The Secret Princess

‘How were you expecting to work if you hadn’t had anything to eat? You’re no good to me if you’re fainting with hunger.’

He stomped back to the house, Lotty following meekly in his wake, while Meg trotted beside him and Pookie scampered around in circles, yapping with excitement.

At the back door he kicked the mud and dust off his boots and snapped his fingers to the dogs. ‘I’ll feed these two, and maybe that will shut Pookie up. If you want to make yourself useful, you can make some tea. The kitchen’s through there.’

He disappeared down a corridor hung with battered waxed jackets and mud-splattered boots, the dogs at his heels. There was something so incongruous about the big man with the fluffy little dog that Lotty couldn’t help smiling as she watched them go. Corran might look tough, but he was also a man who couldn’t say no to his mother. That made her feel better.

The kitchen was a square, solid room with fine proportions and a ceiling festooned with old-fashioned drying racks, but to Lotty it seemed bare and cheerless.

Not that she knew much about kitchens. All her meals were sent up from the palace kitchens, and if she wanted a cup of tea, she rang a bell and one of the maids made it in the servants’ galley.

There was no bell to ring now, and no useful maid. Lotty looked around dubiously. She had never made tea or coffee before, but how difficult could it be?

Well, there was the kettle, at least. She carried it over to the sink, filled it and set it back on the base, resisting the urge to brush her hands together in self-satisfaction. Eat your heart out, Raoul the Wolf, she thought. He wasn’t the only Montvivennes who could rise to a challenge.

Now, where was the tea? Aha! Lotty pounced on a pack, and was feeling pretty confident until she realised that the kettle wasn’t getting hot. She put her hand on it, and had just bent her head to see if she could hear anything when Corran walked in and raised his brows at the sight of her with her ear pressed against the kettle.

‘I don’t think it’s working,’ she said as she straightened.

Corran looked at the kettle and then at her. Without a word, he reached round and clicked on a switch at the back of the kettle. Immediately, a light came on and there was a rushing noise.

Lotty bit her lip. ‘I haven’t used a kettle like this before.’

‘Have you put a tea bag in a mug and poured over boiling water?’ Corran asked sarcastically.

She hoped she didn’t look too grateful for the tip. Bag, boiling water. She could do that. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any coffee?’

‘There’s instant.’ He tossed her a jar, which she caught more by luck than science. ‘Sorry, I’m fresh out of luxuries,’ he said, correctly interpreting Lotty’s look of dismay. She would have sold her soul for a cup of freshly ground coffee right then.

‘I’ll have tea,’ he told her, opening a cupboard. ‘The mugs are in here.’

‘Have you just arrived?’ Lotty took out two, leaving a single mug marooned in a vast cupboard. ‘You don’t have much stuff.’

‘I moved in a couple of months ago.’ Corran tossed a couple slices of bread in the toaster and slammed it down. ‘I’ve never been a big one for stuff,’ he told her. ‘You don’t acquire much in the Army, and my ex wife kept the house and all its contents when we got divorced.’

So he was divorced. Lotty filed that little bit of information away. She would have liked to have known more, but didn’t want to sound too interested. It was hard to imagine Corran McKenna unbending enough to ask anyone to marry him.

Not her business, of course, but Lotty couldn’t help wondering what his ex-wife was like as she put a tea bag in a mug and hoped she looked as if she knew what she was doing. What sort of woman would crack that grim façade? What would it take to bring a man like Corran McKenna to his knees? To make that hard mouth soften and the icy eyes warm with desire?

Lotty stole a glance at him as he opened the fridge and fished out butter and jam and a pint of milk, which he sniffed at suspiciously before putting it on the table. She wasn’t at all surprised to hear that he had been in the Army. He had that tough competence she had seen in all her close protection officers, most of whom also came from a service background. They were all lean, hard men like Corran, men with absolute focus and eyes that were never still.

But she had never noticed their mouths before, or speculated about their love lives. Just looking at Corran’s mouth made Lotty’s stomach jittery. Why had she started to think about him kissing? Now warmth was pooling disturbingly inside her.

Lotty made herself look away and concentrated on unscrewing the jar of coffee granules instead.

‘It’s a shame this room is so bare,’ she said to break the silence. Her voice sounded thin, as if all the air had been squeezed out of it. ‘It could be a lovely kitchen.’

Corran grunted. ‘The kitchen is the least of my worries at the moment. The rest of the house is just as bare. I’m more concerned about getting the estate up and running again. I can live without furniture until then.’

‘You don’t have any furniture?’

‘Just the basics. This table. A couple of beds.’ He nodded his head at the armchair by the range. ‘That old chair my father’s dog used to sleep on.’

‘Then this was your father’s house?’

‘Yes,’ said Corran, a curt edge to his voice. ‘I inherited the house and the estate from him.’

‘Isn’t it usual to inherit the furniture as well as the house?’

He shrugged. ‘My stepmother took everything when she moved to Edinburgh.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘You’d have to ask her that,’ he said distantly.

Lotty sniffed cautiously at the jar of coffee, unable to suppress an involuntary moue of distaste. She was trying to remember what the barmaid had told her at the Mhoraigh Hotel. ‘I heard there was some kind of family feud,’ she told Corran.

‘It takes two to feud,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘I’m not feuding.’

Lotty had been spooning coffee granules into a mug, but stopped when she saw Corran’s expression. ‘What?’

‘You like your coffee strong.’

Uh-oh. Clearly she had overdone it. ‘Er, yes…yes, I do.’ Surreptitiously, she spilled the last spoonful back into the jar. ‘They say the estate should have gone to your brother,’ she said to distract him.

‘My half-brother,’ he corrected her sharply. ‘Who told you that? Oh, you’ll have got it from the hotel in Mhoraigh, of course,’ he answered his own question. ‘That well-known centre of unbiased information!’

‘Is it true?’

‘No, it’s not true.’ Corran scowled as he threw a couple of plates on the table and rummaged in a drawer for knives. Why should he care what Lotty thought? She had pushed her way in here, and if she didn’t like it, she could leave. It didn’t matter if she believed that he wasn’t entitled to the estate, but still he found himself saying, ‘I’m my father’s eldest son.’ The words sounded as if they were pushed out of his mouth. ‘I was born here.’

She had found a warm spot in front of the range and was leaning against it, her arms spread along the rail. ‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ she commented.

‘My parents divorced when I was six. My mother took me to London after that.’

‘So Loch Mhoraigh isn’t really home to you?’

‘Yes, it is!’ As always, the suggestion caught Corran on the raw. Mhoraigh was the only home he had ever had. ‘I spent part of every summer here when I visited my father.’

Lotty was frowning. ‘Then why is there a question mark over you having the estate? Doesn’t the eldest son usually inherit?’

‘It’s normal, yes, but Andrew—my halfbrother—is very popular around here. Especially at the hotel, where he seemed to spend most of his time as far as I can gather,’ Corran added evenly. ‘Everyone would much rather he had inherited the estate.’

‘Why not you?’

He sighed. ‘Are you always this nosy?’

For a moment she looked taken aback. ‘I suppose I’m used to asking a lot of questions,’ she said.