Master of the House (4 page)

I kicked the grass at that place, then turned towards Willingham and the Hall.

The gatekeeper was surprised to see me come in on foot, but he let me pass and I walked on under the canopy of trees, enjoying the shade they afforded on this hot summer day.

The estate office, I recalled, was first left once you were through the door. I rang the bell, looking at the relevant window and wondered if Joss was waiting in there for me.

At a corner of the east wing I could see scaffolding and men on it, working to restore the somewhat neglected exterior of the Hall. This must be what the millionaire’s money was paying for. I watched them filling the peeling plasterwork, until the door opened and Joss stood in front of me.

‘Come in,’ he said, ushering me to his office. ‘Can I get you anything? A drink?’

‘Coffee, I guess.’

‘Coffee it is.’ He went over to a percolator in the corner and poured me a cup. ‘You won’t mind if I indulge in something a little stronger?’

He turned around, brandishing a half-bottle of whisky.

‘Joss,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning.’

He shrugged, pulled out a chair for me and sat down at his desk.

‘Thanks for that – now I don’t have to ring the speaking clock.’ With an air of defiance, he uncapped the bottle and put it to his lips.

‘So you’re an alcoholic,’ I said, recalling how he had had a bottle to himself at the meal last night, plus his champagne cocktail and a liqueur in place of pudding. I’d thought nothing of it – he had always been a
bon vivant
. But whisky at this time of day was a different proposition.

‘I do what I have to to get through the day,’ he said, putting the bottle aside. ‘I’ve had some disappointments in my life, Lucy. It’s medication.’

‘You mean having to let the Hall?’

He gave me a chilly little smile.

‘That’s right,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

‘Pa left me this pile, but he didn’t leave me anything else. Not a bean. He spent the lot on yachts, apparently.’

‘You could sell up.’

‘No, I bloody couldn’t.’ Joss nearly spat the whisky over me. ‘Willingham Hall has to stay in the family. It has to. I can’t be the one who flogs it to a Russian oligarch, Lucy. I just can’t.’

‘You’re attached to this place.’

‘Well, I see that
you
might not understand having a sense of home, but I do. This is my place, my domain. But it costs a fucking fortune to maintain. The heating bills alone are probably more than your annual salary. Or they would be, if I ever turned the heating on. I keep it just high enough to stop the pipes freezing, because I’m not going through that nightmare again. You should have seen me last winter, Lulu. Three jumpers, five pairs of socks. I got through half the peat stocks of the Highlands in whisky.’

‘So it’s expensive, and that’s why you’ve let it. Not much of a story there, really.’ His catty remark about my upbringing, coupled with his use of his pet name for me, had turned me into Ms Uber-Professional Bitch like a charm.

‘No, but the story’s in what it’s being used for,’ he said, lowering his voice. Again, he looked around the office as if he thought it might be bugged. ‘And by whom.’

‘So? Is he here now?’

‘No. He comes here one weekend a month. He brings … friends … with him.’

I shook my head, still not seeing the whole picture.

‘Hookers?’ I hazarded.

‘No, not hookers. He uses the place for extravagant parties. Catering to a particular kind of guest.’

‘Swingers, then?’

‘Do you always think in tabloid-speak these days, Lucy? It’s so unrefined.’

‘I do beg your pardon.’ We gave each other bitter smiles. ‘Go on then. Tell me how elegant and sophisticated it all really is. I’m sure it’s not just rich people shagging on luxury furnishings.’

‘The thing is, Lucy, I’ve never been to one of these parties. I’ve never been invited.’

‘How rude.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? But he likes to keep me in my place. He says he’ll invite me when I have a … guest … of my own to bring.’

‘Joss, could you stop talking in riddles and get to the point? Please?’ I looked at my watch. I was supposed to be in an editorial meeting in an hour.

‘You know, perhaps you should call me Lord Lethbridge. It is my name now, after all.’

‘Might I enquire when His Lordship intends to spill the precious bloody beans?’

Joss hesitated. Actually, I think he was nervous. He was talking to a journalist about something he shouldn’t, after all. He always went all stiff and princely when he was nervous.

‘Please?’ I said, more softly. ‘I promise I won’t blab. It’ll be our secret.’

‘This is serious,’ he said, entreating me with his darkest look.

‘I know. I know it is.’

‘Willingham Hall is at stake. And that’s not all. My life might depend on your discretion.’

‘Wow.’

He sat back in his chair and took a deep breath.

‘I met … this person … at a party. The kind of party he likes to throw, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. It was in London. At a dungeon.’

‘The London Dungeon?’ I said, a little confused. Were they all mad-keen on grisly murders?

‘No, Jesus, Lucy, are you being deliberately dim? A dungeon. In London. Not the London Dungeon.’

Light dawned, albeit of a murky nature.

‘You mean a kinky fetish type of thing?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

I paused and stared at him.

‘Oh.’ It was all I could think of to say.

‘Yes,’ he said, inspecting his fingernails, with the odd surreptitious glance at my expression.

Joss in a dungeon. Was it such an outlandish thought? I mean, there had been nothing weird or fetishy going on when we were together, but we were young, and … actually, looking back, perhaps there had been signs.

A memory popped into my head, of him pushing me up against the tree he had used to tie me to in childhood, holding my wrists above my head, thrusting into me, his eyes like coals. Always that tree. Every time.

‘Whips and chains?’ I said, just for clarification.

‘Whips and, indeed, chains,’ he confirmed. ‘Although I prefer a more subtle approach myself.’

‘You do?’

He looked a little touched by my bemusement and he leaned forwards.

‘Dear sweet innocent Lucy,’ he said softly. ‘Did you never think?’

‘I … you were a bit … I suppose, looking back, it makes a kind of sense. But I never framed it that way. For me you were just on the slightly domineering edge of normal … slap and tickle … I didn’t think it went any deeper than that.’

‘Normal.’ He sat back again. ‘That would be you, would it?’

‘I’ve never been normal.’

He liked that answer.

‘I know. I’m surprised that you’re surprised, to be honest. I always thought you had a touch of that tendency in you.’

‘What … whips and chains?’

‘God, shall we cut the tabloid-speak now, please? I’m talking about dominance and submission. You loved being told what to do and made to do it. In bed, I mean, not out of it.’

I looked down at my lap, remembering the lurid adolescent fantasies I used to have about him. I wanted to deny his assertion, but it was at least half true. It struck me that every time we had made love, he had been doing what he wanted to me, and I had been letting him. And finding the skewed dynamic endlessly arousing.

It probably wasn’t normal. But I wasn’t here to discuss the minutiae of our dead sex life. I made an effort to stay on track.

‘I don’t know why you think that, or what the hell it has to do with this alleged scoop you claim to be offering me.’

‘It has everything to do with it,’ he said.

I pushed my chair back and half-rose from it.

‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that,’ I said, scanning his face intently. ‘If you think I have the slightest idea of getting tangled up with you again –’

‘Sit down,’ he said, and the commanding tone I knew so well did its fatal work on me. ‘Hear me out.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’m not vain or stupid enough to believe that you will ever fall for my bullshit again, Lucy. I’m not out to mess with your heart. But there’s a way to get invited into the inner circle of our loaded friend which will involve our at least seeming to be attached to one another.’

Fuck that, then
, was on the tip of my tongue, but I was too intrigued to dismiss him out of hand. I wanted to at least hear what preposterous non-starter he had in mind before I emptied his oak-aged Macallan all over his unnecessarily attractive head.

‘It would be a charade, Lulu. A performance. An undercover job, that’s all.’

‘What would?’

‘My lessee has always said he would invite me to one of his parties if I got myself a collared submissive.’

A sip of coffee went down the wrong way and I spent the next few minutes trying not to choke.

‘Are you OK?’ said Joss anxiously.

I nodded.

‘“Collared submissive”,’ I coughed out by way of explanation for my fit. ‘What?’

‘Come on, you aren’t slow. I’m sure you can work it out for yourself.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of. That I have. What you’re saying is that, if I pretend to be your, your
collared submissive
, you and I will be invited to Mr Mysterious’s dodgy parties. I will gain an explosive story for the national press and you will possibly get your Hall back? Right?’

‘Right,’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘So, what do you think?’

‘I think you’re insane. The alcohol’s rotted away what little you had in the way of brain cells.’

‘Give it to me straight, Lulu.’

‘And stop calling me Lulu. It’s Ms Miles to you.’

‘Don’t dismiss it out of hand,’ he said, leaning forwards again, all intensity. ‘It could work for both of us. And, really, don’t you remember how good we were together? Would it be such a chore?’

‘
Chore
?’ How could he not see that this would be absolute torture – probably literally? ‘Fuck you and your stupid house. I hope it gets bought up and turned into a theme park.’

Damn, my voice was wobbling all over the shop. I had to get out of there, and fast.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve approached this in the wrong way,’ he said, standing and trying to stop me running out of the door. ‘Lucy, I’m a tactless bastard, but please …’

I opened the door.

‘I miss you,’ he said.

I slammed it in his face.

Don’t you remember how good we were together?
The words rattled in my head all the way through the editorial meeting, winding round and round the strands of council meetings and hosepipe bans and air displays and smothering them until I had no idea what had been said at all.

Of course I remembered. How could I forget?

We had spent the whole summer in bed, or if we weren’t in bed we were out in the grounds, on the lake or in a summerhouse, just for a change of scene.

He was inventive, passionate and outrageously horny all the time.

Luckily enough, I was the same.

What happened to me?

I thought of Károly’s parting words for me.

‘It doesn’t feel like losing you. I never felt I had you. You never gave yourself to me
.
’

He was right, I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not after Joss. After Joss, I had played everything safe, and safety meant keeping my heart to myself. So, when Károly had cheated on me, it hadn’t really touched me, except as a blow to my pride and confirmation that I was quite right not to bother with love.

Now that the initial shock of our meeting was wearing off, I thought more about Joss and how things were with him. The alcohol thing was sobering – so to speak – as was his general air of dejection and defeat. If he wasn’t careful, he might find that it was the tip of a steep decline. Within a few years, the beautiful young man with the world at his feet I had known and loved might be a puffy-faced and red-eyed waster.

I shouldn’t care, but I did.

I spent half a minute doodling on my notepad before I realised that the meeting was over.

‘Oh,’ I said, standing up to find only me and the editor still in the stuffy little room. ‘Right. Better get on then.’

‘Yes,’ she said, giving me a crooked look. ‘Sorry, Lucy, but … do you know what you’re covering today? You seem a bit … distant.’

‘It’s the heat,’ I told her. ‘Goes to my head sometimes. Would you mind …?’

‘Open day at the fire station,’ she said, a tad wearily. ‘Look, I know it’s not international politics here, but …’

‘It’s not that, I promise. I’m happy here. I love working for the
Voice
.’

‘Good. OK. Well, say hi to those hunky firefighters for me, won’t you? Everyone wanted this job. Don’t say I never do anything for you.’

She winked and I smiled back.

If only the hunky firefighters had the power to lure my mind away from Joss and his absurd proposition.

With dull, mechanical attention I watched them go down their poles and wield their hoses, while in the forefront of my mind phrases like
collared submissive
and
we were good together
tormented me like an out-of-control earworm.

I filed my copy then I went home and Googled ‘dominance and submission’ until the sun went down and my eyelids needed propping up.

My dreams plaited themselves with my thoughts and I spent the night in a psychic shimmer of shiny black latex and gimp masks and riding crops. They became senselessly entwined, my waking thoughts continuing from my dreams and my dreams seeming more like waking thoughts until the early hours when Joss broke into them. He was with me, beside me, holding my hand, talking in gentle hypnotic tones about how it wouldn’t hurt when he whipped me, how it would feel more like a kiss. The kiss he gave me, so real, so warm, so much what I wanted and needed and couldn’t live without …

I woke up in a sweat and nearly sobbed out loud when I found that he wasn’t there.

Mum and Animal were sprawled on the living-room floor, last night’s full ashtrays and empty bottles all around them.

I stepped over them, went downstairs to the yard and called Joss.

‘Lulu,’ he said, sounding sleepy and warm and in bed.