by Kait Jagger
‘It isn’t for sale!’
He made a guttural noise and flung his arms wide. ‘Everything in your country is for sale, Luna. It’s simply a matter of price.’
‘You are wasting your time,’ Luna said scornfully. ‘And mine.’
For just a second, his face betrayed a fleeting glimpse of the sulphuric rage underlying his bullying façade. Then he said derisively, ‘I don’t bargain with the master’s bitch. You just carry my message to him. While you’re at it, tell him I would like to buy the furnishings and… other things that go with the house too.’ His eyes ran over her with naked, acquisitive lust.
He began to move toward her and Luna backed away, straight into the two guards, who had magically reappeared at their master’s unspoken command. He issued a harsh order and they grabbed her arms, holding her in place.
‘You have much to learn, Luna. Let me show you what it means to be my bitch.’
Viktor Putinov moved implacably toward her, hands reaching for her. And Luna began to scream.
Epilogue
‘I’ve been so happy, Stefan. Happier than I thought it was possible to be.’
‘But I’ve felt that way too. It’s been the same for me.’
The dream was always the same. Luna was in danger, and he couldn’t get to her. The only thing that varied was how great the feeling of peril was. Sometimes it was just a series of tormented images – him searching for her, knowing that she needed him, but unable to find her. And sometimes it was worse; the very worst ones ended with him jolting awake, gasping and sweating.
At first he assumed it was his subconscious way of coping with her loss during those dark weeks after she left him in January. But the dreams didn’t stop when he carried her to his bed on the night of the Remainers party, or when he reunited with her on Shetland, or even when they became engaged.
Later, following their bleak audience with Luna’s grandmother, when his poor flicka revealed a glimpse of the hell her life descended into in the wake of her father’s death, Stefan began to fear that his dreams were manifestations of his own insecurity. The full truth of Luna’s past lay somewhere in the gaps between the words she said, he knew it, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that some critical occurrence, some vital clue about her, continued to elude him. That Luna herself eluded him.
But the night she stood before him in their bedroom at Arborage, her face adorably vexed, stamping her foot whilst proclaiming, ‘You’re stuck with me, right?’ he’d been certain his nightmares would stop, that the curse had finally been lifted. Only to wake drenched in sweat in the middle of the night, limbs thrashing, heart pounding, the sound of Luna’s screams echoing in his ears.
Turning in bed, he’d found her beside him, tucked up on her side with her fist pressed into her chin, her usual sleeping position. And smiled in spite of himself. She could sleep through Armageddon, his Luna; she devoted herself to it like one for whom slumber had once been an escape from grim reality. Oddly, in all the many, many nights he’d lain awake watching her, not once had he witnessed her dreaming. He’d been completely blindsided by the rush of pure, undiluted jealousy that consumed him when he watched Mika’s footage from the cliffside in Shetland; that Mika, not him, had lain inches away from the magical sight of Luna’s eyelids fluttering, her lips unconsciously pouting…
He’d lied to her, that January night when he stood with her in the Rose Temple, snow falling around them.
Luna told him what loving him was like for her, how it had changed her entire world. And in response he lied, said it was the same for him, when the truth was that he was doing everything he could to prevent that from happening, to stop his overwhelming love for her from taking over his life, turning him from the ambitious, driven man he was into… what? A happy man? A contented one?
Of course, now that he had given himself over to loving her, he frankly wondered why he had ever been so stupid as to resist. Loving Luna Gregory made every single facet of his existence better. It was just like she’d said, this love: it made colours look brighter, bad things seem less important and good things feel even better. It also made him outrageously happy. He caught himself smiling idiotically at random points in the day, thinking of something she’d said or done. Or tapping his foot impatiently in the lift to his apartment, willing it to move faster, get him home to her sooner. Or staring at her in the dead of night, watching her still, sleeping, serious face, thanking God that she was his.
Life was just… easier, now that he could pass all his major decisions through the lens of what’s best for Luna? What’s best for us? And as for her somehow making him less driven, less focused on work, nothing could be further from the truth. To the contrary, something about interacting with her day to day, some kind of chemical reaction he couldn’t explain, made him feel like an engine running at maximum efficiency. Like he was capable of anything he put his mind to.
He wasn’t alone in this experience. Or at least, this was what he concluded during his final conversation with Augusta before she left Arborage, when it became clear to him that her feelings for Luna were deeper, more complicated than what an employer might feel for an employee. ‘She’s a powerful tool, Stefan,’ she said gravely. ‘Use her wisely.’
He couldn’t share Luna’s sadness that Augusta was gone, privately wishing that he could rid himself of the rest of her kin. Cousins or no, he was sick of the sight of the Wellstone family. Not just that sick monster Florian, but Helen and Isabelle too, with their completely unjustified sense of entitlement. He wanted to build something new and unfettered by the past at Arborage, now that it was his. Perversely, however, what his interactions with the Wellstones made him feel like doing most was locking the gates, barring them all, then dragging Luna up the stairs to their bedroom and ploughing her belly with his seed. Freaky, medieval stuff, primal instincts an enlightened Swede such as himself was embarrassed to admit to.
The fact that she’d have let him do it, that she’d happily wear his rope around her neck and submit herself to his tender abuses, well… all the more reason to rid himself of these ancestral encumbrances and devote himself to fucking his bride-to-be into submission.
How galling, then, that the Swedish side of his family was proving just as bloody difficult as the English side. First Christian and now his mother. His mother, who was frankly too old to be carrying on like a schoolgirl about this ‘boyfriend’ of hers, and who, if she wanted to preserve any kind of relationship with her son, had damned well better learn to treat Luna with respect.
He was driving along at a crawl on the M25, mentally calculating how long they’d have to stay at this party before they could leave, when Luna rang him. He put it on loudspeaker, but the connection was so bad he could hardly hear her.
‘Stefan, please hurry…’ he heard, followed by a garbled crackle.
‘Luna?’ he said. ‘Luna, what’s wrong?’
He was just about to hang up and dial her back when the line surged back to life just long enough for him to catch four words.
‘I need you here.’
Three times he punched her details into his phone after that. Three times the call failed to go through. Her voice, there was something in it. Not just Luna trapped at the party from hell without him. She sounded scared.
Stefan looked out at the sea of traffic in front of him, and down at his phone. And pulled the Land Rover onto the hard shoulder.
Ten white-knuckle minutes later, having broken every traffic code known to man in a high speed race through Essex, Stefan arrived at the party and knew immediately that his instincts were correct – something was seriously wrong. How else to interpret the fact that the house he’d come to was a bizarre, amusement park parody of Arborage?
He stalked through strangely deserted hallways, occasionally confronted by gangs of revellers lurching through the property, drunkenly clutching what appeared to be treasure maps. And security guards everywhere, doing little or nothing to contain the hoards. Eventually, he found his mother s
itting in a glass conservatory with a coterie of acquaintances he recognised as her Swedish hangers-on. ‘Liten prince!’ she cried, a chorus of accompanying greetings rising up from her sycophants.
‘Where is Luna?’ Stefan demanded, ignoring the fleeting expression of annoyance that passed over his mother’s face and abruptly grasping her arm to drag her out of the conservatory.
Standing outside with her, he conducted a brief, unyielding interrogation, finally learning who their host for the evening was. Stefan silently cursed himself for not having asked more questions earlier, for assuming his mother’s paramour was some cockney spiv rather than the Russian degenerate who had dared to stage an orgy at Arborage last winter. Who’d sat in a chair in the library there, staring covetously into Luna’s eyes while a prostitute performed fellatio on him.
‘What have you done, Mother?’ he said, voice thick with reproof. And turned away from her speechless, outraged face to continue his search for Luna.
The man sitting on the path in the garden, still recovering from a knee to his groin, cowered in fear when he saw Stefan bearing down on him. ‘Please, no!’ Florian begged as Stefan grasped him by the lapels and dragged him up from the ground.
‘Where is she?’ Stefan gritted out. ‘You tell me where Luna is or so help me I’ll—’
‘They took ’er that way, luv,’ came a voice near his elbow. Stefan glanced down to see a tiny, very orange woman gesturing toward the far reaches of the garden. ‘Two fackin bouncahs took ’er that way.’
Stefan nodded his thanks to her, then returned his attention to Florian, lifting him up till his toes dangled above the gravel. ‘The next time I see you,’ he promised, ‘here, at Arborage, anywhere within fifty feet of Luna… I’ll kill you.’
With that, he gave Florian a final, vicious shake, and pitched him into the adjacent rose bed. Glancing toward the house, he saw a quartet of heavyset guards moving in his direction and immediately turned his back on them, heading off at pace into the overgrowth.
Now he knew: his recurring dreams hadn’t been just nightmares, projections of a troubled subconscious. They were premonitions. Luna was in danger, and he had put her there.
He heard two sounds, then. The first of the four security guards crashing through the garden, shoving startled partygoers out of their way in pursuit of him. And then, off ahead of him, of a woman screaming. Luna screaming.
He began to sprint, running as fast as he could, praying that somehow she could hear the single, silent thought he was sending her way.
Hold on, Luna. Hold on. I’m coming for you.
THE END
About the Author
Kait lives on a farm in Lancashire, England with her husband, four children, one dog and one cat. Her Master’s Servant is her second book, the second in the Lord and Master Trilogy.
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For more information about Kait, or to contact her, please visit www.kaitjagger.com.
The Marchioness
Book Three of the Lord and Master Trilogy
Coming Soon
‘This is all my fault,’ Helen said, wringing her hands together. ‘I was too hard on her.’ They were standing in the family sitting room, the grandfather clock in the corner just chiming quarter past two in the morning. Megan, still dressed in her pyjamas, was sitting on one of the floral sofas clutching a throw pillow while her father paced the floor agitatedly in front of her and Stefan stood next to the mullioned windows, talking to the police on his mobile.
‘What time did you last see her?’ Stefan asked Helen.
‘I went up to her room at around ten,’ she replied. ‘And I—’ She looked at her husband. ‘—I shouted at her, told her to go to sleep.’ She began to sob.
‘Did you get that?’ Stefan said into his phone, his eyes briefly meeting Luna’s before returning to the floodlit lawn below. ‘No, her parents think she might be trying to get here, to Arborage…’
As he continued talking, Luna reached out and clasped Helen’s arm. ‘We’re going to find Tilly,’ she said reassuringly. ‘We’re going to find her and everything is going to be fine.’
There was a loud knock on the sitting room door and suddenly Arborage’s entire security team came pouring into the room. Over the course of the ensuing ten minutes plans were quickly made for Helen to return to the family’s farm to await the police. Stefan and Mark, meanwhile, would search the bike path between the estate and Deersley, and the security team would fan out across the grounds. To her exasperation, Stefan tasked Luna with staying put in the house with Megan.
‘But we could help…’ Luna protested.
‘No,’ Stefan replied adamantly, shaking his head. ‘If Tilly is on her way to Arborage, someone needs to be here waiting for her.’
Luna’s lips tightened as she prepared to answer back, but then she felt a tug on her jumper. She looked down to find Megan staring up at her inscrutably but intently. And swallowed her arguments.
Shortly thereafter, the two of them strode along a darkened gravel path, Megan wearing one of Luna’s coats and Luna shining a torch to light the way. The wind was getting up, and the temperature had dropped to around freezing.
‘Tell me again why you think she may have gone to the Dower House,’ Luna said, gripping Megan’s hand with her own.
‘It’s just…it’s all she’s talked about, since we came here the other week. About the old Marquess and his Marchioness, how romantic it was, her lighting a candle for him every night. Tilly kept asking if I thought you meant it when you said she could spend the night there sometime…’ Megan hesitated. ‘I’m probably wrong. She’d be too scared to go there on her own at night.’
‘Well,’ Luna said, ‘it can’t hurt for us to take a look.’ She gave Megan’s hand a squeeze. ‘I’d be too scared to go there alone in the dark, so it’s a lucky thing you’re here.’
Luna wasn’t saying that just for Megan’s benefit. Although the path was intermittently punctuated with wrought iron lampposts, the illumination they gave off was feeble, swallowed up within a few feet by the overwhelming darkness of the surrounding woodland. She remembered other nights, back in her and Stefan’s ‘courting’ days, when this route had spooked her so much she’d fairly run all the way to the Dower House. Torch or no, the prospect of searching it at night held little appeal, despite her stubborn unwillingness to comply with Stefan’s orders to remain in the main house.
She caught a faint whiff of smoke in the air. ‘Someone’s having a fire,’ she smiled to Megan. ‘Maybe we should do the same after we find your sister, eh?’ The smell grew stronger as they continued. Luna’s eyes actually started to sting from it; something about the direction of the wind seemed to be funnelling it in their direction.
They rounded a final bend and the Dower House appeared in the distance. At first Luna was sure her eyes were playing tricks on her—there looked to be lights on in the downstairs windows where no lights should be, with the electrical work still going on. But no, lights were shining in the windows.
‘How is that possible—?’ she began. And then she saw it: a waning followed by a surge in the brightness within the house. It…it wasn’t lights. It was fire. The Dower House was on fire.
Luna dropped Megan’s hand, her body suddenly coursing with adrenaline. Pulling her mobile out of the pocket of her hoody, she flung it at Megan and began to run.
‘Call 999, then call Stefan!’ she cried over her shoulder. ‘And don’t move. Stay here.’
Tearing up the path to the house, Luna tried the heavy oak door, but it was locked. She peered through the leaded windows, horrified to see fire licking up the walls of the front room. No sign of Tilly, however. Please don’t be in there, please don’t be in there, she prayed as she sprinted around to the back of the house, dodging past a mini-digger and a skip to the temporary door next to the kitchen, which was—ah God—it was ajar. Luna pushed it open and was immediately assaulted by a blast of scorching hot air.
Please don’t be in here, please don’t
be in here.
‘Tilly!’ she shouted, but all she heard in response was the sound of the wood framed house creaking and popping, heat literally expanding its walls, pushing them outward.
Luna ran into the kitchen, where the light of her torch was met with thick darkness. Moving quickly toward the door into the front room, she grasped its wrought iron latch. Instantly a searing pain ran through her hand and she snatched it away with a yelp. The latch was scalding hot. She couldn’t go that way.
Turning back into the kitchen, Luna’s mind went momentarily blank. What to do, what to do? Stumbling past the island, she moved toward the small wooden servants’ staircase, screaming up into the pitch blackness, ‘Tilly, are you up there?’ Nothing. She isn’t here, she thought to herself. I’m on a fool’s errand.
And then she heard it. It could have been wind, or the house squealing in protest as flames consumed it. Or it could have been a girl’s voice. Luna shouted Tilly’s name again, and yet again she thought she heard a faint answering cry. Without thinking, she dashed up the stairs.
The air on the upper landing was thick with acrid smoke and she immediately dropped to her knees, shining her torch along the two foot tunnel of cleaner air beneath the smoke. The floorboards, when she placed her hand on them, were warm, hot almost, to the touch.
‘I’m here!’ came Tilly’s reedy voice from the master bedroom. Thank God. Luna crawled as fast as she could toward the door, pushing it open. The air was less smoky in here, so she quickly shut the door behind her and stood, shining her torch in an arc across the room. And there was Tilly, sitting in the corner on top of her sleeping bag, arms tight around her knees, face pale with fear. Luna immediately ran across the room. ‘Let’s go, sweetheart,’ she said, urging Tilly to her feet. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
In response, the little girl threw her arms around Luna’s waist. ‘We can’t go down there!’ she cried. ‘They’ll get us if we go down.’
