he didn’t send her messages on the hour, every hour.

Corran had never understood why Ella needed proof that he loved her. He said it, and he’d meant it, and it seemed to him that ought to be enough, but Ella required constant reassurance that he had obviously failed to provide. She would plunge into despair, punishing him with floods of tears or sulky silences, and then go out and spend huge sums on her credit card which apparently made her feel better. Corran wondered if she was subjecting Jeff to the same treatment now, and hoped his old friend was dealing with it better than he had.

He couldn’t imagine Lotty carrying on like that. She had a natural dignity and grace, a quiet strength apparent in the straightness of her spine and the tilt of her chin. But then there had been no warning that Ella was that needy either. He had married one woman and ended up with quite a different one, Corran remembered bitterly. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

And what, really, did he know about Lotty? He knew she was warm and passionate and stubborn. He knew she was hard-working and intelligent, but had an inexplicable lack of belief in her own beauty and abilities. He knew how her eyes lit when she smiled. He knew the scent of her skin, the softness of her hair, the precise curve of her hip. He knew she was stylish and sweet and a terrible cook.

But she was close-mouthed about her family and life before she came to Loch Mhoraigh. If it ever came up in the conversation, she would change the subject, and Corran was happy to pretend that her other life didn’t exist, that there was just this time they had together.

Her English was so perfect that he often forgot that she was from Montluce. Mrs McPherson’s reminder had been like a finger poking in the ribs. He didn’t like the idea that she had thought about Lotty being the kind of girl who would like to read a glossy magazine. He didn’t like her knowing something about Lotty that he didn’t. He didn’t like being reminded that Lotty had another life in another country, where she probably shopped and read magazines and wore expensive clothes all the time.

Corran didn’t want to know about that Lotty. That Lotty was going to leave. If he thought about that Lotty, he’d have to remember that she wasn’t going to stay here at Loch Mhoraigh for ever. Watching her leaf through the magazine, remembering, Corran felt something cold settle in the pit of his stomach.

More fool him for forgetting in the first place. He had to get a grip, Corran told himself. He had lost focus on the estate. He was thinking about Lotty too much. He’d be knocking down a wall or plumbing in a new pipe, and he’d remember her softness, or the silkiness of her hair, or the way his heart pounded when she touched him, when he ought to be thinking about breeding programmes or investment strategies.

Lotty was sipping her tea, pursing her lips at a page, shaking her head at another as she flicked through the articles. They certainly didn’t require much reading. From what Corran could see, they consisted of a lot of shiny photographs with captions. How could she possibly find any of it interesting?

Then she turned a page and choked, spluttering tea everywhere.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

But Lotty couldn’t answer. She was coughing and laughing at the same time, her eyes watering, until Corran began to get concerned. Levering himself away from the counter, he patted her on the back.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ she tried to say, but it came out as a squeak and she put a hand to her throat. ‘Sorry!’

Unthinkingly keeping his hand on her back, Corran peered over her shoulder to see what had surprised her so much.

The page was dominated by a photograph of a vibrant girl with untidy hair. She was smiling at the camera and wearing a man’s jacket that was clearly much too big for her. A New Style Icon for Montluce, trumpeted the headline.

Another picture showed her with a good-looking man. Corran read the caption. Wedding Rumours for Prince Philippe, it read.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked Lotty, who was still trying to clear her throat.

‘What? Oh!’ She tried to pull the magazine away. ‘Oh, nothing. I was just surprised. She… she reminds me of someone I used to know, that’s all.’

‘Pretty girl,’ Corran commented, studying the photo. He was still absently rubbing Lotty’s back. ‘At least she looks like she’s got some personality, unlike most celebrities.’

Caro certainly had personality, thought Lotty. She was desperately aware of his warm hand moving over her, and she couldn’t resist leaning back into it as she wiped her eyes.

She wished she could tell Corran about her friend. She would have liked to have explained how Caro worried about her weight and wore the oddest clothes, like that old dinner jacket of her father’s, and how much she would laugh to hear herself described as a style icon.

It would be nice to tell him what a special friend Caro was, and how she had stepped in to give Lotty herself a chance to escape from Montluce for a while. Caro would say that it had suited her too, but Lotty knew that it was a lot to ask her friend to give up two months of her life.

But how could she tell Corran all that without telling him that she was a princess? Without changing everything.

They had so little time left. Why risk spoiling it? They were going to have to say goodbye anyway, Lotty reasoned. She wanted Corran to remember her as a woman, not as a princess pretending to be someone she wasn’t.

Unaware of her thoughts, Corran was still looking at the picture of Caro and Philippe. ‘What an awful life, though,’ he said. ‘Who’d want it? I can’t see the point of these tinpot monarchies, other than to fill the pages of trashy magazines.’

Tinpot monarchy? Lotty stiffened, unable to let the insult pass. ‘I’m from Montluce,’ she reminded him in an icy voice. ‘We don’t think of it as a tinpot monarchy.’

‘Oh, come on, Lotty! You’re not telling me you believe the monarchy in a tiny place like Montluce isn’t an anachronism?’ Taking his hand from her shoulder, he flicked the picture of Philippe dismissively. ‘What does this guy actually do other than get himself photographed? It’s not as if any of them do any work.’

Lotty thought of the long days smiling and standing until her back ached, of putting people at their ease and making them feel as if they had been part of something special even if they had just shaken hands with her. At the end of the day her hand was sometimes so sore she had to soak it in iced water to reduce the swelling.

Abruptly, she pushed back her chair so that Corran had to move out of the way. She carried her mug over to the sink. ‘I didn’t realise you were such an expert on European monarchies,’ she said coldly.

‘I’m not, but I’ve got several mates who became bodyguards after leaving the Army. It’s good money, I gather, but God, what a life, trailing around after obscure royals! Some of the stories they tell about the pampered brats they have to babysit would make your hair stand on end. They spend their entire day following these people around from shop to restaurant to party.’

‘Really?’ said Lotty, who had spent her entire life being shadowed by a member of the royal close protection team.

Montluce had few political problems, at least until the recent furore about the proposed gas pipeline, but it was an important financial centre, and the royal family’s wealth was enough to make them a target. Lotty’s first companions were lean, expressionless men whose eyes moved constantly and who were always on the alert to the slightest sound or movement.

‘It’s not much fun being trailed after either,’ she pointed out, and then, as Corran raised his brows, ‘I imagine.’

Rinsing out the mug, she set it upside down on the draining board and wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘I’d better get back to work,’ she said.

Corran frowned. ‘Haven’t you finished for the day?’

‘I’ve just a bit of tidying up to do.’

‘The midges will be out soon,’ he warned.

‘I won’t be long.’

Lotty needed to be alone for a while. It had been odd seeing Caro and Philippe in that magazine, and she hadn’t been able to help laughing at the idea of Caro’s unconventional dress style coming into fashion, but Corran’s attitude to the Montlucian monarchy had stung. That was her family he had dismissed as being lazy, pointless and out of touch.

It was ironic that Philippe was probably the person who would most agree with him.

The conversation had depressed her, underlining as it did the gulf between them. It had left her feeling disloyal and guilty for being so happy at Loch Mhoraigh.

Calling for Pookie, she walked down to the cottages, her hands stuffed into her pockets. The little dog frolicked around her ankles and she thought about how much she would miss him when she left. The loch was grey and choppy under sullen clouds, and there was a rawness to the air that made Lotty zip up the collar of her fleece. On a day like this, it ought to be easy to feel nostalgic for the green hills and serene lakes of Montluce but there was an elemental grandeur to the Scottish mountains that caught at Lotty’s throat, no matter what the weather.

That made her feel bad too. She was a Princess Charlotte of Montluce. She loved her country. She shouldn’t feel like this about another one, as if Scotland was where she belonged. As if it was going to tear her heart out when she left.

Lotty vented her confused feelings on the floorboards, getting down on her knees to scrub them vigorously. She didn’t want things to change, but they couldn’t stay like this for ever.

She should start giving some thought to leaving soon. She had saved most of her housekeeper’s wage, derisory though it was. She had enough to move on, and maybe get a job somewhere else for her last month of freedom.

Or perhaps she should just go home to Montluce. That was where she belonged, after all. Her grandmother might be autocratic, but Lotty was her only real family now and she would need her granddaughter’s support.

Philippe would be leaving Montluce as soon as his father was well enough to take over his duties once more, and then Lotty would have to be ready to step back into the role she had been born for. But she couldn’t go back to the way she had been before. Not after being here with Corran. Somehow she was going to have to do something to make her life bearable when she got home.

Then she caught herself up. Bearable? What kind of self-pitying nonsense was that? Lotty flinched inwardly, ashamed of herself. She had more money than she knew what to do with. Everyone loved her—the papers were always saying so. She never had to worry about where the next meal was coming from. Millions of people would love to be in her position.

They’d love to have nothing to do all day except be shown around factories and community projects. They’d love to shake hands and smile, no matter how fed up they were feeling. They’d love to have to be careful about everything they wore and everything they said and everything they did. They’d love to spend their lives living up to other people’s expectations.

But she was the one going to have to do it.

And she would, Lotty vowed. As for the time she had left here with Corran, she would make the most of it and refuse to let herself have any regrets.

Corran had been right about the midges. Lotty had to run back to the house, frenziedly batting them away from her ears while Pookie scampered beside her, unclear about the reason for all the urgency but barking with excitement anyway.

In the kitchen, Corran had papers spread all over the table.

‘Oh.’ Lotty stopped, slapping the last few midges from her hands and neck. It was all very well to decide to make the most of things, but all at once the atmosphere seemed awkward. ‘I was going to start the supper. Will I disturb you?’

‘No, you carry on,’ said Corran. ‘I thought it would be easier to do this here than on the computer, but I can move if I’m going to be in your way.’

Why were they suddenly being so polite to each other? Lotty hated it. She washed her hands at the sink.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I heard back from the finance company I approached about investing in the estate this morning,’ he told her. ‘It just so happens that Dick Rowland, one of the directors, is coming up to the Highlands with his wife. He suggested calling in on their way to Skye to have a look round the estate.’

‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’ It was difficult to tell from his expression.

Corran straightened the page of figures in front of him as if trying to decide. ‘It goes against the grain to ask for help,’ he said after a moment, ‘but the fact is, I’m going to need extra money to get the estate up and running again, and I’m lucky to get any interest at all from investors in the current market. So yes, it’s good news—but Rowland won’t make up his mind until he’s seen what we’re doing.’

‘I thought the idea was that income from the cottages would be ploughed back into the estate?’ Lotty dug in the vegetable basket for an onion.

‘It will be, but it’s going to take a while for the money to start coming through. We might pick up one or two Christmas lets but, realistically, we won’t get many takers until next Easter. I need to be investing in breeding stock this autumn. If Dick Rowland is prepared to invest in the estate, I can get going.’

Lotty picked up a knife and sliced the top off the onion. She was getting better at cooking basic meals, or perhaps she was just getting more practice. She was never going to be a master chef, but at least she didn’t need to follow a recipe now to make shepherd’s pie.

‘So we need to impress him when he comes?’

Corran nodded. ‘It won’t be easy. Rowland’s a famously hard-headed businessman. He says it’ll just be an informal visit, but when I mentioned it to the bank manager today, she said I should have all my figures ready for him anyway.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about before we got distracted by Glitz,’ he went on stiltedly after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Are you likely to be around?’

‘Around?’ The onion was making Lotty’s eyes stream, and she lifted her arm to wipe the tears away with the back of her wrist. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The Rowlands aren’t coming for another month,’ he said. ‘You always said you’d only stay a couple of months.’ Corran drew a breath. ‘I wondered if you had a plan to move on yet.’

‘Oh…’ Lotty lowered the knife. Hadn’t she just decided that she should think about leaving? But she couldn’t go, not while he needed her. ‘No…not yet,’ she said slowly.

‘I’d appreciate it if you could stay a couple of weeks longer until they’ve been,’ he said formally. ‘I’d like to make sure the cottages are completely ready. It will show that I’ve got a strategy and can implement it.’

Lotty felt as if she’d been given a reprieve. Another month, and a reason to stay. Happiness was ballooning inside her, but the sober, sensible part of her brain hung in there too, dragging her back to reality with the reminder that nothing had changed really. She would still have to go.

‘I’m happy to stay until they’ve been,’ she told him, ‘but after that…’

‘You’ll leave,’ Corran finished for her quickly. ‘I under stand.’

Lotty didn’t want him to understand. She wanted him to seize her in his arms and beg her not to go. She wanted him to refuse to let her go, to make her stay for ever.

But what about her grandmother? Her duty? What about the fact that Corran wanted a sensible, practical wife to share his life?

She forced a smile and went back to chopping her onion. ‘So what’s the plan? Finishing the cottages?’

‘Yes, those first,’ he said, pushing the papers into a pile. ‘Then I’d like to get the rest of the place spruced up a bit too. Half the fences are down. It all looks shabby. I need to do something about the barns and pens, and the stable block is a mess… Well, I can’t tackle all of it yet, but if I can cost out my development plans and look as if I’ve put in a bit of effort, I should have a better chance of convincing him that this can be a profitable estate again—and that’s all he’ll be interested in.’

Lotty wasn’t sure about that. ‘I think you should do something about the house too,’ she said as she tipped the onion into a frying pan.

Corran frowned. ‘The house is bottom of my priority list.’

‘First impressions count,’ she said.

She should know. She thought about all the royal visits she had done, and how everything was always tidy, always freshly painted and sparkling clean. It was nonsense to think that she was seeing places as they really were. The people who welcomed her wanted her to see them as they could be, as they longed to be, not as they were on a day-to-day level.

Corran wasn’t convinced. ‘The house isn’t part of the investment plan.’

‘They’re going to arrive here,’ Lotty pointed out. ‘I’m not suggesting you do up the whole house, but at the very least you need to make sure the drawing room and the loo look welcoming.’

‘I can’t believe Dick Rowland will notice that the drawing room is a bit shabby.’

‘His wife will. And it’s more than a bit shabby. You don’t want them feeling depressed by the place before they even get outside.’