you get here?’
‘I walked from the hotel,’ she said, eyeing him warily.
‘It didn’t occur to you to ring beforehand?’ he asked, exasperated. ‘It would have saved you a pointless walk.’
‘My phone doesn’t work here,’ she said.
‘If it’s a mobile, it won’t. That’s why we still have landlines,’ he explained as if to a child.
‘Oh.’
She sounded disconcerted. Corran could almost swear she had never used an ordinary telephone in her life. Maybe she hadn’t. Privilege was written in every line of her face, in the tilt of her chin, and cheekbones like that only came from generations of aristocratic inbreeding.
He hardened his heart against the pleading in those huge grey eyes. Desperate? She was probably down to her last hundred thousand.
‘Oh, well…I like to walk,’ she said, recovering.
‘You look ready to drop,’ Corran told her frankly. ‘How far have you walked today?’
‘Sixteen miles.’
Great. Sixteen miles, and he was supposed to let her walk back to the hotel? Corran sighed in exasperation as he faced up to the inevitable. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Lotty,’ she said. A moment of hesitation. ‘Lotty Mount.’
Now why didn’t he believe her? ‘All right, Lotty, you wait there. I’ll get my keys.’
Her face lit up. ‘You’re going to let me stay?’
‘No,’ said Corran, ignoring the disturbing kick of his pulse. ‘I’m going to drive you back to the Mhoraigh Hotel.’
She looked at him in dismay as she waved at the midges. ‘I don’t want to go back there!’
‘Frankly, I don’t care what you want,’ he said, irritated that he had actually started to feel guilty there for a moment, irritated even more by the fact that his pulse still hadn’t quite settled. ‘I want you off my property. There’s no way you can walk back to the hotel and my reputation’s bad enough round here without you collapsing halfway.’
‘I’m not going to collapse,’ she protested. ‘And I’ve no intention of getting in a car with you,’ she added as an afterthought.
‘It’s a bit late to start having scruples, having walked all the way out here,’ Corran pointed out. ‘There’s just me and the dogs.’
‘Well, anyway, I’d rather walk back,’ Lotty said stiffly. ‘It’s a nice evening.’
Corran glanced up at the sky. As so often in Scotland, the day had started murky, but cleared in the afternoon, and now, at almost seven, only a few wispy clouds lurked low on the horizon. At this time of year it wouldn’t get dark for hours yet. The hills were a soft blue, the water still and silver, the air almost golden. Lotty was right. It was a fine evening.
But there was not a breath of air to riffle the surface of the loch, which meant no breeze to blow the curse of the Highlands away.
‘The midges will eat you alive,’ he said, watching her slap at her neck below her ear. ‘If they haven’t already.’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I’d rather walk,’ she added and bent to heave the rucksack onto her back. Corran saw her wince at the weight of it on her shoulders, and he scowled.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman,’ he said irritably. ‘You can’t walk all the way back if you’ve already done sixteen miles today.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘Stay there. I’m going to get my car keys.’
He was gone less than two minutes, but by the time he came back Lotty was already toiling up the track.
‘Fine!’ he shouted after her. ‘Be stubborn! Just don’t collapse on my land!’
‘I won’t,’ she called over her shoulder.
Frustrated, Corran stood at the door and watched the slight figure. Her head was held high, but he could tell what an effort it was, and he swore again.
What was she thinking, hiking three miles to a strange house just on the off chance of a job? It wasn’t safe. He could be anybody.
Corran glowered. He had enough problems of his own without worrying about Lotty, if that really was her name, but he watched her with a frown in his eyes until she had rounded the bend. He would give her half an hour or so and then go and see how far she had got. She would have proved her point by then, and would no doubt be more than grateful for a lift.
But when he drove along the track later, there was no sign of her. He went all the way to Mhoraigh, although he didn’t go inside the hotel. The locals had made it quite clear what they thought of him, and if she had made it that far, she was perfectly safe.
The girl wasn’t his responsibility, anyway. Putting the Land Rover into a three point turn, Corran headed back to Loch Mhoraigh House and told himself he wasn’t going to think any more about her.
Still, he slept badly, and he was in an irritable mood when he set off for the cottages the next morning. The dogs ran eagerly ahead, past the old stable block and the walled garden, past the ruined boathouse and the track leading up to the barns and out beside the loch to the dilapidated cottages that had been built by his great-great-grandfather for the estate workers in the days when Loch Mhoraigh had been a thriving estate.
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
