Chapter Text
1812
The Willowby Gentleman’s Club
(affectionately termed Willowby Court to its noble members)
An Insult is Given
The wager happened the way these things often do: in the heat of the moment, as the result of far too much wine.
It was getting late, the dinner party stretching into its third hour. Candles guttered low in their crystal bases and conversation had slowed to a lazy river. The long table was packed with young men, nearly every member of the elite club in attendance.
With the Prince Regent as royal guest, how could any of them dare refuse?
Prinny sat at the head of the table, haloed by golden candlelight. His round cheeks—kindly called cherubic, though never to his face—worked as he forked and chewed and swallowed, forked and chewed and swallowed, making his way through another dish of flaky pastry. The other young men had tapped out ages ago. There had been countless courses over the three long hours. Countless plates of fine food, countless glasses of wine, countless opportunities to get over-stuffed and muddle-brained and ready to leave what had begun to feel like a prison.
But of course, no one could leave while the Prince Regent still ate, and against all odds, Prinny seemed content to keep eating until he burst.
Finally, one of their newest, youngest, and stupidest lordlings couldn’t keep his mouth properly shut. “Good God,” he muttered to his left-hand neighbor, “how can he still be hungry? Even the fattest man has to be sated at some point.”
His slurred words were too loud and the tired conversation buzzing around the table too quiet. Instantly, the room went still. Pin-drop silent. Scores of eyes swung his way, and the young lord looked up in horror to realize the Regent was staring him down from across the table, eyes glittering like polished stones, fat cheeks puffed out in fury.
The lordling slouched back in his seat. “I…I beg your pardon,” he said, stammering over the words. His own faced was flushed a florid red. “I did not think before I— I am drunk!” he added. “I am very drunk! I did not mean a word of it!”
Silence.
No one else dared move or speak. The Prince Regent was known for having a capricious temper and a tendency to be unpredictable where his vanity was concerned. Ever since he’d begun gaining weight—rounding out from the belly like a great big bird puffing itself up to twice its size—he’d been particularly difficult to anticipate. There was no telling what the (yes, fat) future king would do now.
Prinny set his fork aside with a too-loud clatter. He reached for his stained napkin and touched it delicately to his mouth, wiping away perhaps a quarter of the crumbs gathered there. Sitting at the head of the club’s lavish table, stuffed like a Christmas turkey with all the trimmings until his fine clothes all but creaked around him, he managed to look both regal and ridiculous at once. Truly fat, his over-packed belly a round dome perched on his lap, buttons straining valiantly around the circumference.
Deliberately, as if daring them all to look, Prinny dropped one hand to the crest of his gut and gave it a careful pat.
“I can’t help but think,” Prinny said, leaning back indolently in his creaking chair, “that you would never say such a thing if you had the pleasure of being fat yourself.”
His words came out light, teasing, but there was an audible sharpness beneath them that all the cleverest young men at the table instantly recognized. Danger, it said. DANGER.
The stupid lordling of course missed every sign, instead taking what looked like a peace offering. “No, of course!” he babbled, visibly relieved. “I have never been fat myself, so I have no idea! I was speaking from ignorance. But, ah, naturally,” he added when Prinny subtly narrowed his eyes, “naturally it must be a pleasure to be so fat. An honor, even! A very honorable state!” He was talking faster and faster now, as if unable to stop the flow of panicked words. “Such dignity, such grace, such…gravid presence. I only wish I could be as fat as you.”
Prinny raised a single brow.
“I-if only to understand just how much of a pleasure it truly is.”
“Are the rest of you in agreement?” Prinny asked, both hands on his prodigious gut now. He kept rubbing his palms over the satin-covered dome as if daring them to look—or maybe daring them to look away? It was so bloody hard to tell when he was in this sort of mood! The subtle rasp rasp of each taunting rub was very loud in the petrified dining room. “Well? Do you or do you not agree that I am honored to be so…fat?”
There was a low rustle and clearing of throats. Then one of the slightly older young lords said, “Of course we agree. We agree to a man: everything about you is honorable.”
It was a good response, but not what the Prince Regent was looking for. “And yet even though you believe it to be an honor and a pleasure to be as I am, you have no experience to speak of. You cannot understand your own future king because you have not lived as he has. Do not flatter yourself to think I missed the way all of you,” his bright-eyed gaze swept the entire long table, taking in the dozens of young lords from the very best families in the kingdom, “shifted and yawned and wished to be away from table as I ate. Do not assume I missed the way you pushed around your food and prayed I would soon be done with mine. You have no concept of what it is to have a true hunger. How can you be expected to keep my favor—to keep your own honorable families at the heights of high society—if you cannot comprehend so simple a thing?”
Silence again. The trap was clear as day for even the stupidest amongst them, but no one yet dared to try to spring it. A single misspoken word could lead to lasting damage for each noble house here: the young future dukes and earls and viscounts gathered about the Willowby table were powerful and rich, but none of that made any difference without the king’s favor.
And now the future king was sitting there, rubbing his bulbous gut, and daring them to make a move.
Finally, one of the young men cleared his throat, drawing Prinny’s attention. “We cannot possibly hope to understand,” he said, low baritone clear. He didn’t look to his fellows on the left or right of him; there was only one way forward that wouldn’t doom them all. “But there’s not a man here who doesn’t wish to. So, your grace,” he said, looking steadily at the man who could shape all of their futures at a whim, “what would you have us do to prove ourselves?”
The room was so still, the sound of carriage wheels rolling over cobblestones outside could be heard. The shift and creak of a floorboard as servants moved subtly through the huge club was as loud as a gunshot. Even the candles guttering in their bases seemed loud as shouts, and every breath was held as they waited for the ax to fall.
Prinny simply smiled.
A Wager is Struck
The rules of the “voluntary wager” the Prince Regent offered as penance were simple.
Each young man would come to the head of the table and draw a number randomly from a hat. The numbers ranged from small to large: from 5 all the way up to a jaw-dropping 500. There were more numbers than bodies at the table, to ensure a truly randomized spread.
Once a number was drawn, it became a goal. Anyone below 100 had until the next season’s start—a full year—to add that much weight to his person. Anyone above had an additional one to two years to see his part of the wager through.
At season’s end, the Prince Regent himself would return with the royal doctor to see to weighing and measuring. Should the newly fattened young lord meet his target, he would be given Prinny’s favor: and, in essence, a golden ticket at court, which would impact his family for generations to come.
Should the young lord fail to meet his goal… Well, then the wager would be considered forfeit, and the Prince Regent would be deeply disappointed. No one had trouble interpreting exactly how bad that would be for themselves and their families; everyone knew exactly how long and vindictive a memory the capricious Prinny could have.
The nervous energy was high as a servant brought the tall dove-colored hat full of numbers to the Regent. Young men shifted about in their chairs, trying to imagine themselves ten pounds heavier. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Gazes kept darting to Prinny’s round middle, bulging proud and vulgar against the straining buttons of his fall-front breeches. What would it be like to be that fat? What would it be like to potentially be even fatter? Would they all become laughingstocks of the ton? Was it even possible to stuff your way into a rounded waistline in a year? Could they truly go through with this?
Tension rose with every second as Prinny took the hat and gave it a solid shake. The numbers inside rustled like whispers of dread. Then, a smile spreading across his fat face, the Prince Regent turned to look down the long table at all the most noble and respected peers of the realm.
“So,” he said, sounding pleased. “Who will be first?”