Kitabı oku: «Royal Families Vs. Historicals», sayfa 23

CHAPTER FOUR

THERE were no curtains at her bedroom window. When the summer light woke her early in the mornings, Lotty would allow herself a few moments to just lie and remember where she was before she launched into another gruelling day. Her muscles ached, her bed was narrow, the mattress ancient and lumpy, the room bare, but she was very happy.

Every day was full of new experiences. Small ones, trivial ones, but for Lotty it was like discovering a new world. She learnt to peel potatoes and chop onions, to wash dishes and empty the vacuum cleaner. She wrote her first shopping list and got down on her knees with a scrubbing brush. Unable to bear the disgusting coffee, which Corran insisted was perfectly adequate, she even began to acquire a taste for tea instead.

It surprised her how quickly she fell into a routine. She would clear up after breakfast, prepare sandwiches for later and then head to clean the cottages. All morning she swept and brushed and scrubbed. The Dowager Blanche would be aghast if she knew that her granddaughter was on her knees like a servant.

There were times when Lotty had to screw up her nose. Times when she was so tired and filthy that she was tempted to take a break, but ironically those were the times when she remembered she was a princess. Proper princesses might not get dirty, but they didn’t give up either.

So she kept going until she heard the tractor outside, which was her signal to join Corran for lunch. Once when it was raining, they ate their sandwiches in the barn, sitting on hay bales, but usually they went to the little beach and breathed in the tangy air that blew down the loch from the sea in the west.

Lotty was always stiff when she got up to head back for an afternoon’s hard physical work in the cottages, but that was easy compared to the task of preparing a meal every evening. She was rather miffed to discover that she was not a natural cook. Montluce had a reputation for fine food that rivalled that of its more famous neighbour, France, and Lotty couldn’t help feeling that she should somehow have acquired a talent for cooking along with the stubborn pride of all her countrymen.

The recipes never looked that difficult but, however closely she followed them, meat ended up charred or raw or horribly tough, while even a simple task like boiling vegetables resulted in either a challenging crunchiness or an unappetising slush. With every disaster, Lotty’s chin inched a little higher, and the next day she would square up to the recipe book with renewed determination.

Luckily, Corran didn’t seem that bothered. He had no interest in food and ate only to fuel himself as far as Lotty could see.

‘Isn’t there anything special you’d like me to make?’ she asked him once.

‘This is fine,’ he said, forking in a beige sludge that was supposed to be pasta with a delicate cheese sauce.

‘There must be something you like particularly,’ she persisted.

Chewing, Corran gave it some thought. ‘My father had a cook for a while—Mrs McPherson. She used to make the best scones.’

Scones. Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Determined to make something Corran would enjoy, Lotty found a recipe. It looked fairly straightforward, but she would need bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar, whatever they were.

She added them to the shopping list. Corran had a meeting with his father’s solicitor in Fort William, and had told her to make a note of any essentials they needed so that he could get them in one big supermarket shop. At the top, Lotty had written: ‘Decent Coffee!!!!’ Not that she expected Corran to take any notice.

It was just as well she had given up on the seduction idea, Lotty reflected every night as she fell into bed. She was too tired to put it into action.

If she worked hard, Corran worked even harder. He was always up before her, and was off checking his cattle before breakfast. The sheep grazed high up on the hills, but the cattle were kept down on the flats around the loch. They were lovely solid, shaggy creatures with gentle eyes and incongruously fierce horns. Corran was making silage to feed them in the winter, and in between work on the cottages kept up running repairs on gates and fences around the estate.

Lotty liked seeing him around the farm on his tractor. She watched him studying his cattle, striding up a hillside or neatly stacking bales of silage, and felt a strange constriction in her chest. He looked so contained, so utterly at home here. You could tell just by looking at him that Corran McKenna didn’t need anyone or anything else.

He seemed to be able to turn his hand to anything. In the cottages, he knocked down walls, plumbed in new bathrooms and kitchens, mended floorboards, made a new banister. ‘How did you learn to do all this?’

she asked him, watching him fit a shower in the first cottage.

Corran shrugged. ‘I picked up a few skills in the Army. Here, hold this, will you?’ He passed her a plastic door while he ripped open a packet of nuts and bolts with his teeth.

‘You installed showers in the Army?’

‘It was more about learning to do whatever needed to be done.’

Doing whatever needed to be done. Oddly, his comment reminded Lotty of her grandmother’s steely resolve.

‘Do you miss it?’

‘The Army?’ He shook his head as he took the door from her and manoeuvred it into position. ‘No. It suited me for a while. After I graduated, all I wanted to do was be here—the one place I wasn’t welcome. I was rootless and restless, and the Army gave me the challenge I needed, but I was too much of a loner to do well.’ He glanced at Lotty. ‘I’m not good at taking orders.’

‘A bit of a drawback in the military,’ she commented dryly, and the corner of his mouth lifted.

‘You could say that. I was up for insubordination too often, but I had just as many citations after successful operations, and I got a reputation as a maverick. When my commission was up, I don’t think the Army was that sorry to see me go.’

He screwed in the first bolt with a few deft twists of the screwdriver. ‘I’d seen enough dusty hellholes by then, anyway. I missed the hills.’ He looked out of the bathroom window to where the hillside soared up from the loch. ‘There are hills in Afghanistan, but they’re not like these.’

Lotty’s eyes rested on his profile. He had that toughness and competence that must have made him a good officer, but she could see that he might not have been a successful team leader. He had grown up a lonely little boy, rejected by his father. Not surprising then that he was more comfortable going his own way, relying on himself. Corran McKenna wasn’t a man who would let himself need anyone else.

The thought made her sad.

‘Did you come straight back to Mhoraigh?’

Corran fitted another screw. ‘No. As far as I knew, my father was still intending to leave the estate to Andrew then. I decided that if I couldn’t have Mhoraigh, I would buy my own place, and all I needed to do was earn enough money to get started. So I set up a security company in London with a mate of mine. Jeff did all the schmoozing—he’s good at that stuff—and I dealt with the practicalities. I didn’t like being in London but it was the best place to make money.’

In went the last screw. ‘And then my father sent for me when he knew he was dying, and everything changed.’

‘I can’t imagine you in London,’ said Lotty.

‘I can’t either now, but actually I spent quite a lot of time there one way or another. My mother is a city girl through and through—God knows how she ever got together with my father—and after she left him she took me to London. She’s been there ever since, getting married and divorced on a regular basis. Every time I went home from school, it seemed she was living in a different house with a different man, always convinced that this was going to be the one.’

Corran shook his head at his mother’s capacity for self-delusion as he stepped back and tested the shower door.

‘You must have thought that you had found the one too, when you got married.’ Remembering that she was supposed to be clearing up, Lotty bent for the dustpan and brush. She had been longing to find out more about his marriage, and she might not get a better opening.

For a moment she was afraid Corran wasn’t going to answer. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but it wasn’t that romantic,’ he said in the end. ‘We only got married because Ella told me she was pregnant.’ He caught Lotty’s startled look. ‘She said she’d had food poisoning so she’d missed a pill. It happens.’

‘I didn’t realise you had a child,’ she said.

‘I don’t. We’d barely tied the knot when it turned out that it was all a mistake.’

‘A mistake?’ Lotty was staring at him with those grey eyes that tugged at a chord deep in his belly and made it impossible to ignore her the way he wanted to. Her hair was tied up in that absurd scarf with the jaunty knots. He had found her another shirt as the first one was so filthy after two days that she had had no choice but to wash it. This one was a dark blue tartan. Corran had never thought of it particularly before, but on Lotty it looked wonderful. Sexy.

‘Didn’t she take a test?’

He forced his mind back to the conversation. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, blowing out a breath. ‘It was stupid of me not to ask for proof, but it never occurred to me that she would make up something like that.’

‘Were you disappointed?’

‘No. I hadn’t thought about having a family, so it was all a bit of a relief.’

‘And yet you married Ella straight away.’

Uncomfortable, Corran hunched a shoulder. ‘She said she wouldn’t consider a termination, and I had to accept my part in it. She didn’t get pregnant by herself.’

‘No,’ Lotty agreed, ‘but you didn’t have to get married either. This is the twenty first century. There are plenty of successful single parent families out there.’

‘I know that.’ A muscle started jumping in his jaw. Talking of his marriage always made Corran feel like a fool, and he wished he hadn’t started telling Lotty about it. ‘We could have lived separately. I just didn’t like the idea of a child of mine being shuffled from one parent to the other and made to feel a nuisance to both.’

He stopped, appalled to hear the bitter undercurrent to his words. It seemed to sizzle in the air. Lotty would think he was talking about himself. She would think he was pathetic, and screwed up still about a childhood that was long past. Which he wasn’t. He didn’t believe in self-indulgent wallowing in the past. What was the point of dwelling on it? What was done, was done. His parents had done their best, and he had grown up and made his own life. No problem.

But Lotty wouldn’t realise that. She had been standing there, her head tilted slightly to one side, the way she did when she was listening, and she would have heard that self-pity bursting through. Made to feel a nuisance to both. Why didn’t he just burst into tears and be done with it?

‘I don’t think wanting to make life easier for a child is a bad reason to get married,’ said Lotty after a moment.

Corran busied himself collecting all the packaging from the shower. ‘Well, it’s just as well there was no baby. Ella and I were a disaster together.’

‘There must have been something between you,’ Lotty objected.

‘Sex,’ he said bluntly. ‘That’s not enough to keep a marriage going. Ella was—is—gorgeous, but she’s desperately needy, and I’m not well-equipped to deal with that. She wanted constant attention, and I was too busy trying to keep the company running to give it to her. When you’ve seen the aftermath of a roadside bomb or watched kids used as human shields, it’s hard to care much about sending text messages or arranging little surprise treats. I just didn’t have the patience to deal with Ella’s neuroses. To be honest, it was a relief when I found out that she was having an affair with Jeff.’

Lotty’s jaw dropped. ‘With your friend?’

‘Jeff was much more Ella’s type. God knows why she wanted to marry me in the first place.’

‘Apart from the sex?’ There was an unusual squeeze of lemon in Lotty’s voice, and a tinge of colour along her cheekbones. For some reason that made Corran feel better.

‘Apart from that,’ he agreed gravely.

He propped the cardboard against the wall and balled up the plastic sheeting. ‘As it turned out, it all worked out for the best. Ella would never have come up to Loch Mhoraigh. She’s a city girl, like my mother. Things got complicated with Jeff, of course, and the business went down the pan, but I’d heard from my father by then and I didn’t care as long as I could get to Mhoraigh. I agreed to an outrageous divorce settlement, which is why I’m so skint now.’

‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ said Lotty. ‘She was the one having the affair.’

Corran shrugged. ‘But she was probably right when she said I didn’t pay her enough attention. Besides, it was my fault for choosing a woman who was as unsuitable as my mother,’ he said, stuffing the plastic into a black bin liner. ‘You’d think I would have known better.’

‘You love your mother,’ said Lotty with such certainty that his head came up and he stared at her.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘You’re looking after a dog called Pookie, for a start.’ She glanced at his mother’s dog, who was stretched out in a patch of sunlight, his flanks twitching as he dreamed of chasing rabbits.

Corran sighed. ‘It’s very hard to say no to my mother,’ he conceded. ‘I love her, of course I do, but she’s impossible. Frivolous, scatty, the attention span of a midge. Utterly unreliable. She drifts through life dispensing charm and kisses and leaving emotional and financial chaos in her wake.

‘It never occurs to my mother that someone—usually me—has to clear up the mess she leaves behind her,’ he said, jabbing the last piece of plastic into the bin bag. ‘Which is why I can’t now understand how I ever got involved with Ella in the first place. It should have been obvious that we were completely unsuited, just like my parents.’

‘Sometimes opposites attract,’ suggested Lotty, her eyes on the dustpan and brush she was using to sweep up sawdust. For some reason she was feeling dispirited.

‘In bed perhaps,’ said Corran, ‘but I’m looking for someone who’s in for the long haul now. My mother was a disaster here, and Ella would have been too. My stepmother stayed, but it was her fancy ideas that proved the real drain on the estate. It would be nice to have some female company, sure, but I’ve learnt my lesson. Next time, I’m going to be pragmatic. I’m looking for a nice, sensible, practical woman who’ll fit right in and be prepared to share my life here. I don’t need glamour. I need someone who can drive a tractor and help with the lambing.’

‘Why stick at that? Why not insist that she can cook too?’ said Lotty waspishly. ‘Then she can be really useful!’

‘The kind of woman I’m looking for will be able to cook,’ said Corran. ‘That goes without saying.’

He was warning her off. Lotty was sure of it. Just in case she was getting ideas.

Well, she had got the message. Lotty liked to think of herself as sensible, but she suspected Corran wouldn’t agree. She had done her best with the cleaning, but there was no denying the fact that her practical skills were limited. And she certainly wasn’t a cook.

She wasn’t at all the kind of woman Corran was interested in.

And, even if she was, Lotty reminded herself, she couldn’t stay at Mhoraigh. I’m looking for someone who’s in for the long haul, Corran had said. She was strictly short haul. Her allegiance was to Montluce. That was the life she had been born to. She might be loving this brief escape, but nothing altered the fact that her place was in her own country, with the people she had been brought up to serve, not in these wild hills with a grim-featured man who hadn’t even believed she would last this week.

A divorced man who would never let anyone close to him.

He wasn’t at all the kind of man she should be interested in, either.

Still, she couldn’t help the way her heart jumped when Corran came into the cottage the next morning. He had changed out of his usual old cords and holey jumper and was wearing dark trousers and a jacket. His shirt was open at the collar, but Lotty spotted a tie rolled up in his pocket. He was obviously going to wait until the very last minute before he put that on.

‘You look very smart,’ she said.

Corran grimaced as he glanced down at himself. ‘I thought I’d better brush up for the solicitor.’ He looked around the room, which was still dingy and grubby, but transformed from earlier in the week, and his gaze came back to Lotty, who was on her knees cleaning the skirting boards. ‘Are you going to be OK here on your own all day?’

‘I’ll be fine.’ Lotty wrung out a cloth into the bucket. The water was already filthy. ‘I’ve got Pookie to protect me.’

Corran snorted as he eyed the little dog, who was sitting next to her, looking like a soft toy with his bright eyes and ears cocked as if he was following the conversation.

‘He’s not what you’d call an intimidating guard dog,’ he pointed out. ‘Unless you get a burglar with a phobia about fluff, in which case he might come in handy, I suppose.’

‘No burglar is going to be bothered to come all the way out here,’ said Lotty. ‘Besides, there’s nothing to steal.’

That was true enough. Still, Corran couldn’t help worrying.

And that made him cross. This was exactly what he had been afraid of when he first let Lotty stay. Worrying about someone else. He didn’t need it, he thought irritably.

He had known Lotty would be a distraction, but he couldn’t have guessed just how great a one she would prove to be. He couldn’t shake the image of Lotty in the bath. It was as if the curve of her throat, the slim shoulders, the delicate line of her clavicle were burned into his mind. He could still see the wet, pearly skin, the arms clutched over her breasts, her soft mouth open in shock, her eyes huge and startled.

If only he wasn’t so aware of her all the time. Even when he was ripping up floorboards or knocking down walls, he could see Lotty, slender, eyes shining, smiling that smile that made something stir queerly inside him. He could still picture her wrinkling her nose at a mug of tea or chewing her lip as she studied a recipe.

Much as he would like to dismiss her as a pampered brat, Corran couldn’t deny that she was a hard worker. There was a steely resilience to her that he hadn’t recognised at first, a stubbornness to the way she lifted her chin and refused to give in. He had pushed her unfairly hard, Corran knew, but she hadn’t uttered a word of complaint about the conditions. Corran didn’t know anyone else who would have put up with so much.

‘I’ll go to the supermarket on the way back,’ he told her. ‘Is there anything else you want?’

Lotty sat back on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. ‘Proper coffee,’ she said.

‘You’ve already put that on the list. Three times. And we don’t need coffee,’ he said. ‘We’ve got plenty of tea.’

Lotty made a face, and he grinned at her, a brief, flashing smile, before he turned for the door. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. ‘Work hard.’

Princess Charlotte was hardly ever alone. There was always a footman outside the door, a lady-in-waiting with letters to be answered, her private secretary to discuss visits, a maid to help her dress.

So Lotty didn’t mind being left on her own at all. She hummed as she tackled the grime on the skirting boards and tried to forget about how Corran had looked when he smiled. The grin made him look younger, warmer, more attractive.

Much more attractive.

She wasn’t supposed to be noticing that he was attractive, Lotty reminded herself crossly. Hadn’t he already warned her off? And hadn’t she already remembered that she would be going home to Montluce before too long, and that she had had quite enough new experiences to keep her going for a while?

Losing her virginity was just going to have to wait.

It would be a shame to spoil things. In spite of everything, she liked Corran. She liked the fact that he made no concessions to her. He might be rude, but she could be rude right back. She could say whatever came into her head, and Corran wouldn’t mind at all. In an odd way, they were friends. Lotty had never felt as comfortable with anyone before, that was for sure. She didn’t want to spoil that by making an unwelcome pass that would embarrass him and humiliate her.

It was enough that he had let her stay.

And that she had kept her part of the bargain too. If she could finish washing down the paintwork, the cottage would be ready for painting by the end of the day and she would have done what she had promised to do, Lotty reminded herself. She should be thinking about that, not Corran’s smile.

But she couldn’t help the alarming dip of her stomach when Corran came back earlier than she had expected. He appeared in the doorway of the cottage bedroom, all austere angles and hard planes, and in spite of herself Lotty’s pulse kicked up a notch.

Eyes narrowed critically, he looked around the room. The floorboards were swept, the walls bare, the paintwork dingy with age but clean.

‘Not bad,’ he said.

‘Not bad?’ Lotty echoed, because it was easier than thinking about how lean and hard and untouchable he looked. How could she have even thought about trying to attract a man like Corran? He was too tough, too uncompromising, too dauntingly self-contained.

She rested her fists on her hips. ‘Is that all you can say? Not bad?’

‘What would you like me to say?’

‘For a start, you could say, “I’m sorry, Lotty, you were right and I was quite wrong when I said you wouldn’t be able to get the cottage ready for painting in a week.”’

Something that might have been a smile hovered around Corran’s mouth. ‘All right, I was wrong about that. There, satisfied?’

‘Not quite. You also have to say, “and I was completely wrong about you not lasting a day”. In fact, you might as well admit that you’re well on your way to losing that bet we made.’

‘That was for a month,’ he reminded her. ‘A lot can happen in three weeks.’

Lotty put her nose in the air. ‘Well, I hope you didn’t spend too much money in Fort William today, because you’re going to have to save to take me out for that dinner!’

The dent at the corner of Corran’s mouth deepened. ‘You’re a long way from earning that dinner, but I will give you a night off cooking. I splashed out on a ready-made curry.’

Not having to prepare the meal meant that Lotty could linger in her bath that evening, and she made the most of it. She was getting sick of putting on the same thing every evening but, short of ringing the changes between a camisole and a silk vest, she didn’t have much choice. On went the jeans, on went the raspberry pink cardigan that clashed so horribly with her red hair. She hadn’t thought about that when she threw a few clothes into her rucksack before she set off on the walk. She hadn’t thought it would matter what she wore in the evenings.

It didn’t matter. It was just that it might be nice to look more…feminine, more desirable.

Catching herself sighing, Lotty gave herself a mental slap. Pushing her feet into pumps, she shrugged on the cardigan and went downstairs to the kitchen, where Corran was heating up the curry.

‘Can I do anything to—’

She stopped. A spanking new cafetière sat in the middle of the kitchen table, a packet of freshly ground coffee propped against it.

‘I only bought it because I’m sick of you moaning about the instant coffee,’ said Corran before she could say anything.

Lotty couldn’t believe it. ‘You bought coffee! Real coffee! Oh, thank you!’ Without thinking, she threw her arms around him and hugged him, but even before her hands touched that solid body, she knew she’d made a mistake.

A big mistake.

Now, instead of imagining, she knew that he felt as hard and strong as he looked. She knew how safe he felt, how steady. She could feel the steady beat of his heart, smell clean cotton and clean skin and something that was just Corran.

And for one tiny moment, his arms closed around her and he held her against him. It was an instinctive response to her throwing herself at him, Lotty was sure, but it felt so good, she let herself hope foolishly that he would never let her go.

He did, of course. A beat, another, three, and then he snatched his arms from around her and stepped sharply back.

Mortified, Lotty flushed. ‘Sorry, it was just… I’m so thrilled by the idea of real coffee.’ It sounded lame, even to her.

Corran turned away to check on the rice. ‘It doesn’t take a lot to thrill you, does it?’ he said.

There was just a hint of something that might have been strain in his voice, but Lotty was still too embarrassed at the way she had thrown herself at him to wonder too much at it. She was more concerned to make sure that Corran knew she hadn’t meant anything by her hug. Keep it light, she told herself.

‘You know me,’ she said. ‘Easily excited.’

Then she wished she hadn’t said that. It sounded suggestive somehow.

There was an awkward pause. Lotty’s hands were thrumming with the feel of him. Not knowing what to do with them, she hugged her arms together and moved away as casually as she could while she tried desperately to think of something to say to break the lengthening silence.

In the end it was Corran who broke it. ‘So, how did you get on today? You weren’t too lonely?’

‘No. Well, a bit at lunchtime, maybe.’

She had sat on the beach with just Pookie for company. She had noticed the driftwood on the shingle, the birds that wheeled overhead, the colours of the hills across the loch, but it hadn’t been the same without him.

Corran put the rice and curry on the table, and Lotty pulled out a chair and sat down, still self-conscious. Her grandmother would be ashamed of her. All those years of training to put everyone at their ease no matter the circumstances, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say!

The silence stretched uncomfortably again.

‘Um…how long does it take to get to Glasgow from here?’ Lotty blurted out at last.

Corran stiffened. ‘Two or three hours.’ He shot her a sharp glance. ‘Why? Are you planning to leave?’

Leave? The thought had panic clawing at Lotty’s spine. ‘No! No,’ she said again, more calmly. ‘I’m just sick of wearing the same clothes every evening. I left a case in left luggage at the station in Glasgow and I wondered how hard it would be to go and get it on the bus. Always supposing you’d let me have a day off, of course!’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Corran said. ‘Days off? Next thing, you’ll be wanting sick pay and holidays and bonuses!’

They were both trying too hard, but it was better than that awful tense silence.

‘Just one little day off,’ Lotty pretended to wheedle. ‘I promise I won’t lift my nose from the grindstone for a minute after that!’

‘I was thinking of going down to Glasgow myself at some point,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ll need to furnish and equip the cottages as we get them ready. There are big stores where you can get cheap and cheery flat pack furniture. You might as well come with me,’ he told Lotty gruffly. ‘We could pick up your case at the same time.’

‘That sounds great. Thank you!’

‘I can’t spare the time for a while yet, though,’ he warned. ‘If you’re desperate, you’d better buy yourself something in Fort William. You can do the shop next week. Don’t expect any fancy shops, though.’

Lotty parked Corran’s Land Rover and reminded herself to lock it and put the key away safely. There was no footman here to drive the car away for her, to wash it and valet it and make sure that it was full of fuel before the next time she went out. All she normally had to do was get out and walk up the steps to the palace.

It was all very different here.

Lotty was excited at the trip to Fort William on her own. This was another whole new experience for her. She had been thrilled when Corran had told her she could do the supermarket shop. That morning he had handed her a wodge of cash.