Chapter Text
Freddie Audley was an amiable young gentleman.
Not a smart one. It would have been dashed embarrassing to be smart. To be the sort that ruined a perfectly good soiree by trying to talk politics, or reciting the various scientific benefits of plum trees or something. At Audley Park, that rambling manor house where the five Audley boys wrestled and boxed each other's ears, where they raced the huge dogs of their father, the Baron de Vrees, through the paneled hallways, it would have been an insult to be called smart. When Freddie, last in line, was sent away to school, even his father didn't ask him to be smart.
"You need to go for a few years, even though it might be a waste. Truth is, you're a dashed fool, Frederick," said the old Baron. He was staring out at the rain-streaked manor park while Freddie stood before his desk in the study. "Empty-headed, what?"
"I'm a good shot, though," Freddie told him agreeably.
"Shot! What? You won't be shooting, boy! You'll be learning, I don't know, old Monrovian and such. And taking tests, Freddie, 'm boy. On the names of the Saints! Dashed lot of Saints we have. A gentleman ought to know some of them. Your grandmother wants to make you a vicar--"
"A vicar?" Freddie had cried, aghast.
"You're the fifth son, you little fool," the Baron de Vrees had said. "Y'won't be Baron, Freddie!"
"Well, yes, obviously, but I don't want to be a vicar," Freddie had whined.
"Y'grandmother wants y'to be!" the Baron had said firmly. "Y've got to be something, Frederick!"
"Well, but why?" Freddie had said. "Dash it, can't I--can't I join the army or something-"
He rather liked the thought of joining the army. The men of the Monrovian army were rough and coarse, large brutes in tight, trim blue uniforms. The Audleys liked to go to the Capitol to see the army parades whenever Lord Taverner was back from campaign, and Freddie liked it most of all, because those men -- those tall, regimented, thickly-muscled marching soldiers -- were a sight to see.
Freddie would always pretend he had a stomachache after, so as to not have to box about with his brothers: Francis, Fritz, Felix, and Fabian. Not that he didn't like playing rough and tumble with his brothers. It was a dashed good time, and he loved them tremendously, in the open, loyal, stupid way all the Audleys loved things. But -- but he would rather tug himself off in his room and think of the army men.
Now the Baron de Vrees regarded him sternly.
"Y'need to be smart to join the army, Freddie!"
"What? I'm sure you don't," Freddie said. He blinked. What an appalling thing to say about the brave men defending their empire. "They're not a bunch of bluestockings. Imagine! Sitting around in--in soft jackets, and poorly-cut trousers. Reading all those books and always squinting behind their little spectacles. Hair all thin and faces all pale from not getting enough sun. Talking about -- about the mandibles of the worker ant or something, boring all the ladies stupid. Dash it, they're not like that at all! I refuse to believe it!"
The Baron de Vrees turned away from the window to face his son now. Usually he looked away from Freddie, because looking to Freddie made him take on an agonized expression like this.
"Frederick," he said. "What the devil are you talking about?"
"The army!" Freddie said. "You can't say they're all a bunch of smart types, father! That is -- dash it, that is just too far!"
"Frederick!" cried his father. "Why does every bloody conversation go this way with you? How do you expect to get a wife, being this bloody stupid?"
"A wife?" Freddie said, jaw dropping. Where had that come from -- a wife? No one had ever said he needed a wife before. Because he didn't. Wives were awful things. Freddie's own golden-haired mother was a wife, and as a mother she was perfectly fine but as a wife she was forever sighing at the Baron de Vrees and sweetly giving in to everything he wanted. Agreeable like her son. Choking the Baron with her agreeableness, with her pliability.
And Freddie's grandmother was no better, always sobbing about how each of the Audley boys was so magnificent and clever, like this saint or that saint. It made Freddie want to retch sometimes, it really did. He preferred to be tussled about, to have his ears boxed and to be spoken to firmly, like a man. Wives never did that. They only simpered and said things like, "Ooooh, Frederick, you're such a terribly clever boy," to which Freddie would say, hotly, "Am not!"
“Why the bloody devil do you think we are having this conversation?” his father said testily. “We are addressing your future, Frederick. You will go to school, learn a career suitable for a gentleman, and attach yourself to a suitable wife. As all of your brothers will.”
Freddie had only sputtered. School was one thing, but all this talk of wives and careers — it was too far. It made Freddie almost not want to agree.
“Dash it, it’s lot of bother!” he said roundly. “And y’can’t make me go to school if I refuse to go! Try it! I’ll box the ears of any man who so much as attempts it!”
Freddie wasn’t the tallest fellow in the world, but he was tall enough. Fit enough. He could lay flat Francis, Fritz, Felix, and Fabian, at least.
So his father didn’t have his brothers force him to school. No, instead his father approached their neighbor, the new Earl of the vast district of Summerstoke, which bordered Audley Park.
One morning Freddie woke up in his comfortable featherbed, after pleasantly dreaming of all those big bulges in army trousers. And found a huge, tantalizing creature leaning over him. A large, hairy young fellow with slicked-down black hair, yellow eyes, and trim, dangerous little tusks pointing out from his handsome bottom lip.
Freddie smiled cheerfully. This was even better than army cocks. His delightfully empty brain was as agreeable as the rest of him, and thus good at conjuring up fantasies like this. Fantasies of Wrollves, the brutal wolf-creatures of the North. You saw them sometimes in the Capitol, working menial, sweaty jobs. Carting around bricks or pushing wheelbarrows until they shone with sweat and their huge muscles strained.
The Wrollf didn’t force Freddie to his knees and make Freddie take his big cock out, as he would have in a fantasy. Instead he cracked his knuckles.
“Hello, Mister Audley,” he said firmly. “I’m Jem, I am. And we’re to take you to the Capitol to have your schooling. You can cooperate and get dressed, or I can drag you there as bloody naked as you are right now, but you’re going either way, Mister Audley.”
“Naked!” Freddie said delightedly, for he was not the smartest, and he still hadn’t quite caught on to this not being a fantasy.
This was perhaps not the right choice. When Jem dumped the astonished Freddie in the green-upholstered carriage of the new Earl of Summerstoke, the handsome young Earl laughed himself silly.