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

  ‘Yes,’ Luna said, ‘the sheep breeder from Shetland.’

  ‘That’s right. We were looking to set up an arrangement with him and other farmers to supply wool for a range of outerwear my company wants to launch next year.’

  Luna nodded, not really seeing where this was going.

  ‘It is fair to say that Dagmar has… what is it you English say? “Made a hash”? Yes, that’s it, she has made a hash of it.’ Smiling ruefully, he said, ‘It is partly my fault. I had hoped that she might be suited to move into a management role in my company, but I felt she needed to be tested a little first, put outside her comfort zone. So I asked her to work with Malcolm to put agreements in place with these farmers, and to build a new wool processing facility on the island.’

  Taking a sip of his coffee, Sören went on, ‘It has proven too much for Dagmar. She is not a naturally outgoing person in the best of circumstances, and I underestimated how many difficulties she would face. Somehow in the space of three months, she has managed to alienate most of the farmers we were hoping to attract to this proposition. So I am faced with a choice, Luna. Either withdraw from the project entirely, or provide Dagmar with the tools she needs to put it right.’

  Sören toyed with the stem of his coffee cup, reflecting, ‘I believe that this range of outerwear could become the statement creation of my company, that one day discerning men will refer to the Lundgren coat in the same breath as the Crombie, or the Belstaff. I also have personal interests in Shetland. Have I told you that I own the land Malcolm farms?’

  Luna shook her head.

  ‘You remember me telling you about Augusta’s visit to Sweden when I was a boy, to make peace with my father and borrow funds to pay off Arborage’s creditors. As a quid pro quo, my father demanded the transfer of certain assets, including a sizeable piece of land in Shetland. At the time, I’m sure Augusta thought it was a small price to pay, but my father was a canny man. This land has proven a valuable asset to my family. I would like to make it even more so.’

  He sipped his coffee again and concluded, ‘No. I am not for withdrawing from this project. Not yet.’ Then Sören smiled, his eyes crinkling. ‘So I must provide Dagmar with tools, or rather, a tool. And that is where you come in, Luna.’

  Luna shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘If there is anyone who can woo these farmers back, and wooing is what they need, make no mistake, it is you. I have seen you, when visitors come to Arborage, making them feel like royalty. I honestly think Malcolm thought he had died and gone to heaven, standing with you in the portico.’

  ‘But that’s different,’ Luna protested. ‘Arborage, it – Arborage sells itself.’

  ‘You underestimate yourself.’

  ‘I was just doing my job, supporting Augusta,’ she continued.

  ‘Do you not think you could do the same for Dagmar? She is an extremely talented woman, but she needs help. Help with wooing the farmers, help guiding Malcolm, help with the endless paperwork required to obtain grant funding from the Scottish government and the EU.’

  Luna twisted her fingers together on her lap. ‘I don’t know, Sören. I’d be afraid I’d let you down.’

  Sören raised his hands and said, ‘Look at it this way. You left Arborage with nowhere else to go. Yes, you will find another job, but it may take some time. This assignment, which would be six months, gives you that time. It fills a hole in your curriculum vitae.’ He smiled at her again. ‘Truly, Luna, you could not make the situation up in Shetland any worse than it is now. There is no pressure on you. And if it makes a difference, you have my assurance that I will not inform Stefan of my offer, should you accept.’

  Suddenly, Sören’s kindness was almost more than Luna could bear. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and stood, ready to sprint all the way back to her hotel room.

  ‘Can I think about it overnight? Give you my answer tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Sören said, standing. She was afraid he would hug her again, and if he did she would surely start sobbing all over his lovely tweed suit. But instead he took her by both shoulders.

  ‘Do you know,’ he observed softly, ‘I don’t think I have ever seen you with your hair down before.’ He turned her slightly to see where her dark brown mane fell to the small of her back. ‘It suits you, Luna.’

  And that was it. Him looking at her like that, his eyes and his expression, even the way he said her name, so like his son, it was too much. Luna turned and left the shop in a hurry.

  She didn’t collapse into tears when she got back to her hotel room, which she counted as progress. Instead, she cracked open the bottle of ginger ale she’d picked up from the Aldi down the road and started googling Shetland sheep.

  In truth, she wasn’t sure how she felt about Sören’s offer. On the one hand, he was right that it would paper over the cracks in her CV following her precipitous departure from Arborage. But… she knew absolutely nothing about sheep, and little about farming in general. And Sören was Stefan’s father. If she was trying to leave Arborage and its future ‘lord and master’ behind, entering his father’s employ was problematic at best, regardless of Sören’s assurances.

  To her surprise, there was an email from Dagmar waiting for her in her inbox.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Assignment

  Luna. Sören has told me of his meeting with you. I hope you will consider joining us. I attach CADs for the line, to give you some feeling of it.

  Had Sören put her up to this? Or was Dagmar as eager for her help as her boss? Luna flicked through the computer-generated images of the Lundgren coat, or coats, as there was a long and short version of it, and a variety of accessories, including leather gloves and hats. She could see why Sören was so excited about this line; from the images and what she remembered of the prototype coat he wore on a visit to Arborage, it was something special, made of soft but durable thickly woven black wool. The kind of men’s coat a woman might covet.

  She briefly scrolled through the rest of her emails, mostly from Nancy clucking like a mother hen: ‘How are you? I mean, how are you really? xxoo’, ‘You are a WONDERFUL PERSON, Stellaluna Gregory. Don’t you forget it!!!’, ‘Remember the code: hos before bros!’ Luna smiled, then shook herself when she felt the smile go a little watery.

  She was gearing up to hit reply to Nancy’s latest missive when the laptop pinged and a new email appeared in her inbox. From a name she hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

  *

  The following morning, Luna emerged from Holborn tube station and made her way to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the largest public square in London. Passing the Grade II listed London School of Economics, she approached the north side of the green and entered a Georgian townhouse with a brass plaque outside reading Derwent & Co.

  ‘I have an appointment with Mr Noakes,’ Luna said to the sombre, besuited young man sitting behind a desk at the door. Without a word, he rose and led her up a set of graciously curving stairs to a large office overlooking the park. A tall, elderly man standing next to the sash windows turned and smiled at her arrival.

  ‘Miss Gregory, it’s a pleasure to see you again,’ Elijah Noakes intoned, taking Luna’s hand. He gestured to a leather club chair in front of his large mahogany desk, stacked high with papers and books.

  Taking a seat, Luna clasped her hands together and said, ‘I was… intrigued by your message.’

  Decades of scrutinising legal papers at that desk had left Elijah Noakes with a slightly stooped back, which combined with his aquiline nose and flowing silver grey hair gave him the air of a hawk poised to swoop in on its prey. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, and the expression on his weathered face was kindly as he nodded.

  ‘Yes, I admit, I too am intrigued. I am rarely asked to act as intermediary for this kind of transaction,’ he said, removing his pinstripe jacket and sitting behind his desk.
‘But the gentleman was most insistent on meeting you.’

  ‘And…’ Luna hesitated, ‘he knew my father?’

  Luna’s father formed the basis of Luna’s connection with Mr Noakes. A musician and sometime singer-songwriter who had died when Luna was twelve, Lukas Gregory’s sole album, produced before he met Luna’s mother, had been a commercial failure at the time of its release, but had steadily developed a following over the years. Ultimate control of the modest income generated from royalties became a bone of contention between Luna and her only surviving relative, her paternal grandmother, to the extent that when Luna was in her late teens she was forced to initiate legal proceedings to become an emancipated minor. Though it had never been articulated between them, Luna suspected that it was the Marchioness who sent Mr Noakes to her rescue, for Derwent & Co numbered the Lionsbridge Estate among its clients.

  ‘He claims to know you as well,’ Mr Noakes was saying. ‘But you don’t remember him?’

  ‘No,’ Luna shook her head. ‘My father had a lot of friends, though.’

  ‘And you were very young,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes,’ she said solemnly, thinking she could detect, not for the first time, a glimmer of admiration in his eyes. Although their relationship was purely professional, she remembered Mr Noakes observing once, during one of several meetings they had when she was a teenager, ‘I do believe, Miss Gregory, that one look from you would convince any judge to grant your emancipation.’

  At this point the silent receptionist ushered in a curly-haired man in his mid-forties. Luna rose from her chair and was taken completely unaware when the man took her by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.

  ‘Wow, Luna. I can’t believe how much you’ve grown!’ To her alarm, he pulled her into a hug. Luna was trying to decide whether to return his embrace when he noticed Mr Noakes and reached his hand out to him. ‘Hi, I’m Rafe Davies.’

  For the life of her, Luna couldn’t place Davies. She knew from Mr Noakes’s email that he claimed to have been a friend of her father’s, and from Google that he was an independent filmmaker of some repute, having recently won a prize at Cannes for one of his short films. But his dark mop of hair and downturned, slightly sad-looking brown eyes raised no memories within her.

  Davies was clearly accustomed to taking charge. Sitting in one of the leather chairs next to Mr Noakes’ desk, he gestured for Luna to sit opposite him.

  Adjusting himself in his chair, he began, ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’ He looked over to Mr Noakes. ‘I don’t want to keep you, Elijah. Luna and I can talk privately about this.’

  The older man frowned slightly at the use of his Christian name and dusted an imaginary piece of lint from his shirt sleeve. ‘I’d prefer to stay. Assuming that’s acceptable to Miss Gregory.’

  Luna nodded gratefully and returned her attention to Davies. ‘I understand you’d like to use one of my father’s songs in something you’re working on?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he nodded enthusiastically. ‘An advert I’ve been hired to do for a major European car company. A new sports car they’re coming out with.’ He smiled wryly at an implied criticism Luna hadn’t made. ‘I know, I know, but the adverts pay the bills. They give me the freedom to do the projects I really want to do.’

  As he continued talking, Luna studied both his clothes – a trendy tartan shirt, leather jacket and what appeared to be jeans from Topman – and his expressive, animated face. Indeed, so transfixed was she by his rather extravagant manner, she lost the thread of what he was saying.

  ‘…really dark, totally different from the usual “boys’ toys” advert you get for cars like this.’

  Luna nodded uncomprehendingly, feeling completely out of her depth. Davies seemed to sense her discomfort, because he immediately changed tack.

  ‘Your dad, it’s difficult for me to explain to you the impact his music had on me. I’m one of those people who needs music to spark the creative process, and his stuff…’ He paused and smiled. ‘I remember you coming along with him to the Cat.’

  Ah, so that was where he knew her father from. The Cat was a hole-in-the-wall venue in Hackney where Lukas Gregory regularly performed, mostly as back-up musician for other acts. After her mother died of a brain aneurism when Luna was eleven, Lukas had taken to bringing Luna along with him to his gigs there.

  Suddenly Davies’ relationship with her father became clear to her. Failed solo artist though he was, Lukas Gregory had attracted his share of fans, some of them verging on obsessive. Luna learned to avoid them in the wake of his death, though a few had been fairly persistent for reasons she couldn’t fathom. She was only his daughter, after all; his unique gifts had died with him.

  She thought she could see some of this obsession in Davies’ face and was on the verge of looking for an excuse to draw the meeting to a close when he said, ‘It’s “No Good” I want to use in the advert, by the way.’

  Now this was of interest to her. ‘No Good’ was her favourite of her father’s songs, though it wasn’t the most successful song on the album and got virtually no airplay at the time.

  That Davies wanted to use such a moody, bleak piece brought him up in her estimation, and the silent, rough cut of the advert he showed her on his tablet, featuring a young man who, to Luna’s eyes, looked very much like her father, driving through the deserted, pre-dawn streets of London… well, it was remarkable; incredibly atmospheric.

  Luna was impressed, and she told Davies as much. ‘But, and forgive me, I’ve never been asked to give permission for use of my father’s material, so I’m not sure what you…’

  Davies smiled and nodded, like he’d been expecting this. ‘There are two reasons I wanted to talk to you,’ he said. ‘First, to forewarn you that using a song like this in an advertising campaign can generate a lot of public interest. And that’s a good thing, in terms of shining a light on Lukas’ work. But it can be a double-edged sword, this kind of public attention.’

  Luna glanced at Mr Noakes, who lifted his shoulders slightly as if to say, fair point. Turning back to Davies, she saw him hesitate for the first time in their conversation, as if he didn’t know quite how to phrase what he wanted to say next.

  ‘And second,’ he said eventually, ‘I want to…’ He searched for words. ‘It’s important to me to get your blessing for this. Your father isn’t here to give it, and I know he’d want you to make this decision.’

  Luna sat back in her chair. She hadn’t been expecting this, and it made her extremely uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure you’re right about that,’ she said falteringly. ‘If my mother was alive, yes, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my father would have wanted her to be the custodian of his music. But they had a unique relationship. It wasn’t like that between him and me.’

  She hadn’t intended this to sound like a judgement on her father, but Luna could hear the wistfulness in her tone, and feel the sudden pall that fell upon the room. Davies searched her face, a little sadly she thought, and she wished she’d put it differently.

  ‘I disagree, Luna,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s something else I want to show you.’

  Luna returned to her hotel two hours later having given Rafe Davies her verbal consent to use her father’s song. Rather than go straight to her room, which suddenly seemed less like a refuge and more like a prison, she opted to go to the hotel’s deserted restaurant, sitting at a table next to the window and ordering a cup of tea.

  Looking back on her conversation with Davies, she wondered if he knew about her father’s suicide. Lukas Gregory’s death in the train station at Newbury thirteen years earlier had been reported as an accident, but there was something about Davies’ expression when he’d talked about the ‘double edged sword’ of public attention. Luvvie or not, Luna felt that his intentions in meeting with her were honourable. She liked Rafe Davies, and she shared his hope that this advertisement might lead to a public re-examination of her father’s work.

  Luna si
pped her tea as she watched a steady stream of pedestrians – some tourists, some office workers on their way to lunch – walk past her window. Life went on.

  She had taken great care during her adult life to isolate the period after her parents’ deaths, placing the emotions she couldn’t deal with into drawers in an imaginary apothecary chest. And perhaps the only advantage of becoming an orphan at the age of twelve was that every other bad thing paled in comparison. Losing Stefan had been the first time in a decade that she’d allowed herself to feel genuine heartbreak – but it didn’t compare to the loss of her parents.

  Stefan was still alive, after all. He was alive, and would eventually go on to live a full and happy life, Luna was sure of that. She just wouldn’t be a part of it. She practised putting the lump of pain this thought provoked into a drawer in her apothecary chest. But it wouldn’t fit, not yet.

  Luna finished her tea. Then pulled out her mobile and phoned Sören Lundgren to accept his offer of employment.

  Chapter Two

  Standing on top of the hill overlooking the ocean, Luna looked over to see the ewe she’d just rescued grazing happily on the adjacent patch of grass, its recent misadventures completely forgotten.

  It had been two months since she had taken the overnight ferry from Aberdeen to Lerwick, a stormy February night she’d spent reeling between the deck of the ferry and the loo, heaving her guts out. The sea grew calmer as they approached Shetland’s main port and capital city, and Luna’s overwhelming first impression as they pulled into the harbour was of greyness. Grey fog, grey granite buildings, grey scales on the cod being unloaded from a nearby trawler…

  She had learned, in the time she had been there, that the true colour of Shetland was green. A thousand different shades of green. And black, for her. Sören required a thousand black Shetland sheep to produce enough wool to launch a limited edition, bespoke range of all-natural outerwear.