Читать книгу The Secret Princess - Jessica Hart - Страница 7

WAVING her hands around her head in a futile attempt to bat the midges away, Lotty paused for breath at the crest of the track. Below her, an austere granite house was planted between a forbidding sweep of hillside and a loch so still it mirrored the clouds and the trees clustered along the water’s edge.

Loch Mhoraigh House. It looked isolated and unfriendly and, according to all reports in the village, its owner was the same.

‘He’s the worst boss I’ve ever had.’ Gary had been drowning his sorrows in the Mhoraigh Hotel bar all afternoon and his words were more than a little slurred. ‘Not a smile, not a good morning, just straight to work! I told him if I’d wanted to work in a labour camp, I’d have signed up for one. It’s not as if he’s paying more than slave wages either, and he won’t get anyone else. I told him what he could do with his job!’

‘Quite right too.’ Elsie, the barmaid, polished glasses vindictively and warned Lotty against making the trek out to Loch Mhoraigh House. ‘We don’t want Corran McKenna around here. The Mhoraigh estate should have gone to his brother, we all know that,’ she said, hinting darkly at some family feud that Lotty didn’t quite follow. ‘Nobody from the village will work for him. You go on up to Fort William,’ she told Lotty. ‘You’ll find a job there.’

But Lotty couldn’t afford to go any further. Without her purse, she was penniless, and when you needed money, you got yourself a job, right?

Or so she had heard. The truth was that until an hour earlier, when she had realised that her purse was missing, Lotty had never in her life had to think about money at all.

Now she did.

It was Lotty’s first challenge, and she was determined to rise to it. Her life was so luxurious, so protected. She understood why, of course, but it meant that she had never once been tested and, until you were, how did you know who you were and what you were made of? That was what these few short weeks were all about. Was there any more to Her Serene Highness Princess Charlotte of Montluce than the stylish clothes and the gracious smile that were all the rest of the world saw?

Lotty needed to know that more than anyone.

Here was her first chance to find out. When you didn’t have any money, you had to earn some. Lotty set her slim shoulders and hoisted her rucksack onto her back. If everyone else could do it, she could too.

Three miles later, she was very tired, tormented by midges and, looking doubtfully down at the unwelcoming house, it occurred to Lotty, belatedly, that she could be making a terrible mistake. Loch Mhoraigh House was very remote, and Corran McKenna lived alone out here. Was it safe to knock on his door and ask if he could give her a job? What if Elsie had been right, and he was a man who couldn’t be trusted? Elsie’s dislike of him seemed to be based on the fact that he wasn’t a real Scot, and she had implied that he had acquired the estate under false pretences.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a choice, Lotty knew that. One phone call, and a close protection team would be on its way within minutes. A helicopter would swoop down and scoop her up, and take her back to the palace in Montluce. There would be no midges there, no money worries, no need to put herself at risk. There would just be her grandmother to face, and the knowledge of her own uselessness. She would be the princess who ran away and couldn’t last a week on her own.

Lotty grimaced at the thought of the humiliation. Three months, she had agreed with Philippe and Caro. Three months to disappear, to be anonymous, to see for herself what she was made of. She couldn’t give up at the first difficulty, and slink home with her tail between her legs.

She was a princess of Montluce, Lotty reminded herself, and her chin lifted. Her family hadn’t kept an iron grip on the country since the days of Charlemagne by giving up the moment the going got tough. She had been raised on the stories of the pride and courage that had kept Montluce independent for so long: Léopold Longsword, Princess Agathe who had been married off to a German prince nearly fifty years her senior in order to keep the succession safe, and of course the legendary Raoul the Wolf.

They had faced far greater challenges than Lotty. All she had to do was find herself a job. Was she going to be the first of the Montvivennes to accept defeat?

No, Lotty vowed, she wasn’t.

Lotty adjusted her rucksack more comfortably on her back, and set off down the rough track towards Loch Mhoraigh House.

The house loomed grey and massive as Lotty trudged wearily up to the front door. An air of neglect clung to everything. Weeds were growing in what had once been an impressive gravel drive and the windows were cold and cheerless. It was very quiet. No lights, no music, no sign of anyone living there. Only the crows wheeling above the Scots pines and the cry of some bird down by the loch.

Lotty hesitated, looking at the old-fashioned bell. What if Corran McKenna wasn’t there? She wasn’t sure her feet could take her back up that hill.

But what if he was? Lotty chewed her bottom lip uncertainly. She had never had to persuade anyone to give her a job before. She’d never really had to persuade anyone to do anything. Normally people fell over themselves to give her whatever she wanted. She led a charmed and privileged existence, Lotty knew, but it made it a lot harder to prove that she was a worthy successor to all those doughty ancestors who had fought and negotiated and bargained and married to keep Montluce free.

They wouldn’t have been deterred by a simple no, and neither would she.

For these few weeks, she had abandoned her title and her household. There was no one to arrange things for her, no one to make sure she got exactly what she wanted.

She was going to have to do this for herself.

Taking a deep breath, Lotty pressed the bell.

She could hear it clanging inside the house somewhere. Immediately, a furious barking erupted. It sounded as if there was a whole pack of dogs in there, and instinctively Lotty took a step back. There was a sharp command and the dogs subsided, except for a high-pitched yapping that continued until it was suddenly stifled as a door was shut firmly on it.

A few moments later, the front door was jerked open.

A tall, tough-looking man, as forbidding as the hills behind the house, stood there. He was younger than Lotty had expected, with dark, uncompromising features and a stern mouth, and his eyes were a pale, uncanny blue.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve c-come about the job,’ said Lotty, cursing the stammer that still resurfaced at times when she was nervous. Raoul the Wolf wouldn’t have stammered, she was sure.

His fierce brows snapped together. ‘Job? What job?’

‘I heard in the hotel that you needed help restoring some cottages to let.’

‘News travels fast…or did Gary stop at the bar on his way back to Glasgow?’ Corran added with a sardonic look.

Lotty brushed at the midges that clustered at her ears. Raoul the Wolf wouldn’t have put up with being left on the doorstep either, but she could hardly insist that he invite her inside. She concentrated on sounding reasonable instead. ‘He said you didn’t have anyone else and that you’d be stuck without anyone to work for you.’

‘And did he also say that it was the worst job he’d ever done, not to mention being the worst paid, and having the worst boss?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And yet you want to work for me?’

‘I’m desperate,’ said Lotty.

The pale eyes inspected her. Lotty had never been the subject of that kind of unnerving scrutiny before and, in spite of herself, she stiffened. No one in Montluce would dare to look at her like that.

‘Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look desperate,’ said Corran McKenna. He nodded at the high tech walking trousers and microfleece she’d bought in Glasgow only four days earlier. ‘Those clothes you’re wearing are brand new, and the labels tell me they weren’t cheap. Besides,’ he said, ‘you’re not suitable for the job.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re not a man, for a start.’

‘That’s not a good enough reason,’ said Lotty, who might not want to rely on her royal status to protect her, but didn’t have to like his dismissive tone. ‘I think you’ll find there’s such a thing as sex discrimination.’

‘And I think you’ll find I don’t give a toss,’ said Corran. ‘I need someone strong enough to do physical work, not someone whose most strenuous activity is probably unscrewing her mascara.’

Lotty’s eyes sparked with temper. All at once she could feel her celebrated ancestors ranging at her back.

‘I’m not wearing mascara,’ she said coldly, ‘and I’m stronger than I look.’

For answer, Corran McKenna reached out and took her hands, turning them over as if they were parcels so that he could inspect them. His fingers were long and blunt, and they looked huge holding her small hands. He ran his thumbs over her palms and Lotty burned at the casualness of his touch.

‘Please don’t try and tell me that you’ve ever done a day’s rough work in your life,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t mean I can’t start now.’ Lotty tugged her hands free. ‘Please,’ she said, trying to ignore the way her palms were still tingling. If she looked down, she was sure she would be able to see the impression of his fingertips seared onto her skin. ‘I really need this job.’

‘I really need someone suitable,’ said Corran. ‘I’m sorry, but the answer is still no. And don’t bother looking at me like that with those big eyes,’ he added crisply. ‘I’m immune.’

Her jaw actually dropped. ‘I’m not looking at you like…like anything!’

She did astounded very well, but Corran found it hard to believe that she could really be unaware of the power of those luminous grey eyes. They were extraordinarily beautiful, the colour of soft summer mist, and fringed with long black lashes that did indeed appear to be natural when he looked closely.

The kind of eyes that got a man into trouble. Big trouble.

She was very pretty, slender and fine-boned, and she wore her trekking gear with an elegance that sat oddly with the short, garish red hair. A soft scarf at her throat added a subtle sophistication to her look.

Corran had the best of reasons for distrusting sophistication.

Frowning, he looked behind her for a car, but the overgrown gravel drive was empty. ‘How did you get here?’

‘I walked from the hotel,’ she said, eyeing him warily.

‘It didn’t occur to you to ring beforehand?’ he asked, exasperated. ‘It would have saved you a pointless walk.’

‘My phone doesn’t work here,’ she said.

‘If it’s a mobile, it won’t. That’s why we still have landlines,’ he explained as if to a child.

‘Oh.’

She sounded disconcerted. Corran could almost swear she had never used an ordinary telephone in her life. Maybe she hadn’t. Privilege was written in every line of her face, in the tilt of her chin, and cheekbones like that only came from generations of aristocratic inbreeding.

He hardened his heart against the pleading in those huge grey eyes. Desperate? She was probably down to her last hundred thousand.

‘Oh, well…I like to walk,’ she said, recovering.

‘You look ready to drop,’ Corran told her frankly. ‘How far have you walked today?’

‘Sixteen miles.’

Great. Sixteen miles, and he was supposed to let her walk back to the hotel? Corran sighed in exasperation as he faced up to the inevitable. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Lotty,’ she said. A moment of hesitation. ‘Lotty Mount.’

Now why didn’t he believe her? ‘All right, Lotty, you wait there. I’ll get my keys.’

Her face lit up. ‘You’re going to let me stay?’

‘No,’ said Corran, ignoring the disturbing kick of his pulse. ‘I’m going to drive you back to the Mhoraigh Hotel.’

She looked at him in dismay as she waved at the midges. ‘I don’t want to go back there!’

‘Frankly, I don’t care what you want,’ he said, irritated that he had actually started to feel guilty there for a moment, irritated even more by the fact that his pulse still hadn’t quite settled. ‘I want you off my property. There’s no way you can walk back to the hotel and my reputation’s bad enough round here without you collapsing halfway.’

‘I’m not going to collapse,’ she protested. ‘And I’ve no intention of getting in a car with you,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘It’s a bit late to start having scruples, having walked all the way out here,’ Corran pointed out. ‘There’s just me and the dogs.’

‘Well, anyway, I’d rather walk back,’ Lotty said stiffly. ‘It’s a nice evening.’

Corran glanced up at the sky. As so often in Scotland, the day had started murky, but cleared in the afternoon, and now, at almost seven, only a few wispy clouds lurked low on the horizon. At this time of year it wouldn’t get dark for hours yet. The hills were a soft blue, the water still and silver, the air almost golden. Lotty was right. It was a fine evening.

But there was not a breath of air to riffle the surface of the loch, which meant no breeze to blow the curse of the Highlands away.

‘The midges will eat you alive,’ he said, watching her slap at her neck below her ear. ‘If they haven’t already.’

‘I’ll be fine.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’d rather walk,’ she added and bent to heave the rucksack onto her back. Corran saw her wince at the weight of it on her shoulders, and he scowled.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman,’ he said irritably. ‘You can’t walk all the way back if you’ve already done sixteen miles today.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘Stay there. I’m going to get my car keys.’

He was gone less than two minutes, but by the time he came back Lotty was already toiling up the track.

‘Fine!’ he shouted after her. ‘Be stubborn! Just don’t collapse on my land!’

‘I won’t,’ she called over her shoulder.

Frustrated, Corran stood at the door and watched the slight figure. Her head was held high, but he could tell what an effort it was, and he swore again.

What was she thinking, hiking three miles to a strange house just on the off chance of a job? It wasn’t safe. He could be anybody.

Corran glowered. He had enough problems of his own without worrying about Lotty, if that really was her name, but he watched her with a frown in his eyes until she had rounded the bend. He would give her half an hour or so and then go and see how far she had got. She would have proved her point by then, and would no doubt be more than grateful for a lift.

But when he drove along the track later, there was no sign of her. He went all the way to Mhoraigh, although he didn’t go inside the hotel. The locals had made it quite clear what they thought of him, and if she had made it that far, she was perfectly safe.

The girl wasn’t his responsibility, anyway. Putting the Land Rover into a three point turn, Corran headed back to Loch Mhoraigh House and told himself he wasn’t going to think any more about her.

Still, he slept badly, and he was in an irritable mood when he set off for the cottages the next morning. The dogs ran eagerly ahead, past the old stable block and the walled garden, past the ruined boathouse and the track leading up to the barns and out beside the loch to the dilapidated cottages that had been built by his great-great-grandfather for the estate workers in the days when Loch Mhoraigh had been a thriving estate.

It had rained during the night, and the air was fresh and sweet with the smell of bracken from the hills. Corran thought longingly of the high corries, but he couldn’t afford to take a day off, especially now that he would have to advertise for more help. Gary had only lasted two days. That made him think about the girl, Lotty, and he shook his head. Quite how she had expected to do the job, he didn’t know. She didn’t look strong enough to lift that rucksack.

Although she had, now he came to think of it.

He would finish the plastering in the first cottage, Corran decided, then he would advertise in the local paper—again. He could do that online. He was mentally composing an advert that made the job sound attractive while simultaneously making it clear that the successful applicant would have to work till he dropped for a meagre wage when he realised that Meg had frozen at the cottage door, which stood open although Corran knew that he had closed it when he left the day before.

Meg dropped to her belly and lay alert and quivering as Corran came up. He frowned. ‘What is it, Meg?’ He looked around him, and his brows drew even closer together. ‘And where’s that other damned dog?’

Telling Meg to stay, he stepped inside the cottage. The door on the left led into the living room, and there, sure enough, was his mother’s dog, fawning over the girl who had turned up on his doorstep the night before.

The girl whose stricken expression had sent him on a fool’s errand to the village just to make sure that she hadn’t collapsed in a heap in the middle of the track.

For a long moment, Corran couldn’t trust himself to speak.

She had abandoned her rucksack somewhere, and was in the same clothes she had worn the day before, except that now the scarf was knotted around her head like a Fifties housewife, which should have looked absurd but somehow looked chic instead. Her sleeves were rolled up in a businesslike way. She had clearly been sweeping up sawdust, and she still held the broom in her hands as she crouched down to make a fuss of the dog.

At Corran’s entrance, though, she straightened. ‘Good m-morning,’ she said brightly, and he heard the slight stammer he’d noticed yesterday. Corran guessed that it only happened when she was nervous.

As well she might be.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded, which he thought was fairly restrained under the circumstances.

‘Well, I could see you’ve been working in here, so I thought I could start c-clearing up.’

‘Oh, did you? And what part of me telling you that I wasn’t going to give you a job and wanted you off my property didn’t you understand?’

The soft mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘I wanted to prove that I could do the job. All I’m asking is a chance to show you what I can do.’

‘I drove all the way to Mhoraigh last night in case you’d collapsed on the track,’ Corran told her furiously. ‘Are you telling me you were here all the time?’

‘There was some straw in the barn. I slept there.’

It had easily been the most uncomfortable night of Lotty’s life. In spite of her exhaustion, she hadn’t slept at all. Late in May, the night had still been cool and, even wearing all her clothes, she had been cold and bitterly regretting that she had ever heard of Loch Mhoraigh.

Why hadn’t she tried harder to persuade the hotel to give her a job of some kind, just until she had earned enough to move on to Fort William? But she had chosen to come out here, and now pride wouldn’t let her accept Corran McKenna’s casual dismissal. She might not be using her title, but she was still a princess of Montluce.

Not that pride had been much comfort as Lotty had shivered on the straw and suffered the midges that swarmed through the cracks in the old barn doors. Now she wanted nothing so much as a shower and a cup of coffee.

But first she had to convince Corran to let her stay.

He wasn’t looking at all encouraging. His brows were drawn together in a ferocious glare and his mouth set in what could only be called an uncompromising line. Lotty couldn’t, in truth, really blame him for being angry, but how was she to know that he would be chivalrous enough to drive out and make sure that she was all right? If he was going to be nice, why couldn’t he just give her the job?

It was time to be conciliatory, she decided. Some victories were won by battles, but sometimes negotiation won just as effective a result. Lotty had learnt that from her family history too.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I’m trespassing, but I can do this job—I can!’ she insisted at Corran’s expression. ‘Gary—the guy I met at the hotel—told me he’d been cleaning and painting, and I can do that.

‘You don’t even need to pay me,’ she went on quickly as Corran opened his mouth. ‘I heard you can’t afford to pay much in the way of wages, and I’m prepared to work in exchange for somewhere to stay.’

He paused at that, and she pressed on, encouraged. ‘Why not give me a chance? I’m not going to cost you anything, and I’m better than no one, surely?’

‘That rather depends on how useful you can be,’ he said grimly. ‘I hope you’re not going to try and tell me you’ve got any building experience?’

‘I know how important it is to keep a building site clean,’ said Lotty, who had once laid the foundation stone of a new hospital and had been impressed by the neatness of the site. She’d assumed that it had been tidied up for her arrival, as things usually were, but the foreman had assured her that wasn’t the case. He wouldn’t tolerate mess on his site at any time. ‘An untidy site is a dangerous site,’ she quoted him to Corran.

‘And just how many building sites have you been on?’ he asked, clearly unconvinced.

Lotty thought of the construction sites she’d been shown around over the years. Her father, the Crown Prince, had been more interested in Ancient Greece than in modern day Montluce, and after her mother had died it had fallen to Lotty to take on the duties of royal consort.

‘You’d be surprised,’ she said.

Corran studied her through narrowed eyes. ‘Would I, indeed?’

Oh, dear, she was supposed to be allaying his suspicions, not arousing them. Lotty bent to pat the little dog who was fussing at her ankles still.

‘Look, I can see that in an ideal world you’d employ someone with building skills,’ she said, ‘but I gather experienced tradesmen aren’t exactly queuing up to work for you, so why not give me a try until you find someone else? What can be so hard about cleaning and painting, after all? And at least my services will come free.’

Corran was thinking about what she’d said, Lotty could tell. She held her breath as he rubbed a hand over his jaw until she began to feel quite dizzy. It might have been lack of oxygen but it was something to do with that big hand too, with the hard line of his jaw. It didn’t look as if he had shaved that morning and Lotty found herself wondering what it would be like to run her own hand down his cheek and feel the prickle of stubble beneath her fingers.

The thought made her flush and she tore her gaze away and got her breathing back in order. Taking a firmer hold of the broom, she went back to tidying up the curls of wood and sawdust that covered the floor. No harm in giving Corran McKenna a demonstration of what she could do. It might not be the most skilled job in the world, but a quick look round the cottage had shown her that there was plenty of cleaning to be done.

‘I’m not denying that I’ve found it hard to find anyone prepared to stick the job longer than a few days,’ Corran said at last.

‘I gather you might need to work on your management skills,’ said Lotty, still sweeping.

‘I see you and Gary had a good chat!’ Corran snorted in disgust. ‘All he had to do was plaster a few walls. Why the hell would he need managing?’

‘Well, you know, an encouraging word every now and then might have helped,’ she suggested before she could help herself. ‘Not that I’d need any encouragement,’ she added hastily.

‘No encouragement, no money…’ Corran watched her brushing ineffectually at the floor and looked as if he couldn’t understand whether to be intrigued or exasperated. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so keen to work here. Why not look for a job where you’d get paid at least?’

‘I can’t afford to go anywhere else.’ She might as well tell him, Lotty decided. ‘I lost my purse yesterday.’

It had been so stupid of her. She just wasn’t used to being careful about her things. There was always someone who would pick things up for her, deal with settling any bills, check that she hadn’t left anything behind.

‘I haven’t got money for a cup of coffee, let alone a bus fare.’

Corran’s look of suspicion only deepened. ‘When most women lose their purses they go to the police,’ he pointed out. ‘They don’t set off into the wilds to doorstep strange men, insist on jobs they’re not qualified to do, and trespass on private property!’

Lotty flushed. ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘What about calling your bank or credit card company for a start?’

How could she explain that a phone call to her bank would likely have led straight back to Montluce, where her grandmother would have the entire security service looking for her?

‘I don’t want anyone to know where I am,’ she said after a moment.

Corran’s black brows snapped together. ‘Are you in trouble with the police?’ he asked.

For a moment Lotty toyed with the idea of pretending she had pulled off a diamond heist, but she abandoned it regretfully. Corran’s eyes were too observant and she would never be able to carry it off.

‘It’s nothing like that.’ She moistened her lips. She would have to tell him something. ‘The thing is, I…I needed to get away for a while,’ she began carefully.

It went against the grain to lie, and her grandmother would be horrified at the idea of her denying her royal heritage, but Lotty was determined to spend the next few weeks incognito.

‘My mother always talked about the time she walked the Highland Way, and I thought it would be a good idea to walk it for her again, the way I always told her I would, and think about what I wanted to do with my life.’

So far, so true. Lotty had spent long hours sitting with her mother when she was dying. She had held her thin hand and kept a reassuring smile on her face all the time so that her mother wouldn’t worry. She’d only been twelve, but she hadn’t once cried the way she wanted to, because her grandmother had told her that she was a princess of Montluce and she had to be as brave as all the princesses before her.

There was no need to tell Corran about giving her close protection officer the slip in Paris, or about the crossing to Hull, where she was fairly sure she wouldn’t meet anyone she knew, and where she’d had her hair cut in a funny little place upstairs on a side street.

She had dyed it herself that night, just to make sure she was unrecognizable, but the colour wasn’t anything like it had promised on the box. She had been horrified when she looked in the mirror and saw that it had gone bright red. She looked awful! The only comfort was that no one would ever, ever associate Princess Charlotte with red hair. She was famous for her sleek dark bob and stylish wardrobe, and there was certainly nothing sleek or stylish about her now.

Apart from the hair fiasco, Lotty had been pleased with herself that night. She had got herself across the Channel, and she was on her own. Not a huge adventure for most people, but for Lotty it was a step into the unknown. She was free!

Only sitting in that tiny hotel room, Lotty had realised that now there was no one to organize her day for her, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. That was when the idea of walking the Highland Way her mother had loved so much had jumped into her head. She had taken a train to Glasgow the next day, left her case in a locker at the station, and set off with a rucksack on her back.

‘It was wonderful,’ she told Corran. ‘There’s a very clear track, and other people are walking. I was having a great time, until I stopped for lunch yesterday. I had a sandwich at a pub, so I must have had my purse there, but when I got to the hotel at Mhoraigh I realised that I didn’t have it any more. They were so kind at the hotel, and looked up the phone number of the pub for me, but, when I rang, they didn’t know anything about my purse. I’d hoped someone might have found it and handed it in.’

She actually looked surprised that her purse, clearly stuffed with cash and platinum credit cards, hadn’t been handed back to her intact! She was the most extraordinary mix of sophistication and naivety, thought Corran.

He’d been listening to her story, unsure what to make of her. Clearly, she wasn’t telling him everything with all this vague talk of getting away. It occurred to him that she might be a celebrity who needed to hide away from the media for a while. Not because he recognised her—Corran had no interest in the so called high life, as his ex wife could attest—but because there was a starry quality to her somehow, a certain purity to her features and a luminous presence that even her dusty, straw-flecked fleece and the insect bites on her face couldn’t disguise.

She reminded him of the roe deer he had seen from his bedroom window early that morning. It had paused in a pool of light and lifted its head, graceful and wary. Lotty had the same kind of innocence in her eyes, an innocence that didn’t go with the expensive clothes and the style with which she wore that ridiculous scarf around her head.

Then he caught himself up. What was the matter with him? Any minute now he’d be spouting poetry when what he should be doing was remembering just how easily a beautiful woman could tie you up in knots. Corran scowled at the memory. Nothing Lotty had told him had made him any less suspicious of her motives.