by Jagger, Kait
Thirteen to sixteen were a gaggle of teenagers clutching their mobile phones in the air near the Orangery, playing Nazi Death Hunt, a spinoff app created by Rod and Jem’s company on the back of the whirlwind success of Remainers, their Arborage-based video game. In a clear example of ‘does what it says on the tin’, Luna gathered that the app’s aim was to inflict grizzly death on as many of Hitler’s henchmen as possible, lurking in various corners of the house and grounds. A stroke of genius that had attracted an entirely new demographic to the estate, and become a bit of an obsession for the 17th Marquess himself, who had been known to do a bit of Nazi hunting of his own whilst out running in the grounds.
Seventeen to twenty-one on Luna’s list of meaningful personal encounters were a combination of visitors and stall holders in the Christmas market on the Queen Charlotte lawn, now in its final week before winding down for the holidays.
Unlike Sweden, the weather here in Berkshire was unseasonably warm for December, a headache for Luna as, perversely, good weather had a negative impact on market footfall. Thankfully, the four coachloads of Chinese tourists visiting today didn’t seem to mind the un-Christmassy weather. And cycling was certainly more pleasant in the sunshine, Luna thought to herself as she rode away, the scent of mulled wine and roasted chestnuts in her nostrils.
Ten minutes later, she arrived at the boundary between the estate and the farmland beyond to find her colleague David Martin, who managed the estate’s southern land holdings, helping a tenant farmer coppice hedgerows. It was a labour-intensive task that entailed trimming, bending and breaking the branches of the hawthorns that formed the hedge between fields, which left unchecked would grow into trees.
As Luna pedalled to a halt and hopped off her bike, she could hear the farmer complaining to David, ‘It’s a bloody eyesore and come spring it’ll only get worse.’ She had only to look at the field on the other side of the hedge to know the source of his angst. Unlike his own land, neatly ploughed into furrows, ready for planting come spring, the adjacent field was bristling with thistles and docks.
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ David replied. ‘But I’m afraid my hands are tied.’
The farmer muttered an epithet under his breath and David grimaced apologetically at Luna, who waved a hand. No need for apologies. The neglected field was a thorn, quite literally, in Arborage’s side; a miniscule thirty-acre plot that narrowed to a few yards across where it spiked into the estate, the only land for miles around not owned by the Wellstone family. When the previous owner put it up for sale the previous spring, Stefan jumped at the opportunity to acquire it, but had been outbid by a private consortium that now seemed disinclined to farm it, or even maintain it properly, to the great displeasure of the neighbouring farmers. And recently matters had taken an abrupt turn for the worse.
‘Afternoon, gentlemen,’ Luna greeted them. ‘David, if I could just borrow you for a second?’
She led him into the overgrown field, along a gravel track that joined with a paved road on the estate. Until recently, house and grounds staff commuting from nearby Deersley had used this track to access the estate. Now, at the entrance to the track there were two newly installed concrete bollards, which essentially narrowed its entrance to the width of a footpath.
‘There’s another set on the other side,’ Luna said. ‘Staff found them there on Saturday morning. No warning, no explanation.’
David grunted and rubbed his tanned, weathered cheek. ‘They’re within their rights,’ he said eventually. ‘On the ordnance survey map this is down as a bridleway. We only ever had a handshake agreement with the previous owner to use it as an access road.’
From the field next door, there came the sudden sound of rustling in the hedge, followed by a loud crack of a branch being broken.
‘Not very neighbourly, though,’ Luna said, ‘is it?’
*
Sunflower seed, peanuts, canary seed, corn… Last stop on Luna’s Tuesday itinerary was a meeting with the manager of the estate’s garden centre, after which she’d found herself lingering in the bird-food aisle, perusing the plethora of different seed mixes on offer.
‘No, Tilly, absolutely not,’ came a familiar voice from the adjacent aisle, freezing Luna in place.
‘But you promised!’ came a high-pitched, furious response. The voices were getting closer and Luna cast her eyes haplessly around the shop, seeking an escape route. Too late, for in the next second Helen Wellstone-Waverley reeled around the corner, her two daughters in tow. Dressed in wellies and a fleece, with her light brown hair cropped mercilessly close, the Marchioness’s eldest daughter stopped short when she saw Luna, her already ruddy cheeks reddening even further. She’d have liked to turn right back around and march away, Luna could tell, but eleven-year-old Megan foiled her mother’s plans, touching Helen’s arm and gesturing in Luna’s direction.
Faced with no choice but to acknowledge her cousin’s fiancée, Helen nodded brusquely, but made no effort to fill the awkward silence that followed. Sighing internally, Luna pasted a wide smile on her face and beckoned to the girls. ‘Just the two people I need,’ she declared. ‘There are some sweet little wrens nesting in the ivy outside my office at Arborage House. I’m trying to find the right seed for them.’ Luna waved her hand at the shelves in what she hoped was a disarming show of cluelessness, but tiny eight-year-old Tilly’s expression remained thunderous and Megan’s eyes flitted anxiously to her mother.
‘See,’ Luna persevered, withdrawing her mobile from her pocket and pulling up a photo she’d taken of one of the wrens sitting, head cocked inquisitively, just outside the window. ‘Isn’t he adorable?’
Megan smiled involuntarily and Tilly bent closer, exclaiming, ‘He’s so small!’
‘I’m hoping I can convince your cousin Stefan to hang a bird feeder for me,’ Luna went on. ‘But there are so many choices…’
‘Meal worms.’
All three of them looked up from the phone to Helen, who shrugged and reluctantly elaborated, ‘That’s what they eat, wrens.’
Ten minutes later, Luna, Helen and the girls were sitting at a table in the garden centre’s coffee shop, an ornamental fountain burbling nearby and a sack of meal worms at their feet. Luna had insisted on treating them, pre-empting any objections from Helen by saying she wanted the girls’ opinion on the shop’s new line of cakes.
‘The lemon is my favourite, but this is good too,’ she said, spooning some whipped cream onto Tilly’s chocolate tart. The two girls, both brown-haired and slight of frame, were dressed in jodhpurs and riding boots, so Luna asked them about horses to start, then about school and their Christmas wish lists. Anything to keep the conversation going in the face of their mother’s purely perfunctory input.
Surreptitiously studying Helen, Luna thought she looked tired. The months since Stefan had forcibly evicted her from her beloved equestrian centre had been difficult, Luna knew, with Helen struggling to establish a new showjumping school absent of all the advantages of her previous connection to the estate. She’d phoned the previous month to request permission for the local drag hunt, of which she was master, to cross estate land during its next meet, her normally booming voice muted with mortification at having to seek consent for what had previously been hers by right.
‘Are you going to invite us to your wedding?’ Tilly blurted out, dragging Luna’s attention back to the conversation at hand.
‘Tilly!’ Helen exclaimed, reddening anew. The little girl gave her mother an imperious look that reminded Luna of nothing so much as her grandmother and demanded, ‘What? You and Daddy were saying just the other day that—’ Megan gave Tilly a sharp poke in the arm and Tilly turned furiously on her sister, so Luna hurriedly interceded, saying evenly, ‘Your cousin and I haven’t set a date yet.’
‘But you’ve been engaged for months now,’ Tilly persisted. Jesus wept, Luna thought, the child was a one-woman Spanish inquis
ition.
Casting about for a reply that might shut this line of enquiry down, Luna added, ‘But of course when we do you’ll be invited.’ Apparently satisfied, Tilly nodded once and took a bite of her tart. As her mother’s eyes lifted heavenward.
*
By the time she got back to Arborage House at dusk, walking past topiary glistening with white fairy lights to the portico, Luna’s final tally of meaningful personal interactions for the day was up to thirty-two. Almost a new record, she reflected with satisfaction.
She ate dinner alone in the staff canteen, a steady stream of night workers, cleaners and security guards walking past, some stopping to say hello. After, she climbed the two sets of stairs leading to the family’s private quarters, bypassing the corridor lined with busts of various Wellstones past and entering the small staircase up to the attic.
Stefan had laughed, at first, when Luna said she wanted to move back up to her old bedroom under the eaves. And she’d laughed too, loath to admit to him that she didn’t feel at home in the private wing, the Wellstone family’s inner sanctum. Luna wasn’t part of the family yet. Her encounter with Helen and the girls earlier had been a potent reminder of that. And there was comfort in returning to her old suite, the former schoolroom and governess’s bedroom.
Ascending to the small, dimly lit attic hall, floorboards creaking familiarly beneath her feet, Luna spied a small black box tied up with twine on the floor in front of her door. She smiled. She made herself wait till she’d changed into her leggings and University of Manchester hoody, and lit the fire in the sitting room, to curl up on the worn velvet settee and untie the twine around the box. Inside was a nest of shimmering golden cloth with a sprig of mistletoe resting inside it, and a small card from Stefan reading, ‘’Til Friday.’
Her mobile rang at that exact moment, and Luna answered it softly, ‘Jag älskar dig, min älskling.’
A brief silence, followed by a sigh on the other end of the line. ‘You know what it does to me when you say things like that in Swedish.’
Luna grinned, stretching her toes toward the warm fire and cradling her phone to her ear. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hey. How are you, Miss Gregory?’
‘I’m good, you?’
‘Very good, very good,’ he began in his usual manner. Another brief silence, followed by a sudden huffing sound. ‘No, that isn’t true. I am not good. I am missing you.’
They talked about their respective days, him of the current weather conditions in Croatia, her of her outdoor exploits around the estate. Aimless chat, the kind that would once have been anathema to her self-reliant Nordic God, but which became a staple of their relationship when she worked in Shetland. Still, when the talk turned to work matters, she found herself hesitating. Stefan believed in empowering his managers, giving them the authority to deal with day-to-day matters so he could focus on the big picture. And though she appreciated his faith in her, there were times she missed being able to talk to him girlfriend to boyfriend. Now, for example, when she began to outline her options for completing the renovation of the Dower House, he asked, ‘Do you need my help with this?’
‘No. I was just running it past you.’
‘No need, Luna. I trust you to manage this appropriately.’ So they moved onto other subjects, and she chose not to mention her conversation in the field with David, another problem she assumed he’d expect them to handle on their own.
Given her preference, she wouldn’t have mentioned her encounter with Helen Wellstone-Waverley either. Stefan had yet to forgive Helen’s collusion with her Uncle Florian the previous summer in a challenge to his authority as the new marquess. Since then, he’d made no effort to bridge the widening gulf between himself and his English cousins.
‘Really,’ he enunciated in that scathingly bland way of his when she confessed her sin of drinking coffee with the enemy. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t spit in your face, the usurper’s betrothed.’
‘No, no,’ Luna said with a hasty little laugh. ‘She was very polite, and the girls were pleasant. It was all very civilised.’
‘Why do I sense there’s an “and” coming here?’
‘Well…’ Luna cleared her throat. ‘Helen happened to mention a hunt ball she and Mark are attending in the New Year.’
The sound of a stifled oath. ‘You didn’t say we’d attend, did you?’
‘Of course not!’ Luna exclaimed. ‘As if I’d – I mean, really, a whole night talking about horses with horsey folk; can you picture me voluntarily submitting to that?’ She gave another, slightly nervous laugh. ‘But I, um, might have suggested that Megan and Tilly could spend the night here.’
‘You… might have.’
‘Okay, I did.’ Before he could respond, she rushed on: ‘Those girls adore you. You should have heard them going on. “Cousin Stefan this, Cousin Stefan that.”’ A little noise on the other end of the phone – of exasperation, but also of thawing. He had a soft spot when it came to Megan and Tilly. Pressing her advantage, Luna said softly, ‘Surely you don’t want them to think they aren’t welcome in their family home.’
A pregnant pause, then, ‘No. It’s fine, they can come. But, Luna, to be clear, I am not prepared to offer a rapprochement to Helen. Or Isabelle, for that matter. Don’t ask that of me.’
Chapter Six
Luna stepped off the train in Newbury two nights later feeling tired, hungry and frustrated. She’d spent a day travelling to and from Cornwall, an entirely wasted trip which would now be followed by yet another late night at her desk catching up on everything she’d missed being out of the business for a day.
‘Luna!’ came a voice from the opposite platform, just audible over the sound of the tannoy announcing the next train. Luna looked across the station, scanning the crowd of commuters, to see Mika and Caitlin Murray just off the train from London, looking very pleased with themselves.
‘It was a triumph,’ Caitlin reported enthusiastically over an impromptu dinner of fish and chips in Chieveley shortly thereafter. She and Mika had been in town for an informal screening of the new Arborage ad campaign they’d arranged, for selected friends in the press. ‘The, ahem, ladies in attendance were particularly impressed,’ the petite blonde added with a sideways glance at Mika, who was pouring malt vinegar on his chips.
He looked up long enough to concur, ‘Knickers were gripped,’ before tucking into his chips. As Luna listened to him and Caitlin talking about their day she thought to herself, not for the first time, that they made a good pair with their matching blonde hair and media-savvy ways. Had she been the matchmaking sort… but she was not, and besides, Caitlin had informed her after a couple of drinks at the staff Christmas party that she thought he was already taken. ‘Someone in Stockholm, I think,’ she’d said, a little wistfully.
Caitlin said something to her and Luna tuned back into the conversation with a start, smiling apologetically. ‘I’ve sent you the press release on Mr Marsh’s resignation,’ Caitlin repeated. ‘If you can okay it tonight, I’ll get it out first thing in the morning.’ Another of today’s headaches, which Luna had had to attend to whilst standing in a cab rank in Truro, was the surprise decision of the chair of their board of trustees, St John Marsh, to step down. To make matters worse, in what she considered to be an uncharacteristic breach of common courtesy, St John had ‘dumped’ them by text. A long message, the gist of which was that he didn’t feel he could give Arborage his full attention in view of his obligations at Cambridge. She’d phoned him straight away, of course, to… well, not necessarily to talk him out of it, but at the very least to understand his reasoning, but the call had gone to voicemail. Reading his message over again and again in her taxi, Luna felt oddly stung on Arborage’s behalf. It’s not you, it’s me.
After their meal, Mika drove Luna back to the house, and they walked together through the darkened gardens, feet crunching along the gravel path. She w
as in a pensive mood, and as they passed a copse of manicured box hedges, Mika enquired, ‘Tough day at work, honey?’
‘Wasted day, more like,’ she replied succinctly. And then, because her answer had been brief to the point of churlishness, she elaborated, ‘I was visiting a historic home in Cornwall. The man who owns it is a business acquaintance of Stefan’s who wants to form a coalition of historic properties, package it to tourists on a multi-attraction pass. You know the thing, pay a flat fee for a ticket and you can visit up to three or five properties.’
‘And you are not convinced,’ Mika said. Luna glanced over at him and even in the poor light his face was its usual study in Finnish blankness.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘His property isn’t a patch on Arborage. He only opens ten rooms to the public and his exhibition space is poorly designed. Not many historic homes take conservatorship as seriously as we do here…’ As they continued along the pathway into the dark heart of the garden, she carried on enumerating Arborage’s many superiorities, only pausing when she realised she’d been talking non-stop for several minutes. ‘It’s just…’ she concluded lamely, ‘I’m afraid if we entered into an arrangement like this, we’d end up carrying him and properties like his.’
‘A loss leader,’ Mika ventured.
‘Exactly!’ she cried, practically bouncing up and down next to him on the path. She should have known he of all people would understand.
‘So you politely decline, yes?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, sounding rather more confident than she felt. ‘It was more of a courtesy, me going to visit this place. Stefan will agree with my decision, I’m sure.’
She didn’t go to her office in the end. Instead the two of them went up to the family sitting room, settling opposite each other on the matching floral sofas. She worked on her laptop, reviewing the press release Caitlin had sent her regarding St John’s resignation. Mika, meanwhile, made a round of calls to his mother, the twins (‘Kimi and Kiki send you big hugs and kisses,’ he reported) and an assortment of friends and colleagues in Helsinki and Stockholm.
