by Kait Jagger
Luna nodded and glanced around the terrace. ‘Have you seen James?’
‘Last I looked, he was at a table inside, with Helen practically sitting on his knee. He’s a bit of a dark horse, that one. I don’t usually go for beta men, but in his case I might make an exception…’ Nancy trailed off speculatively, lifting a single, perfectly contoured eyebrow at Luna.
Right on cue, James’s amplified voice rung out from inside the French doors. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests, if you would care to join me for the auction portion of our evening, cheque books at the ready?’
Partygoers began to filter into the Orangery, and James continued, ‘Before I start the bidding, we are aware of the problems with phone reception many of you have been experiencing and are working to resolve this. I am reliably informed that there is reception at the main house, if you care to make the ten-minute walk there.’ He smiled impishly, brushing the hair away from his forehead. ‘I advise against it, however, as you may miss the incredible opportunities to benefit the Royal Marsden I am about to offer you.’
With that, he launched into his auctioneer’s patter, seeking an assistant from the audience and accepting no demurral from Helen, who joined him on the dais to present items including a pearl and diamond necklace and earrings donated by the Queen’s jeweller, a customized Mini that had been used in an episode of Dr Who, and a bespoke Kieffer saddle ‘courtesy of my generous assistant’ James said as Helen blushed like a schoolgirl. Looking on in the audience, Luna shuddered to imagine how the schoolgirl would transform into an angry dragon later that night when she arrived at her farm in Chieveley to find her five horses tethered in the paddock, placidly chewing oats.
‘What am I bid for this exquisite, ultra-limited edition crystal punch bowl, donated by our friends at Waterford?’ James was saying as Helen held a large cut-glass bowl aloft. ‘Am I bid five hundred pounds?’ James smiled and pointed to an elderly lady standing with the Marchioness. ‘Thank you, madam. Am I bid five hundred and fif—? Thank you, sir. I am bid five hundred and fifty pounds. Do I hear six hundred?’
‘Six hundred,’ Mark Waverley shouted, standing with Nancy toward the back of the crowd.
‘Clearly a man of taste,’ James observed. ‘A gift for my lovely assistant, perhaps?’
‘Not me,’ Helen interjected bluntly, provoking a swell of laughter from the audience.
‘Or for yourself,’ James continued blithely. ‘A man can never have too much crystal.’ To louder laughter and applause.
As the bidding continued, Arborage’s head of security materialised beside Luna, bending down to whisper in her ear. Whispering her response, she caught the Marchioness staring quizzically in their direction and smiled coolly at her as if to say, It’s nothing. Nothing to worry about.
The head of security remained by Luna’s side, however, and two more members of the security team appeared at the margins of the Orangery as Stefan’s plan entered its most critical phase. Having settled Helen’s horses, he and his crew returned to the equestrian centre to collect the sole remaining horse, which belonged not to Helen but to a successful show jumping contemporary of hers. According to Ashley, the prize-winning gelding had been sent to Helen for schooling, a common practice in the horse fraternity.
It had been a delicate matter, making alternative arrangements for this gelding. Stefan was forced to call in a few favours, convincing a friend of a friend, one of the British Show Jumping Association’s most highly respected trainers, to take it in. Unfortunately, the trainer’s stables were in Hickstead, a hundred-mile drive away.
Luna later learned that, despite Herculean efforts by Stefan and his men, the horse initially refused to enter the horsebox. Eventually, driven by desperation and a ticking clock, Stefan decided to saddle it and ride it into the wagon himself, head bent down into the horse’s mane; an incredibly dangerous manoeuvre. It worked, but the minute he dismounted the horse began to whinny and scrape the floor of the box with its hooves.
They were no further than a mile down the road when they heard a series of almighty clangs from the back of the wagon; the gelding was kicking against his stall with such force it risked doing itself an injury. Ashley quickly pulled the trailer over and Stefan hopped in the back, spending the rest of the drive down to West Sussex standing next to the horse, stroking its flank, tickling its nose, whispering sweet Swedish nothings in its ear. Whatever it took to keep it calm.
Back in the Orangery, the auction was drawing towards its conclusion. A palpable level of drunken rowdiness had descended upon the room, with bidding becoming more and more vociferous as James moved into the ‘experiences’ portion of the night’s offerings: outings on private yachts, a day’s tuition from an ex-Formula 1 driver at Silverstone and the like.
The final item of the night was a suggestion from Isabelle, a luxury weekend cruise to see the Northern Lights in Sweden, capped by a gourmet meal in Stockholm with the new Marquess himself. Stefan had expressed extreme scepticism about it, observing that morning to Luna, ‘I don’t see anyone paying to spend time with me.’
As it transpired, he underestimated the number of businesspeople and sycophants looking to curry favour with Arborage’s new lord and master. James started the bidding at five hundred pounds and the bids swiftly came up to two thousand. And then Isabelle showed her hand.
‘Twenty-two hundred pounds,’ she declared, fanning herself with her programme.
‘I am bid two thousand two hundred pounds by the Right Honourable Lady Isabelle Wellstone,’ James said. ‘Am I bid—’
‘Twenty-three hundred!’ shouted Lilith, her cheeks flushing red.
‘Twenty-four!’ shouted Tarquin, as Isabelle looked toward Luna and smiled. Care to make a bid? Luna gritted her teeth and forced her lips into an answering smile; she wasn’t going to play this game, not least because she couldn’t afford to.
She saw him then, emerging from the darkness of the garden, stumbling onto the terrace before startled orchestra members. Looking like a mad man, with rivulets of sweat streaming down his face, Florian Wellstone had clearly run the entire way from the stables. Luna quickly glanced at their head of security, but he was already on it, lifting a finger to his men.
Florian almost made it. A few feet further and he’d have been within shouting distance of his niece, able to raise the alarm that her empire was under siege. But the two security guards intercepted him just outside the French doors.
‘Do something,’ Nancy whispered furiously into her ear. Luna looked at her in confusion and Nancy gestured toward Isabelle and her circle, who had raised the bidding on the Scandinavian cruise to four thousand pounds. ‘You’re not going to let that bitch win, are you?’
‘I can’t,’ Luna whispered back. Nancy shook her head in disgust and moved away through the crowd. A chorus of whoops erupted from Isabelle’s friends, fortuitously timed to draw the room’s attention from the unedifying spectacle of the security guards dragging Florian away from the terrace. Exhaling with relief, Luna nodded her thanks to the head of security, who headed off outside to join his men.
She returned her full attention to the auction to see the Marchioness glaring at her daughter, frowning in disapproval of her antics. Heedless of her mother’s opprobrium, Isabelle cried out, ‘Five thousand pounds!’
‘I have a bid of five thousand pounds,’ James announced. ‘Do I hear any improvement on five thousand?’ Isabelle nudged one of her friends gleefully, making a show of rummaging through her clutch bag. ‘Going once,’ said James.
Isabelle removed her chequebook from her bag, poised to collect her prize.
‘Going twice…’ James paused for dramatic effect and Luna felt a stab of annoyance, wishing he would bring her humiliation to an end.
Gavel hovering in the air, James suddenly tensed. ‘Please excuse me,’ he said, reaching into his tuxedo jacket and retrieving his phone. The microphone picked up its ringtone, Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’.
‘Ah, Agnetha,’ James sighed,
to the hilarity of the party guests. He lifted a finger to them. ‘James MacGregor,’ he answered his phone. ‘Yes, we are… I see, yes.’
James held the phone to his chest and announced into the microphone, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have just received an offer of ten thousand pounds from a bidder who prefers to remain anonymous.’ A chorus of ‘ahs’ rose up from the room. ‘Do I have any further bids?’
Isabelle’s friends looked at her and she shook her head. ‘Too rich for my blood,’ she admitted.
‘Going once, then. Going twice…’ James lifted his finger again and returned the phone to his ear. ‘Congratulations, madam! Sold for ten thousand pounds.’ And banged his gavel.
Almost immediately a storm of ringtones, beeps and chimes erupted in the room.
‘Our phone service has been restored just as tonight’s auction comes to a close,’ James said with a smile. ‘It gives me great pleasure to announce that, when combined with the online auction we have been running for the past week, the total we have raised for the Royal Marsden comes to over six hundred and fifty thousand pounds, which makes this the most successful auction in this event’s twenty-two-year history.’
The crowd rapidly dispersed after that, intent on checking messages, tweeting, or in the case of Isabelle’s mates, posting photos of themselves online. Luna and Nancy, meanwhile, made their way up to the dais to congratulate James.
‘You were magnificent,’ Nancy extolled.
‘I try,’ he replied humbly. ‘Truth be told, I’m ready for a—’ He was interrupted by the sound of Helen’s voice, rising agitatedly above the hum of the party.
‘You had no right, no right!’ she screeched, thrusting her phone in her mother’s face, only to be met with a look of total incomprehension from Augusta and a smattering of inquisitive glances from nearby partygoers. Luna was prepared for this and she and James moved swiftly in Helen’s direction, James taking one of her arms and Luna the other.
‘Come with us, please, Helen,’ Luna said quietly.
‘I—’ Helen began, digging her heels in. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ She jerked her arm away from Luna, but James tightened his grip on her, propelling her out of the door, across the terrace and down into the darkened garden beyond, trailed by Luna, the Marchioness, Nancy and a clearly inebriated Mark Waverley.
‘Take your hands off me!’ Helen bellowed as they approached the Jubilee fountain. James released her arm, which she promptly raised to give him a resounding slap across the face. ‘You were in on it, weren’t you, you little worm!’
‘Helen!’ Lady Wellstone exclaimed.
Luna came and whispered in James’s ear, ‘You go get that drink.’ Taking her cue, Nancy simultaneously inserted her arm into Mark’s, saying, ‘Believe me, you’re better off out of this.’ And off the three of them went, back into the Orangery.
‘Will someone please explain to me what’s going on here?’ the Marchioness said.
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on,’ Helen raged. ‘Stefan has gone behind my back and moved all the horses out of the stables, including Tam Maguire’s gelding.’ She rushed at Luna, jutting a finger in her face. ‘That horse is worth one point two million pounds and I promise you if he’s so much as bruised a fetlock, I’ll make sure Tam sues the estate for damages.’
Augusta looked from her daughter to Luna. ‘Is this true, Luna?’
‘It is,’ she confirmed, inciting an angry howl from Helen.
‘How dare he!’ she shouted, whirling toward her mother and flinging her hand in the direction of the stables. ‘He’s even locked me out. Changed the locks, mother. He’s got our own security men posted outside, guarding the place like some kind of fortress. He’s made a fool of me.’
‘Is that not,’ Luna interjected calmly, ‘exactly what you intended to do? Take over the equestrian centre, lock Stefan out and make a fool of him?’
Helen stared at her, her face so twisted with rage that even in the relative darkness of the garden Luna could tell it was flushed bright scarlet. For a moment, the only sound was of water spraying from the fountain into the pool below.
‘You understand nothing about it, you stupid bitch,’ Helen said.
‘Helen,’ her mother warned.
‘All you know is how to fuck your way to the top—’
‘Enough!’ Augusta stood up to her full height, daring Helen to defy her.
Helen wavered briefly under her mother’s iron gaze, but then straightened her back and said, ‘I will fight this. I will not abandon my birthright.’
‘The stables are not your birthright,’ Augusta interrupted.
‘I will fight it to the bitter end,’ Helen carried on. ‘Even if it means contesting his right of inheritance in court. I want my daughters to know; I want them to see their mother fighting for what she believes in.’
Augusta opened her mouth to continue arguing, but Luna lifted a hand. She angled her head at Helen, eyes glowing silver-white in the reflected moonlight.
‘Is that what you think they’ll see?’ she enquired coldly. And shook her head.
Five minutes later, Mark Waverley returned to the garden to discover his wife sitting on the edge of the fountain, sobbing uncontrollably. He went and sat next to her, and Luna and the Marchioness walked back toward the Orangery together.
Lady Wellstone was initially subdued to the point of speechlessness, but as they climbed the steps to the terrace, she turned to Luna and asked, ‘Why didn’t Stefan tell me he was planning this?’
Luna’s shoulders lifted slightly. ‘He felt it would put you in an impossible situation, having to choose between him and Helen.’
‘But I’ve already made that choice!’ Augusta’s voice broke slightly and she choked off, trying to compose herself. ‘Project Mercury, all the work we’ve done to modernise the estate. I thought I’d made it clear that I was prepared to sacrifice anything for Arborage’s future.’ She stopped short again, realising too late what she’d just admitted, and to whom.
‘You’ve been distracted lately,’ Luna said mildly. ‘Understandably. An opportunity presented itself and Stefan took it. It wasn’t his intention to exclude you.’
The two women studied each other. A stand-off. ‘So instead he turned to someone else,’ the Marchioness said, nodding her final comprehension. Luna turned and continued up the stairs as Lady Wellstone’s voice, laden with irony, floated up behind her. ‘And she said, “Leave it with me.”’
Luna was standing in the queue for the punch bowl a few minutes later when Isabelle floated up to her, malevolence oozing from her pores. ‘I haven’t congratulated you on your engagement yet,’ she said, motioning toward Luna’s ring. ‘You must be very pleased with yourself.’
‘I’m very happy, if that’s what you mean,’ Luna replied, suddenly sick to the eye teeth of the Wellstone girls.
Isabelle laughed a forced laugh. ‘I remember you, back at school,’ she said. ‘Poor orphan child, that’s what everybody said. But I knew what you were really like.’
‘Isabelle,’ Luna said. ‘I want no quarrel with you.’
‘No family of your own, so you had to come here and steal mine.’ Isabelle’s smile tightened to the point where her face looked like it might crack.
The two of them reached the front of the queue and Luna took a glass of punch from the server, handing it to Isabelle and bending her head down to her. ‘I have taken nothing that belonged to you in the first place, Bella,’ she said softly. Never breaking eye contact, she extended her hand to the server, accepting her own glass. And tilted her head at Isabelle, frost forming on her irises.
*
‘I don’t think I’ve ever been slapped before,’ James observed an hour later, sitting at an outdoor table with Nancy and Luna, watching the musicians pack up their instruments. He had removed his tie and was well into his second bottle of champagne, looking just a little shell shocked. And who wouldn’t be, Luna reflected, after a close encounter with the flat of Helen’s hand? She reac
hed over and refilled his glass.
‘Thanks for taking one for the team,’ she toasted him, raising her own glass in salute. The three of them started to laugh a little hysterically, equal parts tipsiness and post-traumatic stress.
‘So, I gotta ask you,’ Nancy said to James. ‘What did you say to Helen, to win her round? One minute she’s icing you out and the next she’s eating out of your hand.’
James shrugged diffidently. ‘A little horse talk, that’s all.’
‘You have to understand,’ Luna explained. ‘Helen is all about the horses. Usual flirtation techniques have no effect on her.’ She glanced at James and he reclined in his wrought-iron chair, studying the night sky, content to let her tell this story. ‘There’s a race that’s held annually,’ she went on. ‘The World Endurance Riding Championship. One hundred and sixty kilometres in gruelling conditions. Anyone can enter and it has a certain… cachet in horsing circles. Separates the men from the boys, as it were…’ She smiled. ‘A few years ago, it was held here in the UK and the winner was Sheikh Mohammed.’
Nancy shook her head.
‘As in,’ Luna elucidated, ‘the Sheikh Mohammed, supreme ruler of Dubai, the man who built the Burj Khalifa.’
‘Not to mention owner of Godolphin stables, one of the most successful race horse breeders in history,’ James added, taking a lazy sip of his champagne.
‘At any rate,’ Luna said, ‘James… implied to Helen that he’d competed in this race and befriended the Sheikh, who subsequently invited him to come stay at his palace in Abu Dhabi.’
‘Pony club catnip,’ James smiled sagely, touching the side of his nose.
Nancy burst out laughing. ‘And Helen actually bought this? You really are a dark horse, James MacGregor! Who knew you were such an accomplished liar.’
James finished off his glass of champagne and placed it on the table, motioning for Nancy to refill it. ‘Actually,’ he cleared his throat modestly, ‘it was the truth.’
Luna left them to it after that, heading off through the gardens toward the house as James launched into a tale of camel racing in the desert. Stepping off the gravel path onto the lawn, she kicked off her heels, relishing the dew under her feet and the smell of high summer in her nostrils. This far away from the floodlights of the main house, the moon and stars were shining brightly in a cloudless sky.
