Lord and Master (18 page)

Luna shut her laptop and reached for her second can of Sprite, popping the tab on it. She stared into the fire. Her chest felt achy and she coughed experimentally, feeling herself rattle and wheeze. She wondered if she had any Night Nurse in her medicine cabinet.

She did not look at her phone again that night, for she knew what she wouldn't see.

The next few days were busy enough that she found she could just about keep Stefan at the margins of her mind. The Marchioness had plans to visit one of her friends in Northumbria at the end of the week, a viscountess who ran a much smaller operation than Arborage, and this meant compressed work for them at the beginning of the week.

They were also making preparations for the Marquess's impending return to Arborage. The Marchioness had been in communication with Dr Andrews, Luna knew, though the substance of their conversations remained a mystery. Lady and Lord Wellstone also appeared to be in regular phone contact, which marked a definite change for them, but Luna was no closer to understanding what this meant.

As promised, James rang her on Monday afternoon, and they went through the diary together, giving her his and Stefan's availability to meet with the rest of the board. There was a limited window of opportunity for this before the full board meeting in December when, Luna assumed, the Marchioness would be seeking a green light to proceed with one of the options Stefan had presented.

To Luna's surprise, James appeared to have as little idea as she did of what Stefan was doing in Stockholm. ‘I don't suppose you've talked to him since Friday, have you?' he asked hesitantly.

‘No,' Luna said simply, ending the call as quickly as she could.

Her illness, manageable now, had settled into her chest, producing a wracking cough that kept her up that night, leaving her feeling drawn out and stretched thin. Even the Marchioness, who usually didn't notice these things, commented, ‘You look absolutely dreadful,' when Luna came into her office the following morning bearing the day's newspapers.

Luna laughed, then hacked slightly. ‘Well, thank you.'

‘I didn't mean it that way, but…' Lady Wellstone searched through the stack of papers on her desk. ‘I had a note from HR the other day saying you've only taken…' She peered at a piece of paper through her reading glasses. ‘Eight and a half days' holiday in the two years you've worked here. That's taking dedication to your role a little too far, my dear.' She smiled kindly and for a moment Luna thought her boss could see more than just an ailing PA in front of her. Unbidden, she thought of Stefan's stark, indifferent text on Sunday afternoon and a wave of utter wretchedness rose above her, ready to crash down on her head. She quashed it as best she could, keeping her eyes on the newspapers she was laying out on the table.

‘Why don't you take some time for yourself in the run-up to Christmas?' her Ladyship added gently. ‘I can muddle through without you for a few days here and there.'

Suddenly, Luna's mind was unexpectedly made up for her. ‘What if I took a few days off this week, while you're in Northumbria?'

‘Of course, good thinking. But you'll be here on Monday when his Lordship arrives, yes?'

‘Definitely,' Luna replied, feeling stronger now, partly in response to this slight show of need on the Marchioness's part.

She walked straight out to her desk and sent a brief email to her former boss in Miami Beach. After quickly checking again with Lady Wellstone, she booked a flight from Heathrow to Miami departing the following afternoon. There were worse times of year to go to Florida than November, when the wilting heat of the summer months had passed, but the ‘snowbirds' from the northern US states had yet to start making their winter pilgrimages to the sun. And it was sun she needed right now, she thought, looking out onto yet another grey, damp autumn morning. Something to burn the chill out of her.

If Stefan thought she was going to be here waiting for him tomorrow like a good little girl, well, he could fuck off.

She woke just before seven the next morning in a restless mood. She thought about her nine-hour flight to Miami and decided that with that much time in store sat on her bum, she should at least try to do a run. So she donned her fleecy leggings and two layers of t-shirts topped by her purple University of Manchester sweatshirt, plus gloves and a hat, and headed out around her usual route. She made it all the way around the lake before she was forced to stop, coughing uncontrollably, and walked back to the house after that, sucking on a Strepsil.

She still needed to print out her boarding passes, so she dropped by the darkened, empty office and turned on her laptop. 7.50, she noted – still plenty of time for a shower and porridge in the staff kitchen. She pulled up her boarding passes and set them to print before turning on her out of office message and briefly checking her work emails.

There were two emails sent that morning marked URGENT, one from someone named Bibi Myers and another from Stefan. She opened the one from Bibi Myers first.

Looking at Bibi's electronic signature, it appeared she was an ‘executive assistant' in Stefan's Stockholm office. Lovely.

Luna opened the email from Stefan and saw that it had also been written by Bibi Myers, on behalf of Stefan Lundgren. It basically said the same thing as the first email. She frowned; this was bad PA work. She would never, ever have sent a duplicate email like that using the Marchioness's name. No, if she was looking for a fairly substantial favour like this, she wouldn't have emailed at all. She'd have picked up the bloody phone and asked for help personally.

And then there was Stefan, who'd clearly breezed out of Stockholm that morning, pausing briefly over coffee to ring his office and ask them to sort out all these pesky details for him. Because she was just an admin, right? No need for him to trouble himself with this sort of thing.

Luna considered her options. She could just ignore the emails. After all, she was officially on leave. It would serve Bibi and, more importantly, Stefan right. But. But, but, but. She
wasn't
on leave yet. She still had time to do this, and it went against every fibre of her PA body to leave someone dangling, even if they deserved it. And at the end of the day, it was the Marchioness and Arborage it would reflect badly on if a trustee member arrived to find that no preparations had been made for her.

So Luna got to work. Choosing to reply to Bibi's email, rather than the Bibi as Stefan email, she replied succinctly: Yes, will do. She rang the kitchen to arrange for drinks to be brought up, and then Lady Wellstone to ask if she'd heard about the surprise visit; she hadn't, but said she would make time to come down to the conference room at nine. Then Luna carried her laptop down to the conference room. She hadn't planned on bringing it to Miami anyway, so she affixed a sticky note to it with her login details plus a little note saying, ‘Please leave this on my desk when you're finished with it.'

A porter arrived from the kitchen with flasks of tea and coffee, as well as a pitcher of juice and some biscuits, and Luna asked him to come back at around noon to collect the remainders. Then she adjusted a couple of the curtains in the room so the early morning sun wouldn't fall on the projector screen. She checked her watch – 8.15 – and silently congratulated herself.

As a final check, she brought up the presentation on her laptop, turned on the projector and started clicking through the slides. She was standing in the middle of the conference room, wearing her hat and running clothes, one hand on her hip and the other pointing the clicker towards the screen, when the conference room door opened and Stefan entered.

A lot of things happened in a very short span of time. Stefan looked at Luna, and she could tell that he was surprised to see her there. She looked at him and saw that he was slightly winded, like maybe his inefficient Swedish ‘executive assistant' had phoned and left a panicked message saying she hadn't managed to get hold of Miss Gregory. His mobile rang, and he answered it curtly – ah, there was Bibi now, if Luna wasn't mistaken. Stefan had a brief, brusque conversation with her and, from what Luna heard, appeared to cut her off in mid-apology, switching off his phone.

He looked at Luna again, and she realised that not only was he surprised to see her, he wasn't ready for it either. Obviously, he'd mentally pencilled in their little chat for later that day. And there was something else about his expression, like he was…dismayed or something. With a rush of disgust, Luna realised that he was looking at her red nose and bloodshot eyes – and that he thought she had been
crying.
It was too much. Her disgust quickly transformed into unbridled wrath. She placed the remote on the table and slid it towards him so hard that it almost fell off the edge of the table before he could catch it. Picking up her gloves from the table, she moved past him towards the door.

And then he said it. He opened his mouth, and he said, ‘Luna, we need to talk.'

Instantly, it was like the floor of the conference room was covered with water and she was a live wire, snaking and snapping along it.

‘Oh my God, you cannot be serious,' she replied, her voice hoarse, a half octave lower than usual and crackling with rage. Shaking her head, she said, ‘The time for talking was Friday night when you stood me up to go play with your friends in Stockholm—'

‘That wasn't—'

‘Or Saturday morning when I left you that pathetic message,' she said, overenunciating ‘pathetic' self-derisively. ‘Because, like the fool I was, I was worried about you. Or when I
still
didn't get the hint and bloody texted you.
Now
,' she wiggled her index finger between the two of them, ‘there's nothing for us to talk about.' Her voice began to give out during her final words and she was consumed by a coughing fit, twisting her mouth into the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

Stefan waited for her to stop coughing, then began in his most reasonable, logical voice, ‘There are things I need to—'

‘Fuck
me
,' Luna interrupted, practically hopping up and down with fury. ‘Did you not
hear
me? Save the “this is all moving too fast” and “it's not you, it's me” speech for your next girlfriend. I don't want to hear it.'

She continued towards the door, stopped, coughed twice and pointed at him, saying, ‘And another thing: the next time you want someone to do your donkey work for you,' she waved her hand at the conference table, ‘have the courtesy to ask her yourself. Or better yet,' she leaned close to him and gritted out, ‘try placing your request via the Marchioness, and learn the meaning of the words short shrift.'

She began to wheel away from him, and Stefan placed his hand on her arm, daring to ask, ‘Have you finished?'

Luna looked down at his hand, felt herself sizzle and crackle, and said ominously, ‘If you don't. Take your hand. Off my arm.'

Stefan dropped his hand. And Luna walked out.

The supernova of her righteous fury sustained her all the way to Heathrow, onto the plane and halfway over the Atlantic, but eventually sputtered and burnt out as she sat in her window seat, looking down over a bank of clouds below.

‘The four words no girl wants to hear…' Well, it appeared that now she and Miss Party Supply had something in common. She hadn't really believed it till he'd said them, had held out hope, nay, she had
assumed
that there had to be some reasonable explanation for his behaviour. Because a man didn't behave as he'd behaved with her, he didn't say things like ‘I find I am possessive of you' if he didn't mean them.

She thought about the things they had done together…physically. Things she would never have done if she'd thought it was purely a casual thing. She felt hot shame at the prospect of having to tell her friends that they'd misjudged him, that
she'd
misjudged him. And worst of all, she felt something akin to horror that she had let her guard slip with him; had said and revealed things about herself that she could not now take back. For some reason, the fact that he knew she'd been upset by Florian Wellstone's description of her as an Ice Princess bothered her most of all.

Finally, she thought about the way he had been with her. She believed, or wanted to believe, that his behaviour with her had amounted to more than the combination of respectfulness and sexual attentiveness Miss Party Supply described. What had tipped the scales for him? Realising that he was starting to feel possessive of her? Or was it that she'd begun to encroach on a part of his life he reserved exclusively for his overwhelming business drive? She pictured his face as he'd looked down at her in the office following his presentation and now it seemed to her that in addition to sexual desire there had been something else, a pleasure in having proven himself to her. A short-lived pleasure, apparently.

She shook herself, recalling Nancy's words when Luna's first and only boyfriend broke up with her. Nancy had virtually zero tolerance for feminine heartbreak, and when Luna had begun to speculate on what was going on in his head, why he'd chosen another woman over her, Nancy had said bluntly, ‘It doesn't matter why he dumped you. All that matters is that he did.' Sage advice, even if it was a little heartless. She didn't need to know anymore what was going on in Stefan's head.