Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (9 page)

‘Tell me you love me!’ he cried, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. When she didn’t reply, he shook her again, till her head snapped on her neck. ‘Tell me you still love me!’

‘I still love you,’ she wept, as his lips came crushing back down on hers, and saliva, and tears and blood passed between them. His arms were around her now, her breasts full against his chest. She wrapped her legs around him and tilted her pelvis up toward his, begging, ‘Please, please…’ till he entered her, filling her even as his tongue filled her mouth.

He rode her till the darkness finally stretched so thin it broke, and grey dawn crept across the room. Till his silent, shuddering orgasm ebbed into an exhausted sleep; his head on her chest, nose pressed against her breast.

*

Fully dressed now, Luna phoned a taxi company and arranged for a pick-up at the front portico in ten minutes. She found an invitation to the day care centre opening Stefan was attending with Isabelle on the bedside table. Festivities started at 10am. Glancing over at Stefan, who remained dead to the world, she picked up his phone, entering his security code (the day and month he cut the ribbon on his first office in Stockholm). She set his alarm for, what, 9.15? Just enough time for a lightning shower and coffee with Isabelle before the drive into Deersley.

She sat down beside him on the bed for a final time and placed the phone beside his pillow. He was dreaming again, she could tell, his eyeballs tracking back and forth under his lids. A bad dream, she thought. His brows were knitting together and his fingers were twitching on the bedspread. He mumbled something in his sleep and twisted under the covers.

She placed her hand on his cheek and he immediately stilled. She stroked his dark blond hair away from his forehead and the flickering in his eyelids began to slow, then stopped. He sighed and turned in the bed, throwing his arm over her knee.

Luna had been foolish at the party the night before, to suppose for even a second that she and Stefan could be friends. They could not. She was still in love with him. And now that love had become something twisted, where all they seemed to be able to do was hurt each other.

She knew what he would think, that she was running again. But she couldn’t bear to wake him and risk the hurt starting all over again, or worse, discover that he’d had his fill of hurting her, and was finished with her now.

It was foggy when she exited the portico to find her taxi waiting for her. So foggy that she almost missed the sleeping form on a bench beside the drive. Asking the driver to pull over, she found Ashley Eccles, drenched in dew, his tuxedo, well… he wouldn’t be getting his deposit back on it, put it that way. Taking pity, she had the taxi driver make a detour to drop him off at the stables.

It seemed the least she could do for the poor boy, who was going to have one hell of a hangover.

*

‘But we’re all having brunch at my parents’,’ Jem was saying on the phone. She’d rung as Luna made her way through security at Heathrow. ‘Didn’t Nancy tell you?’ Yes, Luna thought, Nancy had told her, but she’d been clear from the start that she had to leave early the morning after the party.

‘I’m sorry, Jem,’ she said, picking her backpack up off the conveyor belt. The beginnings of a headache thrummed between her eyes. She was too tired for this.

‘My mum’s laid on all kinds of food, and Dad’s making Bloody Marys and
everything
,’ Jem was protesting, when all of a sudden there was a commotion on the other end of the line.

‘Give me the bloody phone,’ she could hear Kayla saying, followed by a clunk and some rattling. ‘Hey, babe,’ Kayla announced, ‘Jem’ll ring you back.’ And hung up.

Luna was in her seat on the plane by the time Jem phoned again, her tone abject. ‘Kay and Nancy have just been telling me what a complete and utter bitch I am.’

‘You’re not,’ Luna assured her. ‘You’ve just been stressed.’

‘No, I’ve been a party-zilla. Kayla says I can forget about her ever being a bridesmaid for me if this is what it’s going to be like.’

‘But it was worth it, right?’ Luna said, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers to her brow, dearly wishing she had some paracetamol. ‘That was quite a party.’

Jem was silent for a moment. Then, ‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth about why you and Stefan broke up?’

‘Ah, Jem…’

‘You must think I’m the crappest, worst friend on earth.’

‘No, no. I just didn’t want you to think you had to… join Team Luna or anything, when Stefan’s been helping you and Rod so much.’

‘So instead I joined Team Stefan.’

‘No.’

‘I joined Team Stefan,’ Jem insisted, ‘and I was a piss-poor friend.’

‘You got
that
right,’ came Nancy’s voice in the background, and Luna could hear her and Kayla starting to cackle.

‘It doesn’t matter, Jem,’ Luna said. ‘Really it doesn’t.’

‘Do you not think…’ Jem hesitated. ‘I didn’t say anything because I thought it’d make you feel guilty, but he’s been so broken up, Luna. He doesn’t talk about it, but you can just tell. Is there no way you two could…?’

Luna felt a lump start to form in her throat. ‘The plane’s getting ready to take off, Jem. I have to go.’ She switched off her phone and turned to look out of the plane window into the mist on the runway. A tear ran down her cheek and she swiped it roughly away with her palm.

‘Are you alright, my dear?’ asked the little silver-haired lady in the seat next to her, offering her a tissue. And because her hair and voice, even the way she said ‘my dear’, reminded Luna so much of the Marchioness, she refused the tissue and turned away from her, ignoring the woman for the rest of the flight.

Luna was sitting with George on the settee in the Coupers’ living room, looking at a picture book of tractors, his current obsession.

‘This is a compact utility tractor,’ she read, pointing to a photo of a John Deere.

‘CUT!’ cried George, placing his tiny, chubby index finger and middle finger on either side of Luna’s wrist and pretending they were scissor blades.

The reason she’d come home early was that she’d promised Malcolm weeks ago that she would babysit on Saturday. It was his and Liv’s fourth wedding anniversary and he’d planned a surprise outing for the two of them. An outing that hadn’t gotten off to the best of starts when Luna appeared at their door late that afternoon.

‘But I don’t have any food ready for George,’ Liv protested, which Luna suspected was code for,
I cannot have this irresponsible woman looking after my precious boy.

It had taken some serious wheedling from Malcolm, plus a tortuous forty-five-minute drilling for Luna wherein Liv produced no less than three pages of notes, for the two of them to finally get her out of the door.

Liv was not entirely unjustified in her misgivings, Luna had to admit. Proceeding to completely ignore the list, she and George headed out under darkening skies, George in his tiny green boiler suit and down jacket and Luna in her off-white wool jumper and corduroys, for the temperature on Shetland was a good ten degrees colder than in Berkshire. Rain was forecast, but to Luna it felt cold enough to snow.

They had fed the pregnant ewes, whose diet Malcolm was supplementing, locked away the chickens for the night, and searched for trows, Shetland’s answer to fairies, getting extremely dirty in the process. And later, when George asked for some of his father’s oven chips, rather than the homemade vegetable loaf his mother had dug out of the freezer for him, Luna had acquiesced. Out of sheer badness.

And tiredness. For after her almost sleepless night, a three hour flight and an evening spent entertaining an energetic toddler, she was bone tired.

To cap off her thoroughly negligent foray into childcare, Luna sat down with George to watch a nature programme on telly and nodded off halfway through, waking to find him fast asleep on her chest. She quickly carried him up to his bed – no teeth brushing, the horror! – coming down the stairs just in time to greet Liv and Malcolm.

‘Nice time?’ she asked.

‘Very nice,’ said Liv, though Malcolm’s face told a different story.

She was almost breathless with fatigue by the time she climbed the cottage stairs to her bedroom a few minutes later. Despite the fact that she had immediately stoked up the Rayburn upon arriving home from the airport, the loft room was freezing cold. Stripping off her sweater, the itchiest in her collection, Luna tried to stop her teeth from chattering. A hot water bottle wouldn’t be enough tonight. She looked at the cast iron bath at the foot of her bed; maybe if she took the hottest bath she could tolerate, then jumped straight into bed?

Her body, her treacherous body that was still silently thanking her for the thorough shagging it got the night before, practically creaked and groaned as she lowered herself into the bath. How long of a dry spell was it in for now, she mused sadly, throwing her hair over the roll-top edge of the bath and sinking into the water. Now that she knew for sure that the only man she wanted in her bed was the one she couldn’t have.

*

Luna woke with a snort, heart hammering in her chest. Sitting up in the bath – the water was still hot, so she couldn’t have slept for long – she looked down to see her fingers raking her chest and immediately forced them to stop. She’d been scratching herself in her sleep, so ferociously that there was blood under her fingernails and livid scratch marks on her chest.

She quickly scooped water onto herself, wincing at the sudden sting. The wind was wailing outside and the darkened skylights were rattling above her. More hail.

Suddenly a loud pounding noise came from downstairs. The front door. Luna jumped and quickly stood up in the bath, sloshing water onto the floor. She could hear Castor and Pollux barking furiously below. They’ll have gotten out onto the road again, Luna thought, to the ire of some passing motorist.

Wrapping a towel around herself, she shouted, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ and skittered down the stairs, only to stumble on the final step, banging her elbow into the wall.

‘Ahhh,’ she moaned, an electric shock of pain running up her funny bone. Elbow throbbing and hands shaking, she undid the locks on the door and opened it. The wind immediately whooshed into the hallway, shaking the hanging herbs on the wall and whipping through Luna’s damp hair. Hail was pouring down outside, bouncing off the flagstone porch. Castor and Pollux, standing together outside the bungalow, were going mad, barking and howling in unison.

And there, standing on her porch, hair dripping wet and hail clinging to his jumper, was Stefan.

Luna stared at him in something like shock, the wind howling around them, until he finally shouted, ‘Luna, please. Let me in.’

She opened the door wider and stood to one side. Stefan turned briefly and waved toward the bungalow, where Luna saw Liv briefly lift her hand before retreating inside. Stefan shut the door behind him, and in the sudden stillness a posy of dried rosemary fell to the floor of the hall. Luna hugged her towel to her chest as he lifted his hand to his face, wiping the water out of his eyes.

‘Luna,’ he said finally. ‘Last night, that is not the way I want things to be between us.’

Luna looked at him uncomprehendingly, then looked outside, then back at him. ‘How did you—?’ she began, only for him to interrupt: ‘I’ve known where you were for a month now.’ Then sigh, ‘And I’ve been trying to get to you ever since.’

She swallowed, trying to take that in. Seeing the questions bubbling up in her, Stefan continued, ‘But first John was taken back to hospital, and I had to be there with Augusta, and then I had to stand in for her at the Association of Historic Homes conference. And when I came back from that, I found your motorcycle gone and I…’

He paused, closing his eyes at the memory of this. ‘So I booked myself on a flight to Sumburgh, ready to run all the way from the airport to you. But then Jem called and said she’d convinced you to come to the party, and was I going to be okay with that. And I said—’ He paused again, making an eager face and clenching his fists to indicate his response to Jem’s question. ‘I said, “Yes, Jem, that will be perfectly fine.”’

His tone was becoming almost singsong now, like he was telling himself a story he’d repeated in his head many times. ‘I said to myself, “Here is your opportunity, Stefan. Luna will come to the party and you will sit her down and make things right with her.” And, well, you saw how
that
turned out.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I stood across the room from you,
my
Luna, and watched as man after man at that party put his hands on you.’ He sighed again and shut his eyes, swaying slightly on his feet. When he opened them, Luna saw for the first time that they were bloodshot with exhaustion.

His voice going deadly quiet, he continued, ‘I woke up this morning and you were gone, of course. No more than I deserved. And you,’ he smiled, ‘set my alarm, like the efficient little PA you are. I thought, this time I will get to her, nothing will stop me. So I told Isabelle she would have to do the nursery opening on her own and I drove to Heathrow. Just in time for them to cancel all departing flights. Fog,’ he scowled. ‘England weather, against me as always.’

Gathering pace, Stefan lifted his hands and nodded purposefully. ‘So,’ he said, switching to the present tense, ‘I get back in the car and I drive, I drive like a lunatic all the way up the M1 to Edinburgh. I manage to catch an afternoon flight to Sumburgh. Which, you will not believe this, gets diverted to Aberdeen.
More
bad weather. Now, you see,
Scotland
is against me.’

‘Next thing I am pacing the airport in Aberdeen, tearing my hair out, when I see a sign for charter flights. And one hour later I am sitting in the passenger seat of the smallest plane I have ever seen, flying over the ocean with a pilot I can only assume must be a madman because the weather is so bad there is no way we should be out there. And I am thinking, “This is it,
this
is how I’m going to prove to Luna how much I love her, by dying in a plane crash at sea.”’

The hail on his jumper had melted, dripping into a puddle on the floor of the hallway. Stefan leaned back against the wall, eyes red rimmed, visibly shattered. ‘I want,’ he began, ‘to talk to you. I want to talk about those things you said in the garden at Arborage, before you left me. But I’m tired, Luna. So tired I can barely stand. I think I am beginning to hallucinate, even.’ He pointed to the door. ‘I swear I saw a two-headed dog out there.’

Running his hand through his still wet hair, he concluded, ‘What I want to do right now is go to bed with you.’ At her wary expression he added swiftly, ‘Just to sleep, I promise. I want to sleep beside you and tomorrow morning I want to wake up beside you. And then I want to talk.’

Luna hesitated, hardly knowing what to say after this flood of revelations. Stefan’s eyes closed again and his head fell against the wall with a loud thump. He jerked it up and rubbed the back of his skull forlornly.

He’s asleep on his feet, Luna thought, making up her mind. She pointed down the hall, ‘The bathroom is there.’ Then to the stairs. ‘My room is up there.’ Stefan exhaled in relief, kicked off his shoes, and immediately turned and began climbing the stairs.

Luna stood in the hall for some time, unsure what to do next. She picked up the dried rosemary and replaced it on its hook. She walked into the kitchen and, shivering, opened the choke on the Rayburn, throwing a few more pieces of anthracite into the fire. Out of habit, she filled a kettle and put it on the Rayburn to boil. Upstairs she heard the sound of water splashing. Stefan, helping himself to her bath, it sounded like.

Stefan Lundgren was in her bath. In her bedroom.

When the kettle boiled she poured it into her water bottle, as usual. She went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth for the second time that night, donning her flannel nightshirt. She returned to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, which she almost dropped when Stefan bellowed from above, ‘Luna!’ Calling her to bed.

She entered the bedroom to find Stefan lying naked in her bed, eyes shut, the last of the water draining out of the tub. She came and stood beside him and he opened one eye, scanning her up and down before homing in on the water bottle in her arms. Momentarily perplexed, his expression quickly turned to one of sheer distaste. Reaching out and grabbing it before she could stop him, he threw it across the room, where it fell with a flaccid thud.

Then his eyes fell on her. ‘What
are
you wearing?’

‘It’s a nightshirt. My, uh, boss, Dagmar gave it to me.’

‘Take it off.’

Luna scowled. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s freezing in here.’

Stefan rose on one arm. ‘
I
will keep you warm!’ he yelled, thumping his fist against his chest, looking so insulted and befuddled and bull-headed that Luna decided it wasn’t worth the fight. She pulled the nightshirt over her head and climbed into bed next to him.

He immediately placed his arm over her waist, pulling her butt into his lap. Tucking his knees into hers, he slid his warm feet over her icy ones, murmuring, ‘Otch, Luna,’ and rubbing his toes against hers.

Then he made a noise, almost like a little chirrup in the back of his throat, curled his hand against her stomach. And fell asleep.

*

The following morning at just gone 8am, Luna carefully carried a mug of coffee up the stairs, Stefan’s jumper tucked under her arm. She’d found it in a damp heap next to the tub when she woke a couple of hours earlier, so had taken it downstairs and hung it on the drying rack next to the Rayburn.

It was Stefan who had woken her, thrashing in his sleep. Another bad dream. All it had taken was her hand on his shoulder to quieten him, but as he fell back into a deep slumber, Luna found her mind whirring.

Stefan Lundgren was in her bed. Her sad, lonely bed.

Unable to sleep, she went down to the kitchen, brewed a pot of coffee and sat at the table with her laptop. She logged onto her personal email account to find a long email from Jem, which she decided to read later, plus several from Nancy featuring her blow-by-blow observations from the party. ‘When did you leave for the hotel, anyway?’ Again, Luna decided to respond to this later.

Finally, there was one from Kayla with the subject line ‘I’ve been a naughty, naughty girl’, to which she attached a link to every single photo she’d posted online on Friday. There were many of Luna, including one of her on the floor of Patrice’s loft in her bra and knickers, toothy grin on her face. Next, one of Patrice kneeling next to her, eyes fixed worshipfully on the curve of her hip (Kayla had included a helpful tagline for this:
He’s NOT GAY, Luna
). And many, many photos from the party of various swamp creatures copping a feel.

Yes, Kayla
had
been naughty, for Luna knew that Stefan was a follower of hers online, and could only cringe at what he must have thought, seeing those.

Having drunk two cups of coffee and checked out her usual news websites, Luna poured a cup for Stefan. If he was still sleeping, she reasoned, she would leave him be and go for a run.

But he was awake, just sitting up in bed as she opened the bedroom door and placed his jumper on the chair next to it, shrugging off her robe.

‘I brought you some—’ she began, stopping when she saw the look of horror on his face. ‘What?’ she asked in alarm.

‘Come here,
flicka
,’ he said, and Luna had to steel herself not to swoon at the use of his pet name for her. She came and sat on the bed, placing his mug of coffee on the bedside table. Stefan immediately reached for her, turning her to face him. Gingerly, he placed his hands on her shoulders, positioning his fingers over the livid bruises there, finding that the imprint matched. He looked down at her thighs, also bruised from where they’d been crushed against the vanity unit in James’s bathroom.