Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (27 page)

As Luna went on to describe the equine war council she’d witnessed from the field that afternoon, Stefan’s face went pale. He handed the phone back to her and walked over to a small wooden sign pointing toward the garden centre.

‘
Jävlar
!’ he seethed, aiming a vicious kick at the sign. ‘That bloody—’ Another kick and the sign splintered in half. Luna watched in silence as an American tour group in khaki shorts, plaid shirts and bum bags walked past, looking askance at the man in the suit with anger issues.

Stefan stalked back to her, pointing a finger in her face. ‘It will last for
months
, this.
Years
, maybe, with your English legal system and so-called squatters’ rights. And the fucking PR nightmare that will doubtless ensue. “Swedish businessman evicts Englishwoman from her ancestral home…”’ He kicked his foot into the lawn, dislodging a piece of turf, then wheeled round to look back at the house, shoulders working under his suit jacket.

After some moments, he turned back to her, running his hand down her upper arm and briefly clasping her elbow in wordless apology. And then said quietly, ‘Do you think you can arrange a meeting between me and Ashley? Tonight?’

The meeting took place at a pub in Deersley, and included not only Ashley but Arborage’s head of security and one of the estate’s lawyers. Stefan didn’t return to the house until after midnight, entering their bedroom to find Luna waiting up for him in the armchair beneath the windows. He took the wooden chair from James’s desk and placed it in front of hers, then sat down and loosened his tie.

Reaching for her hands, he drew them onto his knees and said, ‘
Flicka
, I need your help.’

Luna stood in the middle of the estate’s 18
^th
-century Orangery, the calm in the centre of a storm of preparation. Around her, catering staff were working at a pace to ready the room for the imminent arrival of around 120 specially invited guests for the charity ball.

Being relatively narrow and punctuated with orange trees, the glass and brick building was perhaps not the perfect venue for this type of event. It was on the verge of reopening following a multimillion-pound renovation, however, so the Marchioness had insisted on using it. Even in bereavement, her eyes always on the prize of showing off the jewels in Arborage’s crown.

To outward appearances, Luna was entirely self-contained, smoothly composed. Her dress was black, of course; anything else would have been inappropriate for a house still in mourning. A simple black empire line dress with a single asymmetric strap over the left shoulder. No jewellery, save for her engagement ring. Only her hair hinted at extravagance. Three hours, it had taken the hairdresser – three hours, a welter weight of hairpins and the better part of a canister of hairspray – to arrange it in Grecian style with a trio of sparkling bands pulling it back into a deconstructed bun with loose, artful curls trailing down her neck.

A sudden squeal of feedback rang out across the long, high-ceilinged gallery, followed by the sound of tapping over the PA system. At the far end of the room, Stefan’s friend and office manager James MacGregor was testing the microphone. James’s father was an auctioneer at Sotheby’s and his son had clearly picked up some tricks of the trade. Dressed in an immaculate white dinner jacket and looking entirely at ease behind the rostrum, he recited from his notes, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is James MacGregor and I’ll be your host this evening.’ He glanced at the sound man, who rolled his hand to indicate he should keep talking. ‘Thanks to the generosity of the late Marquess’s many friends, as well as the friends of Arborage and the Royal Marsden, we have a veritable cornucopia of covetable items to offer you tonight…’

The sound man gave a thumbs up and James tucked his notes back into the breast pocket of his tuxedo. As he stepped down from the lectern, a familiar, raspy voice at Luna’s side groused, ‘This titty tape is
killing
me.’

Luna stifled a laugh and turned to look at Nancy, resplendent in a black, backless, halter-neck dress. Her friend was in town that week for meetings with some of her UK clients, but the minute she heard about the ball she wasted no time in 1) inviting herself, 2) muscling her way onto Stefan’s planning team for the event and 3) dragging Luna out on a whirlwind hairdressing expedition.

‘This is your first big shindig as a Marquess’s fiancée,’ she insisted that afternoon when Luna objected to all the back combing her hair was being subjected to. ‘You need to look the part.’ Predictably, however, when the time came for Nancy’s breasts to be lashed to the proverbial yardarm, Luna was promptly demoted from aristocrat-in-waiting to wardrobe assistant.

‘Tighter!’ Nancy exhorted as Luna crouched in front of her naked torso, lingerie tape in hand. ‘No, tighter than that. Zero movement, that’s what we’re going for here.’

Luna frowned with concentration, devoting herself to her task, while Nancy extended her left hand, which was currently sporting Luna’s engagement ring. ‘I’ll say this for Stefan, he’s got good taste in jewellery,’ she observed, reluctantly removing the ring and handing it back to Luna, who smiled wryly. As ever, Nancy wasn’t one to let her ongoing grudge against Stefan obscure the really important issues, like colour, cut and clarity.

‘There.’ Luna rocked back on her heels and studied her handiwork. ‘How’s that?’

Running her hands along her taped breasts, Nancy jumped up and down a few times, then nodded her satisfaction. ‘Help me into the dress,’ she instructed.

Two hours later, guests were beginning to arrive on the terrace adjoining the Orangery, where catering staff were now circulating with trays of champagne. Still, there was no sign of the Marchioness or her daughters, and Luna’s stomach roiled at the prospect of seeing them.

‘Everything okay?’ James enquired, sidling up to Luna and Nancy, his brown wavy hair falling onto his forehead. Nancy quickly grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, handing one to him. ‘It is now,’ she said, chinking her flute against his.

Although Nancy had not admitted as much, Luna strongly suspected that following the oral sex-related revelations during his birthday weekend, her on-off relationship with Robert had reverted to ‘off’ mode. How else to interpret the house on fire swiftness with which her friend and James, two people who’d never met before this week, were getting on? Nancy in particular had been delighted with their undercover assignment for the evening.

‘It’s like you’re Lord Peter Wimsey and I’m Harriet Vane!’ she’d declared to James when Luna sat down with them for a final briefing in the late afternoon, to a brief, game smile from James.

The chamber orchestra on the terrace outside began warming up for the evening, and Luna was reminded that she, too, had a role to play that night. Swallowing her nerves, she straightened her shoulders and walked toward the terrace to begin playing it.

Fortunately, many of the first guests to arrive were well-known to her, trustees and other long-time acquaintances of the Marchioness. She was talking to one of them, a businessman and friend of the Marquess’s, when Lady Wellstone finally joined the party, looking regal in a black satin sheath and matching bolero jacket, her silver bob shining beneath the Chinese lanterns strung out over the terrace. To Luna’s dismay, she found her heart trampolining in her chest at the sight of her former boss, now her… what? Future in-law? Adversary in waiting? And Luna’s apprehension only grew when Isabelle floated across the lawn a few minutes later, followed closely by Helen.

The only person missing from the festivities was Luna’s fiancé, called away on urgent business, to the great unhappiness of Lady Wellstone. The pair of them had had a testy exchange that morning, wherein the Marchioness accused Stefan of failing to take his new responsibilities seriously.

‘You cannot simply palm your social obligations off on your fiancée. She isn’t ready for it,’ the Marchioness had argued.

To which Stefan had replied succinctly, ‘I will accept no lectures from you on either my obligations or my fiancée.’

Lady Wellstone was right, of course. Luna
wasn’t
ready. As guests continued to filter onto the terrace, she felt an entirely unexpected rush of longing for parties past, when she’d been expected to be no more than Lady Wellstone’s silent ‘shadow’. Perhaps the Marchioness felt the same, for as Luna exchanged pleasantries with St John Marsh, Arborage’s longest serving trustee, she came to join them. Standing beside her ex-employer, physically closer to her than she’d been for the past six months, Luna fancied she could hear the silent thoughts the older woman was sending her way.
I know you, my dear
.
Don’t imagine for a second that I don’t
.

‘You’ll have heard about Luna’s engagement to Stefan,’ the Marchioness was saying, dragging Luna back from her musings.

‘I hadn’t,’ St John said, looking between the two women in some surprise.

‘It’s wonderful news, during such a sad time,’ Lady Wellstone said, smiling genially. Impossible to know whether the smile was genuine, or just the Marchioness doing what she did best, playing the charming hostess, single-handedly generating party buzz better than Luna could ever hope to do. Luna began to suspect the latter as news of the engagement spread across the terrace like wildfire and she found herself besieged by well-wishers. How she wished then that she had Stefan, her shield, her protector, with her to deflect some of the attention.

Not to be. For at that moment, if all was going according to plan, he was just under a mile away, sitting in the driver’s seat of a horse box, parked on the road leading to the equestrian centre.

The chamber orchestra struck up the opening waltz of the evening and Helen’s husband Mark approached Lady Wellstone to request the first dance. Helen, looking extremely uncomfortable in her black organza dress, headed toward the punch table, only to be intercepted by James, who smilingly requested a dance. Helen would have liked to refuse, Luna could see, but how to say no to those lovely, melting brown eyes of his? Off she went with him to the dance floor.

St John Marsh did the gentlemanly thing, then, extending his arm to Luna. ‘May I have the pleasure, Miss Gregory?’

‘I can’t promise you it
will be
a pleasure, Mr Marsh,’ Luna laughed self-deprecatingly, ‘but I shall try my very best not to step on your toes.’

She finished her first dance and began her second, a foxtrot this time, with a partner so energetic it was all she could do to keep up with him. She caught a glimpse of Nancy, however, engaging Mark Waverley in flirtatious conversation whilst surreptitiously glancing at her mobile. From the slight nod her friend directed at her, Luna knew that phase two of tonight’s plan had been enacted by their head of security.

For the next hour, as Luna employed every last one of the deportment lessons she’d endured at St Catherine’s Preparatory School for Girls, Nancy and James launched a no-holds-barred charm offensive on Helen and Mark Waverley. One which Mark seemed only too happy to endure, judging from the animated expression on his face as he and Nancy cut a swathe across the dance floor.

James was clearly finding Mark’s wife a tougher nut to crack. Marriage and the subsequent procreation of two children notwithstanding, Helen Wellstone-Waverley had little truck for male companionship. ‘He’s in trouble,’ Nancy observed to Luna during a break between dances, watching James standing across the terrace with Helen and some of her horsey friends. His target was distracted, it was plain to see, frequently checking her mobile for messages, frowning to find none.

‘Give him a chance,’ Luna replied. ‘He has a secret weapon.’

A weapon he’d just decided to deploy, if Luna was any judge. For in that split second, James adjusted his glasses and said something that caught Helen’s attention. And that of her horsey friends, judging by the way they suddenly moved closer to him, like moths to a flame. Helen, too, was leaning toward him, eager to catch his words.
Smiling
, even.

The two of them walked past moments later, horsey set in train, talking a mile a minute. ‘…he’s actually a very down-to-earth chap, no airs and graces with him,’ James was saying, eliciting a nod of enthusiastic assent from Helen. Nancy turned to Luna in mystification, but Luna simply nodded in the direction of Mark Waverley, who was heading their way, a pair of drinks in hand and a spring in his step only New York’s hottest PR exec could inspire.

‘Once more into the breach,’ Nancy winked, and sashayed off to meet him, lips parting in a dazzling smile.

The younger Wellstone sister, meanwhile, camped with a dozen or so of her Chelsea friends in a corner of the gallery, neither dancing nor mixing. Dressed like an exotic swan in a form-fitting Vera Wang gown, with Tarquin glued to her side, Isabelle appeared instead to be indulging in her favourite blood sport: laughing and whispering with her friends, looking down their perfect noses at everyone in the room who wasn’t as tawny and Botoxed and bronzed as them.

Sometime later, Luna stood behind a few of them in the queue for the loo and listened to them engage in desultory conversation. God, they were boring. ‘I don’t know how Bella stood growing up out here in the middle of nowhere. I can’t even get one bar on my phone,’ drawled one ochre-hued brunette, prompting a deluge of concurrence from her companions. All holding their glowing but inoperative phones aloft, their hopes of sharing photos of the wonderful time they were having with the wider world dashed.

Luna knew a moment’s trepidation then. For these people were now an unavoidable part of her future, pampered trust fund babies with whom she would be forced to socialise when she became Stefan’s wife. She wondered if this was a life she could ever be truly at home in. Or Stefan, for that matter. Oh, he could play the part of Marquess with the same louche abandon as his predecessor, but that wasn’t
really
what he was, was it?

No, her Stefan was a man of action. By now Ashley would have given him the signal to drive into the horse yard, and the two of them along with two members of the security team would be in the midst of loading Helen’s five horses into the wagon. That being the crux of Stefan’s plan: stop Helen’s occupation of the stables before it started by clandestinely removing her remaining horses and locking her out.

The orchestra was just finishing a Viennese waltz when Nancy came and stood beside Luna at the edge of the terrace, raising a reassuring hand. ‘Don’t worry. He’s gone to fetch me another drink.’

‘And…?’

‘Hook, line and sinker,’ Nancy grinned. ‘Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so floored by a little female attention. He must not be getting any at home.’

Luna nodded and glanced around the terrace. ‘Have you seen James?’

‘Last I looked, he was at a table inside, with Helen practically sitting on his knee. He’s a bit of a dark horse, that one. I don’t usually go for beta men, but in his case I might make an exception…’ Nancy trailed off speculatively, lifting a single, perfectly contoured eyebrow at Luna.

Right on cue, James’s amplified voice rung out from inside the French doors. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests, if you would care to join me for the auction portion of our evening, cheque books at the ready?’

Partygoers began to filter into the Orangery, and James continued, ‘Before I start the bidding, we are aware of the problems with phone reception many of you have been experiencing and are working to resolve this. I am reliably informed that there is reception at the main house, if you care to make the ten-minute walk there.’ He smiled impishly, brushing the hair away from his forehead. ‘I advise against it, however, as you may miss the incredible opportunities to benefit the Royal Marsden I am about to offer you.’