A Line of Soft Princes - Ch. 10 - A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

Getting back to this series feels so good.  

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Bartem was staring into the mirror, red-faced and frustrated. “I look like a sausage.” An overfilled sausage, at that. “Isn’t there anything else I can wear? I can’t have tried on everything.”

Bartem’s valet, George, tried to hide a grimace. He had spent nearly two hours squeezing the prince in and out of clothes, trying to find something that would fit. To both of their chagrin, nothing had. George struggled not to feel like he’d failed at his job. A competent valet would have predicted exactly this and begun the process of replacing the prince’s wardrobe weeks ago, and had all the prince’s existing clothes let out in the meantime. But most valets didn’t have to try and appease the vanity of a new prince who seemed very certain his figure was as unchanging as the monarchy he was now part of.

The prince in question had shrugged off the idea of new clothes every time George had brought it up. Bartem wasn’t a frivolous man. He had just had an entirely new wardrobe made in the early spring before the wedding. He knew other nobles (his own family members included) updated their wardrobes at least every other season, but he’d had most of his clothes for years. He had assumed that his size would remain much the same as it always had, that the pudge that had collected around his middle would evaporate once he had a little more to do than sit around his new palace abode and eat. How utterly wrong he’d been.

So here he was, squeezed into an outfit that had once draped lightly over him. It was made of soft blue fabric embroidered with flowers and exotic animals, so thin as to be nearly translucent. Or at least, it had been. Stretched across the prince’s now much meatier body, parts of it actually were see-through. It had a halter neck, with two bits of fabric forming a deep V that stretched all the way to his mid-stomach. Previously, it had looked very fetching. Now, his belly pressed against the fabric where it dug in, the front of his belly muffining out at the bottom of the v-shaped opening. The skirt on the outfit was long, with a slit on one side that ran up to his hip. Once, the fabric had cascaded over him, hinting at his hips and thighs. Now, the fabric hugged him tightly, leaving nothing to the imagination. Were it not for it being backless and having a slit up one leg, he would’ve ripped through the entire garment like gossamer after a single deep breath.

It had been barely a month since they had decamped to the expansive summer palace along with Evie’s entire family and half the country’s nobility. The other half would show up for perhaps a few weeks toward the crescendo of the Season leading into fall, visiting their own nearby summer homes or renting in town. Staying for an entire Season was a luxury lesser nobles could ill afford.

Bartem had been right to look forward to a packed schedule for the next four months. The crown princess and her consort were wanted in attendance at every ball, luncheon, salon, and card game. There were operas and plays to attend, horse races to watch, and all manner of other events. Bartem—whose family, though one of the most prominent and wealthy in the country, rarely stayed in town for the entirety of the Season—was overwhelmed. Every day promised some exciting new entertainment, new faces and old friends to see, and… food. So much food.

It must be stated that Bartem had never experienced deprivation of any sort. Everything he wanted, he could have in abundance. That he had been shocked by the lavish offerings at Evie’s little palace had surprised him, but he had already begun to grow used to it (as his softening belly would attest).

The grand summer palace’s food made everything served at Evie’s look positively peasant-like, and the feasts he had enjoyed at dinner growing up seem like slop for pigs. It was not just the quality of the food, which was magnificent. It was the sheer amount. It seemed like Bartem could walk no more than a few feet through the palace without encountering a servant proffering a platter or a little table groaning under the weight of some irresistible treat or another. Bartem had tried some of these refreshments, of course—it was the Season, and he would be so busy running around all day that he was certain that would make up for any indulgence. Besides, even if he had gotten a bit soft, he was almost certainly the slimmest man staying at the grand palace. It was easy to convince himself that would always be the case when men twice his size or more were gorging themselves beside him.

Two of those men, more often than not, were Bartem’s eldest siblings.

Both Emmett and Linden had been invited to stay in the grand palace by their sibling and his wife, and both had taken to the lifestyle of the Season with gusto, indulging at every opportunity. They were so pleased with their sumptuous accommodations that they almost seemed to have forgotten their jealousy and anger toward their thinnest brother for stealing away the most eligible woman on the marriage market.

Bartem, being a good brother, ensured that many of the events he and Evie attended had room for his siblings as well. He had never been one for playing the marriage market, but he knew both Linden and Emmett would have been desperately disappointed not to take every opportunity to show themselves off. Matchmaking between nobles was half the point of the Season, after all.

Having his brothers around resulted in Bartem eating more than he ordinarily would, to his mild annoyance. They were each so excited over it all, constantly asking him if he’d tried the petit fours or the strawberries stuffed with cheesecake, and had he tasted the oysters yet? He would start off having just one of each morsel they recommended, but one tended to turn into two, then sometimes three… sometimes more...

Social expectations at various events also forced him to indulge more than he liked. Before his marriage, he had been able to attend events like these with few eyes on him. He’d had few protocols to follow, and if he flouted them, no one much cared. But now he was often expected to kick events off with toasts and eat richly throughout. If he didn’t look full by the end, it would be taken as an insult to the hosts. In many cases, the hosts were his own in-laws, and he was not interested in building any kind of enmity between himself and the queen or any of his wife’s other relatives.

He’d debated eating less more than once. Surely Lady Bertlett or Duchess Syddington would not notice if he focused more on socializing than stuffing his face? But Evie or his brothers always seemed to ensure he left with a packed belly, no matter his own intentions. Evie might gently urge him to eat a little more without ever exactly saying so—”Lady Allendale is very sensitive, and the wheat harvests from her lands feed nearly a quarter of the country, my dear”—while Linden and Emmett would do so by gobbling down whatever food was in reach and making Bartem look downright rude in comparison.

Despite all this, he had genuinely been more active. There were dances to attend most evenings of the week, and his dance card was always full. Many of the modern dances were slow and sedate and quite short to account for the lack of aerobic fitness in half the dancers. While Bartem felt the slower dances were good for conversation, he looked forward to the handful of faster dances that took place each evening. Many of them were modified versions of country dances popular among the masses. They required fast, careful footwork and agility, which Bartem was lucky enough to have in spades. During these dances, most men were resting on the sidelines, draped heavily over soft couches and strong chairs, eating and drinking to recover their stamina. Women paired up with each other because of the dearth of male partners. Bartem was one of the few men always out on the dancefloor. This made him the most popular man in the room. Everyone wanted to be his partner, if only for a dance or two.

Evie loved witnessing this. During breaks between dances, she would tease her husband about his popularity. “I think Lady Eastbury broke another woman’s rib elbowing to the front of the crowd around you.” She liked seeing him happy, and watching the desire she had for him spark in other people’s eyes.

Aside from the dances, he led regular riding parties around the grand palace’s vast estate. There were usually only a few participants, but he enjoyed the chance to feel the wind on his face and get some exercise in the company of others.

Tragically, dancing and the occasional horseback ride were not enough to trim the excess fat from his waistline. He could only blame himself. In the wee hours of the morning, after hours of dancing through the soles of his shoes, he was always starving. Rather than just going to sleep, he often entreated his wife to procure something for him to eat. More than once, she had hand-fed him chocolates while he lounged in a hot bath, soothing the aching muscles in his feet and legs. It became uncommon for him to go to sleep with an empty belly, and he frequently ate far more than he intended, stuffed belly sloshing as he and Evie jiggled it in bed.

The princess had been quite open about her appreciation for Bartem’s increasing softness. When Bartem was clearly feeling uncomfortable with his new body, she would assure him she liked him at any size. When he was at his most relaxed, she was brazen in her affection. Bartem was no stranger to the pleasures of softer flesh, but it was a new experience to have that flesh be his own. Evie was keen to discover all the newly sensitive parts of him. The soft underside of his belly, his deepening bellybutton, and the breasts he had sprouted became sites of intense pleasure. He had never imagined he’d be going to sleep with sore tits and a stuffed belly with his wife’s hand gently grasping at whatever softness she could hold on him, and yet that had become a near-nightly occurrence.

That was how he’d ended up stuffed into clothes that absolutely did not fit, simultaneously stunned at his growth and utterly unsurprised. Who could attend a multi-month bacchanal and expect to lose weight, after all? He’d been foolish enough to think he had the willpower. Hmph. What was willpower in the face of an entire court that wanted him to weigh twice what he did, just for starters?

The thing was, he had always assumed he would hate being larger. The past month had proved that there were pleasures he had been missing out on. He was not yet ready to get to his brothers’ size or anywhere close, but part of him wanted to relax into it. He was so concerned over his increasing size, and for what? The only one who seemed to miss his old body was him.

“George? Let’s see if we can’t find a way to make this fit, just for tonight,” he said, running a hand over his burgeoning belly. “I’ve a party to attend that I can’t miss.”

“Right away, sir.”

There was some struggle to get Bartem back out of his clothes, but they managed. George thought quickly and cut the slit at the front even deeper, quickly stitching the sides so the newly cut fabric would hold and not look messy. He cut the back open a little and sewed an extra piece of fabric that sort of matched there in an effort to make room for his master’s growing backside. It took nearly an hour to do it all, and George knew his work wasn’t perfect, but it was enough. They were able to get Bartem into the dress a little easier. He was more exposed than before, belly hanging completely out of the front now, the v-neck cradling the bottom of his soft gut. The skirt was still tight on his upper thighs, but he could walk without worrying about splitting seams.

“Excellent work,” he said as he observed himself in the mirror. “Thank you for working so quickly. You can have the rest of the night off.” Bartem adjusted himself a little. “Tomorrow, though, we’ll have the tailor come in for measurements, and make some time to order new garments.” He sighed. He still had every intention of doing better, at finding ways to maintain his figure. Even if he couldn’t get back to his pre-marriage weight before the Season was over, the least he could do was not gain further. He had already put on so much, and he wasn’t ready for additional pounds to pile on just yet.

He had a sense that such efforts might be futile, but he was not yet resigned to the gluttony that ruled over the nobility. He would not be ruled by his appetite, he told himself.

Even as he reassured himself, he could feel himself getting a little peckish thinking about what the spread would look like at that evening’s card game. He chided himself for it, but that didn’t stop him hoping there would be caviar and something creamy for him to sink his teeth into.