by Kait Jagger
Her Master’s Servant
Book Two in the Lord and Master Trilogy
By Kait Jagger
Published by Kait Jagger
Copyright © Kait Jagger 2016
Cover: Lauren Nagoda (www.laurennagoda.com)
Formatting: Troubador Publishing (www.troubador.co.uk/matador)
For address information, please contact the author at [email protected]
All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent of the author, excepting for brief quotes used in reviews.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 9780993458408
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB
Contents
Cover
Praise for Lord and Master
PART 1 – SHETLAND
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
PART 2 – BERKSHIRE
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
About the Author
The Marchioness
Praise for Lord and Master
Book One in the Lord and Master Trilogy
‘This book is filled with good story, passion, good writing and real characters. Nothing feels forced, the story flows flawlessly…Stefan is my newest book boyfriend, and I want one of my own!!’
—Carol Sales, Beauty and the Beastly Books
*
‘Enjoyable, erotic romance, infused with a healthy dose of reality.’
—Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller
*
‘I loved that author Kait Jagger creates the character of Luna as a friend and colleague with a full life of her own, rather than a flat character simply waiting for a man. Lord and Master is indulgent and magnetic. I stayed up way past my bedtime on more than one night simply because I needed to know what happened next.’
—Jenna Czaplewski, The Girl with Book Lungs
*
‘Author Kait Jagger has penned a gripping, scintillating page turner, loaded with riveting characters. Best book I’ve read in ages!’
—Stephanie Lasley, The Kindle Book Review
*
‘Every once and awhile a book comes along that completely knocks you on your ass…There’s an overwhelmingly gothic feel to Lord and Master that we rarely see these days. Modern romances are just that, modern. Lord and Master, however, brings the reader back to such as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights complete with its secrets and intrigue, but with a contemporary British style that reminds one of popular movies like Love, Actually or About a Boy.’
—Sandra Lombardo, Reads and Reviews
PART 1 – SHETLAND
Chapter One
The tide was coming in, in that sudden, treacherous way it did on this stretch of the west coast. Dark, volcanic rocks that had been visible just minutes earlier were now completely submerged under the punishing Atlantic waves.
As another massive wave crashed against the cliffs, a lone motorcyclist slowly negotiated a dirt track rising steeply from the rocks. It was tricky going, this. Not only was the track wet from sea spray and recent rains, it was punctuated regularly with fissures and stones. The trick was to identify the most level route and stick to it.
Reaching the crest of the hill, the biker relaxed slightly, preparing to pull out onto the asphalt road that adjoined the track. It would have been easy to miss the sheep stuck in the wire fencing by the side of the road, but luckily the rider saw it and pulled to a stop, hopping off the bike and popping the side stand.
Luna Gregory removed her helmet and walked toward the fence, where a ewe had managed to get her head wedged underneath the woven wire netting. Possibly due to the recent rains, the ledge of soil next to the fence had eroded, leaving a gap the sheep had apparently found impossible to resist.
Bleset, Luna thought to herself absently – the markings on the ewe’s face meant she was a bleset, to use the Shetland term. Luna also knew from the smudge of blue paint on the ewe’s hindquarters that she was expecting triplets in a few weeks’ time, when lambing season was due to begin.
‘Did the grass look greener on this side?’ Luna asked rhetorically, squatting next to the fence. The ewe bleated in response and Luna carefully tugged the wire upward, placing her hand on the sheep’s black and white face and gently pushing it backward. After a moment, the ewe took the hint and struggled free, rising on her hooves and running off across the field.
‘You’re welcome!’ Luna called after her, then frowned to herself. It had come to this: she was shouting at sheep now.
She stood and wiped her gloved hands against her Gore-Tex biking trousers, tucking an errant strand of long, dark hair behind her ear. Casting her milky blue eyes down toward the rocky shore from whence she had just come, she saw another wave come crashing in, and a plume of spray leap into the air. The noise of the surf had been overwhelming from the rock where she’d been sitting a few moments ago, but up here in the dunes it was muted. She could hear the wind blowing through a stand of tall grass nearby, their blades whipping together like thousands of sheets of paper.
Luna was completely alone, save for the ewe and a few hundred of her brethren on the adjoining fields. Seven hundred miles lay between her and… what? She couldn’t call it her home because, really, she had no home now, or if she did it was here on Shetland.
Five hundred miles by land, plus a further two hundred by sea between her and all she’d left behind.
*
For three days she had cried, sitting in a darkened hotel room outside of London. She who could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d shed tears in the preceding decade, who prided herself on keeping an iron grip on her emotions. True, her losses had been great – in a single stroke, she had parted ways with both her long-time mentor and the love of her life. That the choice to leave them had been hers did nothing to mitigate her pain.
They had betrayed her, between the two of them. Faced with the seemingly inevitable loss of the empire she had built at the 500-year-old Arborage Estate in Berkshire, Luna’s boss – Lady Wellstone, Marchioness of Lionsbridge – had hatched a secret plan to depose her brother-in-law, Florian Wellstone, and install the third in line to the estate, Stefan Lundgren, in his stead. A plan that entailed blackmail, and treachery, and lies. No matter that the odious Florian deserved it. He hadn’t been the only victim of the Marchioness’s scheming; Luna had paid as well.
‘So, is it everything you’d hoped for? Becoming the future “lord and master”, I mean.’
Replaying her final, fateful conversation with Stefan in the formal garden at Arborage, snow falling around them, Luna could almo
st taste the bitterness in her words, and her subsequent despair when Stefan effectively confirmed her accusation that by colluding with the Marchioness he had put his personal ambitions before her.
‘The man you fell in love with was a driven, successful businessman whose family birthright was Arborage. You didn’t fall in love with me despite those facts – they were part and parcel of the man I was, and part and parcel of why you loved me. You can’t expect me to stop being who I am.’
No, no she couldn’t. But she couldn’t live with it either. So she had left, forsaking not only the Marchioness and Stefan, but Arborage, the only place she had ever dared to call home in her adult life.
Of course, of the three, Stefan was the greatest loss. It was thoughts of him that wracked her with sobs in the airless hush of her hotel room. Had it shocked him, to find her room at Arborage empty the morning after their confrontation? Luna was sure it had, though it gave her no pleasure to contemplate it.
After three days sequestered in her room, on the fourth day she found the strength to emerge long enough to go to the nearest mobile shop. In her haste to escape Arborage cleanly, she had left behind her work phone. It was property of the estate, after all, but it contained every phone number, professional and personal, she had amassed in her twenty-six years on earth. No matter, she thought, she really only needed three numbers now.
And three email addresses. Having picked out the best, most expensive phone in the shop, Luna also bought a new laptop, returning to the hotel clutching her purchases. When she finally managed to log into her personal email account, she found no less than twenty-two emails from her friends Nancy, Kayla and Jem, starting three days ago.
From: Nancy
To: LunaG
cc: Kayla; JEM
Subject: Luna!
Lou, something’s wrong with your mobile. Every time I ring it, it just disconnects. Kay, Jem, have you had the same problem, or is it because I’m ringing from the States?
From: JEM
To: Nancy
cc: Kayla; LunaG
Subject: Re: Luna!
I can’t get through either. Fix your phone, Luna! J
From: Kayla
To: LunaG
cc: JEM; Nancy
Subject: WTF?!!!!
Just rung her landline and the message says she’s left Arborage. As in LEFT. FOREVER. What’s happened Lou? Call me.
And so it went, the messages becoming increasingly agitated to the point where Luna couldn’t make herself read any more. She skipped straight to the most recent email, from Jem.
From: JEM
To: LunaG
Cc: Kayla; Nancy
Subject: That’s it
Luna, you either phone me right now and let me know you’re alright or I’m phoning Stefan.
Luna looked at the date and time on the email: it had been sent less than an hour ago. She clicked on the last email from Nancy and scrolled down to her auto signature, quickly punching her friend’s number in New York into her phone.
After two rings, she heard her friend’s familiar raspy voice: ‘Nancy Richards.’
‘Nan, it’s me.’
‘Luna! Jesus, Lou, we’ve been worried sick about you. Kayla’s ready to storm the gates at Arborage and Jem—’
Luna swiftly cut Nancy off. ‘I need you to phone Jem and stop her from ringing Stefan,’ she said.
‘Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on. You quit your job, disappear off the face of the earth—’
‘Nancy, please,’ Luna cried, her voice breaking. She felt fresh tears begin to flow down her cheeks and a sob rise in her throat. Swallowing it as best she could, she continued, ‘I promise you, I’ll tell you everything, but first, please phone Jem. I can’t talk to her the way I am now and I need you to stop her. Please, Nancy.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Nancy assured her. ‘I’ll call her. But then I’m going to phone you back and you’d better pick up, Luna Gregory.’
Shortly thereafter, there followed a tortuous exchange with her best friend, Luna relating the events which had culminated in her decision to leave Arborage. As usual, Nancy saw straight to the heart of the matter.
‘So, her Ladyship basically offered you up to this pervert Florian, and Stefan just stood by and let it happen?’ she raged.
‘He didn’t know about it.’
‘He should have known.’
‘No, the Marchioness did that all on her own. She played us off against each other.’
‘Stop fucking defending him, Lou. The fact that he was your boyfriend and he’s a member of that family means he had more responsibility to look out for you, not less.’
If anything, the call she had with Jem the following day was even worse. She’d decided in advance that she wouldn’t share the details of her and Stefan’s break-up with Jem. Jem’s company, Rod Studios, founded with her boyfriend Rod Okuyo, was technically a business partner of the estate, having recently launched a video game based loosely on Arborage. The last thing she wanted was for either of them to feel they had to shun Stefan, who had been providing free business advice to them via his management consultancy firm.
‘It just wasn’t working out between us, Jem,’ Luna said, inwardly aching at the cool, detached tone of her own voice.
‘Wow, I – I really thought you two were made for each other. Stefan must be in bits.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Luna said hastily, and again, she could hear how callous she must sound to her friend, how uncaring. ‘It’s for the best,’ she concluded lamely, before ringing off. Sitting alone on the edge of the hotel bed, she looked down at her phone with its three numbers: Jem, Nancy and Kayla. And then, even though she’d gone into the call with Jem convinced that she had cried herself out, that there couldn’t possibly be more tears left in her, she heard herself make a pained noise, felt her chest begin to heave. And buried her face in her hands.
She couldn’t stay in that hotel room forever, she knew that. Sooner or later, she’d have to pull herself together, start going to see recruitment agents. Though how she’d explain her decision to quit her job with no notice… She hoped, no, she believed, that the Marchioness would see her way clear to giving her a good reference. Luna had served her devotedly for more than two years, after all. Two happy years. She would never find a job like that again, one that filled every corner of her life the way Arborage had, bringing her not only professional fulfilment, but Stefan.
Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her, the cool note in Jem’s voice when she phoned her the following morning.
‘Someone’s been trying to get hold of you. I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to…’ Jem hesitated and Luna’s heart hammered painfully in her chest. Stefan. But, as it turned out, he wasn’t the one who was looking for her.
*
At almost 2.30 the following afternoon, the small coffee shop around the corner from the British Museum was quiet, its barista leaning against the counter chatting with a waitress and only one customer sitting at a table in the corner, dressed in a natty grey tweed suit. When Luna entered, the man saw her and immediately stood.
‘Luna,’ Sören Lundgren said as she approached tentatively. To her surprise, rather than his customary Gallic kiss on each cheek, Stefan’s father drew her into his arms and embraced her, hugging her tightly for a moment before holding her away to study her. She found she couldn’t meet his eyes, partly because he looked so much like Stefan that the sight of his bright blue irises, the mirror of his son’s, physically pained her.
Sören gestured to the chair opposite him and signalled to the waitress, who came to take Luna’s order. When she’d departed, Luna glanced at him and attempted a smile, which faded almost immediately.
‘I apologise for contacting you through your friend. It was the only way I could think to find you,’ the older man began gently.
Luna nodded and forced herself to look at him. ‘I understand,’ she said. Then, trying to assume the business-like tone she thought he might expect of her, th
eir previous relationship having revolved around his role on Arborage’s board of trustees, she added, ‘What can I do for you, Sören?’
He winced at the tenor of her voice, and Luna immediately felt remorse. Whatever had transpired between her and his son, Sören had always been kind to her; a friend, she liked to think, in addition to a work acquaintance. As if to confirm this, he reached his hands toward hers and squeezed them.
Shaking his head, he said, ‘I think you will not wish to talk of it, so I will only say that I am very angry with Augusta and my son. I more than anyone should have suspected what she is capable of, but I admit she has shocked me. And Stefan…’ He sighed. ‘He has let you down, Luna, and I am sorry.’
At this point, the waitress returned with Luna’s coffee. After she’d left, Luna took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s kind of you, really, to have taken the time to do this. But there’s no need. I’m fine.’ Then, considering the patent falsehood of this claim, she added, ‘Or at least, I will be.’
Sören nodded. ‘I know you will be. And, I confess, I have an ulterior motive in asking to meet with you.’
Luna was silent and he continued, ‘You will remember the meeting my associate Dagmar and I had at Arborage with Malcolm Couper last autumn. The one you helped to arrange.’
