Lord and Master (16 page)

Option 3 additionally meant serious changes for the family, treating Arborage less as a personal playground and more as a business. Hunting should be managed by an outside contractor too, Stefan argued, which meant an end to Florian's petty cash generator. The equestrian centre he proposed scrapping, with the substantial grazing acreage occupied by Helen's horses converted to farmland.

Luna had no idea which option the Marchioness would support. Possibly some halfway house between Options 2 and 3. But there was no doubt that this was a serious presentation, which presented clearly thought out, logical choices for the estate. And made it clear that choices had to be made.

When Luna got to the door of the Dower House, she decided not to knock this time and instead let herself in. Removing her jacket, she began, ‘Hel—' but abruptly cut herself off when she saw that Stefan was asleep on the sofa. She quietly walked into the living room and sat down next to him. His laptop, dark and in standby mode, was open on the coffee table next to his ever-present notebook. Stefan's head was resting on the back of the sofa, up against a throw pillow, and for a moment Luna allowed herself the luxury of watching him sleep. He looked tired, with a greater beard growth than she'd ever seen on him previously. She had to resist the urge to rub his cheek and slide her fingers under his crisp white collar. His tie was folded neatly on the coffee table and she smiled, suspecting he had done this for her.

Luna debated whether to wake him with a kiss, but then looked at her watch and back at him. She thought about what she wanted to tell him about his presentation, and how it made her slightly nervous. Picking up his notebook and pen from the table, she composed a note.

Luna reread the note, looked at the ‘xx' and wondered if it was too much, decided she couldn't scribble it out without it looking weird, then added:

She left the notebook where she'd found it on the table and tiptoed out of the room, smiling to herself.

At just after nine the following morning, Luna's office phone rang, the display reading ‘Gift Shop'.

‘There's a gentleman here, I think he's a little lost. A James MacGregor?'

‘Ah, right,' Luna said. ‘Tell Mr MacGregor I'll come along to fetch him.'

She was dressed for maximum efficiency today, in her white silk blouse, pearls and black pencil skirt, hair in a topknot bun. Teamed with her black four-inch Ferragamo pumps and sheer black stockings, it was an outfit Luna was confident in. She liked the way her heels clicked along the portrait gallery's marble floor as she approached the Visitor Centre.

Entering the shop, she approached a bespectacled, thirty-something man standing in front of a photo montage near the glass entrance and extended her hand.

‘Good morning, James, I'm Luna.' The man started and did a gratifying double take. In her heels Luna was at least three inches taller than him; clearly, her power ensemble had had its desired effect. Pulling himself together, James MacGregor smiled and shook her hand. He had wavy brown hair and lovely, seal-like brown eyes and Luna warmed to him instinctively.

‘It's good to finally meet you. Stefan's told me a lot about you.' Luna raised her eyebrows and bit her lip dramatically –
oh no, that can't be good
– and James laughed, sounding a little relieved that she wasn't quite as scary as she looked. He nodded towards the photos. ‘Coming to the wrong entrance has actually been a good thing. I've gotten to look around a bit and watch your new visitor's welcome video.'

‘These are “making of” photos,' Luna said, pointing toward one of the Marquess and Marchioness talking with the director of the video while a lighting crew set up behind them on the Queen Charlotte lawn. ‘It was actually a very difficult video to shoot.' Not least because the Marquess showed up a mere half hour before filming began, fresh off a plane from Italy and looking like he'd come straight from an all-night party. The Marchioness had been livid, though the end result, including brief clips of them ‘topping and tailing' an introductory video of Arborage's history, revealed none of this turmoil.

‘Hey, that's you, isn't it?' James pointed to a very small photo in the corner of the montage, which showed just the back of Luna's head and a slight bit of her cheek as she stood in the portico, watching the Marchioness being filmed.

‘Yes, I think the photographer thought my hairstyle looked historic that day,' Luna observed dryly. ‘The ghost of Arborage past, or something like that.'

As she led James to the west wing, she quizzed him about his involvement with Stefan's business and it soon became clear that they'd known each other for a long time, since Stefan had spent a semester at Cambridge during his university days.

‘When he decided to open a London office he rang me up, and it's been pretty much non-stop work ever since,' James said, hastily adding, ‘Not that I'm complaining.'

‘Oh, don't worry,' Luna laughed. ‘I won't rat you out. I can well imagine
exactly
what it's been like. He never seems to slow down, does he? All I can say is I hope he pays you well.'

‘No worries on that score,' James assured her, adding just a little bit shyly, ‘I'm his “slide guru”, by the way.'

Lady Wellstone and Stefan were at her meeting table when Luna pushed open the door and ushered James in. Stefan was facing away from her, wearing a dark blue suit she hadn't seen before, but when he turned to look at them Luna's eyes were fixed on Lady Wellstone, doing the little, silent dance they sometimes did when she had guests. Luna looked at her watch again and lifted her shoulders slightly, and the Marchioness nodded.

The greeting of the board members was left to Luna and it was a task she enjoyed; she fancied she was good at it, welcoming guests to Arborage, ushering them through the main portico into the heart of the great house.

As Luna was showing St John Marsh into the conference room, Stefan and James came along from the office and she gave James, who looked a little nervous, a smile and a quick thumbs up. She didn't look at Stefan at all, for reasons that weren't entirely clear even to her.

Meeting underway, Luna returned to her desk. She spent the next hour or so working on mindless tasks, approving expenses and the like. She googled James MacGregor and discovered that he was single, he'd studied classical civilisation at Cambridge and his hobbies were travelling, skiing, and ‘spending way too much time on my Xbox'. The perfect friend for Stefan, she reckoned.

The meeting broke briefly at 12.30, when lunch was delivered. Luna ran along to the conference room to find the Marchioness sitting at the table on her mobile, Stefan standing near the projector talking with two of the board members, and James sat opposite Lady Wellstone shuffling through a pile of papers. She met James's eyes and he asked, ‘If I emailed you a couple of documents, could you print them off for me?'

‘Of course,' she said, standing up and heading for the door, only to hear her master's voice calling her back.

‘Luna! Luna, I need you.'

So she came back to await the orders of the Marchioness, who was still on the phone. As she did so, she covertly studied Stefan, who looked refreshed after a good night's sleep, his face cleanly shaven. She couldn't quite hear what he and the two trustees were talking about, but it sounded genial enough.

Lady Wellstone cleared her throat and Luna realised with slight embarrassment that she must have missed the cues that her phone call had ended. She bent her head down and asked, ‘How's it going?'

‘Well enough. Challenging, I'd say, but nothing we can't handle. Can you dig out the last report the accountants did in September? And there was an email that came with it – print that too. Then bring them here to me.'

Luna nodded and made to exit the conference room. As she passed James, he said, ‘I've just sent you those documents,' at the very same time as Stefan asked, ‘Luna, did I leave my phone in Augusta's office?'

She froze for a second and out of the corner of her eye caught a quick wave of peevishness emanating from her Ladyship, who really, really didn't like it when Luna divided her attention between her and anyone else. Stefan and James caught it too, and there was a comic millisecond when Luna thought they'd both tell her to forget about their requests.

Instead, the moment passed. Luna looked at the Marchioness and silently assured her that her task would come first, briefly said, ‘I'll check,' to Stefan, and gave James a cheeky little wink on her way out.

By the time she returned to the conference room, the meeting was already underway again. Stefan was standing with the remote and she could see from the screen that he was well into presenting his four options for Arborage. The mood in the room seemed slightly fractious.

‘…frankly, if I were Augusta, I would find the implication that Arborage is behind the times, some kind of dinosaur of the historic preservation world, deeply offensive,' St John Marsh was saying. The Marchioness waved her hand and he continued, ‘No, no, it must be said that it is you and you alone who has saved this place from wrack and ruin. The work you have done here, the many treasures you have managed to safeguard for Arborage's future when others would have been tempted to sell them off…'

Luna quickly deposited James's printing in front of him before proceeding to the Marchioness's side of the table.

Stefan, meanwhile, sat down at the table and leant in Marsh's direction, his expression serious. ‘St John, I can remember my first visit to Arborage almost twenty years ago like it was yesterday. I remember back then visitors had to phone ahead to arrange a tour, and tours were only available when, Augusta?'

‘The first and last Thursday of the month,' Augusta replied, smiling.

‘And only included the garden and four rooms.
Four rooms
in the east wing. I know better than anyone how much Augusta has done to transform Arborage…'

Luna knelt next to Lady Wellstone and passed her the report she'd asked for. The Marchioness quickly donned her reading glasses and paged through it.

‘…but I'm afraid I would have to argue that the treasures you so rightly say she has protected for the future are really the only things that are currently attracting visitors to Arborage.' Marsh made to disagree and Stefan continued, his voice growing forceful, ‘Visitors who are presented with literally hundreds of options in the Greater London area and who
will
go elsewhere if we fail to modernise, cut costs and to innovate as our competitors have innovated.'

The Marchioness removed her reading glasses and nodded to Luna, who stood and departed just as the bluster was starting to depart St John Marsh.

‘Well, I take your point, I suppose. At Bletchley Park, I think it's fair to say that they're leaps and bounds ahead of Arborage in terms of their offering…'

Luna shut the conference door behind her, then clasped her hands together, feeling ever so slightly stressed on Stefan's behalf.

An hour and a half later, at just after 2pm, Lady Wellstone strolled back into the office, closely followed by Stefan and James. Luna stood and her boss held up a hand.

‘They've all left, my dear, so you can stand down.'

‘Oh,' Luna said, slightly nonplussed. The Marchioness and James continued into her office, clearly in an ebullient mood.

‘I couldn't believe he asked that question and I literally had the data sitting right in front of me,' James crowed.

‘And here I thought you had all those numbers memorised,' her Ladyship joked.

Stefan came to stand in front of Luna, smiling down at her as he ran a hand through his hair. She reached onto her desk and retrieved his mobile, holding it out to him, and at long last, for the first time that day, she looked up into his eyes. She could feel him buzzing, physically humming almost – it had gone well in the end, clearly. And, well, it shouldn't have been a sexual thing, but her body responded to him like a divining rod, drawn ever so slightly closer to his till she felt the heat of him. He looked down at her and she could tell from his expression that he felt it too, and that he welcomed her response like it was his due.

‘Stefan,' came the Marchioness's voice, sharply.

Spell broken, Luna turned around and saw Lady Wellstone standing just within her doorway, looking at them. Stefan clasped Luna's elbow, then went into the office and shut the door.

Luna sat back down at her desk. Had the Marchioness noticed something? It had seemed like a veritable electrical storm between her and Stefan to Luna, but from an observer's perspective surely it was just a secretary handing someone his mobile phone, right? She silently promised herself not to have sexual thoughts about him in the office ever, ever again. Then pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to erase the grin there.

James emerged from the Marchioness's office at 3.30, rushing to get back to the office.

‘Stefan's asked me to start the meeting without him. What a day!' he exclaimed. ‘I'll ring you next week.' And he was gone.

Luna began to pack up her things, because she, too, needed to go. She'd asked Lady Wellstone if she could leave early to meet Jem and Nancy in town for Kayla's preview screening. She didn't like to leave when Stefan and Lady Wellstone were still in her office, but for once she wanted to give herself enough time that travelling by motorbike wasn't necessary.

She listened briefly outside the door. Her Ladyship was talking, though the door was too thick for Luna to make out what she was saying. She waited for a moment to hear Stefan's voice, but then decided she'd been foolish enough for one afternoon, and went to make her way upstairs.