‘A pint of milk, please, and I’ll take a packet of those biscuits.’
Corran avoided Mrs McPherson’s eyes. He preferred to shop in the anonymity of the Fort William supermarket, but whenever he decided to drive past the village he’d remember Lotty telling him they should support the local shop. So then he would have to come in, like now, and listen to Betty talking about Lotty, whose progress she was following in the glossy magazines she loved.
The news that they had entertained a princess had riveted Mhoraigh, although there were plenty, like Betty McPherson, who claimed that they had always known there was something special about her.
Corran had known there was something special about Lotty too. He just hadn’t realised that it involved a crown.
Everyone in Mhoraigh had hated him once;
now they pitied him. He was the frog who’d blown his chance with the princess.
Betty McPherson was very kind and often cooked him a meal to take home, but Corran hated the sympathy in her eyes. He hated the way she told him about the parties Lotty had been seen at, about the beautiful dresses she had worn. He hated the way he would drive back to the empty house afterwards and find that Lotty wasn’t there.
She wasn’t in the kitchen. She wasn’t in the cottages, her hair tied up in that scarf, humming tunelessly as she painted. She wasn’t walking Pookie down by the loch or sitting on the beach, sipping tea from the flask. She wasn’t there when he reached for her in the night.
She was in Montluce, being a princess, and far, far out of his reach.
Corran had thrown himself into work on the estate, but nothing was the same any more. Pookie was forlorn, and even Meg looked reproachful. ‘It’s all for the best,’ he found himself telling them as if they could understand him, but the words sounded hollow, even to himself.
And yet, how could it not be for the best? If Betty McPherson was to be believed, Lotty had slotted right back into her life in Montluce. It was absurd to hope that she might be missing Loch Mhoraigh, where there were no parties, no people, nowhere to wear those elegant clothes, and where her beauty was wasted on the hills and his mother’s ridiculous little dog. And him.
She had been happy there, yes. Corran knew that. He remembered the way her eyes used to shine—but he remembered, too, that she had never once said that she wanted to stay for ever.
Why would she? Just once, Corran had given in to temptation and looked Princess Charlotte of Montluce up on the internet, and there she was. A fist had closed around his heart at the sight of her. She was the perfect princess, just as she’d told him. Corran read about her life, and how much everyone loved her. Not a single scurrilous story was attached to her. She was just very beautiful, very good, very royal.
Oh, and very rich.
What could a man like him, a working farmer struggling to restore an isolated, dilapidated estate, possibly have to offer Princess Charlotte of Montluce?
Betty McPherson rang up the milk and the biscuits while Corran looked out at the first real snow of the season spitting from a leaden sky. He should stock up in case the track was ever impassable. Those were the kind of practicalities he should be thinking about, not how very far away Lotty seemed.
He opened his mouth to tell Betty that he would take more milk when she got in first.
‘Have you seen our lassie’s in the magazines again?’
Corran set his teeth. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Betty, I think I might—’
‘Look.’ Ignoring him, she pulled a copy of Glitz from the top of the pile on the counter. A Royal Rush Into Marriage! was splashed across the cover over a picture of Prince Philippe and Lotty’s friend, Caro. Philippe and Caro Wed This Weekend.
‘Very nice,’ said Corran. ‘Could I have—’
‘And here’s our lassie.’ Betty folded the page back and showed it to Corran. ‘She looks peaky, doesn’t she?’ Her sharp blue eyes rested on Corran’s face.
Corran didn’t answer. He’d forgotten about milk and bread. He was staring down at the picture of Lotty. She looked strained, but beautiful still, standing next to some chinless wonder in a dinner jacket. Charlotte and Kristof: Another Wedding in the Offing?
There was another picture of Lotty on her own. The caption to that one read, Charlotte’s Bump: Could She be Pregnant?
He picked up the magazine with hands that weren’t quite steady and looked more closely at Lotty’s stomach. It did look like a bump. Was it possible? But how long before a pregnancy showed? It was three and a half long, long months since Lotty had left.
Corran did the sums in his head and stiffened. Crushing the magazine in his hand, he stood for a moment staring unseeingly ahead of him before he turned on his heel and stalked out of the shop without thinking to pay for the magazine, or remembering the milk and biscuits left abandoned on the counter.
Betty McPherson smiled gently and put them back on the shelf.
The palace was alight with excitement. Lights blazed in the windows and the staterooms were filled with a hubbub of conversation as representatives from every part of Montluce mingled with the glamorous guests and visiting royalty who had been invited to see Prince Philippe marry Miss Caroline Cartwright the next day.
It was a long time since Montluce had seen a royal wedding, and the country was making the most of it. In spite of the snow, huge crowds had gathered outside the palace to ooh and aah at the guests as they arrived, and many had staked their claim on the roadside to watch the procession the next morning.
Lotty was working her way round the room, trying to talk to as many people as possible. She had pulled out all the stops to celebrate Caro and Philippe’s wedding and was looking regal in a ball gown made of heavy Italian red silk. Her shoulders were bare except for the ancestral ruby and diamond necklace and she wore a tiara in her dark hair. The beautiful cut of the dress had been specially designed to draw attention away from her bump, but she had draped a chiffon stole over her arms as a further distraction.
Lotty wasn’t ashamed of her pregnancy, but this party was in honour of Caro and Philippe and she didn’t want anything to attract attention away from them tonight. Already there had been some speculation in the papers. Most of the reception guests were too polite to stare directly at her stomach, but Lotty could tell that they were wondering if the gossip was true or not.
So she smiled and chatted and hoped that nobody could see how tired she felt.
Standing up to her grandmother’s fearsome will had been harder than Lotty had imagined. The Dowager Blanche had been devastated by Lotty’s pregnancy and was unable to comprehend how she could even contemplate having the baby on her own. Her latest plan was to marry Lotty off to Count Kristof of Fleitenstien.
‘He would raise the child as his own,’ she assured Lotty. ‘He understands how these things are done.’
Lotty didn’t want things done. The baby was hers and Corran’s. She wasn’t going to pretend anything else. She
