Page 4 of Seduced By a Scoundrel

With confidence restored, Jeremy clutched his bag tighter and hurried across the street toward The Chameleon Club. Surely he could find help there.

Two

The Chameleon Club was an oasis of calm and safety in a cruel world. And as an officer of the Metropolitan Police Department, Derrek Talboys knew just how cruel that world could be. He’d sauntered into the club the night before, after the conclusion of a particularly brutal investigation following the death of a pair of young lads at a factory, pretending that he hadn’t been shaken to the core by everything he’d seen and heard.

It was easy to pretend that he wasn’t scarred when he was inside the safe, pretty, marble walls of the club. He’d joined in with the carousing the night before, never letting on to his friends that he needed the drink to wash away the memory of what had been done to those poor lads. They would have been brought to trial and likely killed anyhow for their so-called sins if the other men at the factory hadn’t caught them at it in a storage room and carried out justice themselves. It was hard to tell which was the more merciful end for the two.

Instead of dwelling on it, Derrek had laughed and danced the night away, drinking too much, flirting with everyone from Lord Stanworth in his starched collar to young Christof, who worked in the kitchens and looked dashing in a footman’s livery. He’d most likely embarrassed himself before being dragged up to bed in one of the club’s guestrooms by his friend and part owner of the club, Cecil Mackworth, Viscount Thurleigh. Cecil and his partner, Austin Haythorne, had made certain he was comfortable as he slept off the spirits, and they’d greeted him for breakfast when he’d slumped his way down in the morning.

It wasn’t morning anymore, but Derrek was still at the club. He sat at one of the grand ballroom’s large, round tables, enjoying luncheon with his friends, laughing and chattering loudly with them, as if they were a flock of geese in Hyde Park, looking as if he was having a good time to the outside world.

“And then the little cherub had the audacity to look up at me with his big, doe eyes and ask, ‘Fancy tupping me around the corner?’” he said with a belly laugh as he told the story of what had happened a few weeks ago when he’d tried to get some of the prostitutes down by the docks to give up their trade and find someplace warm for the night.

Everyone laughed, and it was a bit funny. The young man had balls to have propositioned him after finding out he worked for the Met and was working to get him to change his ways before some other officer came along and arrested him. All Derrek could think about was how hungry the young man had looked and how the life had gone out of the eyes of so many of the young people who were forced to trade their bodies for food.

“They’re getting bolder and bolder down there,” Austen said as he finished up the last of his rabbit pie. The club’s kitchens had gone out of their way to provide the finest food London could produce in the months since Cecil and Austen had opened the place.

“They’re incredibly bold,” another friend, Jack Cotton, partner to the Duke of Wentworth, in every sense of the word, said as he mopped up the last of his soup with a scrap of bread. “Wen doesn’t like walking through parts of town anymore, not because he is accosted by the dregs of the street, but because he feels horrifically sorry for them.”

“I’m surprised the two of you deigned to come back to London from Shropshire at all,” Cecil said as he drank his coffee. “I thought you happy lovebirds were dedicated to living at Telford Lodge and that you never wanted to darken London’s doorstep again.”

Jack huffed a laugh. “As we’ve discovered, you cannot be a duke and stay out of London indefinitely. But as soon as business is concluded, we’re going straight back to Shropshire.”

“Maybe you should take a few of those street boys with you,” Austen said, pushing his plate away and leaning back in his chair. “You could give them a better life out in the country than they’ll ever have here, even if they do become servants or gardeners.”

“Most of them don’t want that sort of life,” Derrek said with a deceptively casual shrug. “London is their home. They’ve never known anything else. Their lives are horrific here, but they’d rather accept that than rush off into the unknown.”

“They need to change their minds,” Austen argued.

“Go right ahead and try to change them for them,” Derrek said, taking a drink from the pint of weak ale he’d almost finished to avoid carrying the conversation further.

He admired Austen’s conscience, truly, he did. It reminded him of Joseph. But Joseph was long dead now, taken by cholera after working his fingers to the bone trying to help the most destitute of London’s East End. Fat lot of good conscience and a caring heart had done his lost lover.

Derrek swallowed hard, even though there was a lump in his throat and his glass was almost empty. Losing Joseph had been the hardest thing that had ever happened to him. The two of them had been unbelievably happy together. They were complete opposites. Derrek was brash and rough. He’d enjoyed boxing and races in his younger years. Joseph was a preacher’s son who believed passionately in helping those less fortunate than himself. He’d nearly impoverished himself giving everything he had to the poor, who sometimes deserved it and sometimes did not.

In the end, Derrek had taken him in and cared for him as ferociously as a fishwife. They’d had two good, passionate, wonderful years together. Joseph was the one who had inspired Derrek to mend his rakish ways and join the Metropolitan Police. He’d changed Derrek in so many ways.

And then he’d gone and died, sickened by his own devotion to others.

He’d left Derrek alone in a cruel world, adrift without a rudder.

“We should go down to the docks and hire some of those young men to work here at the club,” Cecil said, sitting straighter, as if struck by inspiration.

“As what?” Derrek asked. “Entertainment?”

“No, of course not,” Cecil laughed, kicking Derrek under the table. “I’d hire them as cooks and hall boys. Once they’ve proven their worth, they can rise up to be footmen and such.”

“You could even educate some of them and send them into a trade,” Jack suggested.

“If they want that life,” Derrek argued again. “I can’t imagine that a lot of them would want to give up the freedom of living rough for four walls and responsibility around them all the time.”

The others looked baffled by that statement. All but Jack, who Derrek was fairly certain had grown up in rougher conditions and knew which way the wind blew.

“Surely, there must be something you can do for them as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department,” Cecil said.

Derrek made a sound and shrugged before leaning back in his chair and spreading out. “To be honest, the Met isn’t concerned about them as people. My orders are to get them off the street and into gaols, one way or another. My superiors have hinted that if I want to rough them up a bit in the process, they’ll look the other way.”

“Aren’t your superiors supposed to be upholding the law and maintaining order and safety for all?” Austen asked with a frown.

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