Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (6 page)

‘We thought you weren’t coming,’ drawled Girl Number 1 in a Sloane accent, her lips pouting in remembered disappointment.

‘Yet here I am,’ Stefan said lightly. His voice as smooth and self-assured as ever, its slight Nordic inflection serving only to heighten its impact, to Luna at least.

Luna, meanwhile, stood clutching her clipboard, silent, shunned witness to all this, completely unable to speak and wishing she could sink into the grass underneath her feet. To her immense relief, Nancy sauntered over at this point and took the clipboard from her hands, enquiring sweetly of the two girls, ‘Are you two sure you’re supposed to be here? Do your mothers know you’re out this late?’

He turned to her then. It was dark, too dark to see the colour of his azure eyes upon her, but she felt his heat even from two feet away, and when he took a step closer she smelled his cologne, the cologne she knew so well. The smell of him.

Glancing around quizzically, Stefan frowned and said, ‘Miss Gregory, what are you doing? You are no longer in Arborage’s employ.’ Luna flinched at his brusque tone before she could stop herself. And still she couldn’t respond, couldn’t speak to him. Perhaps he saw the effect his words had on her, or perhaps he was just playing the charming host, because he added in a more convivial manner, ‘You are our guest.’

Luna cleared her throat and managed, ‘You appear to be short-staffed. Nancy and I are just filling in.’

‘No, I’m sorry, girls, I can’t seem to find you on the guest list,’ Nancy was saying in a voice so treacly it made Luna’s teeth ache. ‘And, I mean, really, don’t you two have school tomorrow morning?’

As the girls began to protest, Stefan swivelled his head around and enquired silkily, ‘What seems to be the problem?’

Girl Number 2 mewled, ‘This American woman here says she can’t find us on the guest list.’

‘Well,’ Stefan said with a smile, ‘we can fix that. I would be honoured if the two of you would come as my personal guests.’

‘Ah, of course, if your Uncle Stefan vouches for you that’s okay then,’ Nancy said with saccharine-coated venom.

‘Nancy,’ Stefan nodded, eyes glinting. ‘As always, it’s a delight to see you.’ And then he offered his arms to the two girls and off they went into the marquee.

Luna looked at Nancy. Nancy looked at Luna. Inside the marquee, music began to play. The Jackson Five, if Luna wasn’t mistaken. Nancy handed Luna her flask, which Luna lifted to her lips. And drained.

Perhaps it was only a coincidence, but moments after Stefan entered the marquee, Emma from Events came running out, full of apologies, and Luna and Nancy were finally able to join the party.

The marquee was really two tents, one small anteroom and an adjacent, much larger ballroom. Entering the anteroom, they found it decked out with life-sized cardboard figures of the main characters, as well as no less than six large LED screens streaming scenes from the game. Luna had seen this sort of thing at Rod and Jem’s offices in Shoreditch before, but the scenes she was looking at now were much more extensive.

She’d have liked to take a closer look, but Nancy was dragging her toward the main room, declaring, ‘I need a drink.’ Luna paused at the coat check area to hand in her battered North Face backpack, which she’d been lugging around with her all day.

‘What room are you staying in?’ asked the young man behind the desk, who Luna vaguely remembered as an intern in Rod and Jem’s office. When she looked at him blankly, he whipped out a tablet and pulled up a floor plan of Arborage’s west wing bedrooms, done in
Remainers
style complete with Nazis roaming the hallways. There were names, including Jem and Rod’s, against several of the rooms.

‘That is incredibly cool,’ Luna marvelled, ‘but I’m not staying the night. I just need to leave my bag here.’

The main tent, too, had been specially decorated, with a trestle table along one end laden with food and candelabras, and branches dripping with Spanish moss reaching up to the top of the tent. There was the usual bar and dance floor as well, though no one was dancing.

Luna estimated that there were around 250 people present, most in costume. Numerous tuxedo-clad Marquesses, several Anthonys, some household staff, and a surprising number of Elles, to Nancy’s clear annoyance. It appeared that almost all of Rod Studios’ staff, including Rod himself, who was standing near the food table talking to someone Luna didn’t recognise, had opted to dress as lake creatures in various states of decay. Luna smiled and nudged Nancy, nodding in the direction of Kayla, who had also come dressed as a lake creature and was sitting on a gangly programmer’s knee for a photo, their combined bracken becoming tangled together.

‘I’ll get us some drinks,’ Nancy shouted over the strains of Take That as Luna made a beeline toward Jem’s family.

Later, after Jem’s dad had insisted on taking copious photos of Jem, Luna, Nancy and Kayla together, Luna put her arm around Jem and observed, ‘This party is pretty amazing, Jemima Evangeline.’

‘Yes, but…’ Jem scanned the room unhappily and Luna could tell immediately what was bothering her. The room looked incredible, and there were some amazing costumes, but it all felt a little… tame. Maybe just the slightest bit flat. Sometimes that happened – heaven knew she’d seen it often enough during her time at Arborage, parties the Marchioness had hosted that hadn’t quite taken off. And some that had, despite inauspicious beginnings. It was alchemy, from what Luna could tell, what made an event like this successful or not.

But she hated to see the worried look on her friend’s face, so she said encouragingly, ‘I really love what you’ve done in the anteroom.’

‘It was a struggle to get it ready in time, with no help from Arborage,’ Jem replied with tight lips, and again, Luna felt like she was directing this toward
her
. She was just opening her mouth to protest that she didn’t work here anymore when Kayla gave her a wide-eyed shake of her head.

‘She is completely bricking it,’ Kayla said moments later when she managed to pull Luna and Nancy aside. ‘She thinks the party is a failure and she’s let Rod down.’

‘But that’s silly,’ Luna protested as the strains of ‘Lady Marmalade’ began to play in the background.

‘Right,’ said Nancy, downing the rest of her drink and slamming the glass down on a nearby table. ‘Looks like it’s up to us, ladies.’

With that, she strode off toward the dance floor, leaving Luna and Kayla staring in her wake. Only to turn back after five yards and bark, ‘Well, come on!’ Continuing on her way, she grabbed a tall, weedy fellow dressed incongruously in a Tommen outfit and directed, ‘You, dance with her over there,’ pointing to Kayla.

Next, Nancy collared the man talking with Rod. Sweeping her hand toward Luna, she said, ‘This lady needs a dance partner.’ Luna smiled apologetically at the man, who was dressed in a Nazi uniform with fake blood and brains plastered all over the right side of his face (she later learned that Stefan had stipulated attendees could only come dressed as Nazis if they had their heads blown off). To his credit, he clicked his heels and offered Luna his hand.

Nancy found her own partner on the edge of the dance floor, drinking a lager with his mates. One of the garden staff, if Luna wasn’t mistaken.

‘I don’t dance,’ he immediately demurred, holding his hands up. Only for Nancy to reach up and clasp one of them. ‘I’ll teach you,’ she assured him, backing toward the floor, coaxing him along with her.

Midway through the song Nancy’s ploy began to work as others moved toward the floor and the mood in the room shifted up a gear. By the time Patti LaBelle segued improbably into Blur, there were several other couples dancing. Not Stefan, Luna could see; he was talking with her other closest friend on staff, Arborage’s press officer Caitlin Murray. His eyes swung in her direction and she imagined, for a moment, that he was looking at her. But then the moment passed.

For the better part of the next hour, Luna danced pretty much constantly, either with Jem’s sisters or with Kayla and Nancy, or with the surprising number of men who approached to ask her. She began to realise that there was a reason for this when she saw Kayla pointing one in her direction.

When she’d finished dancing with him, Luna grabbed two glasses of champagne and headed over to Kayla, who was leaning against a large, decorative tree trunk, toying with her green braids.

‘Hey,’ said Luna, handing Kayla a glass.

‘Hey,’ said Kayla.

They stood and sipped, watching a lake creature dance by with a housemaid. Stefan was dancing too now, with one of the teenagers from earlier. Forcing herself to keep her eyes on him, instead of succumbing to her overpowering desire to turn away, Luna enquired, ‘You up to something, missus?’

Kayla studied her black talons and said laconically, ‘Might be.’

‘Because so far tonight I’ve danced with a Nazi, a butler, two Marquesses and an Anthony.’

‘Make that three Marquesses,’ Kayla grinned as Roland sashayed his way over to Luna and offered his hand. Pursing her lips at Kayla, Luna allowed Roland to usher her out to the dance floor, right next to Stefan and his dance partner, who looked like a) those heels were really starting to hurt and b) she was imagining herself as the next Mrs Stefan Lundgren.

And it felt… okay, dancing next to him. It helped that Roland was such an ebullient partner, frequently leaning in to shout something in Luna’s ear or laugh with her at a shared joke. The dress helped too. Despite her misgivings about the colour, something about the way it fit, with its deep, low back, tight skirt and form-fitting bodice, changed the way she moved, emboldening her in interesting ways.

Again, she imagined that Stefan was watching her, just as she was him. She imagined, though she didn’t know for sure, that he had been watching her all night. She swore she’d felt his eyes upon her.

She acknowledged to herself, of course she did, that it could just be wishful thinking on her part. A likelihood that seemed confirmed when the music cut out and Isabelle Wellstone strode out onto the raised dais at the end of the marquee, microphone in hand, and gestured for Stefan to join her.

Lady Wellstone’s youngest daughter looked absolutely stunning in her pink flapper outfit, a perfect facsimile of the dress worn by the dead Marchioness in
Remainers
. Studying Isabelle’s lush mouth painted into a cupid’s bow and her blond hair arranged in glossy waves under a jewel encrusted headband, Luna wished that she herself had dressed as something,
anything
else. Stefan came to join his second cousin, throwing his arm over her shoulder, and Isabelle slid her hand under his jacket and around his waist, tucking her beautiful head into his chest. The perfect couple.

Taking the microphone, Stefan announced, ‘Ladies, gentlemen… decapitated Nazis.’ A laugh from the crowd. ‘My cousin Isabelle and I and the entire crew from Rod Studios would like to thank you for coming tonight. We have had quite a job, Isabelle, Rod, Jem and I, judging the costumes this evening.’ Handing the microphone back to Isabelle, Stefan reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

Motioning to him, Isabelle said, ‘Of course, I think we can all agree on who the best Marquess is,’ to more laughs from the crowd and a scattering of applause. Then she leaned into him, taking his arm, her head touching his as she made a show of studying the list of winners with him.

It was too much. Luna turned away, stomach churning, and walked through the crowd, appalled that the sight of them together had this effect on her. She tried her best to shove Stefan and Isabelle into her apothecary chest, practically tasting the viscous green goo that oozed out from the edges of a drawer that refused to shut. She was almost choking on it by the time she entered the anteroom.

The air was fresher out there, though, and after a minute her breathing returned to normal. She felt a nudge at her elbow and turned to find Nancy holding a shot out toward her. Nancy looked at Luna. Luna looked at Nancy. And downed her shot.

They stayed in the anteroom while the costume winners were announced, looking at the video screens and various
Remainers
paraphernalia on display. As often happened at parties Nancy attended, like moths to a flame, others began to filter into the room. She and Luna were talking to the young man from the coat check desk, looking at the map of Arborage on his tablet with him, when Kayla shouted, ‘Lou! Luna, get over here!’

She was standing with a hirsute, chubby lake creature in front of one of the video screens, pointing avidly at something on the screen. As Luna walked over to join them, Kayla laughed, ‘Recognise anything?’

The image on the screen was of the character Elle walking through the formal gardens, shotgun in hand, Nazi on the run in front of her. Luna looked at it, then at Kayla. Her fellow lake creature, who Luna recognised as one of Rod’s designers, had an uncomfortable expression on his face and his plump cheeks were bright red.

‘Um—’ Luna began quizzically.

‘It’s your
arse
, Luna!’ Kayla exclaimed. ‘Scott here has used
your
bottom as a model.’

Luna was speechless. She turned to Scott and lifted an eyebrow.

‘I, uh, well… you used to come to the office to see Jem, and you had this black skirt…’ Scott’s voice was cracking and beads of sweat were forming on his forehead.

‘Yes,’ Luna said, watching Elle’s posterior as she moved into the maze. Kayla pointed a remote at the screen and froze the image. ‘I know the skirt you’re talking about.’ She knew it because there it was, her black pencil skirt. And her arse, apparently.

‘They say,’ Kayla gasped, ‘they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’

‘It was meant with the greatest respect,’ Scott added earnestly. ‘An homage.’

‘To your
arse
!’ Kayla hooted, clutching her side. Despite herself, Luna felt her lips twitching.

So Scott got off easy, in the end – even when he explained the lengths he and his colleagues had gone to in order to take surreptitious photos of her from behind. It was all so absurd, Luna had to see the funny side. She even tolerated it when, after Kayla had insisted on taking a snap of them standing in front of his handiwork, Scott’s hand lingered on her hip somewhat longer than it should have.