LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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