Lord and Master Trilogy

by Jagger, Kait

  So he took a step toward her. ‘Come, sweetheart.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come to me.’

  Her feet moved as, hand still outstretched toward her, Stefan kept talking, guiding her along the edge of the balustrade. When she finally reached him, he’d have liked to grab her, pull her close; Luna could see how much he wanted to. But he read her expression, lifted his hands as if to say, I won’t touch you, I promise. And backed away toward the stairs and down them, eyes always on Luna as she followed him.

  The hail had just begun to clatter across the roof as Luna reached the bottom of the stairwell and Stefan shut the door behind her. Down the stairs they continued, walking side by side now, till they reached the family quarters and their bedroom, where hail was rattling against the leaded windows.

  Stefan came up behind Luna and put his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened and he made a little noise, of both reproach and reassurance, removing her shawl and throwing it on the bed. His hands returned to her shoulders and rotated her to face him.

  ‘You have had a busy day, I think,’ he said, looking down at her intently. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

  So Luna told him. She told him everything. About Isabelle and Roland. About St John and Barry. She told him other things too, about the school counsellor whose career little Stellaluna Incaeli Gregory effectively ended, and the trail of teenage girls she had left in her wake, fingers down their throats. About verbally disembowelling the Norwegian housewife on Shetland who dared to call her a slut, and reducing Helen to hopeless tears the night Stefan evicted her from the stables, holding a mirror up to the pathetic crank she would become in her daughters’ eyes if she continued her vendetta against him.

  She told him about Karoline, sparing herself nothing, no detail of the ruthlessness with which she had despatched his mother. Everything, everything, she told him, save for the final truth about Karoline and Putinov, the betrayal she feared he must suspect, deep in his heart of hearts, which if confirmed would sever his connection to his mother irrevocably. That truth Luna kept hidden. Not for Karoline’s sake, never that, but for Stefan’s.

  And last, Luna told Stefan about her conversation with Putinov on the terrace in Venice, where she followed every last one of Matthias’s instructions, adhered faithfully to the script he’d given her – until the very end, when she’d removed her bandage, and revealed to Putinov his men’s bumbling, violent incompetence.

  ‘Maybe he’d have found out about it on his own,’ she concluded, her voice little louder than a whisper, standing next to the window, where the hail had turned to rain.

  Stefan, who’d been sitting on the bed, legs crossed, feet bare, listening to her talk, broke his silence. ‘I think he would have, Luna. Putinov isn’t a stupid man.’

  ‘Yes, but, he didn’t. I told him.’

  A faint rumble sounded in the distance. The storm, moving along, rolling away from Arborage.

  ‘You said once that you wanted to know me,’ Luna said, lifting her cold, bleak, desolate eyes to his. ‘How does it feel,’ she asked. ‘Now that you do?’

  In answer, Stefan rose from the bed, walked to her, and placed his hands on either side of her skull. ‘Luna, I know you,’ he said emphatically. He kissed her brow. ‘I know you.’ And her temple. ‘I know you, Luna.’

  He kept saying it over and over again, like a prayer, a mantra, as he kissed her trembling mouth, and ran his hands down her arms, pulling her to him. ‘I know you, Luna… I know you…’ Until, at last, Luna lifted her head, buried her nose in his neck, and melted into him.

  Epilogue

  ‘But if someone was threatening me, or Jem, or anyone she loved, Luna would be on them like a mama wolf. She would chase them down, get her fangs in their throat. She would bring that fucker down.’

  Luna was dreaming. Sitting in a chair beside their bed, Stefan watched her eyelids flickering, the tiny, translucent blue veins within them seeming to pulse with every movement, her dark lashes brushing lightly against her pale skin. She was lying on her side, facing him, with her fist pressed into her chin. Her usual sleeping position. Her expression, even in repose, was serious, solemn. His älskling brought the same level of focus to dreaming as she did to everything else.

  But her dream was not, he thought, a bad one. In the time he had known her, all the nightmares in Luna’s life had been waking ones. Sleep was her escape, her refuge.

  She had been completely exhausted, after her confessions to him and all of her perceived misdemeanours that day. He’d had to undress her, take down her hair, and tuck her up in bed, stroking her back until she drifted off.

  And now he was watching her dream, a sight he had never before witnessed in the two years she had been his. From her old bedroom in the attic, to Margery’s room in the Dower House, to his apartment overlooking the Thames, to her loft bedroom on Shetland, in all the many beds he had shared with her, Luna had always eluded him in sleep, until now. Soon he would wake her up, get her to eat, but for now he would keep vigil.

  A monster. That was what she told him his mother had called her. He was glad his mother wasn’t there now, because… he looked down at his fists, gripped upon his lap.

  But it seemed that Luna herself believed that she was some kind of aberration, possessed of a gift for badness. On one level, Stefan thought she was being far too hard on herself. As far as he was concerned, the things she’d done that day, little and big, were all things that needed to be done.

  The only thing he would not allow to stand was Luna’s intention to act as some kind of firewall, a bulwark between him and his mother. A reckoning needed to take place between Karoline Lundgren and her only son, and it would happen without his wife’s involvement. He knew that Luna was trying to spare him this final sundering, and he loved her for it, but that made it all the more imperative that he act. Something ripped inside him every time he pictured her bound in restraints on a hospital bed, bleeding and in pain. His mother was never going to come near Luna again.

  As to Luna’s past crimes… yes, there was a darkness within her. He’d known it already, had seen her grappling with her murkier impulses, the ones that brought down roofing contractors and Russian killers alike. Truth be known, he was not as shocked by her teenage transgressions as Luna clearly expected him to be. He had come into contact with her then, after all, had borne witness to the terrifying, shaven-headed, snarling little arg flicka she had once been. Frankly, knowing her history, he considered it a minor miracle that she had emerged from this period of her life as well-adjusted as she had.

  And if she thought he’d disapprove of her unleashing her inner Fury on thieving staff, or conniving suppliers, or treacherous family members… well, perhaps he needed to educate his wife on the darker side of his own nature. The side that had relished marshalling Putinov’s enemies against him, that would happily inflict grievous bodily harm on the man he’d once considered his friend if he ever dared to speak of love to Luna again. The side that had taken cock-hardening pleasure, on his wedding night, to inflict rope burns on his new wife.

  So, no, Stefan had no interest in reining in his dark bride. On the contrary. In the future, he would just have to do what he did best and manage her abilities, harness them. Utilise them to her benefit. And his.

  Because he understood now, what Kayla had meant when she said it was Luna she would choose to have at her side, when enemies closed in around her. Where Luna loved, she loved completely, ferociously. With badness in her heart.

  And now she belonged to him, this woman in ten thousand. How many men could say what he could: that they were married to a woman who would do anything for them? Anything. That, he believed, was the real reason his forebear Robert Wellstone had sent Margery into exile. Knowledge of what she was, fear of what his Falcon was capable of, what she might do in his name. Stefan literally couldn’t understand casting such a helpmeet aside, waiting six long years to beg for her return.


  And he would not be making Robert’s mistake. No. The only challenge for him was in proving himself worthy of Luna, and showing her, showing her each and every day for the rest of their lives, how much he prized the gift that she was.

  His shield maiden.

  His wolf.

  His monster.

  Luna sighed in her sleep, and threw the cover off herself. Her eyelids stopped moving. Soon she would wake. Stefan leant against the bed, his face close to hers, and rested his hand on the curve of her belly. Everything that was precious to him was lying here in this bed.

  And then he felt it: a fluttering. He stretched his fingers wide on Luna’s stomach, felt a sinuous sliding, the curve distending slightly. And then a short, sharp kick. And another.

  His wife’s milky-blue eyes slid open, soft and drowsy, and Stefan’s face split into a heart-stopping smile.

  ‘I feel her, Luna! I feel our flicka!’

  THE END

  In Conversation with Kait Jagger

  The Lord and Master Trilogy author chats with editor Mary-Ellen Deily and book reviewer and blogger Sandra Fuda Lombardo about her characters, inspirations...and motorcycles!

  M-ED: You’ve said that you wrote this book after becoming frustrated with reading one poorly written Romance too many. But how did you shift from reader to writer? What was your first step, and how long did it take you to take it?

  I should preface my response by saying that there are many, many extremely talented romance novelists out there right now. If I’d been holding myself up to superlative storytellers like Courtney Milan, Sherry Thomas and Elizabeth Hoyt, doubtless I’d never have put pen to paper.

  I’ve spoken in the past about the ‘bad romance’ that finally convinced me to have a go at writing my own, and couched my response to it in terms of ‘disappointment’ and ‘dissatisfaction.’ But if I’m honest, what this book, an international best seller whose writer doesn’t need my good opinion, really made me feel was angry. Angry at the whisper-thin portrayal of the heroine’s career, friends and back story, angry that I was being asked to admire a manipulative, frankly boorish alpha hero, a man with so little respect for women that his strategy for binding the heroine to him was to repeatedly hide her birth control, so he could become her baby daddy, I guess.

  No word of a lie, the sheer rage on behalf of thinking romance readers everywhere that this book provoked in me started me making a list of everything I would do differently even before I finished reading it. I began writing the opening scene in Lord and Master within days. After that, the trick was just not to stop.

  SFL: And, you’d never written fiction before this?

  Not for publication, no. So I suppose I owe that writer and her not-my-kind-of-hero a debt of gratitude, eh?

  M-ED: Luna is a fantastic character—smart, brave, loyal and human in her sadness and fears. Did she arrive in your mind a fully developed character? What traits did you think were essential to making her your kind of heroine?

  Imagine a woman standing in the bright sunshine. And then picture the sun starting to set, shadows creeping in. Then imagine her in twilight. That’s the journey Luna has taken inside my head since her conception three years ago. She started out as a happier, less complex, less dark character. I can’t even tell you why that changed, except that the darkness seeped in as I was writing her.

  In terms of the traits I felt were essential, there are so many qualities I admire in other women, there’s no way I could squeeze them into one character! So I focused on making Luna a ‘fully fleshed’ heroine, with a career that’s important to her, close friends she relies on, the kind of insecurities I’d like to think are common to many women, and a compelling back story.

  M-ED: In what ways is Luna like you? In what ways is she different?

  Other than the fact that we’re both PAs and lapsed Catholics, Luna isn’t much like me at all! I only wish I could be as restrained and cool under pressure as she is. One thing we do have in common is our tendency to fall back on parlour tricks when we feel out of our depth. Like Luna, I’m not a naturally outgoing person and like her I sometimes mimic the confidence of my more self-assured friends, or people I admire, when I’m in social situations.

  SFL: You’ve referred to Stefan as a ‘quiet alpha.’ What does this description mean to you?

  There’s a meme in romance circles to do with heroines who are TSTL (Too Stupid to Live), i.e. women who because of their insufficient common sense are in constant need of rescuing by the hero. Me, I think there should be a similar sobriquet for arrogant alpha heroes, something along the lines of TCTL (Too Conceited to Love)! It was really, really important to me that Stefan came across not just as a driven, confident lead male, but also as open-minded, playful, self-deprecating and... lovable! And if that meant dialling down his alpha intensity a notch, so be it—I think he’s a better man for it.

  M-ED: I sense that you love Arborage nearly as much as Luna. What role does setting play in your book(s)?

  I based Arborage loosely on Chatsworth House, a stately home in Derbyshire that was the setting for the Keira Knightly movies Pride and Prejudice and The Duchess. Chatsworth is really a model for how you turn a money pit of a historic home into a successful business, and Deborah Devonshire, wife of the 11th Duke of Devonshire and driving force behind this transition, was my inspiration for the character of Augusta Wellstone.

  I wanted Arborage to come across as a living, breathing place in these books—another character, as it were. So I spent a lot of time working out the detail of how the house and surrounding estate look, the emotions they provoke in Luna.

  SFL: In general, the trilogy is widely varied in terms of location and scenarios the characters find themselves in. How much of this reflects your own life?

  I’ve travelled across the length and breadth of Britain to research this book and bring its locations to life, and I truly hope my Stockholm scenes reflect my abiding love for Sweden’s capital city. The only other way I purposefully strove to make the trilogy ‘true to myself’ was in the sex scenes. I’ve read one too many romances where I’ve found myself raising my eyebrows at a particularly acrobatic sex scene, thinking, ‘Hunh, I see how it’s possible to have sex this way, but to enjoy it?’ So I made a promise when I started writing these books that I would include no sex act or position I hadn’t tried and taken pleasure from myself. Period.

  SFL: How did you decide how much eroticism to include in your books? (I’d never classify them as purely erotica as there’s so much depth and story) Was it just who Stefan and Luna were, or did you go in thinking, ‘Stefan is going to truss Luna up like a Sunday chicken?’

  Ha ha, no. I do road test some of my ideas with my husband, who as you might imagine is very supportive of my writing career ;-). Other than that, my only other guiding principle in terms of how much detail I include, how far the sex scenes go, is that I want them to inspire my readers, not make them feel inadequate. I am also, in case you couldn’t tell, not a fan of the ‘magic orgasm,’ where the heroine achieves completion without any kind of effort on the hero’s part. It’s a lie I’m not willing to perpetuate.

  M-ED: Luna’s relationship with her female friends is another thing that sets your books apart from many. Why did you want her to have these close friends? Are close friends important to you?

  Ah, I guess that’s another thing I have in common with Luna. Genuinely, if the characters of Jem, Kayla and Nancy ring true to readers in any way, it’s because I borrowed shamelessly from my real life experiences with my four best friends from university. Drunken misadventures? Check. Weird, shared musical obsessions? Check. Cruel-to-be-kind, if-I-don’t-tell-you-who-will unsolicited advice? Check!

  But I think Luna’s friends are also critical to telling her story. She’s so reserved, she isn’t going to volunteer to tell it herself, that’s for sure!

  SFL: What are some of your fa
vourite books? Favourite authors?

  Too hard, too hard! There are so many! My all-time favourite novel is Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, which combines elements of historical fiction, mystery, love story and dystopian science fiction—basically all my favourite genres rolled into one. But I also love authors as varied as Isaac Asimov, Susanna Clarke, Nick Hornby, Sarah Waters, Oscar Wilde and Philip Kerr.

  In terms of romance writers, the aforementioned Milan, Thomas and Hoyt rank high on my list, as does erotic romance author Robin Schone. And then there’s the grandmother of all romance authors, Charlotte Brontë, before whom each and every successful romance writer today should be genuflecting on a daily basis. If Luna Gregory is even a tenth of the woman Jane Eyre was, I’m content.

  M-ED: You’ve said many times that you love the Romance genre. Are your books Romance novels? Is the genre more fluid than many realise, or is there a better genre term to describe them?

  Absolutely my books are romances. And yes, the genre is fluid, or maybe the word is more like varied. There are so, so many sub-genres the sit under the romance umbrella these days, including paranormal, westerns, gay and lesbian romance...it really is a golden era for readers who are looking for something a little different when they crawl under the covers at night, Kindle and glass of wine at the ready!

  M-ED: Was it more difficult, or in any way different, to write the back story for Stefan than for Luna, because of gender?