The Secret Princess Read online

  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 a
t 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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘GO on,’ he said grimly. ‘You’re at the hotel, and have discovered that—incredibly—nobody has handed in your purse.’

  ‘So I was stuck,’ said Lotty. ‘But then I met Gary, and he told me about this job, and it seemed meant. I needed a job, you needed someone to work for you. I walked all the way out here, but then you wouldn’t even consider me, and I just couldn’t face going back to the hotel, so I found somewhere to sleep and, if it’s any comfort, I got bitten to death by midges.’ She showed him her bare forearms, where she had been scratching.

  Corran refused to be sympathetic. ‘Serves you right,’ he said callously. ‘If you’d been sensible, you could have had a lift back to the hotel and called someone from there.’

  ‘I’m not going to call anyone,’ Lotty said, her face set. ‘I can’t explain, but I just can’t.’ She turned the full force of those lovely grey eyes on Corran, who had to physically brace himself against them. ‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘Please let me stay. It would just be for a few weeks.’ ‘Weeks?’

  ‘Until you can get someone else, at least,’ she amended quickly.

  Corran managed to drag his eyes from hers at last and sighed. ‘Come with me,’ he said, making up his mind abruptly.

  Propping her broom against the wall, Lotty followed Corran out of the cottage where they were met by a black and white collie.

  ‘This is Meg,’ said Corran. ‘She does what she’s told.’

  Lotty thought that she was being obedient too but, after a glance at Corran’s face, she decided not to point that out. He was as formidable as the bare hills that rose on either side of the loch. It was a shame he didn’t smile more, especially with that mouth…

  Hastily, she looked away.

  It didn’t matter whether Corran smiled or not as long as he let her stay. The alternative was to admit that she really was just a pampered princess who couldn’t cope on her own. All she would have to show for her rebellion would be four days walking.

  Compared to that, what did it matter if Corran smiled or not?

  He led her to one of the other cottages strung out along the lochside. It was the same sturdy shape as the others, with low, bumpy stone walls, their white paint now flaking sadly, and dormer windows set in the roof like a pair of quirky eyebrows.

  ‘Take a look
,’ said Corran, opening the front door and gesturing her through with an ironic flourish of his hand.

  Lotty stepped cautiously inside. The cottage was filthy. It was cluttered with broken furniture and shrouded in ghostly grey cobwebs. In the kitchen, the sink was stained and rusty, there was mould growing under the old fridge, and the floor was covered with mouse and bird droppings. A window hung open, its glass cracked and dirty, and the banister was smashed. Afraid to trust the creaking floorboards, Lotty turned slowly in one spot.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Corran.

  ‘It…needs some work.’

  ‘Of all five cottages, this is the one in the best condition.’ A grim smile touched the corners of his mouth at Lotty’s expression. ‘At least it doesn’t need major work, and the roof is sound enough. I’ve got three months to get them all ready to let before September.’

  ‘Three months? It would take three months to get rid of the dirt in this one room!’ said Lotty.

  ‘It’s a pity you think that, because I was going to offer you a deal,’ said Corran.

  ‘A deal?’

  ‘You get this cottage cleaned up and ready for painting by the end of the week, and I’ll let you stay. I don’t for a minute think you’ll last that long, but, if you do, then you can paint it too, and then you can move on to the other cottages.’ He looked at Lotty. ‘Think you can do that?’

  Lotty pursed her lips and pretended to study the room as if she were calculating how long it would take her, although the truth was that she had no idea how she would even begin to clean up that mess. Corran had clearly set her what he thought was an impossible task.

  Raoul the Wolf wouldn’t back down from a challenge like this, and neither would she.