Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1 (6 page)

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M
IDNIGHT
M
ARRIAGE
L
ETTERS

M
IDNIGHT
M
ARRIAGE
L
ETTERS

9.  
Estée, Lady Vallentine, to Lucian, Lord Vallentine

10. 
Mr. Martin Ellicott, Esq., to His Grace The Most Noble Duke of Roxton

11. 
Mr. Martin Ellicott, Esq., to His Grace The Most Noble Duke of Roxton

12. 
Mme Vallentine to Mme la Duchesse d’Roxton

13. 
The Most Honorable Marquess of Alston to His Grace The Most Noble Duke of Roxton

14. 
Sir Gerald Cavendish to His Grace The Most Noble Duke of Roxton

15. 
Mme la Duchesse d’Roxton to Mr. Martin Ellicott, Esq.

16. 
The Most Honorable Marquess of Alston to Mr. Martin Ellicott, Esq.

Midnight Marriage
Family Tree

N
INE

Estée, Lady Vallentine, Hesham House, Hanover Square, London, to Lucian, Lord Vallentine, Ffolkes Abbey, Ely, Essex.

Hesham House, Hanover Square, London

August, 1761

Lucian, you must return to London at once! We need you—Roxton needs you.

Something… something utterly shocking has happened. I can hardly bring myself to write. I have been shaking all over these past three hours, and only now have mastered the tremors and my tears, so that I can finally dip my quill in ink and scratch the parchment without dropping great blobs of black all over the page. In truth, this is my third attempt at writing to you, and if it were not for the courier kicking his heels in the courtyard, his horse saddled and waiting, he ready to ride posthaste to you, I would give up the attempt, and throw myself back on my couch.

But write I must, and tell you a little of what occurred so you will not worry on your return journey. But most importantly, so you will not come blustering in here, slamming doors and shouting, demanding all sorts of nonsense, not least of which that our son be thrashed for his part in an incident almost beyond imagining, that has left me, his dearest mamma, bereft of speech and not able to look at him without bursting into fresh tears for his part in this wickedness.

Of course I know they are but mere boys and were stupidly intoxicated, and that he and his friend Robert had no part in the shocking deed perpetrated late last night… But they did nothing—
nothing
—to stop it either, so my brother has every right to think them equally as guilty. So you must come and speak to these boys and find out the truth of the matter. Know that they have come to no harm, but are detained, under house arrest (the shame of it all!), on pain of punishment if they dare try to leave the house without first giving a full account of their actions, and what they witnessed, to M’sieur le Duc.

But my poor brother is in no fit state to interview them. Thus our dearest boy and his school friend will at least have some hours or days! to sleep off their drunkenness. I pray then they will be able to give a better account of themselves to you. But your first duty must be to Roxton. Evelyn you can interrogate later. And it would not do him a harm either for those boys to spend time alone with their thoughts and to think through their deplorable inaction.

No! I have not been drinking, or taking too many James’s Powders. I grant I have not slept all night, and am exhausted from being in attendance on Antonia, but I cannot close my eyes, which are dry of tears because I see the nightmare of last night as vividly as if it were happening all over again. I screamed, I know I did. And it is my screams that still ring in my ears. That poor sweet darling girl did not so much as whimper until her pains they began. I believe she was in shock; is
still
in shock that such a monstrous act was perpetrated upon her, and in her condition! Oh, Lucian! She was so very brave!

And so you 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 from her side, not even to visit Alston, who remains locked up in his rooms, refused all contact with family or servant.

And can you blame my brother, when it was he who returned to the horrific sight of his dearest darling Antonia being dragged into the winter night air in her night attire, out into the square, by her son. Her son, Lucian! Not a fiend, or a criminal, or an escapee from Bedlam. But her most precious eldest son, whom she worships almost as much as she does her husband! Yes, it is true I tell you. Her son, my nephew, Alston dragged her from her rooms and down the stairs and out into the night! He cast her out of the house and into the streets, as if she were a whore not worth his spit. And that is what he said to her. Accusing her of being a bawd, and that the child she carried as being the bastard offspring of her lover. My God, can you believe he accused his mother of adultery? Antonia, of all women on this earth? She the beauty of her age who is so utterly devoted to my brother, a reformed satyr, that they have been the butt of many a ridiculous cartoon not fit to print—but print it they do! I tell you, Lucian, such disgusting drawings would never be printed in Paris! At least France has a secret police to protect us! But I am rambling, but who can blame me?

No one, not I, not the Duchess’s physician, not the faithful family retainers, not even his godfather M’sieur Ellicott, who had come up to London to be present for the birth in a few weeks’ time, could tell Alston any different about his mother. At first we were all too shocked by his behavior and his actions to speak. And then it was almost too late to save Antonia from his wrath, when he pulled her after him, down the stairs and out into the night air! And that darling girl did not utter a syllable against him. I think she too was so shocked she lost the facility of speech.

He was drunk, Lucian. He was so drunk and full of angry tear-filled rage that it would not have mattered what Antonia or the rest of us had said to him, because he was incapable of listening to anyone or anything. He was as one blind to his outrageous behavior, and blind to the fact his mother had gone into labor. He had her by the arm and was shaking her, calling her the most appalling names and demanding of her who was her lover and the father of her bastard, and in such a rage that we were truly frightened he meant to hit her! Just the thought of it makes me faint!

And then, as if from nowhere, Roxton he was there! My brother, just returned from White’s, came out of the darkness. He strode up to his son with all the energy and strength of a man half his age, such was his rage, and I do not doubt fuelled with fear for Antonia. He saw and heard no one but the outrageous scene presented to his shocked gaze.

Thank God he is ever the cool-headed one in a crisis. He did the only thing left to him. The only thing none of the servants, not Antonia, not I, or his family would do. He grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck and pulled him off his mother. He then gave him such a backhanded slap that it knocked the boy off his feet! Stunned, he crumpled to the cobblestones. And it was only then that it came to him what he had done, and what he might have done, to his mother and her unborn child. And then Alston he let out such a howl it was as if a wounded animal had come amongst us.

Antonia she fell into M’sieur le Duc’s arms. And within the blink of an eye, as only Roxton’s presence can command, everyone was quiet and everything still. The chaos and the madness it was over with! My brother scooped Antonia up into his arms and marched indoors, leaving his son sprawled on the filthy cobbles, sobbing.

It was only then that our son he appeared out from the darkness, too, and with him his school friend Robert. They were sheepish but not afraid, and very drunk! Both boys were seized upon by Roxton’s servants, and despite my protests, despite my tears, all three boys were taken away, marched from the square, and taken inside the house and locked up! It was left to Roxton’s servants to clear the square of onlookers, and to Martin Ellicott to help me inside, and we followed my brother and Antonia back up to her rooms, where I have been ever since, except now, to write you this letter, to tell you to come home at once!

I cannot lie to you, and you must know for my brother’s sake, that Antonia was close to death and her labor over with so quickly that there is still a small chance of her not recovering from her ordeal. Lucian, she may not return to us. Her infant he breathes and he suckles but he is so very small. I have lit candles and prayed and prayed.

I do not know what will happen to Alston, or to our son. All I do know is that we need you here, that my brother he needs you here. So for God’s sake, get yourself a strong swift horse and ride like the storm which is fast approaching!

Your loving wife,

Estée

T
EN

Mr. Martin Ellicott, Esq., Third Hill Residence, Constantinople, to His Grace The Most Noble Duke of Roxton, c/o William Kinloch CDA, His Britannic Majesty’s Embassy, Athens, Greece.

Third Hill Residence, Constantinople

June, 1767

Dear M’sieur le Duc et Mme la Duchesse,

I trust this letter finds Your Graces, Lord Henri-Antoine, Dr. Bailey, and the various members of your travelling party, in excellent health, and enjoying the warmer weather the Mediterranean affords.