by Kait Jagger
Even now, a ewe on the other side of the wooden enclosure they were in was pushing her nose through the slats, sniffing eagerly at the new arrival, who was already trying to stand on what appeared to be impossibly long, spindly black legs. Its mother gave it another little nudge and it collapsed, letting out a high pitched ‘baaa’.
It was around 1am on a mid-May night, more than a month since she and Stefan had reunited. Luna knew that similar scenes were playing out in farms up and down the coast. Ruth texted her on Sunday to say her first lambs had been born overnight. Because Shetland sheep were so adept at giving birth, they didn’t require much intervention, but between them, Malcolm, Liv, Luna and Dagmar had been taking turns checking on them through the night. Sometimes a helping human hand was needed.
Now, for example, as Luna continued to marvel at the tiny, quivering black lamb in front of her, Malcolm moved quickly to the ‘orphan’ pen, where they were bottle feeding four lambs he’d removed from their mothers; triplets all, one more than their mothers could easily feed. Picking up one of them, he swiftly carried it back to the enclosure and handed it to Luna, who, used to this drill by now, scooped up the afterbirth from the recently born lamb and smeared it over the orphan. A trick, to fool the new mother into thinking this baby was her own.
Sure enough, when the orphan lamb butted its head into the ewe’s udder, she gave it a cursory sniff and continued licking her new arrival.
Luna pointed to the orphan’s tail, wiggling furiously, and laughed, lifting up her bloody, mucky hands. ‘If you’d have told me a year ago that I’d be standing here doing this…’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You have the best job in the world, Malcolm.’
‘Aye,’ the plump-cheeked farmer said, looking across the shed at the scores of mothers and new babies. ‘You’re not wrong there, lass.’ Then yawned.
‘Why don’t you go get some sleep?’ Luna suggested. ‘I’ll take the next shift.’ Truth be told, it had been mostly him and Luna sharing night duties, Dagmar having been preoccupied with final preparations for her marketing guru friend and his crew, who would arrive the following week to start work on the ad campaign, and Liv having been happy to cede animal husbandry duties to Luna in preference for a good night’s sleep.
Luna didn’t mind. Standing alone in the lambing shed a few minutes later, surrounded by all this new life, she felt uniquely privileged. Maybe a little itchy – she’d had to be extra vigilant about washing thoroughly and applying steroid cream, and yesterday she’d given in and bought an inhaler when after several hours in the shed she found herself starting to wheeze. But still. These had been some of the most magical days of her entire life.
And that was another reason she’d been happy to send Malcolm off to bed. After quickly scanning the shed to reassure herself that no more births were imminent, Luna retrieved her mobile from her jeans pocket and video phoned Stefan, rewarded with the sight of him turning on his bedside light and sitting up in bed in his London apartment.
‘Luna,’ he mumbled, rubbing his eyes.
‘I have something to show you,’ Luna said excitedly. She lifted up the phone to frame the three orphan lambs, fast asleep, huddled together in a warm jumble in the corner of their stall.
She heard Stefan’s voice on the phone, a half-octave higher than usual, exclaiming delightedly, ‘Oh ho ho, they are so cute!’
‘I know, I know!’ Luna said, raising the phone to give him a view of the entire shed. ‘Can you hear that?’ There was a little lamb baaing for its mother on the opposite side of the shed, and then another.
‘Aahhh!’ came Stefan’s voice. Small, cute animals were Stefan Lundgren’s kryptonite; he was helpless in their thrall. And they didn’t come any cuter than Shetland lambs.
‘And look at this little fellow over here,’ Luna said, walking to the pen where she and Malcolm had stood a few minutes previously. ‘I helped to birth him.’ She pointed the phone toward where he and the orphan lamb were contentedly suckling, adding proudly, ‘Me. I did that.’
To which Stefan’s voice jumped a full octave as he crooned, ‘Oh, look, look at his little tail!’
He found a way, after that, to clear his diary so he could come up the next day. And she loved him, loved him so much it hurt, as she watched him sit in the orphan pen, patiently bottle-feeding them, ignoring the formula dripping down onto his jacket and the sheep shit smeared across his jeans.
‘I think I could have been a farmer,’ he said happily, looking up at Luna, who was standing resting her elbows on the side of the pen, chin on palms.
On the downside, Stefan arriving early meant he overlapped with Dagmar, who wasn’t flying out till the following morning. Between Dagmar’s work and the demands of the lambing shed, they managed to avoid each other for most of the day, but Luna insisted that the three of them sit down for dinner together that evening.
The mood was slightly stilted in the kitchen as she served up a meal of Moroccan chicken and couscous. As Stefan and Dagmar faced off against each other across the table, Luna found herself straining to come up with topics to keep the conversation going, until it came to talking about the planned filming for the following week.
After some gentle prodding from Luna, Dagmar outlined the general plan for the shoot, which would involve both a male and a female model, in addition to Malcolm’s new lambs. Dagmar lapsed into Swedish as she was explaining the logistics of the shoot, and Luna’s comprehension was limited enough that much of what she was saying went over her head till Dagmar uttered the name Mika Salonen, her creative marketing friend. Stefan clearly knew him too.
He asked Dagmar something in Swedish – it sounded like he thought this Salonen was working in the US – to which Dagmar simply said he was coming back for this.
Luna looked between the two of them and Stefan explained, ‘Mika is an old friend of mine. Finnish. A, hmm, there’s an English term… is it jack of all trades? In the time I’ve known him, he’s been a rally driver, an ice hockey player. That’s how we met, but marketing is how he makes a living.’
‘You played hockey?’ Luna asked.
Stefan nodded. ‘Not as well as Mika, of course. Rally driving, on the other hand, there I give him a run for money.’ Dagmar rolled her eyes and Luna sensed there was a history there, but Stefan gave little more away. Not at the dinner table or later as he scrubbed her back in the tub.
‘So, when you say jack of all trades,’ Luna said, ‘do you mean and master of none?’
‘No,’ Stefan replied, squeezing water from the washcloth onto her neck. ‘He is well respected in his field. My father rates him, for sure.’
‘And Dagmar.’
Stefan grunted, whether from a lack of regard for Dagmar’s opinion or something else, Luna couldn’t tell. ‘But what’s he like, on a personal basis?’ she tried again shortly thereafter as she stood in the bath and Stefan wrapped her in a towel.
‘Very Finnish. He’s one of five brothers, each crazier than the last. Very competitive, very driven. Work hard, play hard, that sort of thing.’
‘Sounds like someone else I know,’ Luna smiled.
‘Oh no, the Salonens put me in the shade,’ Stefan demurred. ‘Well, maybe not Mika. He’s the baby of the family, so I have a chance against him.’ Rubbing the towel along her back and arms, he inhaled next to her damp nape. ‘Enough talk of Finns,’ he said, throwing the towel on the floor and pushing her down onto the bed. As Stefan crawled on top of her, Luna tensed, listening to the coils in the box spring squealing. How had she never noticed before how noisy this bed was?
Stefan positioned himself between her legs and pulled her to him, the bed creaking under their combined weight. Luna looked up at him in panic, widening her eyes, then motioning with them toward the floor beneath them. Dagmar’s bedroom.
‘We can’t,’ she whispered fiercely, watching as Stefan’s expression shifted from quizzical to exasperated. Rolling off her, he quickly stood and motioned for her to do the same, then pulled the mattress off the
bed onto the floor.
‘Better?’ he enquired.
In response, Luna lifted her index finger to her lips, shaking her head slightly. There was no more than the floorboards and some joists separating them from the room below.
‘Is that a challenge, Miss Gregory?’ Stefan enquired silkily as he lay down on the mattress and held out his hands to her. ‘Because I can be very quiet. Can you, I wonder, when I make you come a few minutes from now?’
‘Shh,’ she hissed, descending into his arms and placing a hand over his mouth, struggling not to laugh. And when he moved against it, opening his mouth to speak again, she placed her other hand on his shaft, hard and waiting for her touch. ‘Can you?’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Even if I do this?’ She ran her fingertips lightly along the rim of his glans. ‘Or this?’ she added, manipulating the velveteen skin beneath it.
In response, Stefan arched his hips and emitted a soft ‘Mmm…’ till he caught Luna smiling down at him as if to say, not so quiet after all, eh? But any protest died on his lips as she continued stroking his penis, and began to rhythmically press her pubis against his thigh. He shuddered beneath her and she slid her other hand from his mouth to his jaw, bending down to kiss him, sucking his lower lip between her teeth.
Stefan rolled her onto her side and their kiss deepened, tongues circling each other, mouths angling for better access. As so often with him, it felt to Luna as if the outside world receded till all there was was his mouth against hers. And his rock hard thigh, moving against her sex even as his arms encircled her. And his cock, so stiff its skin felt tight under her fingers.
Stefan disengaged his mouth from hers, gasping with pleasure. ‘God, you are so good,’ he whispered ardently. And suddenly all she wanted was him in her, to show him just how good she was, how wet and swollen and ready for him. She wrapped her legs around him, lifting her knees till they were up and under his arms. So slick was her interior that he met almost no resistance as he slid into her. He inhaled sharply, struggling for control, his hips poised on the verge of slamming into hers.
Reaching his hand up to her nape, he grabbed her hair and pulled it, hard. ‘Tell me you love me,’ he demanded.
‘I love you.’
He was unsatisfied. ‘Tell me you belong to me.’
‘I belong to you,’ she repeated as he slid his other hand between them, seeking and finding her clitoris, capturing it between his fore and middle fingers, pressing down hard against her. Exposing her most sensitive place and shifting the angle of his thrust so his pubis rubbed directly against it. Luna arched her hips, feeling his hair and his skin brushing her clitoris, teasing it till the muscles around it tightened and released in anticipation.
Stefan pulled the hair at her nape again, forcing her head backward. Even in the darkness, she could see his mouth drawing back, his eyes widening. His fingers hard against her, his cock moving within her, her clitoris, just touching him. Close, so close…
They came together, at the exact same moment, shaking and arching and convulsing against each other. Luna whimpering and Stefan groaning, thin floorboards be damned. It had never happened quite this way before, the two of them climaxing simultaneously, and for some time afterward they lay and stared at each other in mutual amazement and satiety.
Stefan’s hand, however, remained twined in her nape, holding it tight. Sensing that he needed more from her, Luna reached her hand to his cheek and stroked it. ‘I belong to you,’ she reiterated, with feeling. And with that he drew her into his arms.
*
Luna lasted till mid-afternoon in the lambing shed the following day before her wheezing got the best of her. Heading back to the house to retrieve her inhaler, she entered the front door as silently as possible; the quid pro quo for Stefan coming up early that week was that he’d have to do some work.
She was surprised to hear his raised voice coming from the kitchen. ‘Let me be completely clear on this, Helen. I don’t support it and I will not recommend it to the Arborage board.’ Luna stopped in her tracks. He could only be talking to Helen Wellstone-Waverley, the Marchioness’s eldest daughter.
Hovering outside the kitchen door, which was slightly ajar, Luna could hear Helen’s distinctive, booming voice on the other end of the phone. She couldn’t make out the words, but the elder Wellstone sister was shouting, practically shrieking, at Stefan. She could just see his shoulders and the back of his neck, corded with tension. Uncomfortable with continuing to eavesdrop on their argument, Luna was about to go upstairs to the bedroom when Stefan cut Helen off.
‘Fine,’ he said curtly. ‘You do that.’ And pressed the disconnect button on his mobile, throwing it with a clatter onto the kitchen table.
Luna quietly glided into the room, raising a hand when Stefan looked up at her, his expression dark with anger. ‘I’ve just come to get this,’ she said, retrieving her inhaler from next to the salt grinder on the table.
She started to head back out when he said, ‘You heard that?’
‘Just the tail end.’
He was silent, and after a few seconds Luna began to move away again, briefly squeezing his shoulder in passing. But Stefan swiftly grabbed her hand before she could get any further.
‘Will you sit with me for a bit, Luna?’ he asked, pausing. ‘I would like to take your advice.’
This was new. As far as she could recall, Stefan had never asked for her advice before. Her opinion, yes. Her agreement, certainly. But actual counsel? Never. And perhaps he was only asking for it now as another way of proving that he was willing to change, to share more of his life with her. Notwithstanding, she felt she needed to take this seriously, so she sat down next to him at the table. Stefan opened his mouth to speak and she lifted her hand again. Taking a long drag on her inhaler, she coughed, then nodded, eyes watering.
‘On the weekly Arborage management call this morning,’ Stefan said, ‘Helen announced that she has negotiated a deal with English Eventing to host a three-day eventing competition next spring.’
Luna lifted her eyebrows, knowing what was coming next.
‘She has done this completely in secret, without checking with me, or her mother, or, as far as I can tell, any member of the board of trustees.’ Stefan ran his hand through his hair in vexation. ‘And it flies in the face of Project Mercury.’
Stefan’s modernising blueprint for the estate, which had been rubber stamped by the board at the end of the previous year, called for the loss-making equestrian centre to be wound down and its substantial grazing acreage converted to farmland. Luna could well understand Stefan’s frustration at this rearguard action by Helen.
‘To make matters worse,’ he continued, ‘it is a terrible deal she has struck, with no profit to the estate in the first year and only the vague promise of a return in future years. Oh, she claims that there will be ancillary benefits. New patronage for the equestrian centre, horse sales, use of our conference facilities. But really—’
‘Really she shouldn’t have done the deal at all,’ Luna interjected, ‘because the centre is slated to close.’
‘Exactly,’ he nodded. ‘And by springing this on me in front of the other managers—’
‘Augusta wasn’t on the call?’ Luna asked.
‘No,’ he frowned unhappily. ‘Anyway, I think Helen is testing me, trying to see how firm my resolve is.’
‘This deal…’ Luna began.
Sensing where she was going, Stefan said simply, ‘A handshake agreement.’
‘So it could be stopped.’
‘It could.’ He tapped his fingers on the table. ‘But I fear it would mean all-out war with Helen.’
‘And…’ Luna hesitated. Really, she had worked so hard since January to train her mind not to think about Arborage; it caused something akin to physical pain to plunge herself, even briefly, into the family’s internecine affairs. ‘Isabelle,’ she said finally. ‘How has she taken the loss of her shop?’ Another loss-making business in Arborage’s portfolio, a boutique in pr
icy Knightsbridge which Luna knew had now shut, Nancy having admitted to picking up a few bargains in its closing down sale the last time she was in London.
Stefan shrugged. ‘I gather John and Augusta have made restitution to her. You know Isabelle, the shop was just a plaything for her.’
Luna nodded. ‘It’s different for Helen,’ she said. ‘You say she’s testing you, but try to look at it from her perspective. She lives and breathes horses. Her entire life revolves around that equestrian centre. Perhaps she’s trying to prove that she can think like a businesswoman. It’s the sort of thing Augusta would do, offer to host an initial event gratis, in the hope of attracting long-term business.’
Stefan considered this for a moment. ‘So, you think I should let this go,’ he said heavily.
‘No I don’t.’
He looked at her in surprise.
‘The decision about the future of the equestrian centre has already been made,’ Luna said adamantly. ‘You’ve made your recommendation, John and Augusta have backed it, and the board has approved it. Regardless of any justification she may offer, Helen had no business negotiating with English Eventing. And I think if you let her proceed with this event next spring, it’s as good as saying the equestrian centre can stay.’
‘So,’ he smiled cheerlessly. ‘War then.’
‘Not with you,’ Luna replied firmly. ‘Helen’s fight is with her parents. It’s for Augusta to have this out with her.’ And when Stefan opened his mouth to disagree, she said, ‘You’ve asked for my advice and that’s it. Helen won’t hear it from you. She won’t hear it and she’ll spin this thing out, and work to consolidate her position, make herself very difficult to dislodge. But she’ll listen to her mother. And ultimately she’ll take orders from her.’
