LITMIR.BIZ

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the door with his knuckles. ‘I’ve brought lunch,’ he said curtly.

      Startled, Lotty swung round in mid-song, and Pookie came scampering over to yap and fawn at his knees to cover his embarrassment at being caught unawares.

      ‘Quiet!’ Corran bellowed and the dog dropped back on its haunches, ears drooping comically in dismay at his tone.

      ‘He’s just pleased to see you,’ said Lotty, smiling. She propped her broom against the broken banister, pulled off her gloves and dropped them on the bottom step, and came towards him, brushing her hands on her shirt. On his shirt. ‘And I am too, if you’ve got lunch with you!’

      When she smiled, her whole face lit up and Corran felt something tighten around his heart for a moment. It was a long time since anyone had looked happy to see him.

      And how pathetic was it that he had even thought of that?

      ‘Don’t expect me to make a habit of it,’ he said, glowering. ‘It’s just that I’ve finished plastering and I thought I might as well throw some sandwiches together. I want to start baling silage this afternoon, and there’s no point in stopping for lunch once I get going.’

      ‘I didn’t think I’d be allowed the time for lunch,’ she said. ‘I certainly didn’t think you’d make it. I’m impressed by the service!’

      That was right, Corran thought, hunching a shoulder. Make a big deal of it, why didn’t she? Next she would be suggesting that he was worried that he might have asked her to do too much.

      ‘It’s not too bad outside,’ he said stiffly. ‘I thought we could eat down by the loch.’

      ‘That’s a wonderful idea!’ said Lotty. She took a deep breath of fresh air, glad to get out of the musty cottage for a while, although she had no intention of admitting that to Corran, of course. Putting her hands to the small of her back, she stretched, unable to prevent a tiny grimace at the twinge of her muscles.

      ‘Had enough?’ said Corran.

      ‘Certainly not,’ she said, determined not to let him guess how grateful she was for the chance to stop for a while. ‘You were the one who stopped for lunch!’

      Lotty’s shoes crunched on the shingle as she made her way back up the little beach after washing her hands in the cool, clear loch. Corran was unwrapping a packet of sandwiches on the rocky outcrop.

      ‘It’s nothing fancy,’ he warned as he held out the packet to her.

      Lotty took one and perched on the rock beside him. ‘It looks great to me,’ she said honestly. She couldn’t believe how hungry she was, after all that toast at breakfast too.

      The sandwich was little more than a piece of cheese thrown between two pieces of ready-sliced bread, but Lotty had rarely enjoyed a lunch more. It felt good to be outside. The air was cool and faintly peaty and she pulled off her scarf so that the breeze could ruffle her hair.

      Taking a mouthful of sandwich, she turned up her face to the sun that was struggling through the clouds. ‘Good,’ she mumbled. Even that small rebellion felt wonderful. Princesses never talked with their mouths full. When she went home she would have to remember her manners, but right now she could do whatever she wanted. It was an exhilarating thought.

      Corran was pouring coffee from a flask into plastic mugs, but he put it down so that he could brush a cobweb from Lotty’s shoulder. ‘You’re filthy,’ he said.

      It was a careless touch, but Lotty’s skin tightened all the same and she was conscious of a zing of awareness.

      ‘That’s what happens when you try and get rid of forty years’ of dirt,’ she said, embarrassed to find that she was suddenly breathless.

      It wasn’t as if Corran was particularly attractive. He was as hard and unyielding as the rock they were sitting on. The dark brows were drawn together over the pale, piercing eyes in what seemed a permanent frown. And yet one graze of his fingers was enough to send the blood skittering around in her veins, one look at his mouth and her heart bumped alarmingly against her ribs.

      Unaware of her reaction, Corran handed her a mug. ‘I couldn’t remember how you took your coffee this morning, so I put milk in.’

      ‘It doesn’t make much difference to me,’ said Lotty, glad of the excuse to shift her position on the rock. She wrinkled her nose as she looked down in the mug. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful, but this isn’t what I call coffee.’

      ‘I might have known you’d turn out to be a princess,’ said Corran, and Lotty jerked, spilling most of the mug over his shirt.

      ‘What?’

      ‘You’re very particular about your coffee.’ His eyes sharpened suddenly. He was clearly putting something together. ‘You were singing in French just now… I didn’t guess because your English is perfect, but you’re French, aren’t you?’

      Perhaps it would have been easier to have pretended that she was French, but pride in her country was ingrained in Lotty. ‘I’m from Montluce,’ she corrected him, chin lifting.

      ‘Isn’t that part of France?’

      Lotty bridled. People always thought that. ‘No, it isn’t! We speak French, but Montluce is an independent state with its own monarchy.’

      ‘And a big chip on its shoulder?’ Corran suggested with a sideways glance.

      ‘Not at all. We’re small, but we have a very high opinion of ourselves!’

      The corner of his mouth lifted. ‘I see. Does everyone in Montluce speak such good English, or is it just you? I wouldn’t have guessed if I hadn’t heard you singing.’

      ‘I was sent away to school in England after my mother died,’ she told him. ‘You soon pick up the language when you have to.’

      ‘Must have been tough to lose your mother and be sent to a strange country at the same time,’ said Corran.

      ‘It wasn’t the best time of my life,’ Lotty allowed, ‘but I just had to get on with it.’

      She had begged her father to let her stay with him in Montluce, but it was her grandmother who had dealt with all the practicalities of life after her mother’s death. Lotty needed to speak English, the Dowager Blanche had decreed, and it would do her good to have a change of scene. The child was much too nervous as it was. She couldn’t be allowed to mope around Montluce. Yes, her mother’s death was sad, but Lotty had to learn to deal with whatever life handed her. There were to be no tears, no complaints. She was a princess.

      So Lotty had gone away to school and she hadn’t cried and she hadn’t complained. But she had hated it.

      ‘It was awful at first,’ she said, sipping at her coffee in spite of everything she’d had to say about it. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t met my friend Caro there. We were both really plain and both horribly shy and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I had a stammer. I still stammer a little when I’m nervous,’ she confessed.

      ‘I noticed.’

      Everyone else pretended that they didn’t.

      Corran’s eyes rested on her face. ‘You changed,’ he said.

      ‘I lost my puppy fat eventually and grew up,’ she acknowledged.

      ‘You did more than that. You’re a beautiful woman,’ said Corran in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘as I’m sure you must know.’

      Lotty heard that a lot. The beautiful Princess Charlotte. It made her uncomfortable. All beauty ever did was put her on a pedestal, where people gawped at her and admired her, but nobody got close enough to touch.

      ‘I’d rather be pretty,’ she said.

      ‘Isn’t beautiful better than pretty?’

      ‘Pretty is warmer,

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