by Kait Jagger
‘Just pull over here,’ Luna said, pointing to the entrance to a multi-storey car park just around the corner from Dumbarton House. Suddenly a little shy, she clasped her helmet to her and reached for the door handle.
‘Hey,’ he said softly, curling his index finger at her. She leaned toward him and planted a swift kiss on his mouth, but as she pulled away he placed his hand behind her neck and drew her back for a more languorous one.
‘I’ll wait here to make sure you get out,’ he said.
True to his word, he was still sat there in his Lamborghini when she drove out a few minutes later. She was just a block away along the narrow road, building up to 20mph and mentally mapping her route home, when the door of a white van suddenly swung open in her path. She hit the brakes hard and was this close to fishtailing, but managed to bring the bike safely to a halt. The van’s owner emerged, holding his hands up and apologising: ‘Sorry, mate. I didn’t see you coming.’
Luna shook her head at him slightly, waiting for him to shut his door before driving off again. She stopped at a light a few blocks later and Stefan pulled up beside her, rolling down his window.
‘Alright?’ he asked.
Luna gave him the thumbs up, and shrugged. These things happen. Then the light turned and she was off, on her way home to Arborage.
Chapter Fifteen
The following week found Lady Wellstone in a feisty mood, beginning with the monthly managers meeting, which she decided at the last minute to hold outside on the Queen Charlotte lawn. The large permanent marquee there, used regularly for weddings and other events, was currently being prepped for Arborage’s Christmas market, an annual money spinner and pet project of the Marchioness, who vetted the mix of food and craft stalls herself.
Of course, notifying the team about the change of locale less than two hours before the meeting didn’t win Luna any fans.
‘Oh joy, another woodland adventure,’ Roland enthused, sarcasm dripping from his voice.
Paul Walker had been even less thrilled. He almost never showed his face at the monthly meetings anyway, and normally Lady Wellstone turned a blind eye, but this time she’d been quite clear with Luna that attendance was mandatory.
‘Tell her I cannae come,’ Walker said curtly when Luna rang him.
‘You can tell her yourself, Paul,’ she replied. ‘Her Ladyship has said anyone who isn’t attending should give their apologies directly to her. She’s in her office right now. Shall I put you through?’
He’d given in pretty fast after that. Florian Wellstone’s flunky he might be, but Paul Walker knew who paid his wages.
And there he was now, omnipresent cigarette in hand, standing with Laurie and a few of the other managers as the Marchioness and Nigel talked with the men installing an ‘iceless ice’ rink next to the marquee. Paul was muttering something to Laurie and Luna knew a moment’s unease. Something about the expression on their faces – disgruntled would be too strong a word for it, maybe more like restive – niggled at her.
‘“When shall we meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?”’ Roland recited, nodding in their direction. ‘Like Macbeth’s witches, that rabble.’
‘They just have their noses out of joint, with the portfolio review,’ Caitlin said, hands on hips.
‘Several departments ripe for some judicious pruning, in my opinion,’ Roland observed.
Caitlin leaned in to them and said softly, ‘I heard Stefan Lundgren asked for a calendar of all the blackout dates pencilled in for next year, and he was shocked by how many there were…’ Blackout dates were dates when either the house, garden or both were closed for weddings, events or family requirements, Roland’s ongoing bugbear.
‘Hallelujah,’ he said. ‘I’ve felt like Cassandra all these years, pointing out how much blackout days hurt the business, always to deaf ears.’
To all this Luna said nothing. It wasn’t for her to have a stated opinion on these matters. When Stefan’s presentation had been made and the Marchioness had decided how or if she wanted to act, her stance would become Luna’s stance, come what may.
Later, sitting in the small café adjacent to the garden centre, the agenda took less than half an hour to get through. Take seven managers out of their usual, comfortable conference room and suddenly they had less to say, which Luna guessed may have been the Marchioness’s endgame all along. She did notice that her boss took particular care to question Paul about how the hunting season was getting on, in such a focused and charming way that Paul would have had to be a block of stone not to warm a little. Though block of stone he was, judging from his terse, borderline surly responses.
It was Laurie, highly strung Laurie, who finally mentioned the elephant in the room, asking, ‘Can I just ask when we’ll know the outcome of the portfolio review? Only, it’s generated some understandable anxiety in my team…’
‘I don’t know why that should be,’ the Marchioness rejoined plainly. ‘I made it crystal clear when this process began that it was confidential and not for sharing with the wider Arborage staff.’
‘Yes, but these things get out,’ Laurie bleated.
‘It doesnae seem right,’ Paul Walker said. ‘Some outsider tellin us our bezness—’
‘Let me make this clear, Paul,’ Lady Wellstone cut him off. ‘First, Stefan Lundgren isn’t an outsider. He is a member of the family and a long-time champion of the Lionsbridge brand. Second,’ she paused for emphasis, ‘with regard to “our business”, the Arborage business, no one tells his Lordship and I how to run it. They make suggestions, they offer advice and support, but at the end of the day, it is he and I who make the decisions around here. You’d do well to remember that.’
It would have been a brave man who continued to argue with her after that, and Paul Walker was not that man. He sat out the rest of the meeting in silence.
The Marchioness’s fiery mood continued into the afternoon. She’d asked Luna to arrange a conference call with Arborage’s fisheries and estate manager in Scotland, who usually dialled in to the team meetings. The call started well enough, until he asked a perfectly innocuous question about how the portfolio review was going.
‘It’s going fine, Gus – do you have something you want to say about it?’ Lady Wellstone asked aridly, as Luna inwardly cringed next to the speakerphone.
‘No, no, I was only asking,’ he quickly assured her. ‘Stefan came to see me last week and it was a productive meeting, so I’ve no particular concerns.’
‘Right, then, if that’s all,’ the Marchioness said, and abruptly ended the call. Whereupon she was immediately on her mobile to Helen, clearly dissatisfied with the excuses her eldest daughter offered for her absence that morning.
‘How do you think it looks to the rest of the managers here when you don’t show up for these meetings, Helen?’ Luna heard Helen’s deep voice start to talk on the other end of the phone, only to be immediately cut off by her mother. ‘I’ll tell you how it looks. It looks as though you view yourself as being above the boring business of actually running Arborage. I know, I well know, how much you’d prefer to spend every second of every day doing exactly as you’d like, but you are paid a salary and by God you will earn it.’
She rung off a few minutes later, after extracting Helen’s promise that she would never miss another monthly meeting. Then the Marchioness looked at Luna, and if a clap of thunder had sounded in the room, Luna wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘A pot of Earl Grey, I think,’ she suggested. Oh, Luna loved her at times like this, when she was firing on all cylinders. Heaven help the poor board member who stood in her way on Friday.
*
To no great surprise, Luna didn’t hear from Stefan for the first half of the week. Then, on Wednesday morning, she saw an email from him arrive in the Marchioness’s inbox, along with a large attachment.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Presentation for Friday
&
nbsp; Augusta,
I attach the slide deck for your advance review. I shall ask Luna to arrange a call with you this afternoon to get your feedback, if that’s acceptable.
Stefan
Luna immediately walked through to the Marchioness’s office, raising her eyebrows.
‘Yes,’ Lady Wellstone said, looking up from her laptop. ‘I’ve seen it. Put a call in.’ Luna moved to depart and the Marchioness added, ‘And, Luna? Make sure I have at least an hour pencilled in with him on Friday before the trustees get here.’ Luna nodded, not mentioning that she’d already done this. The Marchioness steepled her fingers together, thinking. ‘And see if he’s able to stay for an hour after. For a post-mortem.’
When Luna returned to her desk, she hit reply to Stefan’s message. It occurred to her that perhaps he wasn’t aware that she had sight of her boss’s emails, and she wanted him to know she’d seen it. It was a PA thing, a rare hint of ego on her part, that there was no light between her and the Marchioness on these things. Lady Wellstone expected Luna to read her emails, to digest their content, and when appropriate to respond on her behalf.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Presentation for Friday
S –
Further to your email to the Marchioness, are you available for a call from three till four this afternoon? Also, she’d like to sit down with you after your presentation on Friday. Are you able to stay, or do you have other commitments?
Finally, please let me know what your requirements are for Friday. I will of course have the presentation up and ready to go in the conference room, but perhaps you or a member of your staff could let me know what else you need?
– L
She read the email over, satisfied that it sounded completely professional, and sent it. Stefan replied almost immediately.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Presentation for Friday
Thank you, Luna. Three till four is fine. On Friday I have to be back at my London office at four for a meeting. Assuming the meeting with the trustees doesn’t overrun I should have an hour to spend with Augusta.
Re: our requirements on Friday I am copying my colleague James in. James, will you ring Luna to discuss?
Stefan
Luna frowned. Well, that was extremely professional. Hunh. Her mobile rang: Stefan.
‘Mr Lundgren,’ she answered, her tone mildly astringent. ‘I’m just sending you a diary invitation now.’
‘Luna,’ he said in that way of his that always affected her. ‘How are you?’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘And you? How was Berlin?’
‘Very good, very good,’ he replied in his usual manner, which revealed absolutely nothing. She found herself feeling slightly and rather unjustifiably annoyed with him.
‘I’ll just, ah…’ she opened the calendar for Friday on her laptop, ‘send you a placeholder for Friday afternoon as well.’
‘Very efficient, as usual.’
‘Should I assume James is coming with you?’
‘He is.’
‘Right. Well then, I’ll work with him to make sure the room is ready for you.’ She could hear herself slipping into let’s wrap this call up voice.
‘Luna, I wanted to ask you, would you mind looking through my presentation? Tell me if you see any glaring errors? I’d value your opinion.’
She hesitated. ‘Yes, of course. I could…um…give my comments to James when he rings later?’
‘I’d prefer it if you gave them to me,’ he said, and she could hear him smiling. ‘I’ll be at the Dower House tomorrow night. Do you think you could come over, give me a little bit of…moral support?’
She pursed her lips, then smiled. ‘Moral support. Is that what we’re calling it these days?’
He laughed. ‘Always semantics with you, Miss Gregory!’
And just like that, she thawed. They agreed she would come over at 10pm the following night, and he told her he’d managed to extricate himself from his commitment in Stockholm on Friday night.
‘It will be a little tight – I do have a meeting in London in the late afternoon that I can’t miss – but I should be able to come to Kayla’s performance.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
*
She headed out to the Dower House at just before ten the following evening, having spent a good portion of the afternoon going through Stefan’s slides, which totalled thirty-two in number. She’d been quite frankly amazed at the level of research that had gone into them. She realised now that his recent meetings with managers had been the end of a process rather than the beginning; he and his team had clearly been working on this for months now, and she wondered how the Marchioness had kept it under wraps, even from her.
The slides included detailed information on several of Arborage’s ‘competitors’ – other stately homes and tourist attractions within one hour’s drive of London. This stuff was so detailed, in fact, that she wondered how he’d obtained it, who he must have known to access this level of inside information. There was also a section on Arborage’s ‘customer base’; what it was and what it could be. The presentation had sections on each and every department, giving his assessment of its current performance, and included a quite lovely slide with bubbles of various sizes and colours showing the amount of income generated or lost by each department. Luna noted with some satisfaction that Isabelle’s shop in Chelsea had posted an eye-watering loss in the previous financial year.
Most important, though, was a set of slides laying out four possible options for Arborage, ranging from ‘change nothing’ to what Luna privately dubbed the nuclear option. Change nothing wasn’t a real choice, the slides argued, because of the pace at which Arborage’s competitors were innovating and expanding their share of the market. Equally, the presentation didn’t argue in favour of the nuclear option, which necessitated, amongst other sacrifices, the family ceding control of the estate to the board and decamping from Arborage House to allow conversion of the west wing into luxury apartments. No, the real choices were options two and three, both of which entailed significantly reducing the number of staff directly employed by Arborage and contracting out many of the services currently provided in-house.
Option 3, which also called for some department mergers and selective redundancies on the management level, was clearly Stefan’s preferred option. The presentation made a pretty clear case that much of the management – with notable exceptions like Roland, she was pleased to note – weren’t up to the task of modernising the business. And modernising was what the presentation was all about, from virtually eliminating blackout dates, to dramatically improving Arborage’s online presence, to capitalising on side projects such as Rod and Jem’s forthcoming game release (which got a beautiful slide of its own that Luna couldn’t wait to share with Jem).
On a sadder note, Option 3 recommended completely contracting out all gardening services, which presumably meant Nigel would either be out of a job or forced to become a contractor. Stefan also recommended a comprehensive programme aimed at buying out older tenant farmers without clear heirs, and evicting late rent payers. Luna thought of the elderly farmer who had given her scones to take away, and it made her sad to think of his way of life ending.
Option 3 additionally meant serious changes for the family, treating Arborage less as a personal playground and more as a business. Hunting should be managed by an outside contractor too, Stefan argued, which meant an end to Florian’s petty cash generator. The equestrian centre he proposed scrapping, with the substantial grazing acreage occupied by Helen’s horses converted to farmland.
Luna had no idea which option the Marchioness would support. Possibly some halfway house between Options 2 and 3. But there was no doubt that this was a serious presentation, which pre
sented clearly thought out, logical choices for the estate. And made it clear that choices had to be made.
When Luna got to the door of the Dower House, she decided not to knock this time and instead let herself in. Removing her jacket, she began, ‘Hel—’ but abruptly cut herself off when she saw that Stefan was asleep on the sofa. She quietly walked into the living room and sat down next to him. His laptop, dark and in standby mode, was open on the coffee table next to his ever-present notebook. Stefan’s head was resting on the back of the sofa, up against a throw pillow, and for a moment Luna allowed herself the luxury of watching him sleep. He looked tired, with a greater beard growth than she’d ever seen on him previously. She had to resist the urge to rub his cheek and slide her fingers under his crisp white collar. His tie was folded neatly on the coffee table and she smiled, suspecting he had done this for her.
Luna debated whether to wake him with a kiss, but then looked at her watch and back at him. She thought about what she wanted to tell him about his presentation, and how it made her slightly nervous. Picking up his notebook and pen from the table, she composed a note.
S –
You were fast asleep when I arrived (sleeping like the dead, no snoring!) and I couldn’t bring myself to wake you. I have looked at your slides. There is a typo on slide 14. Look at the third bullet and you’ll see it. Also, be aware that St John Marsh, who will be attending tomorrow, has previously consulted for two of the competitors you’ve profiled (Ham House and Bletchley Park). No need to change your presentation in any way, but he is a talker and he WILL attempt to hijack your presentation if you let him!
Other than that, I have no comments to make except that I think it is a brilliant presentation. Sobering reading, obviously, but brilliant. I honestly can’t believe the amount of work that’s gone into it, how clear and concise it is and how lovely to LOOK at (you must tell me who your in-house slide guru is! I want tuition!). And I can’t believe I am – Luna hesitated: ‘involved with’, ‘shagging’? – dating someone so clever.
