LITMIR.BIZ

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      Without another word, she turned and went back into the drawing room, where she began to gather up the teacups as if nothing had happened, as if his world hadn’t just been turned upside down.

      ‘You must have thought I was an idiot!’ Corran followed her, too angry and humiliated to let it go. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. There was so much that didn’t add up. I should have guessed what you were. Who else but a princess wouldn’t know how to make a cup of tea? Why didn’t you tell me?’

      ‘I couldn’t!’ Lotty’s voice rose, and she let the cups and saucers clatter onto the tray. ‘I didn’t want to tell you! I didn’t want you to start treating me carefully, the way everyone else does.

      Just once, just for a short while, I wanted someone to look at me and see me, not a princess.’ She pressed a fist to her chest. ‘Me!’

      There was a silence. Corran’s gut churned with disappointment and dismay as he stared at her, trying to see the old Lotty in the princess with the flashing eyes and the hectic flush along her cheekbones.

      ‘So what exactly are you doing here?’

      ‘I’m being selfish.’

      Without warning, the fury drained out of her and she dropped onto the sofa as if someone had knocked her legs out from beneath her.

      ‘Everything I told you about my family was true,’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘Except I didn’t tell you that Papa was Crown Prince of Montluce. He was a gentle man, and I don’t think he ever got over my mother dying when she did. He retreated into his studies, and my grandmother ran the country behind the scenes far more effectively than he could ever have done.’

      Lotty risked a glance at Corran, who had folded his arms and was listening with a grim expression. How was she going to make him understand what her life in Montluce was like?

      ‘Papa was more interested in Ancient Greece than in shaking hands,’ she went on after a moment. ‘That was my job. As soon as I left school, I stepped into my mother’s shoes and became the public face of Montluce. I didn’t have a choice,’ she tried to explain, hating the desperation that curled the edges of her voice. ‘I’m an only child. Papa was wrapped up in his own world, my grandmother is elderly. I couldn’t refuse. I was brought up to do my duty and I did it.

      ‘Montluce may be a tinpot country to you, Corran, but it matters to the people who live there. Wherever I go, people are delighted to see me. I’m loved by thousands. They all think I’m wonderful. They all think I’m beautiful. I’m their perfect princess,’ said Lotty dully. ‘I can’t disappoint them by behaving badly, so I don’t. I let them put me up on a pedestal, and then I realised I couldn’t get down.’

      ‘So how did you get from the pedestal to Loch Mhoraigh?’ Corran’s voice was as hard as his expression.

      Lotty let out a long sigh. How could someone like Corran possibly understand?

      ‘Worse than realising that I was stuck was realising that I didn’t know what I was doing up there in the first place,’ she said. ‘Why do all those people love me? It has to be because of what I am—how could it be because of who I am? Nobody knows who I am, least of all me.’

      She paused. Corran was listening, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. ‘My family has a proud history. It’s full of individuals who fought for Montluce and what they believed was right. I’m not like them. I’ve never had to fight for anything. I’ve never been tested.’

      ‘That’s not true,’ said Corran angrily. ‘For God’s sake, Lotty, you coped with losing your mother at twelve and being sent away to school. How much more tested do you want to be?’

      ‘I just didn’t feel as if I had ever had a chance to discover who I really was,’ she said. ‘When Papa died, I was sad, but I thought that at last I’d have the chance to step out of the limelight and find a life of my own. The new Crown Prince had a wife, so they didn’t need me. But then my uncle died, and his son soon afterwards, and it seemed like every time I turned round there was another family tragedy.’

      Lotty smiled sadly. ‘Someone had to represent the family while everything was in turmoil, and how could I refuse when everyone was depending on me? Now we’ve got Crown Prince Honoré. He doesn’t have a wife either, and his only heir is his son Philippe. My grandmother decided it would be a good thing if Philippe and I made a match of it, and I…I panicked. I felt as if I was suffocating. I’ve never been good at standing up to my grandmother, and I could see all my opportunities closing down, one after the other.’

      Leaning forward, she straightened the saucers on the tray. ‘I knew I couldn’t run away for ever, but I was desperate to get away, just for a while. I wanted to do something for myself, to find out what life was like off the pedestal, so I made a plan with Philippe.’

      ‘The same Philippe who broke your heart?’ asked Corran with a scowl.

      ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Lotty. ‘Kath had it all wrong.’

      ‘What was it like?’

      So she told him about the deal she had made with Philippe and Caro, and how they had provided the excuse for her to escape for a while.

      ‘But now it’s all gone wrong,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what happened. Caro’s gone home and my grandmother is upset and Philippe sounds desperate. And I have to go home,’ she said dully.

      ‘Back to the pedestal?’

      ‘Back to my duty.’ Lotty lifted her eyes to his once more. ‘I’m a princess. I can’t do whatever I like. I have a position, and with that comes responsibilities.’ She swallowed. ‘I ran away from them for a while, but they’re still there.’

      ‘So these last few weeks have just been a game to you while you played at being ordinary?’

      In a dim part of his mind, Corran knew that he was being unfair, but discovering that Lotty was a princess had left him feeling raw and foolish. And hurt that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him the truth. He’d always thought of her as transparent and true. Now he was wondering just how much of what she’d told him, how much of what she’d been, had been pretence.

      Lotty bit her lip. ‘I wanted to know what life is like without everyone watching your every movement, listening to your every word in case you make a mistake. Was that so bad?’

      ‘You should have told me,’ Corran said stonily.

      Wearily, Lotty got up and put the last plates on the tray. ‘What would have been the point?’ she asked. ‘There was never any question that we would have a future together. I didn’t want to complicate things.’

      ‘So that’s it?’

      ‘What else is there to say?’ Lotty’s voice was very calm, but her knuckles were white as she gripped the tray and carried it through to the kitchen. ‘We both knew this was a temporary affair, Corran. I told you that I would have to go home to my grandmother, and I think I’d better do that now.’

      ‘How are you going to do that?’ he demanded furiously.

      ‘I just need to lift the phone, and someone will come and get me.’ Lotty turned on the hot tap and held her hand underneath it to check the temperature, while Corran stared at her incredulously.

      ‘What the hell are you doing?’

      ‘Washing up.’ She glanced at his face. ‘You see, I knew it would be like this. You think princesses shouldn’t wash up.’

      ‘I don’t know what I think any more,’ Corran confessed.

      He dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and dragged his hands through his hair as if he could pull his thoughts into some kind of order.

      Too late, he realised that he had fallen in love, but he loved Lotty,

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