Lord and Master (26 page)

It was when Nancy pulled out a container of lighter fluid and began pouring it onto Robert's bed that Luna realised that things had gone too far.

She had flown over to New York on the earliest flight she could find the day after her friend's call, genuinely worried after listening to an hour of increasingly incoherent sobbing that she might do something desperate. But Luna arrived at Nancy's apartment in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights to find her eerily calm, having prepared a game plan for how they would proceed.

‘We're going to go over to his studio,' Nancy said, holding up a key, ‘and I'm going to collect every single thing I've ever given him.' Behind her wire-rim glasses, Nancy's eyes were red and swollen, but her lips were tight and her expression obdurate, so Luna didn't dare raise any objections.

‘Okay, but—' she began.

‘Do you know that he's been screwing her on the mattress
I
bought him? All he had was that rock-hard futon until I decided it was time for him to graduate from Ikea.'

Robert's studio was located in Williamsburg, an arty enclave in north Brooklyn about two miles from Nancy's place. In happier times, when Nancy had first started dating him four years earlier, Luna had visited with Jem and Kayla while their friend was apartment hunting nearby. Luna could remember that proximity to her new boyfriend came second only to desirability of the neighbourhood on Nancy's extensive wish list.

Even in Prospect Heights, which at the time had yet to be gentrified like nearby Park Slope, with its Victorian era brownstones and leafy parks, Nancy's money combined with a small inheritance from her grandmother could only stretch to a one-bedroom duplex next to a liquor store just off Washington Avenue. But they'd spent some happy times there over the years, often involving Robert and his mates, and it made Luna both sad and angry to think how he'd squandered all of this.

When the yellow cab driver pulled up outside Robert's studio, located in a converted garage near the Queens Expressway, Nancy told him to wait. ‘This won't take long,' she said in a voice so ominous that Luna knew a moment's dread, trailing warily behind her with an empty cardboard box as Nancy walked up to the metal roller shutters on the studio, unlocking and opening them with a clang.

‘Are you sure about this?' Luna ventured, peering into the darkened interior.

‘Oh, don't worry. He's in Hoboken at his mom's house. Too scared he might actually have to face me.'

They completely bypassed the studio in the garage, with its lighting and photographic equipment, as well as stacks of framed prints from a recent exhibition of his work – ‘the one I
slaved
to make a success for him,' Nancy seethed – and went straight back to his small, cluttered bedroom in what used to be the garage's office. Nancy immediately made a beeline to a clothes rack against the wall and began pulling shirts and suits out of it.

‘I gave him this. And this. And look at this, a freaking Armani suit. The man bought all his clothes from Banana Republic when I first met him. I revolutionise his wardrobe, give him a sense of style that he has heretofore completely lacked, and it's like I've created a monster…'

Within a few minutes she had transferred more than half the contents of his clothes rail into a pile on his bed. Rifling through a plastic crate beside the rack, she held up a framed photo of her and Robert to Luna.

‘This—' she broke off, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘
This
is how I knew. I came over here day before yesterday to pick up a pair of shoes I needed and I found all my stuff hidden away in here. And then I looked at the bed and I just…knew. He didn't even try to deny it when I phoned him at his mom's. Said he had some serious thinking to do and he was torn between his head and his heart…I don't even know which one of those I am…' Nancy sobbed.

‘That wanker. That bloody wanker,' Luna replied vehemently, fully prepared to give her friend every ounce of her support…till she saw her pick up Robert's prized baseball bat, the one signed by every member of the 2009 Yankees team.

Nodding to the antique mirror above the bed, Nancy said, ‘I gave him that too.'

Two minutes later, the mirror lay in shattered pieces all over the bed and Luna was standing pressed against a wall, more than a little horrified by the carnage she'd just witnessed. Nancy, meanwhile, had moved on to the bathroom where she was retrieving her toiletries, chucking them en masse into the cardboard box. She held up a compact and some Eve Lom moisturiser, observing, ‘These aren't mine,' and tossing them onto the bed along with Robert's clothes, the entire collection of framed photos of the two of them, the iPod and docking station she gave him for his last birthday, and all that shattered glass. Then she picked up her Louis Vuitton bag and extracted the container of lighter fluid.

‘What the—' Luna shook her head as Nancy began to squirt it liberally all over Robert's clothes. ‘You can't do that.'

‘The hell I can't.' Nancy threw the empty container onto the bed and began rifling through her bag again.

‘Nancy, no.'

But as Luna put her hands out to stop her, Nancy pulled out a box of kitchen matches, stepped backwards out of her reach, and lit a match. Which she threw onto the bed, watching with a bitter smile as the pile caught fire with a
whoof
. Next thing Luna knew, Nancy was on her way back into the garage, leaving her standing in front of a burning pyre in the middle of Robert's bed. Accelerated by the lighter fluid, flames were licking up towards the ceiling. Luna cursed and quickly grabbed the plastic crate, running into the bathroom.

It took two trips to douse the fire, by which point the smoke alarm was ringing shrilly in the garage. Pausing to make absolutely sure the fire was out – Robert would not be wearing his Armani suit again, that was for sure – Luna walked out to the cab, where Nancy was sitting primly in the back seat, cardboard box perched on her knee.

‘No need to worry. I'm fine,' Luna coughed caustically, getting into the cab next to her.

‘You didn't put it out, did you?'

‘Yes I bloody put it out!' Luna shrieked. ‘For fuck's sake, Nancy, I can't have you committing arson, no matter how much you hate Robert.'

Two hours later they were in an upscale Mexican restaurant in Park Slope, Luna having insisted that she deserved some enchiladas for her afternoon's firefighting labours. She was on her third margarita and Nancy was on her fifth shot of Cuervo Gold and beginning to slur her words. Luna would never have said as much to her friend, but it passed through her mind that the zero tolerance policy for feminine heartbreak apparently didn't apply to Nancy herself. There had been more tears, plans for further retribution which Luna felt duty-bound to strongly discourage, and underlying all of this, bleak disbelief from the girl who up until now had always been the dumper, not the dumpee.

‘No matter how much I bitched about him and how often he let me down, I don't think I ever really thought we wouldn't end up together,' Nancy concluded dejectedly. Luna thought about Stefan then – Stefan, who she'd had to phone yesterday from Heathrow to say that their plans for a cosy weekend at the Dower House were cancelled – and contemplated the possibility that there were worse things than a man who was dedicated to his work.

She somehow got Nancy home and put her to bed. She went to the cupboard next to the bathroom and got a pillow, some sheets and a blanket, carrying them out to the sofa in the living room. Turning on a lamp, she looked at the assorted photos of Nancy's family, Robert, and of her and the girls displayed on the coffee table. There was one of them at Leeds Festival during their Arctic Monkeys summer, wearing sundresses and flowered wellies, that always made Luna smile.

She looked at her watch, which she hadn't bothered to switch over from UK time as she was flying back on Sunday. Just after 4am. Being fairly drunk, she didn't hesitate to pick up her mobile and ring Stefan.

‘Luna,' he answered sleepily.

‘I've woken you.'

‘It's okay.' She heard him moving, sitting up in bed. ‘How is Nancy?'

‘God, you don't even want to know. I'll tell you the story when I see you but, suffice it to say, I've had an eventful afternoon with her…'

‘I miss you,' Stefan said apropos of nothing, and she could hear him smiling.

‘I miss you too.'

‘Go on, tell me the highlights of your afternoon.'

So she told him, and even he, who she knew had been on the receiving end of a few scorned women's attentions, was incredulous at how far Nancy had gone.

‘Tell me about it,' Luna huffed. ‘That fire singed the hair off one of my wrists.'

‘Otch, Luna…'

‘Puts my little tantrum in the boardroom at Arborage into perspective, doesn't it?'

‘Indeed.'

She lay down on the pillow, pressing her mobile against her ear.

‘You probably need to get some sleep,' she said softly.

‘No, no, I'm wide awake now.' There was a pause and they both started laughing, Stefan adding, ‘It will be a
while
before I can sleep again,' in a voice so comical that Luna laughed until she cried.

‘Gracious,' she gasped eventually. ‘I really, really miss you.'

‘Me too. So much so that I've changed my plans and stayed in Stockholm this weekend so I can come back to London on Monday night.'

‘Ah, lovely.'

‘To show you that not all men are feckless bastards who shag other women in the bed their girlfriend bought them.'

She also told him about helping Sören with his meeting, leaving it to the last minute to mention his account of Augusta's visit to Sweden thirty-five years previously.

‘He told you this?' Stefan said incredulously. ‘How did you charm that tale out of him? This is a story reserved for late-night drunk talk with my uncles at family gatherings…“How in hell did Augusta talk Papa into loaning her eight million pounds?”…'

‘Really? Was it that much?' Luna whispered excitedly, adding, ‘It's possible that your father may have been slightly inebriated when he told me this.'

Stefan laughed. ‘
Flicka
, have you been getting my father pissed in order to steal family secrets from him?'

‘No, no, I swear,' she assured him. ‘And you mustn't mention this to him. By the way, have you…does he know we're…?'

‘I've told him that I'm seeing you in a non-Arborage-related capacity,' he said matter-of-factly. ‘Is that okay?'

‘Yes, yes. I just didn't know.' She bit her lip. ‘And he's fine with you and me…?'

‘His exact words were that I was damned lucky someone like you would even look twice at me.'

She got on the plane home the following evening having extracted a promise from Nancy that she would take no further punitive action against Robert or the nameless other woman. Not that Luna believed this saga was over by a long shot, but she reasoned that as long as no more property was destroyed she could rest easier at night.

Unfortunately, she ended up sat in front of a six-year-old with a penchant for kicking on the plane ride home, so the first half of her overnight flight was an ordeal. Even after he fell asleep, she found she couldn't get comfortable.

So she arrived sleepless and gritty-eyed at Heathrow, only to find a massive queue at immigration. Once she'd finally gotten through, she went to the ladies room and retrieved a toothbrush and toothpaste from her backpack, feeling slightly more human after she'd cleaned her teeth. Her hair, which was crackling with static from the plane, she brushed and swiftly braided.

Luna walked through the final set of doors into the arrivals area with her head down, reaching into her jeans pocket for her mobile and switching it on. A scrum of American tourists were gathered just outside the secure area shouting instructions to each other, and she had to pick her way through them and their assorted luggage. She was glancing around, looking for signs to the taxi rank when, to her amazement, she saw Stefan standing under the arrivals board, dressed in his camel hair coat, a day's growth of blond hair on his cheeks.

He spotted her at the same moment and they both walked towards each other, Luna smiling so broadly she thought her cheeks would crack. ‘What are you doing here?' she exclaimed. ‘I thought you weren't flying in till tonight.'

‘I decided to change my flight,' he said, lifting the strap of her backpack off her shoulder and lowering it to the floor. Luna leaned into him and buried her face in his jumper, reaching under his coat and clasping her hands behind his back. His arms encircled her, pulling her close, and she relaxed for the first time in what seemed like weeks.

‘I am so, so glad to see you,' she said, lifting her face to his. He bent down and kissed her, tasting like coffee and Stefan and smelling ever so nice, and if Luna could have crawled into his coat with him at that moment she'd have gladly done so.

He used a valet service for the Lamborghini, so they had to wait for a few minutes for the car to be brought around. Not that Luna minded, delirious as she was with sleep deprivation and gladness to be with him. Standing together just outside the terminal, he asked about her flight, and about Brooklyn, telling her about the weather in Stockholm, which had gotten a bit warmer after a recent cold snap. And then they kissed again, oblivious to the crowds of travellers streaming around them.

Even when she realised he was driving to his apartment in London, scene of so many erotic encounters with Miss Party Supply, it couldn't put a dent in Luna's happiness. She also found that she wasn't as tired as she'd thought, placing her hand on his upper thigh as he drove into town and slowly moving it inward till it rested directly between his legs.

‘Ah, Miss Gregory,' Stefan sighed, shifting slightly in his seat as he hardened under her ministrations.

‘Am I distracting you?' she enquired sweetly, making to move her hand away, only to have him capture it and return it to his lap.

‘I can manage,' he grinned. ‘Carry on.'

So she did. It got to the point where, by the time he'd pulled up in his underground car park, the two of them were fairly running to the lift, divesting each other of their coats and jumpers even before it got to the penthouse. When the elevator doors opened onto Stefan's apartment, he quickly scooped them up and threw them into the room, sniffing Luna's jacket and remarking, ‘It smells like smoke.'

She kicked off her boots and watched and waited while he knelt down to remove his shoes. When he stood, she walked up to him, placing her hands on his belt buckle and beginning to unfasten it. He did the same to hers and their eyes met, a current of pure lust flowing between them. Stefan lowered his open mouth to hers as they simultaneously unzipped each other's jeans and slid their hands within, Luna locating the gap in his boxers and Stefan circumnavigating the lace on her knickers till they found flesh, his hot and hard, hers soft and slick.

As Luna slid her hand along his shaft, Stefan inserted his entire hand into her knickers, covering and then fingering her. Her clitoris trembled and yearned and for one staggering moment she thought she was going to come there and then. Luna's eyes flew to his in something like panic. In response, he inhaled quickly, summoning his remaining self-control and pushing her away from him.

‘Clothes off,' he commanded. ‘Bed now.'

Never had a trail of clothes been laid so quickly as it was en route to Stefan's bedroom, Luna leading the way and Stefan following. She was down to her bra by the time she got to the end of the bed, turning to find him completely and gloriously naked. Pressing her down on the bed, he quickly unclasped and removed the bra and knelt between her legs, drawing his index finger along her sex and lifting it to his mouth.

‘Christ, you taste good,' he whispered, pushing her legs apart abruptly and lowering his head between them. His teeth grazed her, his tongue darting against her and his mouth drawing her in. Burying her fingers in his hair, Luna's stomach muscles tightened uncontrollably. He loosened the suction against her momentarily, then drew her back in, and she felt herself beginning to pulse, crying out as the surge overcame her. Stefan clamped his hands down on her hips, his tongue twirling around her clitoris until she begged him to stop, hooking her hands under his armpits and pulling him up and on top of her. Lowering his full weight onto her, he gripped her buttocks in his palms and entered her. And then it was fast and frantic, her legs wrapped around him as he thrust into her so ferociously that within minutes his rhythm skipped a beat, descending into four deep, uncontrolled thrusts. ‘Ah, Luna,' he moaned, shuddering against her.

He lay atop her for some time afterwards, and when he eventually moved to shift his weight off her she held him where he was, not ready to break contact. It was a while before she could speak.

‘That was…'

‘Yes,' he agreed, rolling onto his side and pulling her to him, twining her braid with his hand in his usual way.

She began to drift and mumbled, ‘Don't let me sleep for more than two hours.'

‘Mmm, I might have a sleep with you.'

The last thing Luna could remember was smiling into his chest at this.

He was awake before her, of course. When she opened her eyes she was on her stomach in the middle of the bed. Checking the clock she saw it was just after 1pm. She rose from the bed, pulling a blanket around herself and wandering into the living room. No Stefan.

Picking up the pile of her clothes he'd placed on the sofa, she walked back towards the bedroom, extracting her mobile from her jeans and punching in his contact details. She heard his phone ringing, then saw it light up on the bedside table. She picked it up and studied it; there was a photo of her, the one from the Visitor Centre of the back of her head. James must have mentioned it to him and Stefan had somehow managed to get hold of it. Luna smiled, feeling a little warm and mushy inside.

Reflecting that he wouldn't have gone far without his mobile, she headed to the bathroom for a quick shower and was just turning the tap off when he appeared, holding a towel out for her.

‘Have you been outside?' she asked as she stepped into his arms and kissed his jaw.

‘Just downstairs to get the post. It's grey out there, but no rain I think.'

‘Do you, um, need to go into the office, or do any work?' she asked as he towelled her off.

‘No,' he said, pausing for dramatic effect. ‘I have taken the day off.'

She did a slight double take and laughed. ‘And here I've made you waste half of it in bed.'

‘Hardly wasted,' he demurred.

‘Still, though, is there anything you'd like to do?'

‘A walk, maybe?'

Twenty minutes later, Luna wearing a jumper she'd borrowed from Stefan after deciding that everything in her backpack smelled like smoke, they passed under Waterloo Bridge and entered the relative tranquillity of Victoria Embankment Gardens.

It was odd and nice at the same time, Luna reflected, to be out in London with him during the day, strolling along a footpath, holding hands. They didn't talk much but it was a companionable silence, her matching her stride to his, finding that although he was the faster runner their preferred walking speeds were the same.

Once they'd passed Westminster they took the bridge back over to the South Bank, walking beneath the slowly rotating London Eye into Jubilee Gardens, where Luna rushed Stefan past the numerous silver and gold ‘human statue' buskers who congregated there.

‘They're scary,' she declared, studying a silver Michael Jackson circa 1982 with open distaste. Still, she added, she liked this part of the city, with its brutalist architecture and surfeit of concrete. And Stefan agreed.

‘I've always preferred the south side of the river,' he said. ‘I remember when my father and I were looking for our apartment, I spent an afternoon at the Tate Modern and that settled it for me.'

‘Where would you live if you couldn't live here or in Stockholm?' Luna asked as they approached the South Bank skate park, where fifteen or so skateboarders were whizzing around the spray-painted underbelly of the Southbank Centre.

‘Berlin, I think. It's a fantastic city.'

‘I've never been…'

‘I will take you there sometime soon, when work is easier.' They stopped and leant against a metal railing to watch the skateboarders. ‘And you, Luna? Where would you live?'

‘Ah, my answer is a cliché,' she smiled. ‘It would be the south of France. I spent a year working in Nice after I graduated from university. I've always said I'd go back in a heartbeat if the right opportunity came up.'

A teenage boy executed an airborne leap over a set of stairs, flipping his skateboard under his feet in mid-air before landing solidly on the concrete pavement. Luna laughed and clapped her hands delightedly.

‘But you enjoy working at Arborage, yes?' Stefan asked. ‘You aren't looking to move on, are you?'

‘No, but…you never know what the future holds.' Luna thought of the Marquess and his surgery and wished for the umpteenth time that she could talk to Stefan about this. She added quietly, ‘I've been happy with Lady Wellstone and I'd be sorry to leave her.'

‘Happy for other reasons too, I hope,' he said, squeezing her hand.

She looked up at him and smiled. Fingers still entwined with hers, Stefan pulled her hand behind her back and bent to kiss her. At which point the teenage skateboarder glided past, cracking, ‘Gi' a rum, mon.'

The path along the river passed in front of the Tate and Luna suggested going in, but Stefan said he preferred being out in the fresh air with her. When they approached the Globe, a timber-framed reproduction of the original Globe Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, there were a number of actors dressed in Elizabethan costume on the plaza leading to the riverfront, performing magic tricks, acrobatics and juggling, trying to entice passersby to that afternoon's Christmas performance in the outdoor theatre.

‘Still plenty of tickets available for the yard, my good lady,' called a blond woman dressed in doublet and pantaloons to Luna from atop a pair of wooden stilts. ‘Standing room only, but with a great, strapping lad to support thee…' she added, leering purposefully at Stefan.

Luna met his eyes speculatively and said, ‘Do you want to…?'

‘Oh, he does milady, verily,' the blond jested. ‘But 'tis tickets I'm talking about, not what goes on twixt he and thee in thy close and consecrated bower.'

So they went, Luna buying two tickets to stand in the yard for a seasonal pageant pitching the Lord of Winter and his minions against the Sun King and his followers, both claiming that their season was the best, quoting various Shakespeare plays and sonnets to support their cause. There was fire eating, and tightrope walking, and pretend ice fishing with foil fish thrown to children in the audience, followed by flowers dropped from the upper galleries by nymphs, including the blond from earlier.

And Luna found herself surprisingly moved when the Sun King sat down on the stage, leaning back against one of the ornate painted wooden columns, to recite the bard's most famous sonnet. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate…' She'd never really listened before to the final lines of the poem, with its sweet, wistful promise to impart immortality to his lover. ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this and gives life to thee.'

As the performance drew to a close, the Sun King and the Lord of Winter made their peace and the entire cast sang ‘In the Bleak Midwinter', one of Luna's favourite carols. Many in the galleries were singing along, and Stefan was standing behind her with his arms clasped around her waist, and it was so lovely, so perfect. Heart full, she tilted her cheek into his neck just as the song came to a close and whispered, ‘I love you.' The audience started to applaud at this point and probably he didn't even hear her, she realised, but she'd said it and was glad she'd said it. She'd find another time to repeat herself.

When the applause ended, she tucked herself into Stefan's side as he led her by the hand through the crush of theatregoers down the steps leading back to the waterfront, where the skies were darkening. She was on the verge of asking him if he was hungry when he bent down and put both arms around her, lifting her up above him.

‘Say that again, Luna,' he demanded.

‘What?' she laughed down at him.

‘What you said in there.' Ah, so he
had
heard her.