Lord and Master Trilogy

by Jagger, Kait

  Of course, the Enduro couldn’t keep her warm at night. Her attic room, furthest away from the Rayburn, remained freezing cold despite the fact that it was now April. So when her pan of water began to boil, Luna carefully poured it into a hot water bottle. Moving to the small wood-panelled bathroom at the back of the cottage, she brushed her teeth and quickly changed into a flannel grandfather nightshirt Dagmar had given her. She didn’t bother to say goodnight, walking straight upstairs and into her bedroom, crawling into her bed.

  Hugging her water bottle to her chest, she curled herself up into a ball under the duvet. The rain had turned to hail, which was coming down like thousands of tiny pellets on the skylights, but she knew she would have no problem sleeping that night. Sleep was her ally, her refuge. Luna welcomed it like an old friend.

  *

  The next morning she got up early and went for a run, one of the few habits of her previous life she’d maintained here, although the almost lunar landscape of the moorland here was a world away from Arborage’s meticulously maintained gardens.

  Running past Malcolm’s fields, where his flock of black sheep were grazing, Luna thought, not for the first time, that black was the loveliest of all the various colours Shetland sheep came in. She understood all the reasons for farmers’ reluctance to breed them. But they were so unexpected, all these small black creatures against the green fields, with their wide-set, sweet faces and oversized, shaggy pelts. Adorable.

  She was looking forward to lambing season in a few weeks’ time. Not just for the excitement of it, but because Dagmar had arranged a promotional photo shoot for the Lundgren range to coincide with the arrival of the lambs, with models, and a creative marketing guru friend of hers from Stockholm.

  Dagmar had left for the building site by the time Luna returned, gasping and sweating, to the cottage, so she showered and dressed, opting for her dark grey sweater – another promise she’d made herself, that during colder months she would always wear a Shetland sweater in public – and drove the Enduro two miles down the road to the Fisherman’s Rest. She’d initially started going there a few nights a week as part of her making friends initiative, the pub being popular with many of the area’s farmers. When she found out it offered free Wi-Fi, she started using it during the day as well.

  The Fisherman’s Rest wasn’t a traditional pub, or at least not the kind Luna was used to in Berkshire. With its floral wallpaper and dado rails, it looked more like someone’s front room with a bar plonked in the corner. It was cosy and welcoming though, and the staff there were invariably kind to her.

  Luna sat at a small wooden table near the door and a slight, blond woman came over with a cup of coffee.

  ‘Ta,’ Luna smiled.

  ‘Bit of shortbread on the side for you,’ the blonde replied as she moved away.

  ‘Mmm, lovely.’ Luna had never in her life been offered as much free food as she had during her two months on the island. Shetlanders were generous that way, she had found, and the women here seemed to be on a mission to fatten her up.

  ‘Du have a face laek a limed buggie,’ octogenarian Judith had said to her the previous night, urging another chocolate biscuit on her. Apparently ‘limed buggie’ was not a compliment.

  Scrolling through her inbox, Luna found an email from Malcolm with comments on some paperwork she’d completed on his behalf; another grant application. She thought about pinging a response suggesting he come join her at the pub, but then thought again. Liv, she knew, was sensitive about how much time the two of them spent together. It had gotten to the point where Luna could practically see his Norwegian wife’s lips tighten every time she came over.

  Liv and Malcolm had met while she was backpacking around the island a few years previously. Looking at the photos of their wedding on the walls of their bungalow, Luna would have said that, yes, they looked like a May-December couple, but a happy one. Three years and one small, demanding toddler later, however, Liv seemed homesick; the farm was a far cry from cosmopolitan Oslo.

  Homesick… and maybe just a little jealous. Which was mad, of course. Luna had absolutely no interest in Malcolm. She wasn’t interested in anyone. She was aware that there was speculation about her, and there had been a few fumbling approaches here in the pub by regulars and trawlermen on leave. All of which she’d politely but firmly rejected. She’d have liked to say it was out of professionalism, but the reality was that she couldn’t bear the thought of sharing her bed with anyone who wasn’t Stefan. She hoped that this would change. It had to change.

  It had been while she was getting a round of drinks in for her quiz team the other night, having just fended off another trawlerman, that Luna had first seen Rafe Davies’ car advertisement. She’d heard the music first, recognising her father’s song within the first few notes. And there it was on the telly behind the bar, the footage Rafe had shown her in February of a young man driving through London at night, perfectly married to Lukas Gregory’s music.

  She looked around the room, wishing that there was someone she could tell. Or that she could point to the television and shout, ‘That’s my dad singing!’ In truth, what she really wished was that one of the girls were there, to help her savour this moment. But they weren’t. And these people were strangers. So she watched the ad in silence, feeling as alone as she ever had here in Shetland.

  Back in the present, Luna finished her coffee and her shortbread, then headed out to the building site. Malcolm was there with Dagmar and the project manager, watching concrete being poured into the foundations. Luna caught Dagmar’s eye and pointed to her watch. They had a conference call in five minutes with the company producing a range of silk scarves to go with the line.

  They took the call in the car, the quietest place they could find in a noisy building site. The company making the scarves was Italian, and Dagmar led the call. It was in these situations where her natural skills came to the fore, her bullishness and creativity combined, and Luna could see what made her such a valuable asset to Sören.

  When they finished the call, Luna and Dagmar sat in silence in the car for a moment, the sound of the concrete mixer truck droning outside.

  ‘I need to take this Friday off,’ Luna said.

  She felt her boss stiffen beside her; knew that she knew what this meant. But before Dagmar could say anything, Luna fixed her coolest gaze on her. The one that could freeze water. Her personal life was not up for discussion, Dagmar needed to understand that.

  The look had its desired effect. Words that had been forming on Dagmar’s lips died there.

  Instead, she simply said, ‘Okay.’

  Luna texted Jem later, writing simply, I’m sorry. Can I come to your party Friday night? Pretty please?

  Chapter Four

  ‘God, Luna, I’d forgotten what a massive booty you have,’ Kayla said. And then she and Nancy looked at each other and cackled heartlessly.

  ‘Nice,’ Luna replied witheringly. ‘That’s really nice.’

  She was standing in front of a mirror in the Soho loft of Kayla’s friend Patrice, who designed the costumes for Cats and who had occasionally been pressed into service as a stylist for Luna. At that very moment, he was kneeling directly next to said booty, inserting pins into a dress he’d selected for her to wear at the party that evening.

  Speaking out of the left side of his mouth, the right side being full of pins, he said, ‘Your friend has lost weight.’

  ‘Not on my arse, apparently,’ Luna groused, to peals of laughter from Kayla, who was sitting cross-legged on a velvet chair next to the window. Nancy, meanwhile, was admiring her own silhouette behind Luna in the mirror. She had decided, nay insisted, on dressing as one of the three lead characters in Remainers, which posited an alternative reality in which Britain had lost World War II and the Nazis had invaded England. Nancy was dressed as the character of Elle, a super sexy, extremely violent female spy out for Nazi blood.

  She looked perfect, with her platinum blond hair and compact figure, in the cl
ose-fitting black skirt, off-white satin blouse and seamed stockings that were Elle’s trademark look in the game. Whereas Luna… well, suffice it to say, her own costume still needed some work.

  ‘Her waist has shrunk,’ Patrice went on, pulling another pin from his mouth and tucking it into a fold in the dress. ‘And that makes her rear look bigger.’

  ‘Thank you, Patrice,’ Luna said with a pointed look at Kayla in the mirror. ‘You see? It’s just an optical illusion, how big my arse looks.’ She was beginning to snort even as the words came out of her mouth and when Kayla held her hands apart as if to say, This big, Luna held her side and howled in earnest.

  Her ribs were hurting from how much she’d laughed that day. From the moment her and Nancy’s flights arrived at virtually the same time at Heathrow, through a raucous brunch in Covent Garden, to their fitting at Patrice’s loft, it had been just like old times. Nancy regaling them with tales of her adventures in PR, Kayla cracking wise at every opportunity and Luna being the butt, quite literally, of their good-natured jibes. The only thing missing was Jem, who’d cried off saying she had party preparations to attend to and would see them that evening.

  ‘Okay, step out of the dress,’ the trim, bearded costume designer instructed. Luna did as she was told, then plonked down on the reclaimed hardwood floor of his loft, clad in nothing more than her bra and knickers, toying with her fishtail braid.

  Kayla immediately leant down in her chair and raised her phone, snapping a photo before Luna could stop her. Holding it up to Nancy, she mused, ‘You do look a little underfed these days, Lou.’

  Patrice’s sewing machine whirred into action up in the corner.

  ‘And white,’ Nancy said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to go for some fake tan this afternoon?’ Nancy had an afternoon of spa treatments planned for the two of them, given that Kayla had to head off shortly for her matinee performance.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Luna said. ‘Besides, I’m supposed to be a ghost, right? So pale is good.’

  Between them, Kayla and Patrice had decided that Luna should dress as one of the bogeymen in the game; each of the three main characters had an imaginary nemesis who sometimes materialised to make their task of Nazi killing more difficult. For Nancy’s character Elle, it was her brother Anthony, missing in action since a catastrophic D-Day where the Allied forces lost. For little Tommen, the boy from the village, it was swamp creatures who infested the fishing lake at Arborage. And for the character of the Marquess, it was his dead wife, known only as the Marchioness.

  It was this character Luna was supposed to be dressed as. According to the game, the Marquess had spent twenty years in mourning for his ethereal wife, dead since the night of their wedding in 1928. Thankfully, since the flapper look really didn’t suit Luna’s figure, the dress Patrice had chosen wasn’t slavishly 1920s in style. ‘Think more Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot,’ Kayla had explained.

  ‘Okay,’ Patrice said, rising from his sewing machine and carrying the dress over to Luna. ‘Try it now.’

  Luna stood and raised her arms into the air, but Patrice shook his head.

  ‘This time take off your bra. You can’t wear one with it anyway, and we need to be sure it fits right.’

  Luna unclasped her bra and threw it on the floor and Patrice lifted the dress over her head, carefully pulling it down.

  The dress was sleeveless, with a diaphanous, rounded yoke descending to strategically placed sequins that just about covered her nipples, becoming more numerous in the bodice and close-fitting skirt. The skirt needed to be tight, as the dress was backless, with a shining, sequin-laden cowl that fell to the bottom of her spine.

  The fabric, where it was visible under all those sequins, was lightest rose. As Patrice knelt again at her side, Luna frowned speculatively in the mirror.

  ‘I don’t know… pink isn’t really my colour,’ she said uncertainly. She turned slightly to the side, studying the outline of her humble, B cup breasts in the sheer fabric, then trying to catch a glimpse of her bum to see if Patrice’s alterations made it look less enormous.

  Patrice tugged slightly at the hem and ran his hand up the side of said bum.

  ‘No, this shade of pink definitely suits you,’ he said quietly.

  Luna caught Nancy lifting her eyebrows at Kayla in the mirror and whirled around to look at them.

  ‘You think it looks silly on me, don’t you? Come on, be honest.’

  Kayla laughed and assured her, ‘Believe me, you do not look silly, homegirl.’

  ‘No, no, you’ve outdone yourself, Patrice,’ Nancy agreed, looking Luna up and down approvingly. Patrice nodded and stood, moving swiftly over to a clothes rack in the corner. Nancy and Kayla exchanged another glance and Luna could see they were both struggling to keep straight faces.

  ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What?’ Upon which the other two women burst out laughing.

  ‘Right, I have actual work to do,’ Patrice announced, throwing a garment bag at Kayla and making a shooing gesture with his hands. ‘Time for you girls to go.’

  A few minutes later, as they emerged onto the street in Soho, Luna demanded, ‘What’s up with you two? It’s all very well to laugh, but if I’m going to make a fool of myself in that get-up tonight—’

  ‘Sweetie,’ Nancy said, putting her hand on Luna’s arm. ‘You aren’t going to make a fool of yourself. You looked fantastic and now I’m actually slightly jealous of your costume.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kayla added. ‘You saw the effect it had on Patrice.’ Luna looked at her blankly and Kayla rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my days, you really are oblivious sometimes. You didn’t notice how he had to get up and walk away?’

  ‘Tell you what, I noticed,’ Nancy said with a little chortle.

  ‘You mean…?’ Luna stumbled. ‘But, Patrice is gay.’

  Kayla shook her head. ‘No he’s not.’

  ‘Yes he is,’ Luna said.

  ‘I’m telling you, I have known Patrice since he was sixteen years old and he is not gay. What, do you think every man with an eye for women’s fashion is gay?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t, but…’ Luna hesitated, remembering other fittings, including one where Patrice had actually cupped her breasts. Covering her face with her hands, she moaned, ‘Oh God, he’s bloody straight?’

  ‘Why else do you think he was slaving over his sewing machine for you?’ Kayla laughed. ‘Believe me, he doesn’t even offer me that kind of service.’

  Luna cleared her throat, at a loss for words. ‘Crikey,’ she managed.

  ‘That’s right, girlfriend,’ Kayla said, slapping her on the bottom. ‘Patrice wants to tap that.’

  *

  This time, as their taxi made its way down the main drive at just before midnight, Luna forced herself to look at Arborage House. It looked beautiful, as ever, floodlit at night, and she was glad she wouldn’t have to go into it. The party was taking place in the permanent marquee on the Queen Charlotte lawn, where weddings and other events were held.

  ‘Look at the bleeding queue!’ Kayla exclaimed, pointing toward a line of at least thirty costumed partygoers snaking outside the tent. The three women exited their taxi and exchanged glances.

  Luna looked at her watch and shook her head. ‘I thought we were getting here late.’

  ‘I’m not waiting in line,’ Nancy declared imperiously, taking the other two women by the arm and marching to the entrance. ‘Jem!’ she shouted.

  At this, the petite raven-haired woman manning the door looked in their direction and cried, ‘You’re here!’

  ‘You look adorable,’ Luna said, eying up Jem’s 1950s schoolboy outfit, an exact replica of the outfit worn by the character of Tommen in the game. ‘But,’ she gestured to the clipboard in Jem’s hand, ‘what are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be inside with your guests?’

  ‘The girl who was helping me has disappeared,’ Jem replied anxiously, adding, ‘I have to say, support from the Events staff at Arborage hasn’t exactly been�
��’ She looked almost accusingly at Luna, who didn’t know what to say in response. Arborage wasn’t her domain anymore.

  ‘Look,’ said a man at the front of the queue dressed in a butler’s costume, ‘are we going to get in there sometime tonight? Or are you just going to stand there chatting with your mates?’

  ‘Oi!’ Kayla shouted. ‘Shut it, Jeeves.’ She made to move toward him and Nancy grabbed her arm. Sensing that things were on the verge of getting ugly, Luna decided urgent intervention was required.

  ‘You,’ she instructed, grabbing the clipboard from Jem’s hands, ‘get into that party. Kayla, you go with her. Nancy, you stay here with me.’ Jem looked at her doubtfully, but Luna raised herself to her full height, pointing into the tent, and Kayla came and put her arm around Jem.

  ‘Don’t forget to stamp their hands!’ Jem shouted as she was led away. ‘You have to stamp them!’

  Ten minutes later, they’d winnowed the queue down to fifteen or so, though more guests continued to arrive. Luna quickly discovered that the guest list was a disorganised mess, with different lists for employees of Rod and Jem’s company, specially invited contacts in the games industry, and Arborage invitees. She could see why Jem had struggled all on her own and she was frankly taken aback that Arborage’s usually seamless events machine had so completely broken down.

  At least, she thought, she had the advantage of being able to recognise her former co-workers, one of whom had just gotten to the front of the queue.

  ‘Roland!’ she exclaimed, throwing her arms around a balding, bespectacled man dressed in tuxedo and white scarf.

  ‘My dear Luna,’ Arborage’s Tours Manager chuckled, ‘I should have known I’d find you here, sorting us all out.’ Sobering, he kissed her on both cheeks and added, ‘I was so pleased when I heard you were coming. I’ve… well, you have been missed.’

  Luna smiled, genuinely delighted to see him. For all his foibles and slightly fastidious manner, Roland White had been one of her closest friends on the staff. ‘Let me just tick you off the list,’ she said, flipping through the sheaf of papers on her clipboard.