The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 suppose you did this kind of thing in your PR job,’ said Corran, and she bit her lip. She’d forgotten about her imaginary career in public relations.
‘Something like that,’ she said.
A thought occurred to her. ‘How long are they going to stay?’ she asked Corran, not sorry to change the subject. ‘Not the night?’
The pale eyes gleamed with understanding. ‘No, he said they were planning to spend the night in Fort William.’
‘Phew! At least I won’t need to produce a fancy meal.’
‘I’ll suggest a cup of tea,’ said Corran. ‘Just buy a packet of shortbread or something.’
But Lotty had no intention of giving the Rowlands shop-bought anything. She might not be up to cooking a gourmet meal, but surely she could manage something for tea. What better occasion could there be for some perfect little scones? And they would be perfect this time. She would go back to Betty McPherson and learn how to make them properly if it was the last thing she did.
It would be the last thing she did for Corran, and Lotty was determined to do it right. While she was doing her royal duty, she wanted to think of him here, on a thriving estate, doing what he needed to do. And if this investment helped him to achieve that, she would do whatever she could to make it happen.
Lotty was really pleased with the cottages when they were finished. Corran had put in new kitchens and bathrooms and done the tiling, while she had cleaned and painted them all. Now new carpets had been laid, and the rooms were simply but stylishly furnished. With that spectacular setting too, how could the Rowlands not be impressed?
Corran wanted to concentrate on the outside after that, but Lotty set about pulling the tired wallpaper off the drawing room walls. The house had much bigger rooms than the cottages, of course, and the high ceiling proved a new challenge. She had to balance precariously on ladders to reach the wallpaper underneath the coving, until Corran came in and shouted at her for taking unnecessary risks.
‘It is necessary,’ Lotty protested from the top of her ladder and he clicked his tongue in exasperation.
‘I’ll do it, then. Get down from there at once! I haven’t got time to deal with you if you break your neck,’ he grumbled.
It was almost like it had been before.
Almost.
Lotty couldn’t quite put her finger on what had changed, but something had. There was an edge of desperation to their love-making now and, although they still talked and Corran was still grouchy, sometimes a constraint crept into the silences between them. Now those pauses in the conversation which had once been companionable seemed to be weighted with all the things they weren’t talking about, like what would happen after the Rowlands had been.
Like the future, when they would go their separate ways.
Like saying goodbye.
Lotty was making more of an effort to keep in touch with Montluce, hoping that she would start to feel homesick. She wanted to remember all the things she loved about her country: the history and the proud independence of the people, the gentle lakes and the wooded hills, the cuisine and the markets and the chic way the women wore the most ordinary of clothes.
She emailed Caro more regularly, and was one of the first to hear when Philippe defied his father and the Dowager Blanche to refuse permission for the proposed gas pipeline that had caused unprecedented protests in the country. The environmental impact was too great, Philippe had decided, and astounded observers by negotiating a new agreement that miraculously satisfied the activists and those who were more concerned by the impact