Manservant

by Harwood, Michael

  “Well, then I’ve learnt something new today,” I said.

  “It’s also where the phrase ‘to be in the closet’ comes from. So, may I offer you a drink?”

  “I don’t really think I should, sir,” I stammered. “I am still on duty, after all.”

  “Nonsense. Consider yourself stood down for the evening,” he said. “And anyway, the first rule of billiards is that you need a very stiff drink to be able to play properly.”

  I followed him over to the billiards table. He took a bottle of amber liquor from the drinks tray and half filled two crystal glasses.

  “Do you like a good single malt?” he asked, passing one to me.

  “I do when it’s this good,” I said, breathing in the peaty fumes before taking a tentative sip.

  “Cheers, then,” he replied, chinking his glass against mine. Lord Shanderson held my gaze as he sipped at his drink. I didn’t feel uncomfortable exactly, but the atmosphere between us was somehow different since he had found me in his study. The subtle nuances of the master and servant relationship were rapidly becoming blurred. So blurred, in fact, that I was standing having a drink with my employer and about to get a lesson in billiards.

  As Lord Shanderson rattled off the rules of the game my attention turned to the actual billiards table itself. I stared at it for ages, not really being able to figure out what was so different about it. It was an imposing piece of furniture that dominated the center of the room, and, whilst it was certainly bigger than the pool tables of my youth, there was something else very different about it. For a start it wasn’t covered with the familiar dark-green baize but with a midnight blue—but even that wasn’t what set it apart.

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, as it finally clicked what was missing. “This table has no pockets! How is that possible?” I laughed.

  “Anthony, this is carom billiards,” Lord Shanderson said, laughing. “The original form of the game. In fact this table dates back to the seventeenth century.” He ran his hand over the polished mahogany rail before adding, “Let it alone. Let’s to billiards. Come!”

  I might not have known the rules of carom billiards, but I did, against all the odds, get an A in English literature at school.

  “Antony and Cleopatra, if I’m not mistaken,” I said, feeling a little smug.

  “Well, young man, let’s see if your grasp of the game is as firm as your grasp of The Bard.”

  The game was fast and furious, and even though I somehow managed to hit a couple of decent shots, it was obvious I had no idea what I was doing.

  “This is nothing like pool,” I said, pausing between shots. “I think you had better explain the rules before we carry on.”

  “Never mind the rules,” he said, topping up my drink. “Your posture is no good.”

  “In what way?”

  “You need to keep your legs straight and bend from the waist so that you can look straight down the cue like the barrel of a gun. You would improve no end.”

  He was leaning on his cue, puffing smoke rings into the air from his Cuban cigar, his fine chiseled features illuminated from above.

  The drink must have been working its magic, because although I didn’t feel in any way drunk, I couldn’t help but say what was on my mind. “Why don’t you show me what you mean, sir,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.

  He took another couple of puffs before he placed his cigar in the ashtray and walked slowly around the table to where I was standing. He silently moved behind me and took me firmly by the shoulders, instantly forcing me to stand ramrod straight.

  “Take hold of your cue, Anthony.” He said it in a low voice with his mouth surprisingly close to my ear.

  I did as he asked and felt him inch nearer to me, so near I felt the warmth of his body against mine. Then he placed one hand on the small of my back and another at the nape of my neck and bent me sharply at the waist until my chest was almost touching the table.

  “Do you see how much better that position is?”

  “Much better, sir,” I replied, though in truth I could see nothing as my eyes were tightly shut. I stayed like that for what felt like ages, but was probably only a few seconds, concentrating hard on regulating my breathing. The last thing I wanted was to give any hint of the fireworks that were exploding in every nerve ending in my body. Even though the effects of the alcohol were amplifying every sensation running through my brain, I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t know this was a very dangerous game to be playing with one’s employer. And I wasn’t thinking about the billiards.

  “You take instructions very well, Anthony,” he said eventually. “I think you will see immediate results when you listen carefully to my directions.”

  I felt a rush of blood flood my cheeks as his eyes followed my hand when I attempted to hide the bulge in the front of my trousers.

  “Lord Shanderson, it’s getting late and I—”

  “Nonsense, Anthony. I feel like we have only just started to get to know one another. And why don’t you call me Drum?” Something about the way he spoke suggested that, whatever I said, he had made his mind up that we’d be here for a while yet. I took a slug of my drink, and as soon as I did so he topped it up.

  “I think that would be, um, most irregular?” I said.

  “You will find many things about me irregular, Anthony,” he said, taking a step closer. “But I think that you and I could learn to understand one another perfectly. I have been paying a great deal of attention to you, and I like what I see. You have huge potential.”

  As he spoke I inhaled deeply, and my nostrils filled with the spicy smell of his cologne. It instantly reminded me of when I had smelled it in Rose View Cottage when I was with George. I was desperate to ask Lord Shanderson if he had been there that day.

  “Let’s get right to the point here,” he said, placing his drink down and stubbing out his cigar. “I am looking for the perfect manservant, someone who can take care of all my needs. Is this something you are up to?” His words were as clear as a bell, but their exact meaning was far from obvious.

  “Am I not already doing so, sir?” I asked.

  “Hmm, there’s the million-pound question.” He smiled. “You are an excellent butler, but I have very specific needs that have not been fully met for many years, and I won’t pretend to you that they are not complicated.”

  “Go on,” I said, wondering what on earth was coming next.

  “I make no bones about the fact that I am a complex man, Anthony, but what you probably don’t know is that I also have certain proclivities that are more than a little—what’s the word, niche?” He lowered himself into a large leather club chair and gestured for me to do the same opposite him. “It has always been my dream to keep the realization of these desires strictly ‘in house.’ And should ever my dream of finding the perfect servant become a reality, that person would want for nothing. I would make sure of it. That person would be looked after for the rest of his life—just like dear Mr. Johnson was.”

  I studied his body language and realized he was doing just about anything he could to avoid meeting my gaze.

  “As is so often the case in these matters it stretches back to my childhood,” he continued.

  He spoke at a rapid-fire rate, as if he were afraid that if he inserted any pauses or gaps in his rhetoric I would run for the hills. But nothing could have been further from the truth. I was riveted.

  “My father was a distant man, and my mother was simply far too busy being lady of the manor to pay me much attention. I acted up whenever I saw an opportunity in the vain hope it would provoke some kind of reaction from them. I wanted them to get angry with me or shout and scream, but all they did was ignore me and delegate all responsibility for my care to one of the servants.”

  He gave a gentle shake of the head, which made me wonder if that were the end of the story, but after a few seconds he carried on.

  “At first, it fell to my nanny to dole out punishments, but as a teenager I was a
keen rugby player, quite a strapping lad in fact, and it wasn’t long before I towered over her. It wasn’t so surprising that her threats of teaching me a good lesson fell on deaf ears. As I grew taller and stronger her ability to control me withered and died. Of course she complained bitterly to my parents, but they accused her of not doing her job properly.” He relit his cigar and poured us both more whiskey.

  “The poor woman was distraught at the suggestion of being incompetent, so she confided in Mr. Johnson, our butler. It was then that he decided that young Master Shanderson needed to be disciplined by a man. I was fourteen years old.”

  “And then what happened?” I asked breathlessly, hanging on his every word.

  “He marched me up to the top floor and took me to his room. There he stripped me from the waist down and put me over his knee for the beating to end all beatings.”

  I shuddered as I conjured up a mental picture of the young Drummond Shanderson having his hide tanned by the older man in the very room I had been sleeping in until a couple of days ago.

  “And did that work?” I asked, my hand trembling slightly as I lifted the glass to my lips.

  “At first it had the desired effect, yes. I immediately went downstairs and apologized to Nanny, swearing to her through tears of humiliation that I would mend my ways. I regretted my behavior, and I genuinely had no desire to upset her again. But what happened that day wasn’t about Nanny and me. It was about the problem brewing in my sex-addled teenage mind.” He blew a smoke ring into the air and paused as if reliving the moment.

  “And if you don’t mind my asking, sir, what exactly was the problem?”

  I was desperate for him to come to the point of the story to see where, if anywhere, I fit into it.

  “The problem, Anthony, was that for weeks I could think of nothing else other than the burning sensation of Mr. Johnson’s hand crashing down onto my bare arse. The problem was that I was aroused by it. Very aroused indeed.”

  Things were slowly starting to fall into place. Lord Shanderson’s membership in the Black Orchid was certainly beginning to make a whole lot more sense now.

  “I began to misbehave in front of Mr. Johnson with the sole intention of incurring his wrath. I would wait until we were alone and be purposely rude to him, goading him into action and praying he would take me upstairs and put me over his knee.”

  “And did he?” I asked.

  “Yes, with rather alarming regularity. And it went on for years. In fact it went on until just before he died when I was nineteen years old. I was devastated by his death, as were my parents. Though it’s fair to say for very different reasons.”

  I was now feeling quite drunk, but I couldn’t work out whether it was the booze that was making my head spin or everything Lord Shanderson had just told me.

  “Drum,” I said, finding the sensation of using his Christian name a bit strange, “why have you chosen to tell me, of all people, this?”

  He waited before answering, running a hand nervously through his thick, graying hair and pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “I am very attracted to you, Anthony. You do realize that, don’t you?” he said, making proper eye contact for the first time since this outpouring began. “I also saw you with George that day at Rose View.”

  A lump formed in my throat as the image of George’s beautiful, bare backside bearing the brunt of the riding crop replayed through my mind like the highlights of a well-loved porno movie. “Yes, I had a feeling you might have. And?”

  “And my mind has been on little else ever since. It is the reason I have gone out of my way to make your stay here a comfortable one. After seeing the way you dealt with George, I had to make sure you would stay. I had to make sure I got the chance for us to have this chat.”

  He leaned forward in his chair and slid his hand slowly up my leg. He stopped just short of my aching, swollen crotch and firmly squeezed my thigh, before letting go and sinking back down in his chair. The sensation of being touched by him was like being struck by a bolt of lightning and he knew it, if the small smile that flickered across his face was anything to go by. But then, as quickly as it arrived, the smile disappeared, and he became serious again.

  “But seeing you with him was just an unexpected bonus. I had actually gone there that day to pay him off and tell him to leave. He had been the object of my affections for a while, but he was not like you. He did not understand my needs, and when I lost interest in him he turned nasty and threatened to tell the papers what I had gotten up to.”

  “So he was blackmailing you?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Pathetic, isn’t it?” he said, looking rather sad. “He didn’t particularly share my interests, so it was never going to develop into anything meaningful, but when I saw the way you dealt with him and how you used that riding crop on his blackmailing little arse, I couldn’t stop thinking about how we could harness all that sexual energy to our mutual satisfaction.”

  For a fleeting moment it felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Lord Shanderson’s lips were moving, but the only sound I could hear was my own shallow breathing. He placed his hand on mine and tilted his head, waiting for the answer to a question I hadn’t heard.

  “Anthony?” he said, looking nervously up at me. “Have I offended you?”

  I looked down at his hand clasping mine, and before I knew it, I was out of my chair and standing over him. I placed a hand on each of his shoulders and pinned him firmly into his seat. His pale blue eyes widened as I towered over him, saying nothing.

  “One thing you will discover about me,” I said, lowering my face close to his, “is that I am very hard to offend.”

  I fell onto him and kissed him deeply. I could feel the relief radiating from every pore of his body as I kissed him more deeply and passionately than I had ever kissed anyone before. His breath was hot and sweet with just a slight taste of cigar, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

  Despite the vise-like grip I had on him, he struggled and bucked beneath me, so I removed my hands from his shoulders and grabbed each of his wrists quickly, hoisting his arms high above his head and holding them there tightly. His broad chest began to rise and fall dramatically, keeping time with his rapid breathing. At that moment I was sure I’d never seen a man as consumed with lust and desire as he was.

  “Drum,” I said with my mouth close to his ear, “if this is going to work for both of us, I think we need to set some ground rules. Don’t you?”

  He nodded vigorously, but seemed unable to form any actual words. I released his hands, causing his arms to fall like dead weights into his lap. I was straddling him in the chair now and was able to slip my hand between his legs. Just as I had predicted, the fabric of his tweed trousers was straining against his swollen mound, and I allowed my hand to explore the contours of it. I had of course caught a glimpse of his manhood that day when I saw him naked on the bed, but on that occasion he’d been less than fully aroused. Now, though, was quite a different story.

  As my palm brushed his balls he let out a low moan, raising his hips to increase the pressure between his crotch and my hand. I watched as his handsome, chiseled face contorted into a mask of sheer ecstasy. His eyes were tightly closed and his lips slightly parted as my hand explored him through the thick, course fabric. It would have been so very easy for me to unzip him right then, but I knew instinctively that I’d be wise to play the long game with Drummond Shanderson. I planted one final kiss on his lips before climbing off his lap and dusting myself down. His eyes flew open, and he sat bolt upright in his chair.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, flicking an imaginary speck of dust off my lapel.

  “Think about what?” he said, with a look of abject horror.

  “I’ll give some thought to exactly what our ground rules will be. And when I have come to a conclusion, I will inform you, but until then we must maintain our employer-employee relationship at all times.”

  He stared at me in utter disbelief, and
it took him a few moments to compose himself before he could speak.

  “But, Anthony, I have just bared my soul to you. What do you mean you will think about it—what on earth have you got to think about exactly?” He had a note of irritation in his voice that I couldn’t honestly blame him for. But that was all part of my plan.

  “Will there be anything else tonight, m’lord?” I asked impassively.

  “No, that will be all, thank you, Gowers,” he replied, turning his head away as I left the room.

  That night I lay awake until the small hours of the morning, trying desperately to make sense of what had just happened. Lord Shanderson had just taken the biggest gamble of his life, inviting me to be not only his manservant but his master too. It was a dizzying thought, but one that also fascinated me. He had hinted that I would want for nothing so long as I fulfilled my role. If I was honest with myself what I really wanted more than anything in the world was the kind of security I hadn’t had growing up. If I stayed at Castle Beadale and met all Lord Shanderson’s “needs,” then I could live out my days in the manner to which I was rapidly becoming accustomed. I’d never have to worry about anything as dull as paying a utility bill or handing over rent to a faceless landlord ever again, and by the looks of it I wouldn’t even have to worry about buying my own food!

  What’s more, it wasn’t as if he were asking me to do anything I didn’t want to do. It would be a different story if he was some crusty old wreck of a man, but he was far from that. He was deeply, deeply sexy, and the truth of the matter was that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him. But if this plan was going to work for both of us, he would have to sweat a bit before I gave him my answer.