Corran grunted. ‘The kitchen is the least of my worries at the moment. The rest of the house is just as bare. I’m more concerned about getting the estate up and running again. I can live without furniture until then.’
‘You don’t have any furniture?’
‘Just the basics. This table. A couple of beds.’ He nodded his head at the armchair by the range. ‘That old chair my father’s dog used to sleep on.’
‘Then this was your father’s house?’
‘Yes,’ said Corran, a curt edge to his voice. ‘I inherited the house and the estate from him.’
‘Isn’t it usual to inherit the furniture as well as the house?’
He shrugged. ‘My stepmother took everything when she moved to Edinburgh.’
‘Why did she do that?’
‘You’d have to ask her that,’ he said distantly.
Lotty sniffed cautiously at the jar of coffee, unable to suppress an involuntary moue of distaste. She was trying to remember what the barmaid had told her at the Mhoraigh Hotel. ‘I heard there was some kind of family feud,’ she told Corran.
‘It takes two to feud,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘I’m not feuding.’
Lotty had been spooning coffee granules into a mug, but stopped when she saw Corran’s expression. ‘What?’
‘You like your coffee strong.’
Uh-oh. Clearly she had overdone it. ‘Er, yes…yes, I do.’ Surreptitiously, she spilled the last spoonful back into the jar. ‘They say the estate should have gone to your brother,’ she said to distract him.
‘My half-brother,’ he corrected her sharply. ‘Who told you that? Oh, you’ll have got it from the hotel in Mhoraigh, of course,’ he answered his own question. ‘That well-known centre of unbiased information!’
‘Is it true?’
‘No, it’s not true.’ Corran scowled as he threw a couple of plates on the table and rummaged in a drawer for knives. Why should he care what Lotty thought? She had pushed her way in here, and if she didn’t like it, she could leave. It didn’t matter if she believed that he wasn’t entitled to the estate, but still he found himself saying, ‘I’m my father’s eldest son.’ The words sounded as if they were pushed out of his mouth. ‘I was born here.’
She had found a warm spot in front of the range and was leaning against it, her arms spread along the rail. ‘You don’t sound Scottish,’ she commented.
‘My parents divorced when I was six. My mother took me to London after that.’
‘So Loch Mhoraigh isn’t really home to you?’
‘Yes, it is!’ As always, the suggestion caught Corran on the raw. Mhoraigh was the only home he had ever had. ‘I spent part of every summer here when I visited my father.’
Lotty was frowning. ‘Then why is there a question mark over you having the estate? Doesn’t the eldest son usually inherit?’
‘It’s normal, yes, but Andrew—my halfbrother—is very popular around here. Especially at the hotel, where he seemed to spend most of his time as far as I can gather,’ Corran added evenly. ‘Everyone would much rather he had inherited the estate.’
‘Why not you?’
He sighed. ‘Are you always this nosy?’
For a moment she looked taken aback. ‘I suppose I’m used to asking a lot of questions,’ she said.
‘As part of your job?’
Something uncertain flickered in her eyes. Good, thought Corran. Let her see what it was like being on the receiving end of an interrogation for a change!
‘Yes,’ she said after a tiny hesitation. She cleared her throat. ‘I suppose you could say I’m in public relations.’
‘Does that mean you’d be happy discussing your family with a stranger?’
That strange expression flitted across her face again. ‘No, perhaps not. But we’re not going to stay strangers, are we? We’re going to be working together for a whole month so I can win that bet,’ she reminded him. ‘We might as well get to know something about each other. And I’d rather know the truth than rely on gossip.’
‘The Mhoraigh estate is mine,’ said Corran. ‘That’s all the truth you need.’
‘I don’t understand why they don’t like you in the village.’
‘Not everyone falls for my charm,’ he snarled at her, and then wished he hadn’t when she chuckled. She looked startlingly pretty when laughter warmed the patrician looks.
‘Oh, I can see they might be able to resist your sunny disposition,’ she said, ‘but most people like things to be fair and, if you’re the eldest son, it’s fair that you inherited, surely?’
Corran blew out an exasperated sigh. He might as well tell her or she would never shut up about it.
‘My father always intended to change the entail on the estate,’ he said, making sure his voice was empty of all bitterness. He didn’t want Lotty concluding that he was screwed up about all this, no matter how pretty she looked when she smiled.
‘Andrew was his favourite. Everyone knew that. He had the huge advantage of not reminding him of my mother. My father never forgave her for leaving him, and every time he looked at me, he saw her. It made my visits…difficult.’
Lotty’s lovely grey eyes darkened with sympathy. ‘That must have been hard on you.’
‘Please spare me the violins,’ said Corran curtly. He couldn’t bear people feeling sorry for him. He especially didn’t want Lotty feeling sorry for him.
‘I was perfectly happy as long as I could be here at Mhoraigh.’ He had told himself that so often, he even believed it. ‘I knew how my father felt and that the estate would go to Andrew eventually, and I’d accepted that. That’s why I joined the Army. If I couldn’t live here, I had no roots, and the military life suited me fine for a while. When my commission ended, though, I wanted to come back to the Highlands. I was thinking about buying a place of my own, and then my father sent for me.’
He stopped, remembering the last time he had seen his father. The churning bitterness and regret he had denied for so long. Why was he telling Lotty all this? What did it matter? He had come to terms with his father’s rejection long ago.
Hadn’t he?
‘He told me that he wasn’t going to change the entail after all. I still don’t know why. Perhaps he thought the estate would be too much of a liability for Andrew. Mhoraigh would be mine, he said, but he was leaving everything else to my stepmother and Andrew. The trouble was that there was no money left after the way they’d all been living these past few years. I daresay Moira thought all the furniture was the least she deserved. Hence the empty house,’ said Corran.
Lotty was a good listener, he realised. She kept her eyes fixed on his face and her head was tilted slightly to one side as she concentrated on what he was saying.
‘It must have been a difficult situation for everyone,’ she said.
‘It wasn’t difficult for me,’ said Corran, rescuing the toast, which had started to burn. He flicked both slices onto a plate and offered them to Lotty, who pushed herself away from the range and came to sit at the table.
‘I didn’t care if they stayed or not, as long as I didn’t have to actually live with them. I offered Moira Loch End House, which is a perfectly decent house, and said she could take any pieces