by Jagger, Kait
Smiling at Roland, Luna said, ‘Monday openings. At least that’s what you say at every team meeting.’ Roland smiled in return and nodded.
‘The British Museum is open seven days a week, as is the V&A,’ he said. ‘If we want to be considered alongside them, and I believe we do, we shouldn’t close on Mondays. Or indeed on numerous other dates in the year when weddings are scheduled. To say nothing of blackout days imposed by the family itself. But Lady Wellstone knows my views on this.’
*
Luna was not entirely surprised that the farm shop’s manager had no response to the same question when she and Stefan came to see her the following morning.
‘Erm, uh, well…’ Laurie said, her face reddening. ‘I think we’re ticking along nicely, so there’s not much I’d change. More staff would be nice, particularly in the run-up to Christmas.’
It had been a fairly disastrous interview, with Laurie having done no preparation and seemingly completely unaware of the contents of her balance sheets. Luna observed that Stefan took great pains to keep his tone non-confrontational, whereas she personally wanted to throttle Laurie the umpteenth time she said, ‘I don’t know.’
Stefan was thoughtful afterwards as they walked back to the main house. Eventually, he asked, ‘So, what do you say?’
Luna started. ‘Sorry?’
‘What one thing would you change to make the farm shop more successful?’
Luna bit back her instinctive response – sack Laurie – but one glance at Stefan revealed that he was watching her expression keenly. Luna had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d read her mind. Focusing her eyes on her feet crunching along in the path’s fine pebbles, she tried to think of a less provocative answer.
‘I’d think about rationalising their stock. You saw for yourself: they sell twelve different kinds of chutney, which is at least five too many. And then maybe rationalise suppliers, and drive a harder bargain with the ones we decide to keep.’
‘Hunh,’ Stefan grunted, and said no more, leaving Luna wondering if she’d overstepped the mark.
‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘her Ladyship is sensitive about our relationship with suppliers. Some of ours have been with Arborage for decades, and it’s a bit of a hand in glove thing…’ She was rambling now and wishing she’d never opened her mouth, so she shut it.
‘How long have you been with Augusta, Miss Gregory?’ Stefan asked. Making conversation, Luna hoped.
‘Two years.’
‘And before that? Have you always been a personal assistant?’
‘Yes.’ Luna thought about elaborating, but then thought better of it.
‘Never thought about anything else? I imagine you might be suited for…many different roles.’ Luna kept her eyes on the path. This entire conversation was starting to feel like a trap.
‘I think I’m suited to being a PA,’ she said simply, and then, because that response seemed churlish in its brevity, ‘I work harder when it’s someone else’s head on the block. It means more to me, helping someone else succeed, if that makes any sense.’
‘It does. I can see that.’
*
Paul Walker took a long drag on his roll-up and picked a piece of tobacco from his teeth.
‘Ah tol her,’ he nodded dismissively at Luna, ‘ahm no’ the one ye wannay talk wi’.’
Over thirty years in Berkshire hadn’t made a dent in their gamekeeper’s strong accent, or his Glaswegian abrasiveness. Of all the managers who reported directly to the Marchioness, Walker was the only one Luna privately feared. She still remembered the time over a year ago when she’d been running through the estate forests and he’d confronted her, shouting at her to ‘clear out, ye daft betch’. She’d disturbed his precious pheasants, apparently.
Luna had taken care to steer well clear of him after that, until the previous day when she’d phoned to schedule an appointment with Stefan.
‘Dinnae see the point,’ he’d said when she explained the purpose of Stefan’s visit. He was a gamekeeper, he said, not an accountant. And Luna had tried to forewarn Stefan, suggesting he might be better off talking to their in-house finance team, which handled invoicing Arborage’s hunt clients. But Stefan had insisted.
‘This isn’t the nineteenth century, Miss Gregory. It simply isn’t acceptable for someone as handsomely remunerated as Mr Walker to claim ignorance of financial matters.’
Luna silently thought differently. She also knew Walker had friends in high places that meant he got away with things others wouldn’t dare.
So they had trekked out to his hut in the woods, to Walker’s obvious disgust. The grizzled Scotsman, fingers and teeth stained yellow from what smelled to Luna like a two-packs-a-day habit, made no attempt to hide his contempt for Stefan.
‘So ye jes tell folks how tae run their own bezness, do ye?’ he said laconically.
‘I try to help them run it more efficiently, yes,’ Stefan replied.
Walker grunted and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his none-too-clean flannel shirt. ‘Well, sonny, ah jes hunt. And tek rich folk like you hunting.’
‘And yet,’ Stefan responded mildly, ‘your job description says you oversee a staff of twelve, and an annual budget of hundreds of thousands of pounds.’
‘Job description?’ Walker barked, laughing harshly. ‘Ah didnae know ah had a job description.’
And so it went. As Luna had feared, it had been a wasted journey. Stefan, however, seemed philosophical as they began their walk back to the house.
‘Sometimes it goes not so well, this initial chat,’ he shrugged, touching Luna’s elbow lightly as she stepped over a tree root. Luna smiled; she liked the way his phrasing sometimes betrayed the fact that English was his second language.
‘If it was all plain sailing and everyone we dealt with had all the answers, firms like mine would be out of business,’ he added. Mentioning his firm seemed to remind him of something and he glanced at his watch. ‘Skit!’
‘What?’ Luna looked at him.
‘I have a conference call with my office in Stockholm in two minutes. I completely forgot about it.’ He pulled out his mobile, but Luna shook her head.
‘You won’t get any reception out here.’ She glanced back at Walker’s hut. ‘He has a landline. You could ring, let them know you’ve been delayed, put the call back?’
Stefan smiled at her in that honey-on-toast way of his. ‘You are a good PA, Miss Gregory. Have you ever considered working in Stockholm?’
They hurried back to the hut, but as they approached they heard Walker’s raised voice from within.
‘…ah fecking willnae wear it, fecking Swedish bastard!’
Stefan quickly pulled Luna aside, out of Walker’s sight line through the open door. Pressing her up against the wooden siding that lined the hut’s exterior, he placed a finger on his lips.
Walker continued ranting. ‘Thinks he can come in here, tell me my job…and her, that wee betch, the Marchioness’s terrier…’
Luna raised an eyebrow at Stefan, who had the ill grace to look vaguely amused by Walker’s description of her.
‘Ah tell ye, Fox, ye need to nep this in th’ bud. Talk to her Ladyship before we both end up in the crapper…’ There was a long silence as Walker listened to the person on the other end of the line. ‘Well, see ye do then.’ A pause, followed by raucous laughter. ‘Yeah, well you’re telling me…she’s got a right pole up her arse…’
The conversation continued in this way, desultory now that Walker had vented his spleen, and Luna made to move away, but Stefan held her in place, shaking his head. Luna became conscious of his arms braced against the walls of the hut, penning her in. Now that the heat had gone out of Walker’s phone call, Stefan, too, seemed to become aware of their proximity. She could feel his breath on her face, see his bright blue eyes following the line of her cheek down to her throat.
What was happening here? What had started as a bit of impromptu espionage had become…something else. Stefan’s f
ace lowered towards hers till their noses were almost touching. Walker’s voice faded away, subsumed by the thrum of blood in Luna’s ears.
Stefan turned his head this way, then that, within centimetres of Luna’s own. Silently feinting with her, a prelude to a kiss. Then he leaned in closer, bypassing her mouth. His nose grazed her earlobe, and she heard him inhale at the exact spot where she applied her perfume.
Luna placed her hand on Stefan’s chest, felt his heart beating sure and steady. And pushed him away.
Walker’s phone conversation was coming to a close. ‘Right then, yeah, I’ll ring ye later…’ Stefan grinned down at Luna as if to say, can’t blame a man for trying, then grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the hut.
Three minutes later, with the edge of the forest and the garden gates in sight, and her own heart back to something like a normal pace, Luna broke the silence.
‘Well. A terrier with a pole up its arse. I’m a little insulted, I must say.’
Stefan laughed. ‘I think of you more as a loyal Alsatian. Tough, and smart.’
‘I can’t say I’m enjoying the canine comparisons on the whole.’
‘No,’ Stefan agreed. ‘No, most unchivalrous. You can leave Mr Walker to me from now on. Who was he talking to, do you think?’
Luna sighed. ‘That, I can help you with. “Fox” is a pet name. It’s what some people call your cousin, Florian Wellstone.’ The Marquess’s brother, first in line to the estate.
*
Later that night as she sorted clothes into washing piles in her bedroom, Luna reviewed Walker’s part of the phone conversation that afternoon. Florian Wellstone was a keen hunter, and it was well known that he and Paul Walker were also sometime drinking companions. Luna thought it might even have been Walker who gave Florian his nickname; with his red hair and bright, darting eyes, the Marquess’s younger brother did look like a fox, but Luna thought a more likely explanation was his lust for killing animals, to the point of pure excess. Like a fox, Florian Wellstone killed indiscriminately, for the sheer pleasure of it. He’d set Luna’s teeth on edge on the occasions she’d met him.
And now it appeared that between them, Paul Walker and Florian had something to hide. Luna would not be entirely surprised if it turned out they were skimming money. Lady Wellstone took little interest in hunting, so although nominally Walker answered to her, in reality she allowed Florian to run this rather small part of the estate business. ‘A sop,’ she’d described it to Luna with a thin smile.
The question was, what would Stefan do about this, Luna thought as she pulled out her laundry basket. Then realised she was completely out of detergent.
Five minutes later, dressed in black Gore-Tex trousers and boots and carrying a matching jacket and helmet, Luna ran down the path toward the barn where estate vehicles were kept. There, in a corner behind a row of Land Rovers, sat her motorbike, covered in a dust cloth to keep off the droppings from swallows that nested every summer in the barn’s rafters. Off on their long journey to Africa now.
The motorbike, a slightly battered BMW Enduro, was a souvenir of her only long-term relationship, a boyfriend she’d had for a couple of years at uni. He’d driven her up to the Lake District on it and she’d fallen in love with it, and by extension, him. But she couldn’t see the point of riding pillion when she could drive one herself, so she subsequently enrolled in motorbike lessons. Her boyfriend sold her his Enduro at a discount when she got her licence, and shortly thereafter he rode off into the sunset on a new bike, with a new girlfriend.
In retrospect, Luna thought as she shrugged into her jacket and pulled on her gloves and helmet, she’d still come out ahead in that relationship, for she dearly loved her bike.
She climbed on board and turned the key in the ignition, the engine revving into reliable, German-built action. Heading out onto the main drive, she waited till she was well away from the house before allowing herself the pleasure of opening it up a bit. She was within a quarter of a mile of the gatehouse when she saw Stefan’s yellow Lamborghini pull in off the B road. Luna was just calculating whether the narrow strip of grass that lined the road was wide enough for her to go around the Lamborghini when Stefan spotted her approach and did the gentlemanly thing, pulling into a lay-by next to the gatehouse.
She lifted her gloved hand off the handlebar in acknowledgement as she passed, and was rewarded by Stefan’s bemused expression behind the windscreen. He didn’t recognise her in all her Gore-Tex. Luna grinned to herself inside her helmet and cut out onto the main road. Let him wonder.
Chapter Four
The only other appointment within the estate proper that Luna struggled to schedule for Stefan was with the manager of the equestrian centre. It was perhaps no coincidence that the manager in question was the Marchioness’s eldest daughter Helen.
Luna’s dealings with both Helen and her younger sister Isabelle were…careful. Both of them benefited directly from the estate, Helen through the equestrian centre and Isabelle through a shop she ran in London’s Chelsea borough selling Arborage products. Of the two, Luna preferred Helen, who, while not a particularly pleasant person, was at least straightforward to deal with.
Isabelle was nicer, at least on the surface. But she was also flightier and less reliable, and there was history between her and Luna that made interacting with her tricky.
Luna could only speculate that there might be a bit of history between Helen and Stefan when Helen phoned a second time to cancel their appointment.
‘I really don’t have time for it,’ Helen’s deep voice had boomed over the phone, causing Luna’s ear to tickle uncomfortably. ‘I’m giving back-to-back lessons all day today, so if Cousin Stefan really needs to talk to me, he can phone me.’ Did Luna just imagine it, or was there a slight note of deprecation in the way Helen said ‘Cousin Stefan’?
‘Obviously I’ll pass the message on, but I really do think Mr Lundgren’s preference is for a face-to-face meeting,’ Luna replied cautiously.
‘Well, he can come do it on the back of a horse then,’ Helen said, and put the phone down.
Stefan just laughed when Luna popped her head into the Marchioness’s office to relay this. ‘Maybe I’ll do just that, Miss Gregory. So, it looks like we have some free time this afternoon, then, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I would like to go visit some of the tenant farmers whose farms are adjacent to the estate. Do you think you can arrange this?’
‘I’ll try,’ Luna said, mentally beginning to compile a list of them in her head as she withdrew.
‘Oh, and, Miss Gregory?’ Stefan called.
Luna re-entered the office and approached the conference table, where Stefan had laid out a series of maps showing the estate’s tenancies, which stretched from East Anglia all the way up to Scotland.
‘I’ve asked to meet with David Martin tomorrow morning, and I wonder if you’d be willing to come with me.’
This was a surprise. David Martin managed the largest and most successful of their tenant farms, near East Walton in Norfolk. Luna hadn’t really expected to go much farther than the gates of Arborage this week, and she wondered what Stefan thought he might have to teach someone like Martin about farming.
‘Of course.’ Luna paused. ‘I could look into borrowing one of the estate vehicles.’ She refrained from making a crack about the damage a farm track could do to his Lamborghini.
‘Excellent,’ Stefan said, returning to his maps – effectively dismissing her.
It was disconcerting, really, the way he switched on and off, one minute taking liberties in the forest, the next ignoring her here in the office. Luna sat down at her desk and considered this briefly. She supposed he was like a lot of successful businessmen: good at compartmentalising his life. She couldn’t really take offence given that she herself was a past master at putting things in little boxes and shelving them away; she hadn’t given their skirmish in the forest much thought either, for reasons of her own.
And i
t was lucky, really, that she didn’t take offence, because Stefan spent the better part of their drive to East Walton the following morning on the phone with clients. He’d asked her to drive when they picked up an estate Land Rover from the barn at just gone 7am, and had promptly pulled out his tablet and phone. Most of his calls were in Swedish, but he also called a few UK clients, and one German. Luna’s own German had never progressed much beyond GCSE level, and she had to admit she was impressed by his fluency.
Luna, meanwhile, was content to just drive, first along the M4, then the M25 ring road around London, followed by the long stretch out to the very eastern edge of the country. It was therapeutic, really, driving and listening to him talk in that reasonable way of his. Even in Swedish he sounded logical, like someone whose advice you’d respect.
Just after she’d pulled onto an A road outside of Great Chesterford, Luna’s own phone rang. Quickly lifting her ear bud to her left ear, she answered, ‘Luna Gregory.’
‘Babe!’ came Kayla’s voice.
‘Babe!’ Luna replied, smiling broadly. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘I know, I’m sorry. Rehearsals are my life right now.’
Luna had met Kayla, along with Nancy and Jem, while she was at uni in Manchester, though Kayla’s aspirations had been a world away from Nancy and Luna, who both studied history, and Jem, who was a web design student. Kayla was an actress and singer; ‘our famous friend’ the girls liked to call her, though to date her career had only stretched as far as a stint as a dead body on Casualty and a feminine hygiene advert.
But now she’d had her big break: a starring role in a revival of Cats on the West End.
‘How’s it going, my feline friend?’ Luna asked.
‘Embracing my inner tabby, bitch!’
Luna chuckled briefly, then cleared her throat, glancing out of the corner of her eye at Stefan, who was still in a call.
‘Patrice called this morning,’ Kayla continued. ‘He has some dresses for you to try for that party of yours. I’ve got some time this evening, if you wanted to come into town?’
