by Jagger, Kait
Her subsequent descent went by very much in a fraught blur, Luna focusing on her technique to the exclusion of all else. Back on her heels first, and when she was ready to turn, rocking onto her toes. Trying to keep the angles of her turns tight, disciplined, doing exactly what her instructor had taught her: moving with the board, cutting it a little more into the snow than she strictly needed to, to reduce her speed. ‘Nothing wrong with slow and steady,’ his voice echoed reassuringly in her head.
She was only vaguely aware of passing Jem and a prone Kayla, and scarcely registered Mika catching up to her and swooshing past, hopping up into the air in a perfect ollie. Down, down the mountain Luna went, mouth clamped shut, cheeks stinging from the cold, wondering how anyone could possibly enjoy the view, or the other skiers, or anything when so much effort and concentration was required just to stay upright.
And then suddenly the decline began to level out, and she saw the rest of their party clustered at the bottom of the hill. Her lips parted in a delirious, amazed smile. She’d made it!
‘Good girl! Good girl!’ Stefan shouted as she slid to a halt in front of him, showering him with snow. Heart pounding, absolutely astonished that she’d managed to get all the way down without falling, Luna removed her goggles and looked at him with what she hoped was casual nonchalance.
‘Go again?’ she asked.
She fell a few times after that. But it didn’t matter. Everyone was falling – well, not Stefan and Nancy, but everyone else, Mika managing a particularly epic wipe-out after jumping a mogul. After four more runs they stopped for coffee at the fairly basic shack on the top of the mountain, lining up on benches, chatting and laughing, and Luna began to see the appeal of ski culture, especially here in Sweden where the entire endeavour was so determinedly relaxed.
She would never, she feared, be a natural on the slopes. But sitting quietly next to Stefan on the bench, sipping her coffee, she reminded herself that the important thing was, she hadn’t embarrassed herself, hadn’t embarrassed him. She allowed her jaw to unclench for the first time that morning, and began to take in the conversation around her.
‘So, you’re less than a year younger than the twins?’ Jem was asking Mika.
‘That’s right,’ Kiki answered on his behalf. ‘After the shock of two more boys, even such perfect babies as us—’ he glanced at Kimi for confirmation and his twin nodded vigorously, ‘—our mother decided to have one last try for a girl.’
‘And nine months later,’ Stefan intoned earnestly, ‘her wish came true and Mika was born.’
‘Hunh,’ Mika grunted, raising a white-blonde eyebrow. ‘Funny talk, Liten Prince.’
And that dropped the bomb. Stefan’s face contracted in an anticipatory wince as the entire Salonen clan burst out laughing.
‘Oh, Liten Prince!’ Kiki trilled in a falsetto. ‘Your dinner is ready!’
‘Stand up straight, Liten Prince!’ Kimi admonished, wagging a finger at Stefan.
Luna’s friends looked toward her in confusion and she explained, ‘His mum’s nickname for him.’
‘This is going to get ugly,’ Stefan sighed, standing and offering his hand to her as Kimi launched into a description of his boyhood terror of Karoline Lundgren. ‘Gives new meaning to the words “mother love”, Stefan’s mamma,’ he said with an exaggerated shudder.
‘Don’t feel bad, Stefan,’ Jem called after him as he led Luna away from the table. ‘Rod’s mother still calls him mtoto.’
‘Look,’ Rod objected. ‘Don’t drag me into this.’
‘It means baby in Swahili,’ Jem added helpfully, prompting another eruption of laughter from the table.
Mika followed Stefan and Luna out, lobbing a parting, ‘Wrap up warm, Liten Prince,’ as he headed toward the loo.
Outside the shack, Stefan began digging their snowboards out of the ski rack. Luna stood watching him for a moment, hands shoved in her pockets, then said, ‘Wait, I’ve forgotten my mittens,’ and ran back inside. Glancing into the main room, where Kimi was still holding court, she removed her mittens from her jacket pockets and waited till Mika emerged from the loo. Whereupon she swiftly threw her arms around his neck. ‘Thank you for teaching me,’ she whispered. Then departed.
‘I really, really like the Swedish way of skiing,’ Luna said an hour later, sitting on a reindeer-skin rug next to a dugout in the snow, watching Stefan cook sausages on a little paraffin stove. He’d brought it all with him in his backpack, and judging from the numerous other families dotted around the hillside also enjoying lunch al fresco, this was the way things were done here. Stefan gave the sausages another flip, then came to join her on the rug.
‘Happy?’ he asked, giving her a little kiss.
‘Very.’ She glanced around at the snow-covered conifers around them. ‘It’s like something out of a fairy tale.’ He smiled and moved in for a longer, more thorough kiss, which had a small girl and boy in matching red bobble hats in a nearby dugout giggling and pointing at them.
Sticking out her tongue at them, Luna asked, ‘What were you and Matthias talking about last night, out on the balcony?’
‘I was taking his advice about the situation with the Russian,’ he replied, voice assiduously bland.
Viktor Putinov had instigated a number of skirmishes in the weeks since the fateful party in Essex, all of them conducted through legal intermediaries. Having had three offers for Arborage House firmly rejected, he seemed disinclined to take no for an answer and was now pressing for a face-to-face meeting with Stefan. Which Stefan refused to even contemplate. ‘It would give him succour, being granted an audience with me,’ he had stated bluntly when Luna questioned him on it. ‘And I am not in the business of giving my enemies succour.’
Stefan’s mother, meanwhile, refused point blank to disengage herself from Putinov. ‘“You men and your business dealings are nothing to do with my personal life,”’ he reported her as saying when he returned stony-faced from a visit to see her in Stockholm. The whole situation had become so tense that Luna had begun to dance carefully around the subject with Stefan. Now, for example, she hesitated, turning her next question around in her head before giving voice to it.
‘What exactly,’ she asked eventually, ‘does Matthias’s company do?’
‘It provides security services,’ Stefan replied, in a voice that invited no further discussion.
‘Hunh.’ Luna studied her red mittens. ‘Security.’
He rose, then, and went to tend the sausages. And the moment passed.
Chapter Five
Luna returned to Arborage alone on Monday night, Stefan having flown straight to a consulting assignment in Croatia. Faced with the prospect of a solitary evening in the private quarters, she decided to catch up on work instead, walking from the main hall, still obscured by scaffolding from a restoration project due to complete by the middle of next year, along the silent, darkened corridor that led to the anteroom that now served as Stefan’s office, through to her own office.
She found her desk piled high with memos, correspondence and other paperwork left by her managers. And… ah, a stack of CVs from the head of HR, who was doggedly attempting to foist a personal assistant on Luna. So far, Luna had managed to put her off. She’d been a PA herself up until a few months ago, she protested – she was perfectly able to book her own travel and manage her own appointments.
An assertion that was potentially open to challenge, Luna realised, in view of the state of her diary, chock-full of commitments and double bookings through to the Christmas holidays. And all those papers on her desk. Not to mention her coursework for the MBA she was currently studying for.
Imposter. Not for the first time, the silent accusation rung out in Luna’s mind as she sat down at Lady Wellstone’s Queen Anne desk, in her chair. The Marchioness had reigned over the estate for more than three decades before stepping down the previous summer. Her knowle
dge of Arborage’s inner workings had been encyclopaedic, her drive and personal charisma unassailable. Not in thirty or three hundred years could Luna ever hope to fill her mentor’s shoes.
In truth, the Marchioness was more than a mentor. During the darkest time in Luna’s life, she’d been her guardian angel, and though Luna understood Stefan’s need to wipe the slate clean, place his stamp on the estate, she missed Augusta Wellstone. Missed her all the time.
The cast-iron radiator under the bay window hissed and pinged. Somewhere in the distance, a vacuum cleaner droned; the evening shift, doing their nightly clean. Five hundred staff. Scores of volunteers. Thousands of visitors passing by her office window every week. Luna was surrounded by people. Strange, then, that she felt entirely alone.
Giving herself a quick shake, she returned her attention to the mound of paperwork on her desk. A to-do list, that was what she needed. Moment of weakness past, Luna reached for her notepad, switched on her desktop lamp, and settled in for a late night.
*
‘We’ve been very meticulous,’ the building contractor said. ‘See here? Every board has been numbered in chalk. So reinstalling it should be like putting a puzzle together.’
He and Luna were squatting atop a joist beside a stack of wooden floorboards piled high in a small, low-beamed room. The floor below was clearly visible in the gaps between the trusses. Hard to credit that this shell of a room was the same bedchamber where Luna and Stefan had embarked upon their relationship over a year ago. Stripped of its mahogany four-poster bed and sumptuous upholstery, the bedroom looked naked.
It and the rest of the Dower House were in the midst of a much-delayed renovation, top of Luna’s to-do list. The house, which dated from the Jacobean period, was one of the jewels in Arborage’s crown, and it bothered her that it languished in disrepair, wires trailing everywhere and a grimy coating of builder’s dust on its leaded windows.
‘How soon can you get started?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to say next week, but realistically, this close to Christmas?’ The contractor pulled a face. ‘It’ll be January before I can get my men back here.’
Luna stood and began carefully picking her way across the joists toward the landing. ‘I blame you for this, you know that don’t you?’ she joked, hopping out into the hall. The contractor followed, holding up his hands in mock supplication. He’d been the one to raise the alarm in early October, halfway through the renovation project. Luna was sitting in a meeting with prospective suppliers up at the main house when he phoned her. ‘You need to come,’ he’d said, a hint of urgency in his tone.
She arrived at the Dower House shortly thereafter only to be ushered straight past his team working downstairs, up to the master bedroom, where he swiftly shut the door behind them. Luna was on the verge of asking what the cloak-and-dagger routine was for when he knelt on the floor and gingerly lifted up a board, shining a torch inside. She knelt beside him and peered down into the cavity.
‘Good lord,’ she said. ‘What—?’ She hesitantly reached her hand into the hole, extending her finger. And touched an emerald.
‘The find of the century,’ The Times called it. ‘A treasure trove, both literal and historic,’ the BBC’s cultural correspondent said, standing in front of the estate’s gatehouse with a breathlessly excited historian from Oxford University.
What the building work had uncovered, a small casket encrusted with gold and precious stones, had rested undisturbed for more than five hundred years. And its contents overturned whole chapters of history, almost everything presumed to be known about the 6th Marquess of Lionsbridge, Robert, and his wife Margery.
A cruel and ruthless autocrat who expanded his estate and material wealth with relentless ferocity – this was how the history books described Robert. A punishing taskmaster, the first marquess to insist on being addressed as ‘lord and master’ by his serfs. And a terrible husband to boot, who built the Dower House as a virtual prison for his wife Margery, exiling her there in favour of his mistress.
Contained in that chest, however, were five letters from Robert to Margery written over a period of two years spanning from the end of a long period of estrangement between the two of them in 1607 to her death in 1609. The letters, and the tokens found with them, revealed an entirely different man to the one in the history books.
Exciting as this find undoubtedly was, the weeks since its discovery had been filled with mounting headaches for Luna. Renovation work ground to an immediate halt, of course, as representatives from English Heritage, Historic England and assorted Russell Group universities descended on the property ‘like a parade of angry garden gnomes’, as Arborage’s press officer Caitlin Murray irreverently put it.
Ten weeks and several interminable meetings on, English Heritage had only just given the green light for limited building works to recommence. But this left Luna with the conundrum of what to do with the Dower House in light of this incredible find, how best to capitalise on Robert and Margery’s newly discovered story.
A partial answer to this last quandary arrived along the path from the main house shortly thereafter, as Luna stood within the arched entryway to the house watching the building contractor’s car pull away.
‘Roland,’ she said warmly, reaching out to take the arm of her most trusted lieutenant. Her balding, bespectacled Tours Manager, dressed in a tweed suit and sporting a natty tartan scarf, looked rather like a garden gnome himself. But Roland White was her garden gnome, by God, and her heart softened at the sight of his nervous expression. She led him across the drop-cloth-shrouded front hallway through a small antechamber that opened into the dining room, the only room as yet untouched by the builders.
Gesturing for him to sit beside her at the table, where her laptop, satchel and papers were laid out, Luna tapped her fingers lightly on the manuscript she’d taken with her to Sweden. ‘You’re a man of hidden depths, Mr White.’
‘You’ve erm…’ Roland cleared his throat. ‘You’ve read it, then?’
‘I have.’
‘And…?’ He coloured then, actually blushed, and Luna couldn’t find it in herself to tease him any longer.
‘I loved it!’ she exclaimed, picking up the manuscript and hurriedly paging through it, pointing to a passage she’d circled. ‘“As darkness fell on a frigid twelfth night, the Lord and Master of Lionsbridge stood in the gallery of his mansion, heedless of the revellers surrounding him. Robert Wellstone’s steely grey eyes were fixed on the horizon… waiting. But soft, soft. A flame in the distance, ephemeral, insubstantial, but unwavering. It was her, lighting the candle. Sealing her fate, and his.”’ Luna placed a hand on her chest. ‘This is very romantic stuff, Roland.’
He knitted his gnarled fingers together atop the table and said, ‘There are those who might say – in the academic community, I mean – that it’s not a serious work.’
Luna nodded. ‘They might.’ Then shrugged. ‘Do you care?’
Roland flushed an even brighter shade of red and Luna reached her hand out to his, giving it a quick squeeze. ‘It’s wonderful writing, Roland. You made me feel everything that Robert must have been feeling. And Margery… What an incredible love story.’ She snorted air through her nose in a show of derision. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the academic community can get stuffed. They’ll be wishing they were you when this is topping the bestseller list.’
‘It’s only three chapters,’ he demurred.
‘And I can’t wait to read the rest of it,’ Luna replied briskly. ‘We’ll publish under the Arborage imprint, of course.’
‘Well, I…’ he began, his chest visibly swelling.
‘And I’ve been thinking, do you want to take a sabbatical? A year, say, so you can really focus on this? I’m sure we could sort out a contingency in Tours.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Roland said hastily. ‘I do most of my writing in t
he evenings anyway. And I wouldn’t like to miss the next few months, putting the finishing touches on the Robert and Margery exhibit, not to mention the opening event in February.’
Luna considered this for a moment. ‘Why don’t you think on it overnight,’ she said, ‘while I get the publishing team to draft up a contract.’
Roland opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment his mobile vibrated across the table. ‘Alex’, read the name on caller ID. ‘Oh dear,’ Roland said, checking his watch and lifting the phone to his ear. ‘Yes, dear boy. I’m on my way.’ He listened briefly, then chuckled, murmuring, ‘What would I do without you?’ Luna resisted the strong urge to roll her eyes. Alex Parker was Roland’s junior in Tours and their relationship was… overly familiar, in her view.
Their conversation hadn’t gone entirely as she had hoped, Luna reflected a few minutes later, watching Roland scurry back along the path towards Arborage. Frowning thoughtfully, she retrieved her staff bike from the side of the house, then pedalled off along the lane that ran around the perimeter of the estate.
Tuesdays were Luna’s dress-down days, when she spent most of her time out and about on the estate, and the rule for Tuesdays was that she would have meaningful interactions with as many people as possible.
The building contractor and Roland counted as one and two toward her tally. A member of the Grounds staff she stopped to chat with as he was pressure-washing some moss off a slippery bit of path was three, and the manager of the Farm Shop and his employee of the month, to whom she presented a new gold lanyard and a John Lewis gift card, were four and five. Numbers six to twelve were a group of pensioners awkwardly attempting a selfie in front of the Jubilee fountain, till Luna smilingly offered her services as photographer.