by Kait Jagger
‘Luna,’ he warned, voice straining with need. Luna ignored him, closing her mouth on him till he came, capitulating to her with a long shudder.
She swallowed, of course she did. To have done any less would have been rude, and she wanted him to know she took pride in her endeavours. Afterwards, resting her head on his stomach, she pondered idly, ‘I wonder what sixteen-year-old you would have thought if twenty-six-year-old me magically appeared in his bed one night and put her mouth on him.’
Stefan half laughed, half groaned. ‘He’d have thought every last one of his Christmases had arrived all at once. And he doubtless would have come immediately.’
She smiled broadly at this, and Stefan snapped his fingers in front of her, saying, ‘That’s how fast it would have been over.’ She felt and heard him laugh, and laughed herself, till her ribs ached.
Much later, they lay in bed facing each other, Stefan’s head resting on his arm and Luna’s cheek nestled in her pillow. Her eyes watching him, and his her.
‘Luna,’ he said. ‘What did your father do for a living?’
‘He was a musician.’
‘And your mother?’
‘When they met she was a secretary, like me.’
‘Who do you look most like?’
‘My mother,’ she said solemnly. ‘But I have my father’s eyes.’
He didn’t ask her anything more, as if he knew that this had been enough for her. She closed her eyes then and felt his hand in her hair, stroking it. He was still stroking it when she drifted off.
Chapter Twenty–Two
Luna was standing in the portico at Arborage House, waiting. Regina sat on the step beside her, leaning into her leg. It was early evening on Monday, and she was tired. She’d slept for only a few short hours on the plane ride home from Miami, coming straight to work from Heathrow after refusing Stefan’s offer of a lift.
‘I’m going to the Dower House anyway, Luna. It makes absolutely no sense for you to do this,’ he’d said as she headed towards the taxi rank. But she was unyielding. She didn’t want to be seen arriving home with him in his Lamborghini, both of them tanned and rested from their weekend away. Whatever had happened between the two of them that weekend, and she acknowledged internally that something had happened, that a Rubicon had been crossed, she wasn’t ready for it to become public knowledge, fodder for the Arborage rumour mill.
Besides, she wasn’t sure what their relationship was now anyway. She’d said to him on the plane that she would be happy to temporarily limit their time together, to allow him to get on with his business opportunity.
‘A date every two weeks would be fine,’ she’d nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the setting sun visible through the plane window. ‘I could live with that for a few months.’
To which Stefan had shifted unhappily in his seat and begun, ‘I rather think we can do better than th—’
‘No, no,’ she’d interrupted. ‘I want you to be able to focus on this. I don’t want to be a distraction.’
‘You aren’t a distraction.’
‘We could treat it like a…foreign posting or something. Yes,’ she’d said firmly. ‘I think that’s best.’
And he’d looked at her with apprehension then, like maybe he’d unwittingly unleashed a monster.
On the portico, Luna stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together. She was wearing a wool coat and scarf, but her sun-soaked body still hadn’t acclimated to being back in England. It was hard to believe that just over twenty-four hours earlier she’d been snorkelling in a coral reef with Stefan, her surprise for him before they left the Keys. Floating amongst a school of blue iridescent fish, reaching for his hand in excitement. Feeling relaxed and at ease and…close to him.
She wondered if he’d have told her about his father that weekend, if he’d have shared his tale of the arg flicka, had they been here at Arborage. It seemed inconceivable. For here she stood, in her black heels and coat, her hair in its customary French twist, her face its usual smooth, calm self, as if nothing had changed. Though it had, she knew. Things between them were at once less serious, with her proposed twice monthly rota, and more, for she saw him more clearly now, knew and understood him better. With something between unease and dread, she thought about his questions regarding her parents, and realised that he expected reciprocity.
So, yes. Limiting her exposure to him had seemed like a safe choice, a wise one.
Besides, she had other priorities now that she was back. The Marchioness had seemed relieved to see her that morning, scarcely asking her how her weekend had been, consumed as she was with thoughts of the Marquess’s imminent arrival. She’d even taken the unusual step of going to meet him at Heathrow, a gesture she had never before made during Luna’s time with her.
As far as Luna was aware, news of the Marquess’s return was not common knowledge; she assumed the household staff knew and that his bedroom had been aired and readied for him, but the wider staff, which would normally have been on high alert in the advent of a command visit, had appeared to carry on as usual that day. Luna didn’t like the idea of his Lordship’s arrival going completely unmarked, so she’d asked the gatehouse to let her know when the Jaguar entered the grounds. And now here she stood, keeping vigil for them.
She could see the Jag now, making its way down the drive. She went to stand on the steps.
Luna thought of Stefan, who would make his presentation to the Marquess in a one-to-one meeting the following afternoon, and who would also be joining the immediate family for a meal later that week. She wondered how their limited visitation rights would work with him in such close proximity, though she assumed that soon he would be jetting off to Stockholm, or Berlin, or wherever this business opportunity lay.
The Jaguar was close enough now that she could hear its tires crunching on the gravel.
She was prepared to be resolute. ‘I won’t be able to give you the attention I’d like to,’ he’d said. Well, she refused to be a millstone around his neck. If he had commitments to be getting on with, she would get on with her own life and try to make the most of the restricted time they spent together.
The car came to a halt in front of the portico and the driver immediately got out, walking to the rear passenger side door and opening it. Regina barked joyfully and went bounding down the stairs as the Marchioness stepped out, then looked to the interior of the back seat. Luna couldn’t see inside, but eventually the Marquess’s head, with its distinctive white leonine mane of hair, rose from the car. He and her Ladyship walked together towards the portico and as they reached the first step she linked her arm with his, glancing briefly at Luna.
The Marquess had never been a large man, but it seemed to Luna that he had visibly shrunk since the last time she’d seen him. His houndstooth coat sat loosely on his shoulders and his skin, usually so tanned, seemed unusually pale. His thin lips, a Wellstone physical trait that could well have been passed down to him from his Jacobean ancestor, were compressed together, as if climbing the steps was an effort for him. He glanced at Luna as he and the Marchioness passed through the portico. She wasn’t sure he recognised her, but he smiled nonetheless, the lord and master displaying his noblesse oblige.
After a moment, she trailed them into the house, watching them walk up the main staircase, under the watchful eyes of angels and cherubs on the ceiling above.
Now she knew. She knew the cause of the Marchioness’s tears, her injunctions to Luna to keep this secret from her daughters and, above all, Florian. The Marquess had come home at last. Come home to die.
*
She had cause, over the following week, to question her judgement, to wonder whether her initial, brutal assessment of Lord Wellstone’s health was wrong. He and her Ladyship went to see the GP first thing the following morning and later returned to her office in good spirits, the Marquess looking markedly less haggard than he had the previous evening. He even managed to flirt mercilessly with Luna when she brought a tray of tea in for them, ply
ing her with questions when he learned she had just been to Miami.
‘I spent a bit of time there, in my misbegotten youth, before I met Augusta,’ he recalled. ‘A number of drunken misadventures…’ And because his description was so close to her own when she’d recalled it to Stefan, Luna had to smile, which only encouraged further flirting and, if she was not mistaken, an appreciative study of her posterior in its black pencil skirt as she left the Marchioness’s office.
‘John, you really are incorrigible,’ Lady Wellstone muttered, not unpleasantly, as the door shut.
Later, his Lordship reclined on the loveseat underneath the large sash windows, Regina at his feet. The Marquess was gazing out onto the lawn to survey his domain, looking…louche was the word that sprung to Luna’s mind. At age sixty-four, he still had it, that ineffable mix of charisma, lifelong privilege and an air of calculated degeneracy which had made countless Italian socialites swoon.
But shortly after their return to the office, the Marchioness told Luna to clear her diary for the next day and book her driver to take them to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea first thing. Luna recalled the grim set of the Marquess’s mouth as he passed her in the portico. In the normal course of events, she placed great faith in her instincts, and her instincts the previous night had been unequivocal. She hoped she was wrong. She hoped.
Stefan arrived just before his 2pm meeting with the Marquess, wearing her favourite grey suit, his hair back to its usual well-coiffed state, to her slight regret. Lord Wellstone was talking on his mobile in the office, so Luna rose to greet Stefan, keeping her expression carefully neutral, despite him gracing her with his very best smile. Which was very difficult to resist.
She looked down at the laptop in his hands and said quietly, ‘You won’t need that. His Lordship is…technology-averse. I’ve printed out three hard copies and left them on the meeting table.’
‘Thanks,’ he said briefly, handing her the laptop and standing a fair deal closer to her than he really needed to. He smelled so phenomenally good that her body, her damned, disobedient body, responded to his as it ever did. Really, what would it take for it not to do so? A natural disaster? An act of God?
‘You’re looking very well, Luna,’ he said slightly more loudly. ‘Have you been away?’
The Marquess appeared at the door, holding out his hand to Stefan. ‘It’s good to see you, cousin.’ He placed his arm around the younger man’s shoulders as he led him into the office, Luna following behind, observing their interactions with interest.
‘How is Sören?’ the Marquess enquired.
‘Very well, very well, and looking forward to seeing you both in a few weeks,’ Stefan replied, bending down to kiss Augusta, who turned to Luna.
‘Earl Grey?’ Luna said immediately, then looking to the Marquess, ‘English Breakfast with a splash of milk,’ and finally to Stefan, ‘and a black coffee?’
She decided that she liked having the Marquess there after she returned with their drinks, then moved towards the door. Seeing her hand on the doorknob poised to shut it behind her, his Lordship said simply, ‘No, leave it open.’ And she swore, she swore from the sideways glance he gave her that he said this with intent. You’re welcome, little earwig. Jesus wept, she could see why the ladies of Venice fell for him.
So she finally got to hear Stefan’s presentation in its entirety, albeit from the confines of her desk whilst quietly working to clear the Marchioness’s diary for the following day. Of course, this presentation was markedly different from the two he’d already given, Luna could tell – more relaxed, with the Marchioness taking a back seat, doing paperwork at her desk as the two men talked, occasionally walking out to Luna’s desk to ask her about some unrelated matter. Luna noted with some relief that the Marquess had clearly already read the presentation and discussed it at length with Lady Wellstone, and his view was not whether they should take action but how, and how quickly.
And how to sell it to the family, for Lord Wellstone was inclined towards option 3, Stefan’s preferred option, which entailed Helen, Isabelle and Florian essentially surrendering the livelihoods Arborage had previously afforded them. Luna was surprised by this, and even Lady Wellstone seemed taken aback, though possibly she was just playing devil’s advocate when she protested, ‘It will be a hard blow, John. Particularly for Helen.’
‘Arborage is a business at the end of the day, my dear,’ the Marquess replied. ‘You and I will have to find some other way to compensate the girls.’
‘And Florian?’ the Marchioness asked.
To Luna’s annoyance, her phone rang at that exact minute.
By the time she’d dealt with the call, she’d missed whatever remedy Lord Wellstone proposed for his brother’s loss, and she missed even more of the discussion when a delivery man arrived at her desk with a black rectangular box. She signed for it quickly, rushing him back out of the door. By which point the three of them were talking about dates when they could start enacting option 3.
‘Augusta will need your help with this, my boy,’ Lord Wellstone was saying. ‘I want to be assured that you can give it.’
A brief silence ensued. ‘In the normal course of events,’ Stefan finally said, ‘my company does not involve itself in…actualising our recommendations. We give advice and then we leave it to the company leadership to enact it if and as they see fit. But Augusta has explained your needs, and I think I can help. I have another project on the go at the moment, but if we were to start a timeline in, say, late January, I can free up some time then.’
Well, Luna thought. She didn’t know what she was expecting from this meeting, but it hadn’t been this. She silently thanked the Marquess again for making her leave that door open – heaven knows when Stefan would have gotten around to telling her all this. As their conversation continued, she stood and looked down at the box on her desk. A bit early for the Marchioness to start receiving Christmas gifts, she thought to herself, before noticing that the card on the box was addressed to herself.
She opened it and saw two words in Stefan’s handwriting: For Gerda…, then opened the box and lifted several sheets of beautiful, delicately embossed tissue to reveal eighteen blood-red, long-stemmed roses, the furry kind that looked like they were made of velvet. They were tied up in pink silk cord with tassels – proper luxurious cord like you’d use to tie back a curtain. She shut the box immediately and glanced into the office, where things were starting to break up.
She put her head in the door and looked enquiringly at the Marchioness, who nodded, so Luna began to collect the cups from around the room.
‘And what does your amanuensis think of this plan, I wonder, Augusta?’ the Marquess enquired lightly, meeting Luna’s eyes as she took his teacup from him. Luna looked again to the Marchioness, who smiled and said, ‘I don’t know, John, why don’t you ask her?’
‘Come then, amanuensis, tell us what you think. You’ve looked at this, I assume,’ his Lordship said, lifting the presentation.
‘I have,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Obviously, I will support her Ladyship with whatever course you decide to take.’
‘Ah,’ Lord Wellstone said. ‘Look at her, Stefan, standing there so grave and cold, like an ice maiden, poised to do her mistress’s bidding. Would that all women were so…steadfast.’ Stefan had no reply to this, and Luna felt herself growing angry at his Lordship’s presumption. The Marchioness looked sharply at her husband and Luna realised she was being used, that whatever truce he and his wife had come to was an uneasy one.
‘I also think,’ she said quietly, ‘that the coming year is the time to make changes, if you’re going to do it. So often when companies make major structural moves like Mr Lundgren has proposed, it’s because their business is at risk and their hand has been forced. That clearly isn’t the case for Arborage. You would be making these changes from a position of strength, and everyone would know it.’
There was a brief, rather loaded silence in the room. Provoked by the Marquess,
she’d said more than she intended to. Placing his cup on the silver tray she was carrying, Luna cast a worried glance at Stefan, who was absolutely no help, looking at her, as he was, like he wanted to take her there and then. She carried the tray out of the room, not daring to look at Lady Wellstone for fear she had genuinely overstepped the mark. She was deeply relieved, therefore, when she heard the Marchioness begin to laugh.
‘Touché, dear girl, touché,’ the Marquess called after her.
Soon after, the Marquess left the office to return to the family’s private quarters, looking depleted, as though he had used up all his inner resources for the day. Stefan and the Marchioness continued talking for a few minutes, whereupon Stefan said his goodbyes and sauntered out to Luna’s desk. Luna stood and glanced towards her Ladyship’s open door, then gestured towards the black box on her desk and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’
He came at her in a rush, moving so fast she found herself backed up against the wall behind her desk. Placing his hand behind her head, he dug his fingers into her bun, angling her head so he could lower his nose to her earlobe. ‘You’re very welcome,’ he whispered.
And then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty–Three
‘Come on, Lou, keep up,’ Jem shouted, skating ahead of Luna on the Christmas market’s ice rink.
Jem executed a lovely little spin in the middle of the rink and skated back to Luna, taking her hands, leading her along the ice. Her tiny friend was wearing a little skating skirt, woolly tights and a multi-coloured jumper and looked frankly adorable, with her pink cheeks and flaming red hair. Luna, meanwhile, had slipped on some leggings underneath her work skirt, and her University of Manchester sweatshirt over her blouse, and was feeling multi-layered and ungainly by comparison.
Luna hadn’t heard from her boss since she and Lord Wellstone left for the Royal Marsden that morning. With a little pang of guilt, it occurred to her that she might have missed her mobile ringing over the music playing in the market, so she held up a hand to Jem and grabbed the padded railing at the side of the rink, extracting her phone from her coat pocket. Nothing from the Marchioness, but a missed call from Stefan.
