Hidden Desire (Regency Men in Love 2), page 1
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Newsletter and Social Media Links
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Carole Mortimer
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Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
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Editor: Linda Ingmanson
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Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign
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ISBN: 978-1-910597-92-7
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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All Rights Reserved.
Dedication
Jo – I couldn’t do any of this without you!
Chapter One
Apollo Club, London
Summer, 1816
“I must say, you two are looking disgustingly happy,” Maxim Armitage, the Duke of Lancaster, said, teasing the two men sitting together on the leather couch opposite him. “Even more so than when I visited Kent a week ago to attend your church blessing.” Tonight was the first time Maxim had been to the Apollo Club since his return to London.
“Speaking for myself, understandably so.” Lucius Cranfield, the Duke of Sheffield, smirked. “How could I be any other when this delicious man has promised to love me and live at my side forever?” He gazed lovingly at Lord Tobias Bishop, the Earl of Chelmsford, seated beside him, the identical gold bands upon the ring fingers of their left hands gleaming brightly.
Men such as they were not allowed to marry each other, of course. The law forbade them from ever openly acknowledging their love. But the pastor on Sheffield’s estate in Kent had been chosen for his belief that love of any kind was sacrosanct. Consequently, he had been more than happy to give a blessing upon Sheffield and Chelmsford’s wish to spend the rest of their lives together, in front of their close friends and the servants and families who lived and worked on the Sheffield estate.
Maxim and Sheffield were two of the four founder members and owners of the Apollo Club, a private club opened ten years ago, which allowed gentlemen such as themselves to meet, dine, and spend time with other gentlemen of like tastes.
Because of the nature of the club, and the ridiculous law which could result in a hanging or consignment to an asylum if it were suspected they loved another man, the club’s members had been and still were chosen very carefully by the four owners. Even so, the fear of being reported to the authorities was genuine, and any newcomers were only allowed to become members after being carefully vetted.
The Apollo Club was not intended, by any stretch of the imagination, to be a brothel or house of ill repute, and any liaisons which took place on the premises were strictly consensual. The complete discretion offered by the club to its members merely provided the privacy in which the gentlemen could conduct affairs either physical or of the heart.
But there were many in Society who would consider them deviants and perverted for preferring to love their own gender. Consequently, they chose to keep those sexual desires private.
“To add to our happiness, we are to board a boat later tonight which will take us to a villa in Italy and the start of our honeymoon.” Toby gazed adoringly at his “husband.”
Maxim could only look on as the two men lost themselves momentarily in each other’s gazes. He had never thought that Sheffield, two years older than him at eight and thirty, would ever settle down with one man. Sheffield’s liaisons in the past had always been purely physical and of short duration, but his friend had become completely lost to his emotions within days of meeting twenty-year-old Tobias Bishop. There had been several misunderstandings between the two of them to begin with, but they had become inseparable since explanations had been made for those misunderstandings.
Maxim was pleased for both of them, and knew from observing them together that theirs was a love for the ages, with a depth of emotion between them which could, and would, withstand the test of time. Maxim merely wished to be lucky enough to one day find a similar long-lasting love for himself, but so far, he had been unable to find that one man who—
“Where is the golden-haired boy who so held your interest the last two times you and I met here?” Sheffield’s drawl interrupted Maxim’s thoughts.
Maxim instantly felt the engorging of his cock merely thinking of the angel who had captured his attention from the first night he began working at the club as one of the servers. Maxim’s immediate cock stand whenever he talked to the younger man did not help him deny the latter part of his friend’s observation.
Maxim did not even try to do so. “Christopher is nineteen, not a boy,” he defended, and then realized his mistake when Sheffield gave a satisfied smile at his having fallen into his trap. Maxim should have denied all knowledge of there being a boy who had caught and held his attention. “I believe he is about somewhere.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Is he?” Sheffield’s brows rose. “We’ve been here half an hour or more now enjoying your company and this wonderful champagne you’ve provided to celebrate Toby’s and my vows to each other.” He toasted first Toby and then Maxim with the fluted glass in his hand before sipping some of its bubbly contents. “I haven’t seen your boy out and about serving drinks once during that time.”
“He is not my boy,” Maxim insisted, knowing that the telling bulge in his evening trousers revealed only too well his deep interest in Christopher.
Golden-haired and golden-skinned, with the deepest blue eyes Maxim had ever seen, the boy—man—had the appearance of an angel Maxim dearly wished to debauch.
But that seventeen years in age between them, and Christopher also being an employee, meant he was completely out of bounds to Maxim.
“He was here a short time ago…” Maxim frowned after a quick search of the bar area and dining room of the club had proved Sheffield’s observation to be correct. There was no Christopher in sight. “He’s been missing for the past half an hour, you say?” He frowned his concern.
“At least,” the other man confirmed.
“If you will excuse me?” Maxim avoided Sheffield’s knowing gaze as he rose lithely to his feet. “I believe I will check in the kitchen to ensure nothing has gone amiss.” One of the four owners was always on hand in the evenings to ensure the smooth running of the club. Tonight, it happened to be Maxim’s turn.
“Of course.” Sheffield nodded, his attention having already shifted back to the young man who now possessed his previously cold and guarded heart.
Maxim frowned as he entered the kitchen amid the usual rush and bustle as the young servers carried out food and drinks to the bar and dining room. There were at least three of those young men present, as well as the assistant chef. But no Christopher.
Maxim raised his voice so as to be heard above the noise of the kitchen. “Has anyone seen Mr. Brooks recently?” His concern for Christopher deepened when it grew instantly silent but no one seemed to want to look in his direction, let alone meet his gaze. “Someone give me an answer now,” he growled with displeasure at this continued silence.
The assistant chef visibly startled at this uncharacteristic show of aggression on Maxim’s part. “I believe ’e’s out the back.”
“Out the back where?” As far as Maxim was aware, the only thing “out the back” was a cobbled alley and the wooden storeroom where they kept the bulkier ingredients safely stored from insects and rodents, as well as locked away from the gangs of thieves who freely roamed the streets of London. They kept no alcohol out there for that very reason, but to some, the food would prove almost as valuable.
“The storeroom,” the other man confirmed economically.
“And where is Chef Pierre?” Maxim frowned at this other notable absence from the kitchen.
“’E’s out the back too,” the man muttered.
Maxim frowned. “Also in the storeroom?”
“I believe so, yes.”
Maxim’s eyes narrowed as the other man continued to avoid meeting his gaze. “And might one enquire what the club’s head chef and one of the servers are doing together in the storeroom?”
There was a strict no-fraternizing rule in place between the members and the young men who chose to work here, so as to avoid any of them being sexually coerced. But that same rule had never applied regarding the forming of relationships between employees.
Even so, Maxim doubted a young man such as Christopher would find Chef Pierre, a man aged in his late forties and slightly obese from indulging in too much of his own cooking, in the least attractive. It appeared he might have been mistaken.
The thought of the beautiful and slender Christopher with the overweight and middle-aged chef was enough to bring the taste of bile to the back of Maxim’s throat.
Dear God, and to think Maxim had considered himself far too old, at six and thirty, to even approach the mu
“Why are you all still so intent on avoiding looking at me directly?” he probed shrewdly, his scowl deepening as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Did Christopher go voluntarily into the storeroom with Chef Pierre?”
The assistant chef looked slightly uneasy, increasing Maxim’s suspicion. “I couldn’t say, Your Grace.”
“I can.” A red-haired young man no older than Christopher and only recently employed at the club to replace a server who had left now stepped forward.
Now that Maxim thought of it, there had been reason to replace not one or two but several of the young servers who worked here during the past two years, this red-haired sprite—Billy?—being the most recent of those replacements. “Explain yourself,” Maxim instructed tersely, although the tightness in his chest already warned he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Gladly,” the sprite spat out vehemently. “Chef Pierre is a dirty lecher ’oo takes advantage of ’is position ’ere to force us younger men into sexually servicing ’im in whatever manner he chooses.”
Maxim’s heart stilled in his chest, and ice entered his veins. “But he’s a married man with children.”
“Them as try to ’ide their pro—procli—their sexual likes,” Billy gave up trying to pronounce proclivities. “Them’s the worst sort, Your Grace,” he scorned knowingly. “An’ your bastard chef ensures we’re sacked for one reason or anovver if we don’t give ’im what ’e wants.”
“And has Christopher…given him what he wants?” That bile now threatened to burst from Maxim’s mouth merely thinking of his angel, of Christopher, being sexually coerced into surrendering that slender and lithe body when it should only be gifted to some lucky man in mutual desire.
Billy wrinkled his freckled nose. “Well ’e ’adn’t when ’e wen’ owt there, but I dowt as ’at’s still the case—”
Maxim didn’t stay to listen to the rest of what the red-haired Billy had to say, but instead hurried out to the back of the club to where he instantly saw a candle flickering inside the darkness of the wooden storeroom.
There was also the sound of a raised voice, followed by a different one whimpering.
Maxim easily recognized the latter as belonging to Christopher.
Not the pleasurable whimpers and groans Maxim had so often imagined hearing from him on the nights Maxim could take the torment of his desire no longer and lay alone in his bed and brought himself to completion.
No, these were sounds of pain, not pleasure.
Chapter Two
“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.”
