Lord and Master Trilogy

by Jagger, Kait

  ‘Come with us, please, Helen,’ Luna said quietly.

  ‘I—’ Helen began, digging her heels in. ‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ She jerked her arm away from Luna, but James tightened his grip on her, propelling her out of the door, across the terrace and down into the darkened garden beyond, trailed by Luna, the Marchioness, Nancy and a clearly inebriated Mark Waverley.

  ‘Take your hands off me!’ Helen bellowed as they approached the Jubilee fountain. James released her arm, which she promptly raised to give him a resounding slap across the face. ‘You were in on it, weren’t you, you little worm!’

  ‘Helen!’ Lady Wellstone exclaimed.

  Luna came and whispered in James’s ear, ‘You go get that drink.’ Taking her cue, Nancy simultaneously inserted her arm into Mark’s, saying, ‘Believe me, you’re better off out of this.’ And off the three of them went, back into the Orangery.

  ‘Will someone please explain to me what’s going on here?’ the Marchioness said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s going on,’ Helen raged. ‘Stefan has gone behind my back and moved all the horses out of the stables, including Tam Maguire’s gelding.’ She rushed at Luna, jutting a finger in her face. ‘That horse is worth one point two million pounds and I promise you if he’s so much as bruised a fetlock, I’ll make sure Tam sues the estate for damages.’

  Augusta looked from her daughter to Luna. ‘Is this true, Luna?’

  ‘It is,’ she confirmed, inciting an angry howl from Helen.

  ‘How dare he!’ she shouted, whirling toward her mother and flinging her hand in the direction of the stables. ‘He’s even locked me out. Changed the locks, mother. He’s got our own security men posted outside, guarding the place like some kind of fortress. He’s made a fool of me.’

  ‘Is that not,’ Luna interjected calmly, ‘exactly what you intended to do? Take over the equestrian centre, lock Stefan out and make a fool of him?’

  Helen stared at her, her face so twisted with rage that even in the relative darkness of the garden Luna could tell it was flushed bright scarlet. For a moment, the only sound was of water spraying from the fountain into the pool below.

  ‘You understand nothing about it, you stupid bitch,’ Helen said.

  ‘Helen,’ her mother warned.

  ‘All you know is how to fuck your way to the top—’

  ‘Enough!’ Augusta stood up to her full height, daring Helen to defy her.

  Helen wavered briefly under her mother’s iron gaze, but then straightened her back and said, ‘I will fight this. I will not abandon my birthright.’

  ‘The stables are not your birthright,’ Augusta interrupted.

  ‘I will fight it to the bitter end,’ Helen carried on. ‘Even if it means contesting his right of inheritance in court. I want my daughters to know; I want them to see their mother fighting for what she believes in.’

  Augusta opened her mouth to continue arguing, but Luna lifted a hand. She angled her head at Helen, eyes glowing silver-white in the reflected moonlight.

  ‘Is that what you think they’ll see?’ she enquired coldly. And shook her head.

  Five minutes later, Mark Waverley returned to the garden to discover his wife sitting on the edge of the fountain, sobbing uncontrollably. He went and sat next to her, and Luna and the Marchioness walked back toward the Orangery together.

  Lady Wellstone was initially subdued to the point of speechlessness, but as they climbed the steps to the terrace, she turned to Luna and asked, ‘Why didn’t Stefan tell me he was planning this?’

  Luna’s shoulders lifted slightly. ‘He felt it would put you in an impossible situation, having to choose between him and Helen.’

  ‘But I’ve already made that choice!’ Augusta’s voice broke slightly and she choked off, trying to compose herself. ‘Project Mercury, all the work we’ve done to modernise the estate. I thought I’d made it clear that I was prepared to sacrifice anything for Arborage’s future.’ She stopped short again, realising too late what she’d just admitted, and to whom.

  ‘You’ve been distracted lately,’ Luna said mildly. ‘Understandably. An opportunity presented itself and Stefan took it. It wasn’t his intention to exclude you.’

  The two women studied each other. A stand-off. ‘So instead he turned to someone else,’ the Marchioness said, nodding her final comprehension. Luna turned and continued up the stairs as Lady Wellstone’s voice, laden with irony, floated up behind her. ‘And she said, “Leave it with me.”’

  Luna was standing in the queue for the punch bowl a few minutes later when Isabelle floated up to her, malevolence oozing from her pores. ‘I haven’t congratulated you on your engagement yet,’ she said, motioning toward Luna’s ring. ‘You must be very pleased with yourself.’

  ‘I’m very happy, if that’s what you mean,’ Luna replied, suddenly sick to the eye teeth of the Wellstone girls.

  Isabelle laughed a forced laugh. ‘I remember you, back at school,’ she said. ‘Poor orphan child, that’s what everybody said. But I knew what you were really like.’

  ‘Isabelle,’ Luna said. ‘I want no quarrel with you.’

  ‘No family of your own, so you had to come here and steal mine.’ Isabelle’s smile tightened to the point where her face looked like it might crack.

  The two of them reached the front of the queue and Luna took a glass of punch from the server, handing it to Isabelle and bending her head down to her. ‘I have taken nothing that belonged to you in the first place, Bella,’ she said softly. Never breaking eye contact, she extended her hand to the server, accepting her own glass. And tilted her head at Isabelle, frost forming on her irises.

  *

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been slapped before,’ James observed an hour later, sitting at an outdoor table with Nancy and Luna, watching the musicians pack up their instruments. He had removed his tie and was well into his second bottle of champagne, looking just a little shell shocked. And who wouldn’t be, Luna reflected, after a close encounter with the flat of Helen’s hand? She reached over and refilled his glass.

  ‘Thanks for taking one for the team,’ she toasted him, raising her own glass in salute. The three of them started to laugh a little hysterically, equal parts tipsiness and post-traumatic stress.

  ‘So, I gotta ask you,’ Nancy said to James. ‘What did you say to Helen, to win her round? One minute she’s icing you out and the next she’s eating out of your hand.’

  James shrugged diffidently. ‘A little horse talk, that’s all.’

  ‘You have to understand,’ Luna explained. ‘Helen is all about the horses. Usual flirtation techniques have no effect on her.’ She glanced at James and he reclined in his wrought-iron chair, studying the night sky, content to let her tell this story. ‘There’s a race that’s held annually,’ she went on. ‘The World Endurance Riding Championship. One hundred and sixty kilometres in gruelling conditions. Anyone can enter and it has a certain… cachet in horsing circles. Separates the men from the boys, as it were…’ She smiled. ‘A few years ago, it was held here in the UK and the winner was Sheikh Mohammed.’

  Nancy shook her head.

  ‘As in,’ Luna elucidated, ‘the Sheikh Mohammed, supreme ruler of Dubai, the man who built the Burj Khalifa.’

  ‘Not to mention owner of Godolphin stables, one of the most successful race horse breeders in history,’ James added, taking a lazy sip of his champagne.

  ‘At any rate,’ Luna said, ‘James… implied to Helen that he’d competed in this race and befriended the Sheikh, who subsequently invited him to come stay at his palace in Abu Dhabi.’

  ‘Pony club catnip,’ James smiled sagely, touching the side of his nose.

  Nancy burst out laughing. ‘And Helen actually bought this? You really are a dark horse, James MacGregor! Who knew you were such an accomplished liar.’

  James finished off his glass of champagne and placed it on the table, motioning for Nancy to refill it. ‘Actually,’ he cleared his throat modes
tly, ‘it was the truth.’

  Luna left them to it after that, heading off through the gardens toward the house as James launched into a tale of camel racing in the desert. Stepping off the gravel path onto the lawn, she kicked off her heels, relishing the dew under her feet and the smell of high summer in her nostrils. This far away from the floodlights of the main house, the moon and stars were shining brightly in a cloudless sky.

  As she skirted the exterior of the maze, running her hand along the neatly trimmed yew hedge that formed its ‘walls’, Luna became aware of a presence behind her, matching her pace. Just a feeling, a sense she had, for her silent shadow was walking on cat feet and all she could hear was the sound of a nightingale singing from somewhere within the maze.

  She slowed to a halt beside a break in the hedge marking the maze’s entrance, and felt a heat radiating into her back, a whisper of breath on her bare shoulders. ‘Unadvisable,’ came a voice directly behind her, ‘a beautiful young woman like you, walking alone at night.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luna agreed, smiling down at her bare toes. ‘These parts are riddled with brigands and horse thieves, I’ve heard.’

  ‘Brigand,’ the voice echoed. ‘I like the sound of that.’ Luna shivered as fingertips ran up the side of her neck, lifting a tendril of hair. She turned to look at her brigand, lean and dangerous in jeans and a black zip-up running top.

  ‘Good night?’ she enquired.

  ‘Mmm. You?’

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly describe it as good,’ she replied. ‘My preferred dance partner wasn’t available, so I had to make the best of things.’

  He lowered his head toward hers and inhaled next to her ear.

  ‘You smell very good,’ he said softly. ‘Much better than my own dance partner this evening.’ He reached for her, but Luna glided backward, just out of his grasp.

  ‘We are very much in James and Nancy’s debt,’ she said. He moved toward her and again she backed away, onto the darkened path that led into the maze.

  ‘And Ashley’s,’ he concurred. She could just see his lips curving in the moonlight as he closed the gap between them, only for her to take another step backward.

  They continued in this way, feinting with each other in the darkness, moving further and further into the labyrinth of yew hedges, telling each other about their respective evenings.

  ‘And there was no one guarding the stables?’ Luna asked sometime later, hesitating next to a fork in the hedge.

  ‘Dereliction of duty,’ Stefan said, nodding toward the right fork. As Luna reversed in that direction, he elaborated, ‘Florian spent most of the night at the pub. By the time he came to check on the horses, Ashley and I were halfway to Hickstead. Probably just as well, because if I’d gotten my hands on him…’

  They reached the centre of the maze, a rectangular patch of camomile lawn dominated by a statue of a lion rearing on its two hind legs, just as Luna was finishing her description of the auction and its aftermath. She chose to edit out much of her exchanges with Helen and Isabelle, deflecting further questioning from Stefan by launching into a humorous account of Lord Peter and Harriet’s undercover activities.

  ‘I’m a little worried Nancy has designs on your auctioneer,’ she concluded.

  A flash of white teeth in the darkness. ‘Believe me, James can look after himself.’ And a pause. ‘I’m sorry, älskling, that I wasn’t with you tonight.’

  Luna’s turn to smile. ‘You had brigand duties to attend to.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He reached for her and this time she allowed it, lowering her head as he rested his fingers lightly on her shoulders. ‘All this banditry and horse thievery,’ he said. ‘It’s exhausting work. What would you say, Miss Gregory, if I told you that right now I want nothing more than to lie down on the grass, looking up at the moon and the stars and my naked betrothed?’

  Luna made a show of looking around. ‘I’d say your betrothed doesn’t fancy being witnessed by a member of your security team, out on their rounds.’

  ‘Lucky thing half of them are guarding the stables, then,’ Stefan said, his hands slipping to the back of her dress, unzipping it. ‘And the other half are down at the pub enjoying a thank you drink from their employer.’

  ‘Stjärna och måne,’ he sighed moments later as Luna descended upon him, sheathing his hardness. He placed his hands on her hips, preparing to thrust himself up into her, but Luna shook her head.

  ‘Lie still,’ she instructed. ‘Let me please you.’ And began to slowly move above him, eyes half-closed, face tilted upward into the moonlight. So Stefan dropped his hands, allowing them to fall onto the camomile lawn beneath them.

  ‘I—aahh,’ he exhaled as she angled her hips to take him more deeply in. ‘I remember the day we met, in Augusta’s office. You holding your hand out to me and me thinking…’ He closed his eyes for a moment. ‘She is so cold, this one.’

  The nightingale began to sing again, somewhere very close. Luna looked from Stefan’s face, brow creased in pleasure, to the statue of the lion overhead, its teeth gleaming, claws extended to strike.

  ‘And then, you and I walked Augusta to her car. She was flying to Venice to see John and you were fussing over her, the way you always did.’ Stefan smiled, and Luna slowed her pace, focused, and tightened herself around him. ‘Mmm… you watched her car drive away and your eyes, just for a second, they softened.’

  He reached for her waist, rocking her backward as he ascended from the ground, rising to meet her. ‘And I thought, what would it be, to have those eyes soften for me.’ Their torsos met and his arms wrapped around her. And all talking ended.

  Much later, they walked back to the house together across the lawn, holding hands.

  ‘By the way, I’ve booked us a holiday,’ Stefan said. A pause, and a smile in his voice. ‘How would you like to see the Northern Lights with the Marquess of Lionsbridge?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Stefan moved swiftly and ruthlessly to consolidate his grip on the estate in the days that followed. A demolition crew descended on the equestrian centre within hours after the charity ball, and by Monday morning the entire site was levelled. Two staff members found to have actively abetted Helen’s insurrection had their redundancy packages revoked and were instead summarily dismissed. And an equestrian supporter of hers who was also a supplier to the estate was summoned for a short, sharp meeting with the new Marquess.

  Later in the week, when Isabelle phoned the kitchen to say she’d invited guests to the house that weekend and could Marta whip up one of her special hampers, she was informed that these requests would henceforth require the prior approval of his Lordship. Who sent her away with a flea in her ear when she confronted him about it.

  Voicing her concern that Isabelle would interpret this as punishment for her stunt during the auction, Luna was taken aback when Stefan confirmed that was exactly what it was. ‘Isabelle is a stakeholder in the Lionsbridge business, Luna,’ he explained patiently. ‘There are rules of behaviour I expect her to adhere to, and the sooner she learns this, the better.’ How to argue in the face of his implacable, Swedish logic?

  Not all of Stefan’s actions in the wake of the ball were motivated by calm rationality, however.

  On Thursday morning, as he sat on the edge of the bed in the apartment tying his shoelaces, Luna mentioned that she was meeting a friend for lunch. Rafe Davies, as it happened. To her secret guilt, all Stefan knew about him was that he was a mutual friend of hers and Mika’s; she’d told him nothing about Rafe’s connection to her father, and this was something she wanted to put right.

  ‘You could join us, if you have time,’ she suggested sleepily, reaching her hand out from under the covers to rub the small of his back.

  ‘Not today, I’m afraid,’ he replied, his tone clipped.

  Luna’s hand stilled on his back. Rising from the bed without another word, she went into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Stefan joined her in front of the mirror and Luna glanced at his reflection brief
ly, then turned away. She spat out in the sink and made to move past him, but he reached out an arm, pulling her against him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘I have a lot on my mind today and I’m taking it out on you.’

  ‘You could just,’ she replied, voice muffled against his chest, ‘talk to me, you know.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right. Let’s go out for dinner tonight and we’ll talk.’

  *

  She met Rafe at a restaurant near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, just around the corner from Derwent & Co. He had a meeting with Elijah Noakes that afternoon, the two of them having formed an unlikely friendship following their introduction in February.

  ‘Elijah’s helping me with some legal stuff, I’m helping his granddaughter with a work placement,’ Rafe explained as they sat drinking cappuccinos at the end of a long, chatty lunch. To Luna’s shy delight, he’d been genuinely excited to learn of her engagement, insisting that he wanted to meet Stefan at the earliest opportunity. They also talked at length about Mika.

  ‘A bit of a rogue, our Finnish friend,’ Rafe noted.

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to tell me that,’ Luna chuckled, pulling out her phone to show him an image of Mika’s mobile sitting on a beach chair in the Maldives, a little washcloth wrapped around it in the manner of a towel around the waist, with a message reading, Left behind by Mika AGAIN :-( One of a series he’d sent her including shots of his phone in bed next to an unidentified naked woman, one of it sitting on a park bench with a Great Dane, even one in a Parisian jazz club propped against a bottle of Pernod.

  After lunch, they walked arm in arm to Derwent & Co’s offices and she was preparing to take her leave when Elijah Noakes himself walked out of the entrance. He was dressed in his customary pinstripe suit and had his pipe in hand, clearly on his way out for a smoke.

  ‘Miss Gregory,’ he said in surprise. And glanced behind him into the building.