little french boy. ➵ lashton ✔

un.*

"Stupid fucking salope!"

Luke flinched, blood running down his arms and tears running down his cheeks as he was brutally punished by the Duke. He knew, though, if he resisted, it would only result in further punishment.

"Se il vous plaît, monsieur, arrêtez!"

"Can't even speak in fucking Anglais, can you, little French boy?"

Luke looked up in to the Duke's cold, unloving eyes as he felt the pain intensify.

The Duke was getting closer, so Luke just let it happen when he finally came.

"Arrêtez," he whimpered weakly, begging the Duke to stop.

The Duke never stopped. He didn't stop until he was finished.

»»»

Being the Duke's favorite had upsides and downsides, Luke had decided. He was rewarded after sex with food, but little comfort. He was to speak of the Duke's sexuality with no one, though Luke couldn't express his emotions with anyone if he wanted them to understand.

Luke had been born and raised in the outskirts of France, speaking French all his life and never learning anything different. He didn't know English, he assumed he'd never learn.

When the Duke called him over and mumbled to him in French that they were to have a dinner party that night, he smiled a little. He always liked the luxurious dinners that Edmund planned. He liked watching the chefs scurry about, carrying God-knows-what around on silver platters.

Luke especially liked dressing up. He loved the way he looked in his black suit and Edmund did as well. It was one of the nights when Luke was actually appreciated by his suitor.

That night, when Luke was dressed up in his suit and standing in front of the mirror, the Duke walked up behind him and gnawed on his ear, whispering "vous regardez magnifique."

Luke smiled absently at the cooks and chefs rushing around, attempting to make everything perfect as the guests arrived one by one.

The Duke didn't pay much attention to Luke at the parties, and that didn't bother Luke at all. He was a particularly silent boy, given his lack of proper language for the British-English speaking area in which Edmund ruled.

He sat alone with a small plate of something called shrimp in his hands. Crevette, he knew, was shrimp. He affiliated the word crevette with the food the way we affiliate the word shrimp with the food. He didn't know anything else.

Luke sat down in a rather comfortable chair and pulled his long legs in as he balanced his plate on his nimble, skinny knee.

He bit at the seafood and watched the elegantly dressed men and women enter the room.

The Duke spoke with a large smile and rosy cheeks, as always. The Duke, himself, was a large, robust man with nice rolls of fat for his old age and a light white beard on his chin and neck. He hadn't much hair other than that, however, and he kept his crown on at almost all times.

Luke's eyes were focused on another figure in the crowd, however. It was a rather short young man with a crown atop his head. Luke recognized him. Sir Ashton from Helungar. The Duke had always told Luke never to speak to Sir Ashton, for he was a roi and Luke was a serviteur.

Luke wasn't able to help it, though, when the Duke grabbed his arm and pulled him along through the sea of finely-dressed people. Luke's eyebrows furrowed.

"Où me emmenez-vous?" Luke rasped softly, wondering where they were heading. He saw Sir Ashton up ahead and flinched when his back was pressed against the wall. The Duke explained something quick and specific to Luke in French.

He wanted Luke to seduce the king, reel him in like a fish underwater and tear his kingdom to shreds. There would be no war, then. Luke would be able to go home to France.

"Oui."

Edmund roughly shoved Luke in to the closet with a handful of dirty rags. Luke was to change in to servant clothes and trip near Ashton. Even Luke knew that Ashton was kind and loving, he would never refuse to help a servant in need.

When Luke was in position, he began to walk, trembling. As if it were practiced, he tripped and swore in French, standing up and looking at the mess he had made on Sir Ashton's shirt. His eyes welled up with tears.

"Je suis tellement désolé, monsieur. Pardonnez-moi." Luke gushed, cheeks heating up quickly under the gaze of Sir Ashton.

The back of his neck was immediately seized by the man that Ashton had been speaking to. He was a upperclass man that lived in the castle with the Duke. He knew Edmund's favorite, everyone did.

Luke whimpered loudly and squirmed under the painful hold.

"Stupid French boy," the man muttered at him, throwing him to the floor.

Ashton was wiping at his chest, keeping a watchful eye on the confused French boy.

"Does he not speak English?" He asked the man.

"Not a word."

Ashton looked at Luke sympathetically. He knew what it was like to feel foreign, to not know right and wrong. Fortunately, they could communicate. As a king, he'd been learned French so to be able to communicate with those who were less fortunate, like Luke.

"Il est tout à fait bien, petit garçon français. Allons, asseyons-nous ensemble."

Luke's eyes lit up. He, a little servant boy, was going to sit with the king of the land he lived in. Ashton even told him that tripping over him and soiling his shirt was alright!

Ashton wrapped an easy, yet protective arm around the little French boy and watched him smile.

"Êtes-vous un serviteur de Edmund?"

Luke nodded, he was Edmund's servant, no matter how much the Duke liked him.

"Il me dit que je suis une salope. Suis-je une salope, Sir Ashton?"

Ashton was so appalled at the question he couldn't remember that he didn't understand English.

He'd burst out in answer.

"Of course you're not a slut, why would he tell you that?"

Before he rephrased it in French for the boy's understanding.

"Il me dit que je suis stupide et je be mérite pas sa gentillesse. Il est agréable, cependant. Il me donne de la nourriture, et un abri," Luke explained.

"I'm glad he's kind, but that does not give him any right to call you things that you aren't," Ashton grumbled, standing up and giving Luke an explanation of his actions in French. He didn't even bother to ask who 'she' was.

He was going to buy the little French boy from Edmund, right now, during his dinner.

He knew it was unspeakably rude, but he didn't care. He didn't even know this boy's name and he was buying him off of the hands of the Duke.

"Edmund, I'd like to strike a deal. Eight-thousand pounds for him." Ashton pointed to Luke.