by Jagger, Kait
‘Do you really want to walk down this road with me, Roland?’ she asked impassively. And then, sparing him the need to speak his answer, she said, ‘Sack him. Today. If you don’t, I will.’
Luna hit her stride after that, rounding off her invigoratingly productive morning by returning a message she’d had from St John Marsh on her mobile the previous week. He wanted, he’d said, to use the estate’s conference facilities for a day-long meeting he was planning with his colleagues at Cambridge.
‘I thought,’ he said jovially when she rang, ‘as an ex-member of the board, perhaps we could negotiate a reduced rate. And an evening meal thrown in?’
Luna almost smiled, wishing he was in the room with her rather than sitting in the comfortable office in Cambridge’s History Department that Viktor Putinov had bought for him. No, she said, she could not negotiate a reduced rate with him. No, no evening meal either. And no, he could not use Arborage’s facilities now or ever again in the future.
‘I must say, Miss – Lady Wellstone, this is extremely short-sighted of you,’ he blustered in an aggrieved tone. ‘The world of historical preservation is a small one, as you know, and by alienating me you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.’
‘Really,’ Luna said blandly, studying her fingernails. ‘I’ll take that risk.’ And pressed the disconnect button on her mobile.
Mindful of Stefan’s excellent advice that problems were always best tackled on a full stomach, Luna ate lunch in the staff kitchen before going to seek out her mother-in-law. A chicken Caesar salad, plus a chocolate tiffin brought to her table by Marta herself, whose eagle eyes had been watching Luna’s clothing adjustments in recent weeks with avid interest. Her head of catering’s beatific smile prompted Luna, on finishing her tiffin, to swing past her room for her silk paisley shawl. The fact that Karoline Lundgren was soon to become a grandmother was a distraction from the matter at hand, and beside the point, now.
On her way back down the hall, she heard the sound of girlish laughter in the family sitting room and stepped into the doorway. Karoline was standing next to a ladder, talking to none other than Alex Parker. Luna half-smiled at the temerity of him, presuming to make himself at home in the family quarters. She had forgotten that he’d met Stefan’s mother the previous summer, during another of her surprise visits. They seemed remarkably chummy, Alex leaning close to Karoline, speaking in a hushed voice, and Karoline listening with rapt attention.
They heard Luna enter and from the fleeting, unguarded expressions that crossed their faces, she gathered that she had been their topic of conversation. Karoline’s girlish mask quickly slid back into place, but Alex dared to look at Luna with an air of amused familiarity. Oh, Luna repined, to be the one who wipes that look off your face, Alex.
‘Ah, and here is the newlywed,’ Karoline warbled. She looked Luna up and down, sizing up her changed appearance. ‘Your charming employee was just showing me the renovations you are doing. So very exciting, but…’ Karoline reached for a sample book on the worker’s bench, riffled through its thick pages with her perfectly manicured nails. ‘…such an unconventional colour palette. It will be difficult to find accessories to go with it. Perhaps I can take you to some of my favourite shops in London.’
Luna looked at Alex and said, ‘I think Roland was looking for you.’
Karoline kept talking, after he left. About colour palettes, and shopping, and how lovely it was that Luna had taken her advice and decided to redecorate this room. Luna didn’t bother to listen, choosing instead to focus on the smell of recently sanded floorboards and plaster, the good, clean bones of Arborage House. And the cool breeze flowing through the open windows. The sun was still shining outside, but there was a hint of ozone in the air. A storm was coming.
She wound down, eventually. They always did, the talkers. And when she stopped talking and silence fell upon the room, Luna spoke.
‘Do you believe in original sin, Karoline?’
A complete non sequitur, one that caught Stefan’s mother off guard. Her brow wrinkled and Luna patiently elaborated, much as Augusta Wellstone had done for her fourteen years before: ‘Do you think man is born naturally good, and must choose to be bad?’
‘You’re asking me a philosophical question?’ Karoline smiled faintly.
Nodding animatedly, Luna went on, ‘A friend of mine prefers to think that men are naturally bad, that they have to strive to be good. She says—’ Luna waved her arms around the room, spreading her fingers as if to encompass all of Arborage. ‘—places like this couldn’t be built without that desire for goodness, for order and harmony.’ She lifted her shoulders, frowning speculatively. ‘Me, I’m not so sure. I think it takes a bad man to build an empire like Arborage, don’t you? And it’s interesting to take the opposing view: that men are naturally good.’
She pondered for a moment. ‘Or maybe the word is more like naturally weak. Look at it that way, and it rather leaves the field open for the outliers, doesn’t it? For those prepared to be bad.’
Luna tilted her head at Karoline, the white-blue of her irises glowing against her dark lashes. ‘How old were you, I wonder, when you realised just how bad you could be? I’ll bet you were very young. I’ll bet all the girls in your lekskola went quiet every time little Karoline came into the classroom. I’ll bet they quaked and quivered when you looked their way and opened your mouth, wondering if their time had come.’
She shrugged. ‘It was different for me. It took a shock to the system to wake me up to my more honest self. And for a while after that I was very, very bad.’ She grinned in remembrance. ‘I wish you could have seen me back then. No one was safe around me, including your son!
‘But then this friend of mine, the one who doesn’t believe in original sin, persuaded me that I should try to change. That being as bad as I wanted to be meant a lifetime of loneliness…’ Luna paused for a moment, adjusting her shawl.
‘I’m not going to lie, Karoline,’ she sighed eventually. ‘It was hard to change. I’d gone almost completely feral by that stage. I had to completely retrain myself how to behave, and there were definitely times when it didn’t seem worth the effort.’ She looked to the older woman as if for confirmation, like this was a little shop talk between fellow practitioners. ‘It’s just so hard being nice, isn’t it? Over the years, I’ve fallen off the wagon a few times, had a few relapses, I admit it. I mean, come on, some Norwegian bitch calls you a slag, you’re going to cut her down to size, aren’t you?’
Luna gave Karoline a confiding look. ‘I tell you all this purely to show you that we do understand each other, you and I. I imagine it was just as hard for you, being good for Sören. And you were good for him, weren’t you. He wouldn’t have had you otherwise. And then, how did he repay you? By falling in love. With a man.’ Luna placed a hand on her chest. ‘I can only imagine the betrayal, the rage you must have felt, especially when you found out Christian was even prettier than you.’
Another grin. ‘But I digress. It wasn’t your son who convinced me to be good, though he…’ Her eyes softened for a moment as she thought of Stefan. ‘…No, it was a girl, a girl who had every reason to hate me, taking my arm one day as we walked down the street together. It was her kindness that made me want to change, to be more like her.’
She lapsed into quietude. Sensing an opportunity, Karoline affected a look of concern, but Luna held up a hand. ‘And I can see you now, gearing up to say—’ she adopted an arch, Nordic accent, ‘—“You poor girl. It is clear that you are suffering from emotional troubles… psychological issues. I will speak to Stefan, we will get you the help you need.”’ A little crack appeared in Karoline’s façade and Luna burst out laughing, wagging her finger at her. ‘See, see, I do know you!’
She consulted her watch. ‘Right, we don’t have much time, so I’m going to ask you not to interrupt while I tell you how things are going to be between us, in the future.
‘Have I told you,’ Luna confided, ‘that your pojkvän Viktor once compared me to a dog?’ She widened her eyes in mock dismay. ‘Yes I know! How rude! But for the purposes of this conversation, the comparison is instructive. From now on, I want you to think of yourself as my dog, Karoline. And when I say stay, you will stay. And when I say come, you will come. I should warn you, however, that it will be mostly staying from now on.’
A high, deep flush rose in Karoline’s cheeks. ‘How dare you speak to me—’
‘Ah ah,’ Luna chided. ‘Remember, no talking. As I say, from now on you will only be welcome here at Arborage on my invitation, which will come infrequently but regularly if you behave yourself. If you don’t, the invitations will stop.’
‘You cannot bar me from my son’s home.’
‘I won’t have to. He’s hurrying home right now because he’s worried about you being alone with me. All I’d have to say is that your visits make me unhappy, and who do you think he will choose? You? Or his pregnant wife?’ Luna ran a hand over her stomach, confirming serenely, ‘Yes, Karoline, married life is suiting me very well, thank you.’ Karoline’s eyes followed her daughter-in-law’s hand, then slid shut as the truth that had been staring her in the face all day hit home.
‘And I won’t stop at that,’ Luna went on. ‘If I get even a whiff of misbehaviour from you, the slightest hint that you have appealed to Stefan behind my back, I’ll convince him to cut off all contact with you, here and in Stockholm.’
Karoline’s mouth fell open. ‘What kind of monster has my son married? He will not allow this. I will speak to him.’
‘You won’t,’ Luna replied, ‘and if you interrupt me one more time, I will phone security and have you dragged out of this house.’ She shook her head earnestly. ‘And I don’t want to do that, Karoline, not until I’m absolutely certain that you and I truly understand each other.
‘The last thing I will do, if you fail to embrace the terms of our new relationship, is to cut off your money.’ Karoline stiffened in denial and Luna rolled her eyes. ‘You think I didn’t know that Stefan bankrolls your lifestyle in Gamla Stan? That it’s him who makes all your little shopping expeditions, and treats for Borr and Burri, and trips to the Côte d’Azur possible? I wonder how long your friends in black will endure your company once the free champagne dries up.’
The older woman stared at her with hatred in her eyes. And lingering scepticism, Luna sensed, that her daughter-in-law could deliver on her threats. Time to kill that. ‘And I see what you are thinking, Karoline,’ she said. ‘I hear you asking yourself, how will she turn my son against the woman who gave birth to him? How can she possibly make him deny his own mother?’
Luna leaned closer and breathed in Karoline’s ear, a susurration: ‘I will tell him the truth about you and your pojkvän. That it wasn’t some chance meeting that brought you and Viktor Putinov together last year. Fox Wellstone told you about Putinov and you asked for an introduction. And then you seduced him. And when he’d outlived his usefulness, you rid yourself of him.’
She shook her head. ‘What kind of mother seeks out her son’s enemy, forges an alliance with him purely for the sake of causing her child pain? What kind of mother does that?’
Karoline’s façade cracked completely apart then, as if hewn in two by an axe. Reduced to mute, inarticulate, impotent rage, all she could do was stare at Luna.
‘A bad one,’ Luna answered for her.
She glanced at her watch. ‘Stefan will be home in just over an hour. You need to be gone before he gets here. I’ve taken the liberty of having your bags packed for you, and there’s a car downstairs waiting to take you to Heathrow.
‘And this is the point,’ Luna concluded, clasping her hands together, ‘where I’m supposed to show mercy. To ask you not to force my hand. To say that I don’t want to be the cause of a permanent rift between him and you. But the truth is…’ She smiled. ‘I so rarely get the opportunity to be bad anymore, particularly in aid of such a worthy cause. So please, Karoline, if you don’t believe I will do everything I’ve told you, try me. I’d like nothing more.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Barry the roofing contractor squatted down beside a worn strip of lead, inserting his finger into the gap beside it. ‘You were absolutely right to be concerned about this. It’s not leaking now, but all it would take is one bad storm.’ He stood and looked toward the horizon, where ominous clouds were roiling in the distance. Proof of his point, his sage look seemed to say.
He and Luna were standing atop the west wing of Arborage House on a small balustraded section of the roof, inspecting the lead sheeting that lined its surface. Barry was her last appointment of the day, the final, small problem on Luna’s to-do list.
A sudden gust of wind swept across the roof and Luna pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. She heard the sound of tourists whooping to each other on the Queen Charlotte lawn below. Soon they would be running for cover, seeking shelter from the elements.
‘These flat roofs are always a worry,’ Barry added, consulting his clipboard. ‘I’ve yet to see one that can withstand the Great British weather. But I can see my way clear to starting on it next month, once you’ve signed off on my quote.’
Luna raised her eyebrows. ‘About your quote,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to take another look at it.’
The contractor frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because you’re taking the piss, Barry.’
Not the wording Luna would normally have chosen, but she was running low on patience. And something had started the second Karoline took her hands that morning. From Isabelle, to Roland, to St John, to her final confrontation with Stefan’s mother, a familiar ice-cold tide had been rising within Luna all day. Even now, it was closing in over her head. And oh, how she loved watching Barry’s face over the ensuing seconds. The momentary whitening, the expression of blank disbelief. Did she just say what I think she said? And then the inevitable mottled flush as he realised he’d been caught bang to rights, dipping his fingers a little too far into Arborage’s cookie jar.
Recovering, he assumed a posture of umbrage. ‘If you aren’t happy with my costs—’
‘I’m not,’ Luna said flatly. ‘And if you don’t cut this quote down by a third, I’ll put it out to tender.’
‘My company has been the sole roofing supplier to the estate for over thirty years,’ Barry responded haughtily. ‘You’re paying not just for our expertise, but for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that when the local conservation officer comes to inspect, he will be dealing with someone he knows and trusts. I daresay you can find cheaper quotes, but will you be assured of the same quality of materials from another contractor? The same attention to detail and craftsmanship?’
Luna sighed. He was getting on her nerves now. ‘Barry, please understand me. If I have to move my desk up here, supervise the roofing work personally, that’s what I’ll do before I pay your inflated prices.’
‘Lady Wellstone never would have questioned—’ Barry cut himself off, too late remembering who he was talking to.
Luna let his mistake linger, let him suffer for a moment, then reiterated, ‘Cut your quote. Then we’ll do business.’
The wind was well and truly getting up by the time he’d packed up his kit. Barry clearly thought that Luna should come with him back down the stairs to the attic, but she waved him off. ‘I think I’ll stay up here for a while,’ she said, turning away from him to the balustrade.
And then she was alone. Off in the distance, at the edge of the purple-black skyline, a spiderwork of incandescence appeared, followed by a rumble of thunder. The view of Stefan’s kingdom from this high up was majestic, stretching as far as the eye could see. As storm clouds rolled in, a shadow fell across the wheat fields to the west. On and on the shadow moved, gathering pace, consuming the woodlands, the outer edge of the g
ardens. Racing toward her.
Luna watched the storm building, cumulating, as whispers of judgements past swirled and coalesced around her.
‘You were just so… fierce. I remember thinking, I want to be like her…’
‘Poor orphan child, that’s what everybody said. But I knew what you were really like.’
‘What kind of monster has my son married?’
A monster. Was that what she was? It was what she felt like, standing here on the cusp of a storm, her day’s dirty work behind her. For Luna’s dark, secret heart was aching, half-hoping and half-afraid that another unsuspecting victim would come traipsing up the attic stairs into her waiting embrace.
‘I have watched you, trying so hard to please him, to mould yourself into what he expects you to be. His “flee-kah”, his “good gurrl”.’
She remembered the look of contempt on Mika’s face as he uttered those words, his damning implication that Stefan was holding her back somehow, preventing her from fulfilling her true potential. Luna almost laughed. Mika had no idea how right he was, and how wrong. Stefan’s good girl was exactly what she wanted to be, but not because he expected it of her. She wanted it, wanted to be good for him.
‘I know what it is to find that the words from your mouth have the power to wound, the power to destroy.’
The ephemeral, ghostly fingers of Augusta’s warning on the hidden stairway stretched their way across fourteen years, plucking at Luna’s arm, begging for her attention. What use, a power that could only destroy? Only hurt?
What kind of monster am I?
‘Luna!’
She whirled around to find Stefan standing at the top of the stairs, bracing himself against the wind. ‘What are you doing out here?’ he yelled over the oncoming roar of hail, pouring down on the garden, bouncing off the sides of the marquee tent. ‘It isn’t safe, flicka. Come in!’
Luna stared at him. She clasped her arms around herself, pulling her shawl closer. A long strand of hair whipped in front of her face, but she made no move to push it away. Or any move toward Stefan.
