Lord and Master Trilogy

by Jagger, Kait

  ‘Varsågod, Luna,’ he responded formally. ‘Du är mycket välkommen.’ And kissed her hand. Then turned to Stefan and embraced him in a bear hug, saying, ‘She is as beautiful as you said.’

  Within minutes of their arrival, Stefan and Sören decamped to the basement to play video games, leaving Luna with Christian, who refused all offers of help in the kitchen, sitting her down on a bar chair next to the concrete island and pouring her a glass of Chablis.

  ‘Your house is incredible,’ Luna said, taking in the frankly jaw-dropping view over the Riddarfjärden to Stockholm’s brick town hall in the distance.

  ‘We like it,’ Christian said modestly, chopping spring onions as he heated oil in a wok. A shout followed by laughter filtered up from the basement. ‘So, Luna, tell me more about you…’

  The ensuing conversation was more than a little uncomfortable for her. Oh, Christian was very pleasant; a natural listener, Luna thought to herself as she did her best to answer his questions. The problem was she wasn’t a natural talker, not when all the questions seemed to revolve around her life experiences and interests. And she began to suspect that there was a hidden agenda at work when Christian eventually said, ‘It’s good to see Stefan so happy, especially after last winter. He’s more of a – “sensitive soul”, is that what you English say? – than he lets on. But you know this, I’m sure.’

  Later, the four of them sat around the table after they’d finished eating, Sören’s arm slung around the back of Christian’s chair and Luna gripping Stefan’s hand for dear life under the table. Sören mentioned a patient of Christian’s in passing and Luna said, ‘I hadn’t realised, you’re a doctor?’

  ‘A counsellor,’ he clarified. ‘I specialise in cognitive therapy.’

  He looked at Luna. And she looked at him. And a wall immediately went up.

  ‘He doesn’t like me,’ she said to Stefan later in bed.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Stefan scoffed. ‘Christian thinks you are wonderful.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I will have a word with him.’

  ‘You most definitely will not,’ Luna responded, sitting up in bed. ‘I love that he’s protective of you.’

  Stefan made an impatient noise and pulled her back down, climbing on top of her. ‘You two make me sound like a piece of bone china.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Luna said, pressing herself up into him, reaching down to caress his waiting hardness. ‘Why don’t you show me just how… durable you are?’ And raised her mouth to his neck, biting it.

  Still, the visit shook her a little. And she returned to Arborage that Sunday night in a pensive mood, eager to head straight to bed to recharge for the work week ahead. She and Stefan had just arrived home, lingering in the front hall to examine progress on the renovation, when a member of the household staff approached and said, ‘Lord Wellstone, your mother is here.’

  *

  The woman standing in front of the window in the family’s private drawing room was statuesque and stunning, with a bone structure even Kate Moss might envy. Karoline Lundgren turned and held out her arms as Stefan approached, her lips parting in a bedazzling smile. ‘Min gulleplutt,’ she purred fondly as he kissed her on both cheeks.

  ‘Mamma,’ Stefan said, ‘this is—’

  ‘Your fiancée,’ Karoline finished for him. And extended her hand to Luna, giggling, ‘As if I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs Lundgren,’ Luna said, taking her hand, surprised to find it every bit as cold as her own.

  ‘Oh no, no,’ Stefan’s mother interjected, pulling a horrified face. ‘You must not call me that. You will make me feel old. Call me Karoline. Or Karo.’

  They sat on the floral sofas and drank coffee, there in the heart of what Luna still viewed as exclusively Augusta’s domain. She felt entirely ill-prepared, and dearly wished she was wearing something more dressy than her trainers, boyfriend jeans and t-shirt. Especially when she set herself beside Karoline Lundgren’s blonde, gamine haircut, flawless tanned skin, and effortlessly stylish capri pants teamed with sleeveless silk top. Luna calculated her age at fifty-two, but she could easily pass for late thirties.

  Stefan’s mother led the conversation with disarming, somewhat overwhelming charm, telling them both about her recent holiday in the south of France – ‘Such blue water! Such Gallic charm!’ – her two Siamese cats, Borr and Búrri – ‘Naughty boys, so cheeky, but I adore them!’ – and her recent shopping expedition in London. She reached for Luna’s hand and added, ‘You must come to my room later and I will show you all my new treasures.’

  ‘So,’ Stefan said cautiously. ‘You are staying here tonight?’

  ‘Tonight and all week, my liten prince,’ Karoline trilled, and Luna swore she saw a muscle in Stefan’s cheek twitch. His mother twittered on, ‘The minute I heard that Augusta had abandoned you, I changed my entire schedule to fly to your side. It is too much, this big house, for a young man like you, with all your other commitments.’

  ‘I assure you, Mamma, it is not,’ Stefan disagreed. ‘Besides, I have Luna here to run the house.’

  Karoline placed a perfectly manicured hand on her chest, protesting sweetly, ‘And I am sure she does a wonderfully efficient job of it, but…’ She cast her eyes around the room and suddenly Luna saw it through her eyes: expensively decorated but… faded, tired. ‘This place needs a mother’s touch.’

  And then she was off again, talking a mile a minute, like some kind of unholy cross between a Valkyrie and a hummingbird. Luna, who had said nary a word since they sat down, smiled and nodded, fielding occasional hapless glances from Stefan. Particularly when the topic turned to his mother’s new boyfriend, a property developer and international man of mystery, judging from Karoline’s breathless, coquettish description.

  ‘Oh, he is so strong, so manly, my Freyr,’ she gushed as her son stared up at the ceiling, looking as though he had entered the seventh circle of hell. ‘A man’s man. I feel so safe when I am with him. You understand what that’s like,’ she said as an aside to Luna, who nodded and opened her mouth, only for Karoline to carry on. ‘Though Stefan, he has always been more gentle. He is soft, like his father.’ Luna looked at her sharply, but Karoline was smiling, her expression guileless.

  ‘I don’t know what I did in a previous life to deserve this,’ Stefan despaired in the privacy of their bedroom late that night. ‘For months, years, I see hardly anything of her, and now suddenly it is all, “I’m here to save you, liten prince.” I’ll tell you another thing, those cats of hers, fucking little devils, both of them.’

  ‘Look,’ Luna said, taking a deep breath. ‘I can carve out a little time this week, here and there. Why don’t you leave your mother to me?’ To a look of such profound gratitude from her betrothed that she managed, just, to ignore the fact that every last one of her spider senses was tingling at the prospect.

  So, what did Luna discover about Karoline Lundgren in the days that followed?

  Karoline loved to shop.

  Really loved to shop. Luna managed, with difficulty, to dissuade her from embarking on a full-scale redecoration project in the private quarters, citing vague (and entirely specious) concerns about the need to ensure that any new furnishings complied with the house’s Grade I listed status.

  So that left clothes, ‘treasures’ for Karoline’s own home in Stockholm, and feline gifts for her two little darlings. Luna herself had about as much interest in shopping as she did in girly chat (which Karoline liked to indulge in while she shopped), but she gritted her teeth and pasted a smile on her face. And endured.

  She knew nothing about Luna.

  Or this is what Luna assumed when Karoline suggested a lunch with her mother to discuss wedding arrangements. To her credit, she had seemed mortified when Luna explained why this wouldn’t be possible, and thereafter she made no further mention of Luna’s family.

  She wasn’t a fan of the Marchioness.

  It became clear during one of their many one-sided girly chats tha
t Karoline blamed Stefan’s sojourn at Arborage as a teen, and more particularly Augusta’s undue influence, for his subsequent decision to move out of her house and in with Sören. Stefan’s mother also took frequent oblique digs at Lady Wellstone, couched in the form of helpful advice about the need for Luna to defer to Stefan in all matters relating to the estate. ‘It’s so ugly, I think, when women who marry into privilege start behaving as though they were born to it,’ Karoline observed over afternoon tea at Claridge’s. With no apparent sense of irony.

  She was utterly enamoured of her boyfriend.

  For whom she had numerous nicknames, including Freyr (not, as Luna had assumed, his name, but the name of the Norse god of love), Mr Big, and something in Swedish that Luna couldn’t quite catch that sounded like ‘Store of Car Lick’. Rather coyly, Karoline declined to reveal many details regarding her paramour, and this was par for the course, according to Stefan. ‘Mother is nothing if not dramatic,’ he informed Luna in extremely jaded tones. Instead, Karoline insisted on staging a reveal; her boyfriend, who had a mansion in Essex, was hosting a soirée in a few weeks’ time, ‘which Stefan and you must attend,’ she insisted.

  She loathed Christian.

  Or ‘the boy toy’, as she disparagingly referred to him. In a display of maternal ire worthy of Medea, Karoline held Sören’s partner accountable for virtually every display of weakness she observed in her son. Paradoxically, this made Luna think better of Christian, and feel more than a little sorry for Stefan, who stoically bore the brunt of his mother’s jibes, some of which struck Luna as dangerously close to the bone.

  Perhaps Karoline took Luna’s silence on the matter to signify her concurrence, for over dinner on the second night of her stay, when Stefan left the table to take a call from Sören, she leant forward to Luna and sniffed, ‘It’s as though he has two mothers, the way his father smothers him…’ In response, Luna rested her chilliest gaze upon her, wordlessly imparting, You have misjudged your audience. Karoline’s rant sputtered to a halt and she stared back at Luna. And there was a moment of clarity between them.

  On the fourth day of Karoline’s visit, Luna was forced to cry off further shopping expeditions. She had a full diary that day, including a brainstorming session with Jem and some of her Rod Studios team about possible Remainers-themed excursions to the estate.

  It turned out to be a less-than-satisfactory meeting. Roland inexplicably opted to delegate it to Alex, who proved incapable of providing insight into how Tours would incorporate the excursion into its existing portfolio. Instead, he spent the entire meeting exchanging style notes with Jem, fidgeting with his hair, and generally making a nuisance of himself. Luna was trying to come up with an excuse to send him on his way when Karoline sailed into the office, looking for Stefan.

  ‘He’s not here, I’m afraid,’ Luna smiled.

  ‘But this is his office, yes?’ Karoline said. And looked around the room with pointed perplexity.

  ‘He’s in the gardens right now, talking to one of our contractors.’ Luna consulted her watch. ‘Actually, I think their meeting may be just finishing. Alex, I don’t suppose I could trouble you to take Mrs Lundgren to the Jubilee fountain?’

  ‘Karoline,’ Stefan’s mother corrected her, gracing Scott the programmer with a smile of such solar ferocity that Luna swore she heard him gulp. Alex, only too happy to escape, immediately stood and offered Karoline his arm, and off they went.

  ‘That one’s trouble,’ Jem said later, as the two of them were chatting on the settee.

  ‘Yes,’ Luna agreed. ‘I’ll have a word with Roland and make sure he isn’t involved in this project.’

  But Jem just smiled a sympathetic little smile, and Luna realised it wasn’t Alex she was talking about. ‘Karoline has a… forceful personality, that’s for sure,’ Luna said diplomatically.

  ‘She reminds me of Mama Okuyo,’ Jem said.

  ‘Ah, no,’ Luna objected laughingly. Rod’s Kenyan mother was a dreaded presence in Jem’s life, one of the few people her normally sweet-tempered friend had a bad word for. Eager to divert the conversation away from Karoline, she quoted, ‘“No woman is good enough for my mtoto!”’

  Jem grimaced and feigned tearing her hair out.

  ‘“You are so thin, mtoto,”’ Luna went on. ‘“Who is feeding you?”’

  ‘I’m not kidding,’ Jem persisted. ‘The way she looked around the office just now, like, what are you doing in my son’s domain, you, you… English hussy.’ The pair of them cracked up, and Luna pressed a palm to her forehead and groaned, powerfully glad to have Jem at her side, helping her navigate these uncharted waters as Stefan’s fiancée.

  Jem’s final comment on the matter gave her pause, however. ‘Let me ask you this: has she ever called you by your name?’

  Luna’s brow wrinkled quizzically.

  ‘I mean, actually spoke your name,’ Jem said. ‘As in, “What do you think, Luna?” or, “Stefan, what are you and Luna doing tonight?”’ Jem studied her fingernails, currently a shocking shade of emerald green, observing, ‘That’s how they get you, show you where you stand: they never say your name.’

  After Jem left, Luna headed to the gardens in search of Stefan and his mother. Making her way down the gravel path under an arbour draped in wisteria, she could hear children laughing and playing inside the maze, and ahead of her saw Stefan walking slowly with Karoline, her arm linked with his. Had her future mother-in-law ever said her name? Luna couldn’t remember.

  She got to within ten feet of them and was about to announce herself when she heard Karoline’s voice raised in agitation.

  She was speaking in Swedish, and in the normal course of events, much of what she was saying would have gone straight over Luna’s head. But Karoline had an extremely animated way of expressing herself, and Luna’s powers of comprehension were temporarily, magically enhanced following her talk with Jem. To her surprise, she seemed able to understand every word Stefan’s mother was saying to him. And the words went something like this:

  What do you even know about her? How do you know it’s the truth? No parents, no family…

  Luna immediately slowed her gait, matching it to theirs, hanging back.

  All I am saying is you should think about what you’re getting yourself into. When I think of all the nice Swedish girls you could have. Astrid, she is a lovely girl, perfect for you. With her own business. And so pretty…

  Suddenly a little boy of no more than three came barrelling out of the maze, bouncing off Luna’s legs and falling back onto the grass. She squatted down to him, dusting him off. ‘Okay?’ she asked. And felt Stefan turning his head, seeing her there.

  The little boy sat up and held out his fist to her, opening it to reveal a tiny buttercup. ‘Do you like butter?’ he enquired cheekily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Luna replied, raising her chin for him. ‘Why don’t you find out?’

  Moments later, when the boy had run off again, she stood and rubbed the pollen off her chin. Rejoining the path, she was careful, this time, to make her presence known, drawing up beside them on the path. Karoline glanced sideways at her, but didn’t so much as pause for breath as she continued her diatribe.

  …just like Elin Nordegren. Or worse, Sofia Hellqvist. Otch, I shouldn’t be surprised that your father likes her. He has always been easily deceived. But you, I expect more of you. She is cold, this one.

  Stefan had had, at last, enough. Removing his mother’s hand from his arm and clasping it firmly between his own, he smiled tightly and said with deceptive lightness, ‘She also speaks some Swedish, Mother.’ At this, Karoline turned to Luna, looked her straight in the eye. And laughed a girlish, guilty laugh.

  Thank God, at this point a member of the household staff approached with a matter that needed Luna’s attention and she seized the opportunity to beat a retreat. Sitting slightly shell shocked on the portico steps shortly thereafter, Karoline’s guilty yet thoroughly unrepentant laugh still ringing in her ears, Luna decided she h
ad some questions that needed answering. And only one person she could ask them.

  ‘Hallå, Luna!’ came Dagmar’s voice down the phone. ‘I have been wanting to ring you—’

  ‘I need your help with something,’ Luna interrupted. ‘Swedish stuff. First, what does, hmm, I think it’s something like ‘min sto-RAH ka-LICK’ mean?’

  A deadly silence on the other end of the line. Then, ‘Please tell me Stefan does not make you call him this.’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘It means “my big love”,’ Dagmar said, sounding like she’d just been a little sick in her mouth.

  ‘And who is Sofia Hellqvist? And Elin Nordegren?’

  Another silence. ‘Where did you hear these names?’

  ‘Stefan’s mother said them while she was talking to him,’ Luna said. And bit her lip, admitting, ‘About me, I think.’

  ‘Ah, Karoline…’ Dagmar whistled, actually whistled on the other end of the line. ‘She is a total bitch.’

  ‘So, what does—?’

  ‘I do not joke,’ Dagmar went on. ‘She comes to the office to see Sören and everyone goes running.’

  ‘But these women, who are they? Did Stefan used to date them?’

  ‘No.’ Dagmar hesitated, then conceded, ‘Maybe, I don’t know. But she is not saying their names for that. They are… what is the English word for women who marry rich men?’

  Luna thought for a moment. Then said, heart sinking, ‘Gold diggers?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dagmar said. ‘Gold diggers, that’s it.’

  Ten minutes later, Stefan burst into their bedroom to find Luna standing in front of the bed, her backpack open in front of her, a pile of clothes beside it. He was winded, as if he’d run all the way from the garden.

  ‘Luna!’ He rushed toward her, grabbing her by the arms. ‘Don’t do this.’

  Luna frowned up at him. ‘What is it you think I’m doing?’