Jessica Hart - The Secret Princess

He didn’t want to think about his annual visits to see his father, which he had longed for so much and hated at the same time. Andrew was seven years younger than him and the two boys had nothing in common. As a child, he had been bitterly aware that neither his father nor his stepmother wanted him there. Only the hills had welcomed him.

‘As for the village, well, they’ve already made up their minds about me, and I haven’t got the time or the inclination to try and make people like me. I’ve got enough to do keeping this estate afloat.’

Corran eyed Lotty with a mixture of resentment and frustration. He had been perfectly happy to keep all this buried until she had started asking her questions. What was it about her that made you want to tell her, to make her understand? It had to be something to do with that shining sincerity, that luminous sense of integrity that made you trust her in spite of the fact that you knew nothing about her.

‘So what about you?’ he asked, wanting to turn the tables once more. He pushed the butter and jam towards her. ‘I suppose you come from a big, happy family where everybody loves each other and behaves nicely?’

Lotty understood the sneer in his voice. She understood the ripple of anger. She had heard a lot of sad stories in her time. No matter how people tried to dress them up for a royal audience, the pain was always there, and her heart ached for Corran as it did for everyone she met who had suffered and endured and who made her feel guilty for not having done the same.

She could only imagine what it had been like for Corran, loving this wild place but feeling unwanted here. No wonder there was still something dark and difficult in his face. For as long as she could remember, wherever Lotty went, people had tidied up and given her flowers and waved flags and clapped her just for existing. She might long for anonymity sometimes, but never had she been made to feel unwelcome.

She was lucky.

‘I can’t claim a big family,’ she said, buttering her toast. The extended family wasn’t even that big now, she thought, and it wasn’t that happy either. She wondered what Corran would make of the so-called curse of the Montvivennes, which had seen such tragedy over the past couple of years.

‘I’m an only child. I’d have loved to have had a brother or sister,’ she added wistfully. It would have been wonderful to have shared the responsibility, to have had someone else who understood what it was like. ‘My mother died when I was twelve, and my father last year.’

There was a pause. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Corran gruffly. ‘I shouldn’t have said that about happy families.’

‘It’s OK. Both my parents loved me, and they loved each other. That makes us a happy family, I think.’

‘So you’re on your own too,’ he said after a moment.

Lotty had never thought of it like that before. As a princess, she was rarely alone.

‘Well, there’s my grandmother,’ she said. ‘And my cousin.’ Philippe was like a brother, she thought.

And of course there were thousands of people in Montluce who loved her and thought of her as one of their own. She had no grounds for feeling alone.

‘No husband? No boyfriend?’

‘No.’ Aware of Corran’s eyes on her, Lotty felt the telltale colour creeping along her cheeks. She spread jam on her toast and took a bite. ‘No, there’s no one.’

‘So who are you running away from?’

Still chewing, Lotty put down her toast. ‘I’m not running away.’

‘You said you needed to get away,’ he reminded her.

She had. Lotty sighed. How could she explain to Corran the pressure to be perfect all the time?

Of course she wasn’t running away from anything bad. Her life was one of unimaginable luxury and Lotty had always known that the price of that was to do her duty, and she did it.

Since her mother’s death, her grandmother had controlled her life absolutely. Every minute of Lotty’s day was organized for her, and Lotty went along with it all, because to protest would be childish and irresponsible.

How selfish would she be to insist on her own life when so many people looked forward to her visits? How could she behave like a spoilt brat when her own grandmother had devoted her entire life to the service of the country and endured bitter tragedy without complaint? The Dowager Blanche had lost two sons and a great-nephew in quick succession. Compared to that, how could Lotty say that she didn’t want to open another hospital, or spend another evening shaking hands and being nice?

Until Philippe came back and the Dowager Blanche had decided that Lotty’s duty to the country extended to marrying a man who didn’t love her. Philippe had understood. It was Philippe who had encouraged her to escape. ‘Your grandmother is the queen of emotional blackmail, Lotty,’ he’d said. ‘You deserve some fun for a change.’

‘I’ve always been a good girl,’ Lotty told Corran. ‘I’ve always behaved well, and done what’s expected of me. I just want a chance to be different for a while. I want to take the kind of risks I never take. I want to make my own mistakes. I want to see if I’m as brave as I think I am, and if I go home now I’ll know I’m just a coward.

‘I’m not running away,’ she told him again. ‘I just want to do something by myself. For myself.’

‘Then you’re going to learn what I learnt a long time ago,’ said Corran. ‘If you want something badly enough, the only person you can rely on is yourself.’

To Lotty, it sounded a cold philosophy, but how could she argue when she had no experience of relying on herself?

‘And you want Mhoraigh?’ she said.

Corran nodded. ‘This used to be one of the finest estates in the Highlands,’ he told her. ‘But there’s been no maintenance for years, and gradually its wealth has been frittered away. My father liked to act the laird, and he was big on shooting parties and keeping up traditions, but he didn’t believe in getting his hands dirty, and Andrew’s the same. He looks the part, but the land was just a source of income for him.

‘But Mhoraigh’s mine now,’ said Corran, setting his jaw, ‘and I’m going to make it what it was.’

‘On your own?’

‘On my own,’ he agreed. ‘Of course, it would be easier if I had some financial reserves, but between alimony payments and all the ready assets going to Moira and Andrew, I can’t begin to improve the breeding stock or even keep up with the maintenance.

‘That’s why I need to get the cottages up and running as soon as I can,’ he said, drumming the fingers of one hand on the table. ‘Holiday lets are a good source of income, but the summer is my only real opportunity to get the work done. This is a working estate, and there’s farming to be done too. We’ve finished lambing and the sheep are out on the hill now, but come September I need to be taking them to market. Then I’ll be buying tups, and the cattle will go in October. And all that’s apart from the forestry and routine maintenance.’

‘Hmm,’ said Lotty through a mouthful of toast. ‘I can see why you need some help.’

‘And instead I’ve got you,’ Corran said with a sardonic look.

She met his eyes across the breakfast table. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘You’ve got me.’

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