Lord and Master Trilogy

by Jagger, Kait

  She fought tooth and nail that autumn, when her headmistress called her into her office to say her grandmother wanted Luna to spend the mid-term break with her in Manchester. Much as she had done prior to her ill-fated sessions with the school counsellor, Luna told her headmistress that no good would come of it; she’d seen as much as she wanted to of Marika Gregory.

  Luna did not prevail, not on this occasion. They packed her off on a train to Manchester with just enough money for a taxi from the station to her grandmother’s house, where she arrived late on a sunny October afternoon to find her grandmother working in the front garden, a straw hat perched on her head and garden shears in her hand, tending her autumn blooms.

  It was completely unexpected, this woman with Luna’s eyes and her hair, at that time with only hints of grey in it, standing in the garden lavishing attention on her flowers. Like the witch in The Snow Queen, another story Luna’s mother had read to her often when she was small, who lured unsuspecting Gerda into her garden because she wanted a little girl of her own. Luna was taken off guard, and a small, brief flame of hope blazed within her, that perhaps she had misjudged her grandmother.

  That flame was extinguished almost the moment they entered the house, the chemical odour of mothballs flooding Luna’s nostrils. Her grandmother had many valuable wool rugs and tapestries, she was told. The mothballs were to protect them. Many valuable things, too, which Luna wasn’t to touch. Instead, Marika led her up to her father’s old room – also, heartbreakingly, denuded of every last clue that he had ever lived there – and told her to stay there until she was called. So Luna sat down on the single bed, on the musty wool blanket that was to leave her covered in hives by the following morning.

  Her grandmother called her down to dinner later, to a meal of some bitter-tasting soup and hard black bread, followed by a surprisingly delicious cherry trifle, Marika Gregory’s only apparent weakness being a sweet tooth.

  Her previously uncommunicative grandmother talked throughout the meal, first of Luna’s father and what a talented boy he’d been, a clever boy, a good boy, all of it wasted now. And then of her mother; bitter, ugly words about the nineteen-year-old girl she’d met only once, but for whom she had nursed a roiling, monumental hatred in the intervening years.

  And finally of Luna, this child for whom she was suddenly responsible, this burden upon an old woman. So much responsibility, so many legal problems, with Lukas Gregory having died intestate. So many matters for a simple woman like her to sort out. It was lucky, she remarked in passing, that there was some income from his estate for her to draw on, royalties from his music.

  ‘Not enough, of course,’ Marika said with a sour glance at Luna. ‘Nowhere near enough.’

  It was her grandmother’s words about her mother that stayed with Luna that night, after she’d gone back up to her father’s bedroom. All the rest, about her father and herself, well, perhaps it was true. That he had squandered his potential, leaving behind a burden for his long-suffering mother. But Luna’s mother, she wasn’t what that evil witch said. Only a sick mind or a senile one could think such wicked things about Emily Gregory.

  She made her plans that night, plans for escape. After Marika woke early the next morning and repaired to the bathroom for her morning ablutions, Luna rose from her father’s bed, fully dressed, and went quickly to her grandmother’s bedroom, rifling through drawers, peering under her bed.

  She found her mother’s diamond earrings in a small tray on top of the dresser, and one of her silk scarves hanging in the wardrobe. Her father’s beloved Yamaha Xeno trumpet was under the bed, still in its case, and his gold wedding band was out in plain sight on the bedside table.

  There was more, Luna knew it, but no time, no time to find it. She quickly shoved what she could into her bag, listening all the while to the sound of water running in the bathroom next door. When the sound stopped she grabbed her bag and her father’s trumpet case and ran down the stairs, struggling with the three locks on the front door before escaping onto Chorlton’s streets.

  She hadn’t thought everything through, unfortunately. She had no money. No mobile phone. She managed, with difficulty, to make her way to Manchester Piccadilly train station, where the guard proved to be like every other adult Luna had dealt with in the past few months, refusing to see the desperate girl in front of him, pointing again and again at the fixed return date on her ticket, five days hence.

  ‘When I finally got back to school, my headmistress hauled me into her office and told me she’d had my grandmother on the phone saying I’d robbed her and run away after one night. But that she forgave me, and she was still willing to take me in again, come Christmas term break.’

  Luna was sitting next to Stefan on the bed, relating all this in a detached, unemotional tone, though a trickle of acid crept into her voice at this last revelation.

  Stefan, meanwhile, was finding it difficult to listen in silence.

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t go,’ he burst out. ‘Tell me that bitch of a headmistress didn’t make you go back.’

  Luna blinked at him in mild surprise. ‘She wasn’t a bitch. Not really. She just didn’t know how to deal with me. And when I think of what I put her through, after that, the problem student I became…’ She smiled. ‘No, I didn’t go back at Christmas. I explained my position to her in a way she understood this time.’

  They were quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘Five days.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luna said, her expression clearly indicating that this was a matter she would discuss no further with him. That some drawers would remain shut.

  Stefan reached for her hand, twisting her engagement ring around her finger. ‘Luna, your grandmother mentioned an advertisement of your father’s.’ He hesitated, adding earnestly, ‘I’ve made a point of not googling him or anything, since I promised I would wait for you to tell me.’

  Luna gave his hand a squeeze and leant into him briefly, entirely unsurprised that he would behave this way, honouring both the letter and spirit of his promise to her. She hopped off the bed and retrieved her tablet from her backpack, quietly revelling in the way his jaw dropped when she brought up Rafe Davies’ car ad.

  ‘Your father wrote this song? This is him singing?’ Stefan said in amazement.

  She explained to him briefly about the legal steps she had undertaken to sever herself from her grandmother, and about her meeting with Rafe in Mr Noakes’s office earlier that year.

  ‘He was sweet,’ she recalled, relating Rafe’s desire to get her blessing to use her father’s song. ‘I tried to tell him that it wasn’t for me to give permission, that my father and I didn’t have that kind of relationship… and then he showed me this.’

  She pulled up another video titled ‘Lukas Gregory – Rare Live Gig’. The notes beneath it indicated it had been shot on a cold February night at the Cat in Hackney, the club where her father sometimes performed. Luna herself had almost no recollection of this night, though she’d been there, sitting in a chair at the side of the stage. Equally, she couldn’t remember a young Rafe Davies standing on the opposite side, recording all of this on a handheld camera.

  Luna forwarded the clip to around the nine-minute mark and pressed play. The footage showed her father between songs, joking with his bassist, then briefly looking offstage as he removed the capo from his acoustic guitar.

  ‘I need some help for this one,’ he said with a smile. His fellow musicians started to laugh and gesture, someone bringing up a chair. A girl with waist-length dark brown hair walked over to the chair, her eyes trained on Lukas.

  Stefan sat up straight then and grabbed the tablet away from her, looking more closely. ‘This is you!’ he exclaimed excitedly as, in the footage, Lukas leant down to his daughter and briefly spoke with her. ‘Oh, Luna,’ Stefan said wonderingly, ‘you are so small.’

  Twelve-year-old on-screen Luna, undersized for her age, didn’t need much instruction from Lukas. She knew her father’s music best of anyone on that stag
e, though he rarely performed the song he was about to play.

  In the video, Lukas ran a hand through his dark curly hair as he spoke to her, his voice just audible above the chatter of the audience. ‘You take the high bit? Spare Daddy’s poor voice?’ to which on-screen Luna nodded. Lukas briefly conferred with the rest of the musicians on stage, then adjusted the pegs on his guitar, tuning it.

  He started alone, singing the opening line a cappella.

  He’s a thief

  He’s a liar

  On the take

  For all his whole life

  The song went on to describe a bad man, a user who had taken a woman’s heart and crushed it. A common enough theme, though the way it was written made it sound like it was sung from the perspective of a third party, possibly another man who loved this woman. Luna’s part, the descant, sung over the chorus in a sweet, clear soprano, was a torrent of abuse about this user, much of it profane.

  Of course, at the time she had no idea that the song was autobiographical. It wasn’t a love song, a message to a beautiful, wronged woman. It was a mirror. And, judging from the agonised expression on Lukas Gregory’s face as he sang it, all that had occurred since he first wrote it – finding his Emily, loving her and becoming a better man because of her – all of that did nothing to mitigate his self-loathing.

  Stefan watched all this transfixed, his initial delight fading into rapt engrossment as the song reached a crescendo. It ended with just Lukas on guitar and Luna singing the chorus, her high, clear voice ringing out like a bell.

  He’s no good

  No good

  He’s no good…

  There was a full ten-second silence after the last notes faded away. And then thunderous applause. The camera shook slightly, panning out to reveal everyone in the room on their feet, many screaming, some with tears streaming down their faces. And then back to Lukas, smiling now, talking to one of his bandmates. While on-screen Luna sat beside him, watching him, willing him to look at her. Ignoring the other musicians bending down to tell her what a clever, talented girl she was. Waiting for him to look at her.

  The clip froze there.

  She knew why Rafe Davies had shown her this. He wanted to prove to her that she had been a part of her father’s musical life. His best self. She wondered if Stefan would see it that way too.

  He didn’t speak for some time, cradling the tablet in his hands. Then he said very quietly, ‘I know, Luna, that you don’t want my pity.’ And stopped, jabbing his finger at the screen. ‘But allow me for a moment to feel sorry for her.’ His voice cracked and she looked at him in alarm, only to see that he had tears in his eyes.

  She felt… fine, later. Rather to her surprise, Luna found that there was, after all, some relief in talking about these things. Only to Stefan, she suspected. And it would be a lie to say that she was completely comfortable to reveal herself in this way even to him.

  Particularly when, as he was lying behind her in bed late that night, his arm slung over her hip and his lips in her hair, he asked, ‘What did you say, to your headmistress? To talk her out of sending you back to your grandmother at Christmas?’

  Unseen by him, Luna shut and opened her eyes. And considered dissembling. Answering vaguely, or with a half-truth.

  ‘I told her,’ she said at some length, ‘that if she forced me to go back, I would burn my grandmother’s house down. With her in it.’

  Stefan laughed sleepily at this, hearing but not hearing her, and his breathing soon slowed and deepened. But Luna’s eyes remained open, staring straight in front of her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Oh, it felt good. Dressed in her black pencil skirt, Ferragamos and white silk blouse, Luna exited a taxi outside the portico feeling every inch the personal assistant.

  She’d just returned from a job interview in London, which had gone extremely well. More than that, though, it had been incredibly empowering to be back to her professional self after months of jeans and itchy sweaters and, more lately, sundresses and sandals. The minute she’d slipped into her pumps that morning, Luna had felt… more herself. And when she put her hair up into its customary French twist, she felt invincible.

  Practically skipping down the hall towards her old office, full of the joys, Luna heard Stefan on the phone, talking in Swedish – to Sören, she thought, judging from his tone and the gist of the words she understood. When she entered the office he confirmed it, saying, ‘Pappa, can I ring you back? Luna just came in.’

  ‘I have had the best day!’ Luna crowed as he rung off. ‘Interview? Aced it. Birthday present for your dad?’ She raised a Harvey Nichols bag. ‘Bought it. Lunch with Jem? Ate it. Oh, and I…’ she rooted through her handbag, retrieving a receipt, ‘…dropped your suit off at the dry cleaners too. Honestly, Stefan, I was on fire in that interview. They practically offered me the job there and then.’ Placing a hand on her hip, she prompted, ‘Go on, then. Who’s a clever girl, eh? Who’s a…’ She trailed off as Stefan walked over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

  Ten minutes later, she burst into the Orangery, where Lady Wellstone sat on a wooden bench drinking tea, Regina fast asleep at her feet.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Luna exclaimed. ‘This, this isn’t what Stefan wants.’

  The Marchioness raised an eyebrow and said, ‘You think not?’ And smiled enigmatically.

  ‘Arborage is your home,’ Luna insisted. ‘You can’t just leave.’

  ‘My dear,’ Lady Wellstone said calmly, patting the bench beside her. ‘Please come and sit with me.’

  So Luna sat, knitting her fingers together as the Marchioness poured her a cup of Earl Grey from the pot on the table next to her. She waited until Luna took a sip before saying, ‘An old friend of mine has invited me to come visit him in New York. It’s been an age since I spent time there and now seems like an appropriate juncture. And then I’d like to do some travelling.’ She paused ruminatively. ‘I’ve never been to Japan, if you can believe that. I’ve a mind to see it.’

  ‘But,’ Luna said, ‘you’ll come back after that. After you’ve finished travelling.’

  Lady Wellstone smiled again. ‘No, my dear. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘But why?’ Luna cried, heart in her throat.

  Just then the newly installed sprinkler system came on with a hiss, and the orange tree opposite them was engulfed in a fine mist. Lady Wellstone looked up at it and after some seconds nodded her satisfaction, then gazed out onto the gardens beyond. Like Ozymandias, Luna thought. Looking upon her works.

  ‘If I were to ask you,’ Lady Wellstone said eventually, ‘what you will do when you find yourself in my position, what would you say?’

  Luna shook her head, not understanding.

  ‘If,’ the Marchioness lifted a hand, ‘and, God willing, may the day be long in coming, Stefan predeceases you, do you think you’ll be able to walk away from this place?’

  Luna’s answer was swift and certain: ‘It’s Stefan I’m marrying, not Arborage.’

  Lady Wellstone laughed then, a strange, arid laugh. ‘That’s exactly what I’d have said if you’d asked me forty years ago. That it was John I loved and this—’ she waved her hand, ‘—all this was just collateral, something that went along with loving him. I couldn’t even tell you when that changed, but it did. So have a care, my dear.’

  Luna could muster no response, and Lady Wellstone didn’t appear to expect one. Instead, she lapsed into quietude again and for a moment it appeared she’d said all she intended to. A wave of sorrow rose up over Luna; sorrow and emptiness, that this was all that was left between the two of them.

  ‘I was an unnatural mother,’ Augusta said abruptly.

  Luna looked at her in surprise and she clarified, ‘That was what I thought, when the midwife handed me James. Everything I’d been told, all the baby books I’d read, led me to believe that some force of nature would take me over and I’d feel a rush of love for him. But instead I found myself looking d
own at this little… alien, and feeling nothing. No protective instinct, no flood of motherly love. Nothing.’

  Augusta put her hand on her chest and half-laughed, half-gasped. ‘Do you know, I’ve never admitted that to anyone before. It’s a relief to say it out loud.’ She smiled ruefully at Luna. ‘Of course, at the time there were no helplines, no online forums for unnatural mothers like myself. So I set my mind on learning to love him. Fortunately, James was a very loveable boy. A good baby. And as he got older we had Arborage in common. Even as a very young child, he loved this place, loved the mechanics of it, the way I did. I remember him running through the gallery – he couldn’t have been more than four – rattling off each and every one of his ancestors’ names…’

  Her eyes drifted for a moment, as if following the mental image of her little son. Then she remembered herself and continued, ‘You can imagine my horror when the girls came along and my lack of maternal feeling didn’t improve. If anything, it was worse. Helen was a difficult child to love, and once she saw her first pony she had no more use for me. And Isabelle was her father’s daughter through and through.

  ‘I began to believe that my unnaturalness must be down to gender, that I was one of those women who could only really love boys. And the secret shame of that led me to overcompensate. I spoiled the girls, didn’t discipline them as I should. I made a conscious decision to place all my eggs in James’s basket, so that when he died I was left with nothing. Nothing but two girls I hardly knew and a husband I blamed for my loss.

  ‘And Arborage,’ she said grimly. ‘I had that. It was the estate that kept me going in those horrible months after James died.’ She placed her teacup on the table beside her and rested her hands on her lap, staring up at the small rainbow created by a shaft of sunlight piercing through the sprinkler mist.