The Royal Collection. Rebecca WintersЧитать онлайн книгу.
don’t. We’d barely tied the knot when it turned out that it was all a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’ Lotty was staring at him with those grey eyes that tugged at a chord deep in his belly and made it impossible to ignore her the way he wanted to. Her hair was tied up in that absurd scarf with the jaunty knots. He had found her another shirt as the first one was so filthy after two days that she had had no choice but to wash it. This one was a dark blue tartan. Corran had never thought of it particularly before, but on Lotty it looked wonderful. Sexy.
‘Didn’t she take a test?’
He forced his mind back to the conversation. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, blowing out a breath. ‘It was stupid of me not to ask for proof, but it never occurred to me that she would make up something like that.’
‘Were you disappointed?’
‘No. I hadn’t thought about having a family, so it was all a bit of a relief.’
‘And yet you married Ella straight away.’
Uncomfortable, Corran hunched a shoulder. ‘She said she wouldn’t consider a termination, and I had to accept my part in it. She didn’t get pregnant by herself.’
‘No,’ Lotty agreed, ‘but you didn’t have to get married either. This is the twenty first century. There are plenty of successful single parent families out there.’
‘I know that.’ A muscle started jumping in his jaw. Talking of his marriage always made Corran feel like a fool, and he wished he hadn’t started telling Lotty about it. ‘We could have lived separately. I just didn’t like the idea of a child of mine being shuffled from one parent to the other and made to feel a nuisance to both.’
He stopped, appalled to hear the bitter undercurrent to his words. It seemed to sizzle in the air. Lotty would think he was talking about himself. She would think he was pathetic, and screwed up still about a childhood that was long past. Which he wasn’t. He didn’t believe in self-indulgent wallowing in the past. What was the point of dwelling on it? What was done, was done. His parents had done their best, and he had grown up and made his own life. No problem.
But Lotty wouldn’t realise that. She had been standing there, her head tilted slightly to one side, the way she did when she was listening, and she would have heard that self-pity bursting through. Made to feel a nuisance to both. Why didn’t he just burst into tears and be done with it?
‘I don’t think wanting to make life easier for a child is a bad reason to get married,’ said Lotty after a moment.
Corran busied himself collecting all the packaging from the shower. ‘Well, it’s just as well there was no baby. Ella and I were a disaster together.’
‘There must have been something between you,’ Lotty objected.
‘Sex,’ he said bluntly. ‘That’s not enough to keep a marriage going. Ella was—is—gorgeous, but she’s desperately needy, and I’m not well-equipped to deal with that. She wanted constant attention, and I was too busy trying to keep the company running to give it to her. When you’ve seen the aftermath of a roadside bomb or watched kids used as human shields, it’s hard to care much about sending text messages or arranging little surprise treats. I just didn’t have the patience to deal with Ella’s neuroses. To be honest, it was a relief when I found out that she was having an affair with Jeff.’
Lotty’s jaw dropped. ‘With your friend?’
‘Jeff was much more Ella’s type. God knows why she wanted to marry me in the first place.’
‘Apart from the sex?’ There was an unusual squeeze of lemon in Lotty’s voice, and a tinge of colour along her cheekbones. For some reason that made Corran feel better.
‘Apart from that,’ he agreed gravely.
He propped the cardboard against the wall and balled up the plastic sheeting. ‘As it turned out, it all worked out for the best. Ella would never have come up to Loch Mhoraigh. She’s a city girl, like my mother. Things got complicated with Jeff, of course, and the business went down the pan, but I’d heard from my father by then and I didn’t care as long as I could get to Mhoraigh. I agreed to an outrageous divorce settlement, which is why I’m so skint now.’
‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ said Lotty. ‘She was the one having the affair.’
Corran shrugged. ‘But she was probably right when she said I didn’t pay her enough attention. Besides, it was my fault for choosing a woman who was as unsuitable as my mother,’ he said, stuffing the plastic into a black bin liner. ‘You’d think I would have known better.’
‘You love your mother,’ said Lotty with such certainty that his head came up and he stared at her.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘You’re looking after a dog called Pookie, for a start.’ She glanced at his mother’s dog, who was stretched out in a patch of sunlight, his flanks twitching as he dreamed of chasing rabbits.
Corran sighed. ‘It’s very hard to say no to my mother,’ he conceded. ‘I love her, of course I do, but she’s impossible. Frivolous, scatty, the attention span of a midge. Utterly unreliable. She drifts through life dispensing charm and kisses and leaving emotional and financial chaos in her wake.
‘It never occurs to my mother that someone—usually me—has to clear up the mess she leaves behind her,’ he said, jabbing the last piece of plastic into the bin bag. ‘Which is why I can’t now understand how I ever got involved with Ella in the first place. It should have been obvious that we were completely unsuited, just like my parents.’
‘Sometimes opposites attract,’ suggested Lotty, her eyes on the dustpan and brush she was using to sweep up sawdust. For some reason she was feeling dispirited.
‘In bed perhaps,’ said Corran, ‘but I’m looking for someone who’s in for the long haul now. My mother was a disaster here, and Ella would have been too. My stepmother stayed, but it was her fancy ideas that proved the real drain on the estate. It would be nice to have some female company, sure, but I’ve learnt my lesson. Next time, I’m going to be pragmatic. I’m looking for a nice, sensible, practical woman who’ll fit right in and be prepared to share my life here. I don’t need glamour. I need someone who can drive a tractor and help with the lambing.’
‘Why stick at that? Why not insist that she can cook too?’ said Lotty waspishly. ‘Then she can be really useful!’
‘The kind of woman I’m looking for will be able to cook,’ said Corran. ‘That goes without saying.’
He was warning her off. Lotty was sure of it. Just in case she was getting ideas.
Well, she had got the message. Lotty liked to think of herself as sensible, but she suspected Corran wouldn’t agree. She had done her best with the cleaning, but there was no denying the fact that her practical skills were limited. And she certainly wasn’t a cook.
She wasn’t at all the kind of woman Corran was interested in.
And, even if she was, Lotty reminded herself, she couldn’t stay at Mhoraigh. I’m looking for someone who’s in for the long haul, Corran had said. She was strictly short haul. Her allegiance was to Montluce. That was the life she had been born to. She might be loving this brief escape, but nothing altered the fact that her place was in her own country, with the people she had been brought up to serve, not in these wild hills with a grim-featured man who hadn’t even believed she would last this week.
A divorced man who would never let anyone close to him.
He wasn’t at all the kind of man she should be interested in, either.
Still, she couldn’t help the way her heart jumped when Corran came into the cottage the next morning. He had changed out of his usual old cords and holey jumper and was wearing dark trousers and a jacket. His shirt