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

by Kait Jagger

  ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ she said to the woman behind the bar.

  ‘Single or double?’ the bartender enquired, sliding a slice of lime into a glass of ice.

  ‘Oh, I think you’d better make it a double,’ Luna replied. She leaned closer to the woman and asked, ‘Which one is the host?’

  The bartender scanned the room, then shook her head. ‘He was here earlier. I think he might be upstairs.’

  Drink and walk, that was what Luna was thinking as she climbed the curved staircase a few minutes later. Until Stefan arrived, she was going to occupy herself by drinking and walking around the house, which, fair play to her host, did feature an original Monet at the top of the stairs. And bloody hell, was the sculpture of a naked woman in the hallway beyond a Rodin? This place really was a puzzle, from the ridiculous to the sublime in the space of a few short feet.

  And it was a relief, really, after the past few months at Arborage, to find herself suddenly just a tourist, dropped into a social setting where she felt entirely unfettered, under no obligation to make conversation with strangers… free to drink and walk.

  Her phone buzzed and she retrieved it from her bag. A text from Stefan: Stuck in traffic. Will be late. Wondering just how much walking she could do in these heels, she texted back :-( and contemplated a return trip to the bar.

  Despite her best efforts to avoid personal interaction, she got cornered shortly thereafter by a vaguely familiar-looking man who told her he was a television presenter hired to play master of ceremonies for a treasure hunt later that evening. Trying hard not to be mesmerised by his blindingly white teeth, Luna questioned him about their host, but he appeared to know even less about him than she did.

  ‘My management company deals with these bookings,’ he said, sipping what looked like a triple whiskey. ‘I just show up and play my part.’ He watched a gaggle of scantily clad young women shimmy past, mentally licking his chops, and Luna inwardly rolled her eyes. She caught a glimpse of Karoline then, standing across the room, and made her excuses, sidling in her direction through the throng of guests on the upper landing.

  She lost sight of Stefan’s mother briefly as she skirted a group of chattering twenty-somethings, but then someone moved and Karoline came back into view, dressed in a sapphire blue cocktail dress, hair recently cut and highlighted. She was laughing at something an unseen companion was saying. Luna took another few steps toward her, stopping short when a waiter cut across her path. Karoline spotted her then, and stood on tiptoe, raising her hand.

  ‘Come, come!’ she gestured to Luna, lips parting in her trademark megawatt smile. Luna lifted her hand in return, angling sideways and raising her glass above her head as she squeezed between two groups of partygoers. She eventually stumbled through, composing her face into what she hoped was a sunbeam of party enthusiasm as she came face to face with Karoline.

  Who was standing next to Florian Wellstone, her hand resting on his shoulder.

  ‘Here she is!’ Karoline sang out. ‘Fox, this is…’ She paused and laughed. ‘But of course, you two know each other.’

  Luna looked from Karoline to Florian, the smile disappearing from her lips. And then, to her horror, Florian moved in her direction, placing his hands just above her elbows, pulling her toward him.

  ‘Luna,’ he said, kissing her first on one cheek. ‘Delightful to sssee you.’ Then the other. Luna stiffened, barely preventing herself from jerking away from him, and gaped at Karoline, who was prattling on about the party, how lovely it was that so many people had come, and where was her liten prince? Luna barely registered what she was saying, but managed to stammer, ‘Stefan is… he’s stuck in traffic.’

  ‘Your glasses are empty, ladies,’ Florian said unctuously, removing them from their hands. ‘I’ll get you a refill.’ And off he went toward the bar, leaving Luna and Karoline alone.

  Karoline’s eyes travelled the length of Luna’s outfit appraisingly. ‘Don’t you look pretty,’ she said. ‘Are you enjoying the party?’

  Feeling physically ill, Luna ignored her question and said incredulously, ‘Florian… he’s your boyfriend?’

  Karoline’s nostrils flared as if she smelled something vaguely unpleasant. ‘Whatever gave you that idea? Fox is just a friend. I’ve known him for years, since Sören and I used to visit Arborage when Stefan was small.’

  Luna’s body almost buckled with relief. ‘Florian was actually my matchmaker,’ Karoline confided girlishly, displaying no apparent discomfort to be sharing this news with her son’s gold digging girlfriend. ‘It was he who introduced me to…’ she trailed off, eyes distracted by something across the room. ‘Ah, here he is now, my pojkvän.’

  Luna turned in the direction of Karoline’s gaze. No, it wasn’t possible. Walking toward them, gliding through the room like a whale shark in the shoals, was Viktor Putinov, his pallid, almost albino face glowing, and lashless eyes moving languidly from Karoline to her.

  ‘Luna,’ he said as he reached the two women, taking her hand in his and raising it to his fleshy, colourless lips. And if Karoline was surprised to discover that Viktor already knew her son’s fiancée, she didn’t show it, instead tilting her head obligingly to receive a kiss from her pojkvän.

  Locked in the powder room a few minutes later, hands shaking so much she could hardly hold her phone, Luna phoned Stefan. She’d made a hasty excuse to Karoline about needing the loo and ran, or came close to running, without exchanging a single word with Viktor.

  Viktor Putinov, Russian thug, Florian’s lender, drug supplier and procurer of whores, was dating Stefan’s mother. He was her Freyr, her Mr Big. The tidal wave of horrendous possibilities this raised was too awful to contemplate. How in God’s name was she going to remain at this party with him and Florian, pretending she didn’t know what they really were?

  ‘Flicka,’ came Stefan’s voice, the line crackling with static.

  ‘How far away are you?’ Luna said urgently.

  ‘Eight miles, maybe.’ He said something else, but the phone cut out and she didn’t catch it.

  ‘Stefan? Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Stefan, please hurry. There’s… there’s something wrong. Your mother, this man she’s dating… I need you here.’ The phone beeped three times in her ear. She’d lost the connection. She tried ringing him back but it went straight to voicemail.

  Running warm water over her freezing, shaking hands, Luna tried to think. What to do, what to do? What she wanted to do was sit down on the floor, curl up into a ball and hide. She’d been so certain she’d seen the back of Viktor Putinov and now here she was trapped in his house, caught in some ghastly charade of Florian Wellstone’s making. For there was no doubting that his ‘matchmaking’ efforts had been to a purpose.

  And… Stefan’s mother. Karoline’s dislike of her notwithstanding, Luna couldn’t bear to think of her becoming a pawn in some dirty little game cooked up by these two men. It was that threat, at last, that put a little Swedish ice in her stomach. She turned off the tap and dried her hands, leaning close to her reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Snap out of it,’ she commanded.

  Luna exited the powder room to find that all hell had broken loose, Essex-style, at the party. The highlight of the evening, compèred by the middle-aged presenter, was a scavenger hunt featuring gemstones and miniature gold bars as prizes. The result was pandemonium, with packs of crazed women and feral young men roaming the halls in search of treasure. Viktor and Karoline were nowhere to be seen, though Viktor’s omnipresent security force was much in evidence, surveying the greedy thrall with open distaste.

  Passing a pair of Tango-coloured women literally tearing each other’s extensions out over a ruby the size of a Cadbury’s mini-egg, Luna escaped into the garden in search of Karoline. Though what she would say to Stefan’s mother once she found her, she had no idea.

  Outside, the sun was beginning to set in the almost deserted garden. In stark contrast to the ma
nsion’s rather sterile interior, its exterior was lush with growth. A little too lush, in Luna’s opinion, accustomed as she was to Arborage’s rigorously maintained, manicured grounds. Someone had once put a lot of effort into planting perennials and roses in this garden, but now the entire place was overgrown, with rose bushes grown to the size of small trees, bristling with thorns and humming with bees and wasps. As she passed a disused fountain choked with weeds, Luna experienced another, inexplicable sense of déjà vu. She knew she’d never been here before, so why did this place feel so familiar?

  Wandering under an arbour sagging under the weight of dense foliage, she heard partygoers spill out of the house and sighed. No respite out here.

  ‘Hello, Princesss.’

  Florian Wellstone had been waiting for this opportunity to get her alone, judging from the eager expression on his face. Luna took a step backward and he raised an appeasing hand.

  ‘Please, give me a moment. I’ve wanted to talk to you for so long now, but it’s been imposssible to get to you.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what we have to say to each other,’ Luna said, cursing the faint tremble in her voice.

  He heard it too, and smiled. ‘You know, we’re not ssso different, you and I. Both tied to Arborage, but at the mercy of forces we can’t control.’

  Luna shook her head at him. ‘We are nothing alike.’

  ‘The… unpleasantness last winter. Deeply regrettable. But surely you must sssee that it is Augusta who is to blame for it. She tricked us both.’ He stepped toward her and Luna swiftly turned away, walking as fast as possible toward the opposite end of the arbour. Why did he have such power over her? Was it purely that his attack on her in January had taught her the hard lesson that she could be broken by a man who was stronger than her?

  ‘We should be working together,’ he was saying, rushing along behind her. ‘If you would just convince Stefan to meet with Viktor, he could be a valuable friend to the estate.’

  A group of women were standing just outside the arbour, rooting through a plant pot. Realising belatedly how his pursuit of her might look, Florian attempted to take Luna’s arm, trying to make it appear more like a friendly stroll through the garden.

  Luna felt his sweaty hand come to rest on her and froze. He was banking on her playing along, she realised. Not making a scene. He’d banked on her compliance all along, just like all the vulnerable young girls he’d abused over the years; as far as Florian was concerned, Luna was no different from them. She looked down at his hand on her arm, felt a torrent of pent-up rage coursing through her veins. And said, ‘If you don’t. Take your hand. Off my arm.’

  His hand stayed where it was, so Luna quickly swivelled toward him, lifted her Swarovski crystal-clad foot, and kneed him sharply in the groin. Down Florian went like a stone, clutching his privates. Luna watched with gratified fascination as he rolled on the ground, his face going a putrid shade of green.

  The women standing around the plant pot, her sisters from the Estuary, took in the scene before them and correctly diagnosed its cause. One of them, a pint-sized Kylie Minogue lookalike, marched over to Florian and gave him a kick.

  ‘That’s wah you get, you duh-ty ow perv!’ she cried, nodding to Luna, ‘You owight, dahlin?’

  ‘I’m fine, fine,’ Luna replied, a bubble of elated, hysterical laughter beginning to swell up inside her.

  And then two security guards appeared in front of her.

  Luna looked from one to the other. And shrugged. ‘I’ll get my coat, shall I?’

  So, Luna’s star turn at her first and last Essex cocktail party ended with her being frog-marched away by the guards. Well, she thought, Stefan would understand. Hell, he’d applaud her. And his mother, who knew, maybe she’d see the humour in her gold digging future daughter-in-law being forcibly ejected from the property.

  Rather than go through the house, where, Luna assumed, the sight of her unseemly expulsion might cast a pall on the party atmosphere, the guards herded her further into the garden, along an uneven gravel path punctuated by weeds and tufts of crabgrass. ‘Taking me out the back way, eh, boys?’ Luna observed drily, to complete silence from her escorts. Really, she felt quite giddy – God, she couldn’t wait to tell Caitlin she’d kneed Florian Wellstone in the goolies.

  They walked for what felt like ages to the edge of what had been the garden, where it backed onto a hilly wooded area beyond. There was a gate leading to a small road, but when Luna veered toward it, one of the men grunted, ‘No, this way.’

  The rose bushes here had completely outgrown their beds, encroaching on the path to the point where it was necessary to walk single file, the two men leading and Luna following. They reached a clearing where stood a small stucco outbuilding with a set of steps leading to it. The guards moved to either side of the steps, one of them motioning up them with a quick jerk of his head.

  This… this didn’t feel right. Luna stopped in her tracks. ‘Look,’ she said, pulling her mobile out of her bag, ‘I’ll just phone my boyfriend, he’ll come get me, and I’ll be out of your—’

  Suddenly, one of the men lunged for her, grasping her arm and twisting it, removing the phone from her hand. The other reached for her elbow, propelling her up the steps.

  ‘What the—!’ she cried, struggling against him. ‘Take your bloody hands off me!’

  She stumbled slightly when they got to the top and the man hauled her up, then shoved her forward. To where Viktor Putinov was waiting for her inside the building, arms crossed over his broad chest.

  ‘You avoid me, Luna,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘So I ask my men to bring you here, where we can speak alone.’

  Luna opened her mouth to protest, but felt the stolid presence of his guards behind her, quickly scanned the woods outside and calculated that, even if she made a break for it, she was well out of screaming distance of anyone who might come to her aid. She looked into Viktor’s cold, emotionless eyes.

  ‘Qu’est-ce que vous voulez,’ she said icily.

  Viktor nodded his approval of her choice of language, and henceforward the conversation took place entirely in French, in which he was fluent.

  ‘I would like you to deliver a message to your master,’ he said.

  ‘Master?’ Luna said sharply. ‘I have no master.’

  ‘Do you not?’ Viktor replied, walking toward her. ‘And yet, before you answered to Florian, and now you answer to the new lord of Arborage.’

  ‘I answer to no one.’

  ‘Or, do you just come with the house?’ A brief, cavernous rumble emanated from within him, the approximation of a laugh. He was within a few feet of her now, close enough for her to see the five o’clock shadow on his skull where his hair was shaved.

  ‘That morning last winter,’ he recalled, ‘when my friends and I were thrown out of the estate like so much garbage, I remember you, sitting outside the house, watching us drive away. Staring at me as if to say, “Get out. This is not your place.”’

  Luna said nothing. She wasn’t going to argue with him.

  ‘I thought to myself, she reminds me of something, this one. It took me a while to realise. You’re like a dog I had when I was a boy. She had eyes just like yours. And the same… proprietary nature.’ He paused, smiling with relish at the comparison. ‘Half-wolf, this dog was. My father found her when she was a puppy and brought her home to our dacha. I remember my mother saying he was mad, that this bitch could never be trained, and sure enough, a few weeks after he brought her home she bit me in the ankle. She was guarding the house, you see, just like you, and she didn’t want me to go in.

  ‘So my father,’ Viktor went on, ‘who was a very smart man, he caught that bitch and put a chain around her neck, and tied her to the house. For ten days, he left her on the chain with no food. Until she learned what she was. And she did learn. Oh, she was still half wild – she’d rip the throat out of a stranger on command. But she knew who was master.’

  He paused again, letting that
sink in. Turning his head slightly, he seemed to notice his two guards for the first time. He barked a brief command to them in Russian and they retreated outside onto the steps. Catching the expression on Luna’s face, he nodded and confirmed, ‘Yes, they are good dogs.’

  Eyes still resting upon her, he gestured toward the garden. ‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me, Luna, what do you think of my house?’

  ‘Not much,’ she replied honestly, to which he laughed, a full, hearty belly laugh this time.

  ‘I agree,’ he chuckled. ‘It is ugly. I accept no blame for that. My former wife chose the design, oversaw the building work herself. She had a passion for English things, my wife. At the time, I didn’t see the attraction. You English are so weak, dissolute… why worship the remnants of a dead empire? But she came over for a holiday fifteen years ago and while she was here she visited a historic home, fell in love with it, and decided she wanted to build one just like it.’

  Luna’s eyes widened.

  ‘Yes,’ he congratulated her, ‘you see now, don’t you.’

  She did see. Now she knew where her recurring sense of déjà vu that evening sprang from. This house, this Essex monstrosity, had taken its inspiration from Arborage. The rose garden, the lion statues, the grinning cherubs on the ceiling of the hall, all of it bastardised out of recognition from Arborage’s transcendent beauty.

  ‘Years later,’ Viktor recalled, ‘after I’d rid myself of my wife and the opportunity presented itself to see her favourite mansion, I was predisposed to dislike it. You can imagine my surprise when I found it to be everything she’d said it was, and more…’

  ‘And you think somehow that by duping Stefan’s mother into becoming involved with you,’ Luna enquired haughtily, ‘you will be welcome at Arborage?’

  Another brief, unpleasant laugh. ‘No. I am a simple man. Too simple to play your complicated English games. I want to buy Arborage. That is the message I would like you to take to your master.’