“Yer nuthin’ but a fuckin’ cock tease.”
Blows from a leather belt rained down upon Christopher’s head and shoulders to accompany Chef Pierre’s tirade as Christopher crouched down on his haunches trying to partially hide himself behind some bags of flour.
If the chef was genuinely a Frenchman, after Christopher had listened to a barrage of insults delivered in broad Cockney for the past several minutes, then Christopher was a Chinaman.
The chef’s voice was no longer the accented English he used in the kitchen and to their employers. His anger had caused him to drop the French accent altogether and lapse into one more suited to the men working on the London docks.
“If’n ya wants to keep ya job ’ere, I suggest yer suck me cock like I told ya to. Uvawise, I might jus’ decide to fuck ya over a sack o’ this ’ere flour and be done wiv—” He broke off abruptly, the blows also ceasing to fall and the verbal tirade having been reduced to nothing more than a gurgled squeak.
Christopher cautiously lowered the protection of his arms from over his head to look up warily. His eyes widened when he saw none other than one of the owners of the club, Maxim Armitage, the Duke of Lancaster, with his hand about Chef Pierre’s throat as he held the other man pressed up against the far wall.
The darkness of the duke’s gaze was glittering with fury when he turned to look at Christopher slowly rising to his feet. That fury deepened after he had no doubt seen the marks Chef Pierre’s poorly aimed belt had made across Christopher’s face and throat when he hadn’t moved quickly enough to protect himself.
“You fucking bastard!” The duke thrust his furious face within inches of the chef’s. “How many more of the young men employed here have you used your position to abuse? Answer me, you sniveling piece of horse shit!” He shook the chef as if he were a dog holding a rat in its jaws.
Christopher was the one to answer him quietly. “All the ones who did not prefer to leave first.”
“What?” Maxim thundered.
Christopher nodded, knowing there was no point now in not coming clean on the situation. He’d done what he could to avoid the chef’s demands, whilst also trying not to alert any of the four gentlemen who owned the Apollo Club as to what was going on, but that silence was useless now.
He had previously remained silent because he needed this job very badly. Also, there was no guarantee, if he did report the chef’s behavior to one of the owners, they would take his side over the matter.
But the game was well and truly up after what the duke had now witnessed.
Christopher lifted his chin. “Shortly after coming to work here, I discovered there’s an unwritten rule.” He was determined to carry on despite the warning glare the chef was giving him. “It is that you can either agree to let the chef fuck your mouth or your arse, or in some cases both, or seek other employment.”
The duke’s brow darkened. “Is this true?” he demanded of the chef.
“’E is juz a li-er and a troublemaker, Your Grace.” The pretender had affected the phony French accent again in front of his employer.
“Is that why you were hitting him with your belt when I came in here?”
Christopher frowned at the mildness of the duke’s tone, sure that, as he had feared, the man disbelieved him, and he was the one about to be blamed for this debacle. No doubt he was about to have his employment at the club terminated, with or without having sexually serviced the chef.
One of the sad realizations Christopher had been forced to come to during the past year of living alone and fending for himself in London was that the wealthy and the privileged would always be believed over a penniless young man who was well-spoken but had no claims to pedigree.
He could not claim one, perhaps, but that was through personal choice rather than the truth.
Having forged a reference for himself as being a young man who was both trustworthy and capable, Christopher had first taken employment as the secretary to an elderly member of parliament. Only to discover that, with the man often kept late at the House, Christopher was expected to entertain the elderly man’s much younger wife. Indeed, it seemed it was the only duty Christopher had, as his lordship already employed a perfectly capable middle-aged male secretary.
Not only was Christopher not inclined to intervene between a man and his wife, but his sexual interest had never been in women.
Using that same reference as to his character, he’d gained his next employment as a footman in the household of a newly elevated lord. His sexual inclinations had proved to be the same as Christopher’s, but unfortunately, once that gentleman’s male lover learned of Christopher’s presence in the house, he had strongly objected to the “young and pretty footman.”
After being dismissed post-haste from that position, Christopher had this time remained unemployed for several weeks. Having no savings to call upon, he’d been hard-pressed to keep up the rent on even the one room in the attic of the less than salubrious house situated within sight of the notorious slum of St. Giles.
The job of server within the Apollo Club had been suggested to him by one of the young gentlemen renting a room in the same downtrodden house. That young man was about to leave his employment at the club, as well as vacate his room, and return to Cornwall from whence he had come, after having declared London to be “full of lechers and cutthroats.”
Never at any time had that departing young man warned Christopher of what to expect once he began his employment at the Apollo Club.
Christopher had lost his previous two positions through no fault of his own, and it appeared this one was about to meet the same end. What he would do then, he had no idea.
“I ’it ’im because I caught ’im stealing food, Your Grace,” Chef Pierre claimed in his broken English.
“That’s a lie!” Christopher gasped out before he had chance to consider his words. “I would never— I would rather starve than steal from anyone, least of all you, Your Grace.” He broke off abruptly the moment those last words left his mouth, his cheeks burning hotly at what he might have revealed.
From the moment he’d come for his interview at the Apollo Club and met the Duke of Lancaster for the first time, Christopher had felt an attraction to the older man.
Tall, dark haired and dark eyed, and handsome as the devil, the duke was also possessed of an inborn self-confidence and an elegant austereness. The latter was evident in his perfectly tailored dark clothing, which proclaimed him above such things as the gaudy fashions and styles preferred by the fops in Society.
Christopher’s heart would beat louder and a little more quickly whenever the duke put in an appearance at the club, which he did several evenings a week.
The only reason Christopher had continued to work here, after being informed of the chef’s demands, was because he did not wish to deny himself the pleasure of being able to see and occasionally speak to the handsome duke.
He’d been fobbing off the chef’s demands for the past three weeks, with one invented reason or another. But there was no denying that this evening, he’d been deftly cornered in the storeroom by the chef before being attacked by him.
Christopher sighed. His employment here couldn’t have lasted much longer, anyway, the chef having made it clear earlier tonight that he was out of patience with Christopher’s avoidance of his sexual demands.
Even if the duke’s expression did soften as he gazed at Christopher for several more seconds before it hardened again as he turned back to his other employee. “I am going to tie you up and lock you in this storeroom until I decide what we shall do with you,” Lancaster told the chef.
“Ya can’t do tha’,” the man protested when Maxim took a rope from the top of one of the flour sacks and bound his wrists with it. The man’s surprise had obviously caused him to once again speak in the broad Cockney accent rather the affected French one. “I ’as food ta prepare and cook an’—” He broke off as the duke’s fingers pressed against his windpipe, cutting off his air as well as his ability to speak.
“You will never again prepare a meal in this club, nor anywhere else of repute, once I have made it known what sort of man you are,” Lancaster assured grimly. “I also suggest, when we talk again, that you cease this charade, drop the phony accent, and provide me with your real name. Because you are no more French than I am, which is to say not at all. I am going to remove my hand from your throat shortly. I advise that when I do, you do not, by word or deed, attempt to speak to or bully Mr. Brooks again. Nod if you understand me.”
Christopher tensed as the duke, having received his nod, slowly removed his hand from about the chef’s throat.
He wasn’t tense because he feared Lancaster incapable of preventing any further physical attack on him by the chef, but because Christopher had every reason to believe he would.
One thing Christopher knew from his three weeks’ employment here was that Chef Pierre, or whatever his name really was, was a vindictive bastard. He would no doubt take great delight in seeking revenge against the duke for his actions this evening.
The duke now lifted and tilted the candle to indicate Christopher should precede him out of the storeroom.
One last glance inside the room before the duke turned to lock the door shut behind them showed an expression of complete malevolence upon the chef’s face.