Lord and Master (35 page)

‘Things will be different now, believe me. I'll be spending more time here, and I'll have more time for you,' he promised her, and Luna nodded into his neck.

‘You'll be late for your call with Gus,' she said eventually, kissing his jaw and lifting her fingers to his nape, savouring the scent of him.

‘Ever the efficient PA,' he said lightly.

‘Well,' she smiled wanly, ‘you knew what I was when you fell in love with me.' To which Stefan laughed and lifted her against him.

‘Walk back with me?' he asked.

Luna shook her head. ‘I think I'll stay out here a while longer.'

She watched him walk back towards the house, his feet making prints in the virgin snow. Then she lifted her scarf over her head again and walked back herself, skirting the exterior of the west wing and making her way to the portico, where the estate driver was parked in the Jaguar.

‘Thanks for waiting for me,' she said as she got into the back seat.

‘Not a problem, miss. It's going to be a nasty night. I wouldn't want you trying to get to the station on your own.'

He began to drive and Luna turned to look out the rear window as they drew away from Arborage, where her letter of resignation lay on her desk and her personal belongings sat boxed on the floor of her sitting room, awaiting collection by a storage company in the morning. The house looked beautiful in the floodlights, the falling snow making it look hazy, almost dreamlike as it receded into the distance.

She couldn't stay. Of course she couldn't. The Marchioness would understand that, but Stefan…

Luna turned away from the rear window. Tears were streaming down her cheeks now. The driver glanced with concern in his rear-view mirror and she shook her head at him.
It's okay. Just keep driving.

And then Luna buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

‘I want one of you to tell me what the
hell
is going on here,' Sören was shouting at Augusta and Stefan in the sitting room of the family's private quarters. It was Sunday morning, the morning after their call with the board. Augusta was sat tight-lipped on one of the sofas and Stefan was standing next to the window, unshaven and exhausted, looking out on the snowy lawn below.

He had spent a sleepless night searching for Luna. Halfway through the conference call with Gus, he'd started to get a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Excusing himself, he'd run all the way up to her sitting room, opening the door to find three neat boxes, carefully labelled, her bedroom denuded of all her personal effects except the pink silk cord that had come with her roses.

The estate driver had been unable to tell him anything more than that he'd left her at the train station in Newbury, at her request. Though when pressed he gave Stefan a hard look and added, ‘She was crying her eyes out in the back of that car, sir.'

He had known desperation then. Wild, helpless desperation.

‘You led me to believe that Florian was stepping down of his own volition,' his father was saying to Augusta, pacing agitatedly in front of the fireplace. ‘That he had “skeletons in his closet” that made it impossible for him to become Marquess. And now I find instead that you have blackmailed him. And drawn my son into your dirty little game. When what you should have done is taken the evidence your investigator uncovered straight to the police, and damn the scandal.'

‘I did what I did to protect Arborage,' Augusta said obdurately, clasping her hands on her lap.

‘How is it protecting Arborage to leave Florian in play, free to continue dripping poison in your daughters' ears? Do you honestly think he will crawl quietly into a corner and stay there, after what you have done? You have absolutely no idea what you're playing at,' Sören said, shaking his head contemptuously.

‘And then there's that poor girl,' he continued, pointing in the direction of the office downstairs. ‘That girl who would do anything for the two of you. And you let her. You took advantage of her loyalty.'

‘Oh, come now, Sören,' Augusta said peevishly. ‘Luna is an adult—'

‘He almost
raped
her, Augusta!' Sören thundered, slamming his fist onto the coffee table in front of her. Stefan released a fraught, inarticulate noise at this and his father turned on him. ‘Too late for that now.' He looked between the two of them with disgust. ‘It's a bad business, this,' he concluded. ‘I wish you no happiness from it.'

Stefan had found Luna's work phone, laptop and tablet all neatly piled on her desk, along with a brief letter of resignation saying she had to leave for personal reasons. And so she slipped through his fingers. He had no idea where she was, or how to find her. His only connection to her had been through Arborage, he realised with some shame – he didn't even know if she had a personal email account. He could call Jem or Kayla, he supposed, beg them for news of her. But he didn't, knowing that she would hate him for involving them.

His father seemed to regret his harshness later, when the two of them sat together in the Dower House, Stefan riddled with guilt and regret.

‘I blame myself for this,' Sören said. ‘I should have suspected something when Augusta first came to me to talk about Florian. I, who knew her better than anyone. I should have asked more questions…'

He gave his son no comfort on the matter of Luna, however.

‘When you told me you were seeing her, I was of two minds. First, I was glad, but then…Luna is a serious girl, Stefan, the kind who doesn't love lightly. And you have never been serious about women.'

But his father was wrong. Stefan couldn't even find the words to tell him how wrong he was. He thought back to the moment when he had first recognised Luna, standing dripping wet in the garden. How he had laughed, not out of a lack of seriousness, but out of sheer joy, that there was a reason he'd felt a connection with her from the moment he had seen her in the farm shop. She was the
arg flicka
, and she belonged to him.

He had pursued her single-mindedly after that, so certain was he that they were destined to be together. Even Augusta's dire warnings of Luna's mental fragility in the wake of her parents' deaths hadn't put him off – indeed, this very fragility, combined with her quiet reserve, had drawn him towards her. That and her honesty, her complete inability to play games.
You look beautiful too.
He'd known even before the first time they made love that it would be special, and she hadn't disappointed him – he'd literally never experienced anything like it, the way she made him feel. She unmanned him without even trying, without even realising her power over him.

Power. That was what it came down to. Her unwitting power over him, his desire for power over her. The power Augusta had over them both, power she had used to set them at cross purposes, drive them apart. And the power of love, to which he had been so completely unwilling to yield that he had shut Luna out of every part of his life he deemed off limits.

He thought about their final conversation in the garden. He had come into it determined that it was an argument he must win. Goaded by her initial coldness, he'd kept at her and kept at her until he broke her. God forgive him, he'd even silently exulted when he saw her shoulders sag, heard her say,
You're right. I'm being unfair.

Now, too late, he saw the conversation through Luna's eyes. Not as an argument, but as the final step in a decision-making process. She had already concluded that she had to leave the Marchioness; she'd come to the garden to decide if she was leaving him as well. She had given him every chance to make a concession, and gotten nothing in return. Could he admit that he had been wrong to conceal his agreement with Augusta from her? No, he could not. That his obsession with work and his own selfish concerns had put her off seeking his help with Florian? No. No, in fact, he'd as much as blamed her for remaining silent.

And worst of all, could he convince her that of course she came first in his life, that if she doubted it he was prepared to do anything it took to make her believe? No.
You knew what I was like when you got involved with me
, he'd chided her, watching her break in front of him, and taking satisfaction from breaking her.

And now she was out there somewhere, alone, crying for him.
But you. You told me you loved me.
The possibility that she believed he didn't, that she thought loving her had been a game he'd played in his spare time, tore a hole in his chest.

He would prove to her that she was wrong. She couldn't hide forever, not even his elusive Luna. Her severance payments from Arborage had to go somewhere, and her bike still sat in the barn. She would reveal herself to him eventually, and if she didn't, he would track her until he found her.

He would get her back. That was all that mattered.

Kait lives on a farm in Lancashire, England with her husband, four children, one dog and one cat. Like Luna, she makes her living as a PA.

Lord and Master is Kait's debut novel, the first in a trilogy. The second book in the series, Her Master's Servant, is due for publication by late-2015.

www.kaitjagger.com