Corran had been right about the midges. Lotty had to run back to the house, frenziedly batting them away from her ears while Pookie scampered beside her, unclear about the reason for all the urgency but barking with excitement anyway.
In the kitchen, Corran had papers spread all over the table.
‘Oh.’ Lotty stopped, slapping the last few midges from her hands and neck. It was all very well to decide to make the most of things, but all at once the atmosphere seemed awkward. ‘I was going to start the supper. Will I disturb you?’
‘No, you carry on,’ said Corran. ‘I thought it would be easier to do this here than on the computer, but I can move if I’m going to be in your way.’
Why were they suddenly being so polite to each other? Lotty hated it. She washed her hands at the sink.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I heard back from the finance company I approached about investing in the estate this morning,’ he told her. ‘It just so happens that Dick Rowland, one of the directors, is coming up to the Highlands with his wife. He suggested calling in on their way to Skye to have a look round the estate.’
‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’ It was difficult to tell from his expression.
Corran straightened the page of figures in front of him as if trying to decide. ‘It goes against the grain to ask for help,’ he said after a moment, ‘but the fact is, I’m going to need extra money to get the estate up and running again, and I’m lucky to get any interest at all from investors in the current market. So yes, it’s good news—but Rowland won’t make up his mind until he’s seen what we’re doing.’
‘I thought the idea was that income from the cottages would be ploughed back into the estate?’ Lotty dug in the vegetable basket for an onion.
‘It will be, but it’s going to take a while for the money to start coming through. We might pick up one or two Christmas lets but, realistically, we won’t get many takers until next Easter. I need to be investing in breeding stock this autumn. If Dick Rowland is prepared to invest in the estate, I can get going.’
Lotty picked up a knife and sliced the top off the onion. She was getting better at cooking basic meals, or perhaps she was just getting more practice. She was never going to be a master chef, but at least she didn’t need to follow a recipe now to make shepherd’s pie.
‘So we need to impress him when he comes?’
Corran nodded. ‘It won’t be easy. Rowland’s a famously hard-headed businessman. He says it’ll just be an informal visit, but when I mentioned it to the bank manager today, she said I should have all my figures ready for him anyway.
‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about before we got distracted by Glitz,’ he went on stiltedly after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Are you likely to be around?’
‘Around?’ The onion was making Lotty’s eyes stream, and she lifted her arm to wipe the tears away with the back of her wrist. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Rowlands aren’t coming for another month,’ he said. ‘You always said you’d only stay a couple of months.’ Corran drew a breath. ‘I wondered if you had a plan to move on yet.’
‘Oh…’ Lotty lowered the knife. Hadn’t she just decided that she should think about leaving? But she couldn’t go, not while he needed her. ‘No…not yet,’ she said slowly.
‘I’d appreciate it if you could stay a couple of weeks longer until they’ve been,’ he said formally. ‘I’d like to make sure the cottages are completely ready. It will show that I’ve got a strategy and can implement it.’
Lotty felt as if she’d been given a reprieve. Another month, and a reason to stay. Happiness was ballooning inside her, but the sober, sensible part of her brain hung in there too, dragging her back to reality with the reminder that nothing had changed really. She would still have to go.
‘I’m happy to stay until they’ve been,’ she told him, ‘but after that…’
‘You’ll leave,’ Corran finished for her quickly. ‘I under stand.’
Lotty didn’t want him to understand. She wanted him to seize her in his arms and beg her not to go. She wanted him to refuse to let her go, to make her stay for ever.
But what about her grandmother? Her duty? What about the fact that Corran wanted a sensible, practical wife to share his life?
She forced a smile and went back to chopping her onion. ‘So what’s the plan? Finishing the cottages?’
‘Yes, those first,’ he said, pushing the papers into a pile. ‘Then I’d like to get the rest of the place spruced up a bit too. Half the fences are down. It all looks shabby. I need to do something about the barns and pens, and the stable block is a mess… Well, I can’t tackle all of it yet, but if I can cost out my development plans and look as if I’ve put in a bit of effort, I should have a better chance of convincing him that this can be a profitable estate again—and that’s all he’ll be interested in.’
Lotty wasn’t sure about that. ‘I think you should do something about the house too,’ she said as she tipped the onion into a frying pan.
Corran frowned. ‘The house is bottom of my priority list.’
‘First impressions count,’ she said.
She should know. She thought about all the royal visits she had done, and how everything was always tidy, always freshly painted and sparkling clean. It was nonsense to think that she was seeing places as they really were. The people who welcomed her wanted her to see them as they could be, as they longed to be, not as they were on a day-to-day level.
Corran wasn’t convinced. ‘The house isn’t part of the investment plan.’
‘They’re going to arrive here,’ Lotty pointed out. ‘I’m not suggesting you do up the whole house, but at the very least you need to make sure the drawing room and the loo look welcoming.’
‘I can’t believe Dick Rowland will notice that the drawing room is a bit shabby.’
‘His wife will. And it’s more than a bit shabby. You don’t want them feeling depressed by the place before they even get outside.’
Corran thought about that. ‘I can’t afford new furniture.’
‘We can use some of the stuff we bought for the cottages,’ said Lotty. ‘As long as we’ve fully furnished a couple of those, they’ll get the idea. We just need a couple of sofas and a coffee table. We’ll keep it simple.’
She shook the onion in the pan, excited by the possibilities. ‘It wouldn’t take long to strip off the old wallpaper so you can’t see the marks where the paintings were—that would make a big difference!—and we could sand the floorboards. I can make it look nice.
‘If you want to impress this guy, Corran, you need to make sure you welcome him properly,’
she said. ‘I know what I’m talking about,’ she promised him.
‘I
