Lord and Master Trilogy

by Jagger, Kait

  Walking back into the house a few minutes later, Stefan chuckled at his cousin’s remarkable volte-face, then observed mischievously, ‘I like Tilly. She reminds me of a girl I knew once.’

  Luna barked a quick laugh. ‘Sobbing and petulant?’ she suggested.

  He grinned and shook his head. ‘Little and angry.’

  *

  Luna was drifting. Lying on her side in bed, Stefan’s hand running up and down the curve of her hip, she was completely relaxed, just this side of somnolence.

  After an uncertain start, it had been a pleasant, productive Saturday. She’d phoned Caitlin first thing to find her press officer sanguine regarding the Times piece, wherein Florian was quoted bemoaning the ‘greedy money-making machine’ Arborage had become under Stefan’s stewardship. ‘He sounds like a whingeing old dinosaur,’ Caitlin scoffed. ‘And on the positive side, he specifically mentioned the Robert and Margery exhibit.’

  ‘As an example of our profiteering ways,’ Luna interjected warily.

  ‘Trust me, Luna, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.’

  To round out her morning, Luna spent an hour with staff in the ticket office, satisfied that initial sales for the exhibit were brisk. Afterward, she took the tour herself, flushed with quiet self-congratulation when she beheld the bracelets, emerald necklace and ring in their lighted display cases for the very first time.

  On her way back to the office her phone buzzed: a message from Mika with just a jpeg attachment. Not breaking stride, she tapped to download and watched as a photo began to slowly materialise on the display, bar by bar. It was… her. A picture taken the previous night, perhaps by the magazine photographer? The image showed her standing alone at the entrance to the exhibit, the candle flame video visible in the background. Taken from behind, it captured Luna with her hands clasped behind her, gold bracelets and bells shining against the deep blue of her skirt. Above her bare back, her neck curved downward, a tendril of hair escaping the chignon at her nape.

  Luna slowed to a halt, smiling down at her phone. No, it had to be Mika who’d taken this. Only he would have captured such a flattering image of her. Feeling, again, a little emotional, she texted back a quick xo and headed into her office, running headlong into Stefan.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, clasping her elbows. ‘Go for a run with me?’

  ‘Running with Stefan’ was a bit of a misnomer, Luna had found. The vast disparity between their fitness regimes was nowhere more evident than the gear they sported when they set out a half-hour later in drizzling rain. Whereas Stefan was wearing the latest in technical apparel, from a Dri-FIT jacket to high-performance running shoes, Luna wore a pair of ratty leggings, her University of Manchester hoody and trainers that had frankly seen better days. She was also grim-faced and panting within twenty minutes of starting out, whereas Stefan, curse him, was just getting warmed up.

  ‘Good riddance!’ she wheezed when he eventually peeled off into the forest at a sprint, leaving her in his proverbial dust. After that, she elected to proceed at a more relaxed pace; a jog, if you will, or even a walk at some points. Well, she was still officially hungover, and it wouldn’t do to tax herself, would it?

  Luna was near the end of her run when Stefan re-emerged from the forest, pelting up from the ornamental lake toward her at top speed. She stopped to wait for him beside the wrought-iron gate, where a volunteer was leading one of the last garden tours of the day. Suddenly a strident American accent rose up from within the tour group. ‘I don’t believe it! It’s him!’ And then another: ‘Oh, goodness gracious, just look at him!’

  Luna turned to scrutinise the group, twenty or so women wearing matching Lynchburg Baptist Church ponchos and identical expressions of ecstatic joy, some pointing in the direction of Stefan, others clutching each other deliriously. Oblivious to them, his eyes crinkled as he ran up to the gate, a clever clogs comment about Luna’s running prowess doubtless hovering on his lips.

  The cohort of women shifted as one, advancing upon him. To Luna’s infinite satisfaction, the smile froze on Stefan’s face. Visibly startled, he slowed to a halt, too late understanding his peril. He looked at Luna, but she just grinned in response. Dismay warred with duty for a split second, till duty won. Raising the white flag, Stefan unleashed his honey-on-toast smile upon the tour group, exclaiming warmly, ‘Ladies, welcome to my home.’ A chorus of delighted cries went up, the ponchos closed in on him in a pincer movement, and Luna walked back toward the house laughing long and hard.

  Her mirth returned when he joined her in the shower shortly thereafter, glowering down at her. ‘That was—’ She broke off, laughing breathlessly, water streaming between them. ‘That was quite a sight.’

  ‘Very funny,’ he observed, clasping his hands around her waist and pulling her toward him.

  ‘Kind of like the running of the bulls at Pamplona,’ she chortled, pressing a hand to her side. ‘Or a zombie apocalypse—’ Stefan’s mouth swooped down on hers and she emitted a hapless, ‘Mmph.’ And melted into him.

  Luna was almost asleep, her fist pressed into her chin, Stefan’s fingers still gliding from the base of her spine to her neck. He is so good at this, her drowsy brain purred. In the distance, she heard her mobile’s ringtone and vaguely perceived him shifting on the bed to answer it, her conscious thoughts splintering, slipping away from her. She felt his body tense next to hers. ‘Who is it?’ she murmured, struggling her way back to consciousness.

  ‘It’s Helen. Tilly is missing.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘This is all my fault,’ Helen said, wringing her hands together. ‘I was too hard on her.’

  They were standing in the family sitting room, the grandfather clock in the corner just chiming quarter past one in the morning. Megan, still dressed in her pyjamas, was sitting on one of the floral sofas clutching a throw pillow while her father paced the floor agitatedly in front of her and Stefan stood next to the mullioned windows, talking to the police on his mobile.

  ‘What time did you last see her?’ Stefan asked Helen.

  ‘I went up to her room at around ten,’ she replied. ‘And I—’ she looked at her husband, ‘—I shouted at her, told her to go to sleep.’ She began to sob.

  ‘Did you get that?’ Stefan said into his phone, his eyes briefly meeting Luna’s before returning to the floodlit lawn below. ‘No, her parents think she might be trying to get here, to Arborage…’

  As he continued talking, Luna reached out and clasped Helen’s arm. ‘We’re going to find Tilly,’ she said reassuringly. ‘We’re going to find her and everything is going to be fine.’

  There was a loud knock on the sitting-room door and suddenly Arborage’s entire security team came pouring into the room. Over the course of the ensuing ten minutes, plans were quickly made for Helen to return to the family’s farm to await the police. Stefan and Mark, meanwhile, would search the bike path between the estate and Deersley, and the security team would fan out across the grounds. To her exasperation, Stefan tasked Luna with staying put in the house with Megan.

  ‘But we could help,’ Luna protested.

  ‘No,’ Stefan replied adamantly, shaking his head. ‘If Tilly is on her way to Arborage, someone needs to be here waiting for her.’

  Luna’s lips tightened as she prepared to answer back, but then she felt a tug on her jumper. She looked down to find Megan staring up at her inscrutably but intently. And swallowed her arguments.

  Shortly thereafter, the two of them strode along a darkened gravel path, Megan wearing one of Luna’s coats and Luna shining a torch to light the way. The wind was getting up and the temperature had dropped to around freezing.

  ‘Tell me again why you think she may have gone to the Dower House,’ Luna said, gripping Megan’s hand with her own.

  ‘It’s just, it’s all she’s talked about since we came here the other week. About the old Marquess and his Marc
hioness, how romantic it was, her lighting a candle for him every night. Tilly kept asking if I thought you meant it when you said she could spend the night there sometime…’ Megan hesitated. ‘I’m probably wrong. She’d be too scared to go there on her own at night.’

  ‘Well,’ Luna said, ‘it can’t hurt for us to take a look.’ She gave Megan’s hand a squeeze. ‘I’d be too scared to go there alone in the dark, so it’s a lucky thing you’re here.’

  Luna wasn’t saying that just for Megan’s benefit. Although the path was intermittently punctuated with wrought-iron lampposts, the illumination they gave off was feeble, swallowed up within a few feet by the overwhelming darkness of the surrounding woodland. She remembered other nights, back in her and Stefan’s ‘courting’ days, when this route had spooked her so much she’d fairly run all the way to the Dower House. Torch or no, the prospect of searching it at night held little appeal, despite her stubborn unwillingness to comply with Stefan’s orders to remain in the main house.

  She caught a faint whiff of smoke in the air. ‘Someone’s having a fire,’ she smiled to Megan. ‘Maybe we should do the same after we find your sister, eh?’ The smell grew stronger as they continued. Luna’s eyes actually started to sting from it; something about the direction of the wind seemed to be funnelling it in their direction.

  They rounded a final bend and the Dower House appeared in the distance. At first Luna was sure her eyes were playing tricks on her – there looked to be lights on in the downstairs windows where no lights should be, with electrical work still going on. But no, lights were shining in the windows.

  ‘How is that possible—?’ she began. And then she saw it: a waning followed by a surge in the brightness in the house. It… it wasn’t lights. It was fire. The Dower House was on fire.

  Luna dropped Megan’s hand, her body suddenly coursing with adrenaline. Pulling her mobile out of the pocket of her hoody, she flung it at Megan and began to run.

  ‘Call 999, then call Stefan!’ she cried over her shoulder. ‘And don’t move. Stay here.’

  Tearing up the path to the house, Luna tried the heavy oak door, but it was locked. She peered through the leaded windows, horrified to see fire licking up the walls of the front room. No sign of Tilly, however. Please don’t be in there, please don’t be in there, she prayed as she sprinted around to the back of the house, dodging past a mini-digger and a skip to the temporary door next to the kitchen, which was – ah, God – it was ajar. Luna pushed it open and was immediately assaulted by a blast of scorching-hot air.

  Please don’t be in here, please don’t be in here.

  ‘Tilly!’ she shouted, but all she heard in response was the sound of the wood-framed house creaking and popping, heat literally expanding its walls, pushing them outward.

  Luna ran into the kitchen, where the light of her torch was met with thick darkness. Moving quickly toward the door into the front room, she grasped its wrought-iron latch. Instantly a searing pain ran through her hand and she snatched it away with a yelp. The latch was scalding hot. She couldn’t go that way.

  Turning back into the kitchen, Luna’s mind went momentarily blank. What to do, what to do? Stumbling past the island, she moved toward the small wooden servants’ staircase, screaming up into the pitch blackness, ‘Tilly, are you up there?’ Nothing. She isn’t here, she thought to herself, I’m on a fool’s errand.

  And then she heard it. It could have been the wind, or the house squealing in protest as flames consumed it. Or it could have been a girl’s voice. Luna shouted Tilly’s name again, and yet again she thought she heard a faint answering cry. Without thinking, she dashed up the stairs.

  The air on the upper landing was thick with acrid smoke and she immediately dropped to her knees, shining her torch along the two-foot tunnel of cleaner air beneath the smoke. The floorboards, when she placed her hand on them, were warm, hot almost, to the touch.

  ‘I’m here!’ came Tilly’s shrill voice from the master bedroom. Thank God. Luna crawled as fast as she could toward the door, pushing it open. The air was less smoky in here, so she quickly shut the door behind her and stood, shining her torch in an arc across the room. And there was Tilly, sitting in the corner on top of her sleeping bag, arms tight around her knees, face pale with fear.

  Luna ran across the room. ‘Let’s go, sweetheart,’ she said, urging Tilly to her feet. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  In response, the little girl threw her arms around Luna’s waist. ‘We can’t go down there!’ she cried. ‘They’ll get us if we go down.’

  Luna took Tilly by the shoulders and held her away from her. She didn’t know who ‘they’ were and she didn’t have time to argue. ‘This house is burning down, Tilly. We have to go, you understand?’ With that she began marching toward the door, dragging the child with her. In her haste she banged the torch against the door frame and it immediately went out. Shaking it, then switching it on and off had no effect, so she dropped it.

  Back out in the darkened hallway, smoke filling her lungs, Luna was confronted with an awful choice: turn right and head back to the servants’ staircase, now billowing with black smoke, or turn left toward the main stairs, semi-lit by the flames below.

  No time, no time, no time…

  Suddenly there came the sound of feet pounding up the main stairs and a masked face appeared through the bannister. The masked intruder reached the top landing and Luna instinctively pulled Tilly close as he ran toward her.

  He reached up to pull down the cloth covering his nose and mouth and at sight of the familiar face underneath Luna almost collapsed with relief. But there was no time to waste. ‘Out now!’ Stefan yelled, reaching for Tilly, lifting her up into his arms. ‘You go first,’ he shouted to Luna, gesturing toward the stairs, and she promptly raced down them.

  Straight into a blast furnace. The fire had spread everywhere. Walls, doors, even the beamed ceiling in the front vestibule was burning. Bounding off the bottom step, Luna hurled herself at the front door, working at the locks; first the dead bolt… almost there… then the Yale lock… almost there, almost there… fingers fumbling on the latch…

  ‘Luna, no!’ Stefan bellowed from behind her. She turned to find him standing at the bottom of the stairs, Tilly clinging to him for dear life. ‘Backdraft!’ he shouted. ‘We can’t go that way!’

  ‘But—’ Luna’s body flooded with panic. They were so close to safety, surely there was no other way. Stefan stepped forward, passing Tilly to her.

  ‘Follow me,’ he commanded, striding swiftly down the burning hallway.

  Luna tightened her arms around Tilly. And then followed in Stefan’s wake, back into the house. Into hell.

  She ran behind him through a corridor of fire, flames licking up both sides of the wood-panelled hall. They rounded a corner and he skidded to a halt so fast she ran straight into him, almost dropping Tilly.

  ‘What—?’ Luna began, and then she saw what had stopped him. Steel scaffolding, glowing incandescent all along the walls, searing with convected heat, twisting and buckling to the extent that only a perishingly small gap remained for them to escape through.

  Stefan turned. ‘We need you to walk from here, Tilly,’ he shouted. Luna let the girl slip to the floor, afraid for a moment that she might balk in panic, but Stefan immediately crouched down, patting his back. ‘Put your face here and follow me.’ Tilly did as she was asked and Luna moved up to curve protectively around her from behind. They moved in tandem through the web of scalding-hot metal. Luna could feel its scorch, taste its burning metallic tang in her mouth. Her knees fair shook with relief when they emerged unscathed at the end of the hall.

  They stopped before the entrance to the dining room, Stefan running his hands along the door, testing it for heat. Satisfied that it was safe, he opened it and promptly pulled Luna and Tilly into the small, sweltering antechamber. He lifted his hands to the door on the opposite wall
and said over his shoulder, ‘Shut that one.’ With a last look at the conflagration consuming the hallway behind them, Luna obeyed, briefly plunging them into suffocating blackness. Tilly whimpered and Luna gripped her shoulders reassuringly.

  After what felt like an eternity, Stefan opened the second door and they practically fell into the dining room, its oak table and benches calmly awaiting them in the demi-light. Luna gazed out of the bank of leaded windows, briefly stupefied. Fireflies, she thought fleetingly, absurdly. But no, it was sparks streaming in the wind, the house burning down around them.

  Stefan shut the second door and scanned the room, eyes lighting on a heavy wooden chair in the corner. ‘Stand back,’ he said, and lifted it above his head, arms straining. He heaved it at the window and the glass shattered, wind and smoke pouring into the room. Wrapping his scarf around his arm, he punched out the remaining shards of glass and swung himself up into the window’s stone frame, pausing only to nod resolutely at Luna before dropping from sight.

  She ran to the window to find him standing in the courtyard just below, arms outstretched. ‘Let’s go, sweetheart,’ Luna yelled as, possessed of a strength born of sheer terror, she hoisted Tilly up onto the ledge, where the little girl scrambled into a sitting position, then froze.

  ‘Come on, Tilly, I’ve got you!’ came Stefan’s voice. A sudden bang sounded from the floor above and plaster showered down on Luna’s head. Without another thought, she placed her hands on Tilly’s bottom and pushed, the girl’s high scream splitting the air.

  Seconds later, Stefan half-dragged, half-carried them both clear of the house, into the woods beyond. They stood in a circle, arms tight around each other as Tilly coughed and Luna retched painfully, a slick, dirty stream of saliva trailing from her mouth to the ground. Blue lights flashed in the distance, the fire brigade at last on its way.