Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1 by Lucinda Brant Read Free Book Online Page A

must return here with all haste, and not stop until you are in his house, and can help my brother with the unspeakable reality that his son and heir is a monster. A monster, I tell you! And others will attest to this sad fact, so I am not the only one who thinks so.
    It is dawn and the morning sky is streaked red. That is not such a good omen, is it, to think the new little one’s first day in this world will be full of storms, when this birth, so longed for and so anticipated, should have been joyous, wondrous, an event most worthy of the noble parents, and yet, it has turned into a catastrophe of a magnitude most shocking.
    It is as if one son he has run mad and in his place is this puny but perfectly formed little bundle of bittersweet joy. For all that, he is very much alive, determined in fact, to remain on this earth and not ascend into Heaven. His cries are lusty and demanding and he has taken to the wet nurse’s breast with gusto. So that must say something for his will to live and gives us hope that he will one day thrive.
    Yes, Lucian, Antonia has given my brother a second son. But she is too weak to feed her infant. She is almost too weak to live. She has lost a great deal of blood, and her spirits they are so low that the physicians have advised Roxton that even if she manages to rally physically, her poor mental state may see her decline further. But we—Roxton and I, her maid Gabrielle, and those who love and know her best—put our faith in her strength of personality and great will to live. She would never willingly leave Roxton in this way, and she could never abandon her newborn son.
    And so the new little one, as I told you, has been given to a wet nurse, a sturdy young wench who has no history of drinking or carousing, and has just the sort of disposition needed to care for a premature newborn of an ailing mother. She will stay by Antonia’s side, despite the physician’s advice the Duchess needs rest and no distraction. But Antonia wants to be near her newborn son, to see him for herself and hold him between feedings, even though she can barely hold up her head, and needs assistance to drink from a pap cup.
    Roxton agrees the infant remain within the sickroom, and this despite the physician advising him in private that there is a chance his newborn son will not live out the week, and the devastating effect this will have on Antonia were she to witness him taking his last little breaths and then expiring in front her! Oh, Lucian, just the mere thought of such a horrendous circumstance, after all they have been through—the babies they have lost before this one—to have a second son and then to lose him within the blink of an eye, it makes my heart break.
    I tell you, Lucian, my brother has aged ten years in ten hours! You will not know him I think. I am certain his hair is turning white before my eyes, and his eyes, they are full of such sadness. Forgive me the splotches. I did not think I had tears enough left to shed. But there you are!
    Lucian, oh Lucian, what has become of us? Why has our world been turned upside down in this way? How could that boy do this to his mother? What demons are in his head? Between you and me, I cannot but help recall the incident with the Vicomte d’Ambert, wherein he attacked Antonia and almost killed her when she was pregnant with Alston. And now this! Sixteen years on and that infant in the womb turns around and does the very same thing to his own sweet mother? It is beyond belief! My brother must surely wonder what blood runs in his veins to have produced such monstrous offspring. But I will say no more about it, and you would do well to burn this letter before your return. My fears in that direction I pray nightly are wholly unfounded and some other explanation can be found, but what that could be, is beyond me!
    I have not had the heart to broach the subject with Roxton, and with Antonia unable to rally after a most traumatic labor, he has not been a minute away