The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
he could do, but when his strength ran dry, then there would be something else there to step in, something that seemed to have a better plan for him than anything he could have ever planned for himself, if the woman walking over the sand toward him was any indication.
He knew that something went by a great many names. Some called it the Universe, the life force, God.
He had come to call it Love, and to recognize it had been running the show long before he’d come along, and would be running it long after.
There came a point when a man had to realize that there were things he did not control, and that he would only exhaust himself, drain away his strength and his soul, if he continued to think the whole world would fall apart if he was not running it.
Ronan had come to believe that he could trust the protection and care of a force larger than himself.
It was the same force that brought a certain man and a certain woman together, against impossible odds, across cultural and social differences, the force that made one heart recognize another.
And it was that force that would protect them and see their children into the world.
Once upon a time Jake Ronan had thought if he ever had to stand where he was standing today, he would probably faint.
And yet the truth was, he had never felt so calm, so strong, so right. And the strangest thing of all was that, even as Ronan admitted he was powerless in the face of this thing called love, with each day of his surrender he felt more powerful, more alive and more relaxed, more grateful, more everything.
This was the something more he had longed for all his life: to be a part of the magnificent mystery that flowed around him and in him as surely as it flowed through the waves on the sea. He longed to ride that incredible energy with the ease and joy with which he could ride the most powerful of waves. Not to conquer but to feel connected.
He watched Shoshauna move toward him, and he almost laughed out loud.
For one thing he had come to know that this thing he chose to call Love had the most delicious sense of humor.
And for the longest time he had thought it was his job to rescue the princess.
But now he saw that wasn’t it at all.
That she had come to rescue him. And that allowing himself to be rescued had not made him a weaker man but a better one.
She reached him, looked him in the face, his equal, the woman who would be the mother of his children, his companion, his friend, his lover through all the days of his life.
“Beloved,” she said, her voice hushed with reverence of what they stood in the presence of, that Force greater than all things. “Retnuh.”
And he said to her, his eyes never leaving her face, in her own language, a greeting and a vow, “My heart is home.”
Jessica Hart
For my dear niece, Suzy,
with love on her engagement.
WAVING her hands around her head in a futile attempt to bat the midges away, Lotty paused for breath at the crest of the track. Below her, an austere granite house was planted between a forbidding sweep of hillside and a loch so still it mirrored the clouds and the trees clustered along the water’s edge.
Loch Mhoraigh House. It looked isolated and unfriendly and, according to all reports in the village, its owner was the same.
‘He’s the worst boss I’ve ever had.’ Gary had been drowning his sorrows in the Mhoraigh Hotel bar all afternoon and his words were more than a little slurred. ‘Not a smile, not a good morning, just straight to work! I told him if I’d wanted to work in a labour camp, I’d have signed up for one. It’s not as if he’s paying more than slave wages either, and he won’t get anyone else. I told him what he could do with his job!’
‘Quite right too.’ Elsie, the barmaid, polished glasses vindictively and warned Lotty against making the trek out to Loch Mhoraigh House. ‘We don’t want Corran McKenna around here. The Mhoraigh estate should have gone to his brother, we all know that,’ she said, hinting darkly at some family feud that Lotty didn’t quite follow. ‘Nobody from the village will work for him. You go on up to Fort William,’ she told Lotty. ‘You’ll find a job there.’
But Lotty couldn’t afford to go any further. Without her purse, she was penniless, and when you needed money, you got yourself a job, right?
Or so she had heard. The truth was that until an hour earlier, when she had realised that her purse was missing, Lotty had never in her life had to think about money at all.
Now she did.
It was Lotty’s first challenge, and she was determined to rise to it. Her life was so luxurious, so protected. She understood why, of course, but it meant that she had never once been tested and, until you were, how did you know who you were and what you were made of? That was what these few short weeks were all about. Was there any more to Her Serene Highness Princess Charlotte of Montluce than the stylish clothes and the gracious smile that were all the rest of the world saw?
Lotty needed to know that more than anyone.
Here was her first chance to find out. When you didn’t have any money, you had to earn some. Lotty set her slim shoulders and hoisted her rucksack onto her back. If everyone else could do it, she could too.
Three miles later, she was very tired, tormented by midges and, looking doubtfully down at the unwelcoming house, it occurred to Lotty, belatedly, that she could be making a terrible mistake. Loch Mhoraigh House was very remote, and Corran McKenna lived alone out here. Was it safe to knock on his door and ask if he could give her a job? What if Elsie had been right, and he was a man who couldn’t be trusted? Elsie’s dislike of him seemed to be based on the fact that he wasn’t a real Scot, and she had implied that he had acquired the estate under false pretences.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a choice, Lotty knew that. One phone call, and a close protection team would be on its way within minutes. A helicopter would swoop down and scoop her up, and take her back to the palace in Montluce. There would be no midges there, no money worries, no need to put herself at risk. There would just be her grandmother to face, and the knowledge of her own uselessness. She would be the princess who ran away and couldn’t last a week on her own.
Lotty grimaced at the thought of the humiliation. Three months, she had agreed with Philippe and Caro. Three months to disappear, to be anonymous, to see for herself what she was made of. She couldn’t give up at the first difficulty, and slink home with her tail between her legs.
She was a princess of Montluce, Lotty reminded herself, and her chin lifted. Her family hadn’t kept an iron grip on the country since the days of Charlemagne by giving up the moment the going got tough. She had been raised on the stories of the pride and courage that had kept Montluce independent for so long: Léopold Longsword, Princess Agathe who had been married off to a German prince nearly fifty years her senior in order to keep the succession safe, and of course the legendary Raoul the Wolf.
They had faced far greater challenges than Lotty. All she had to do was find herself a job. Was she going to be the first of the Montvivennes to accept defeat?
No, Lotty vowed, she wasn’t.
Lotty adjusted her rucksack more comfortably on her back, and set off down the rough track towards Loch Mhoraigh House.
The house loomed grey and massive as Lotty trudged wearily up to the front door. An air of neglect clung to everything. Weeds were growing in what had once been an impressive gravel drive and