Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1

by Lucinda Brant

  Let me tell you all about it. You will enjoy hearing how silly it is, particularly when I tell you who participated at the Twelfth Night revelries at Grandmama’s house. Yes indeed, we played these games in her drawing room. I insisted, for how else can I become a proper Englishwoman if I do not know all the English traditions? And so I argued this to Theo, who argued with Grandmamma, and was supported in his arguments by Lady Paget, Miss Harcourt and her brother Percy. Finally, Grandmamma threw up her hands in capitulation, saying we could do what we liked. I see your smile at this great manipulation of mine. But it was for the greater good, I assure you. For why should we all not join in the revelries of such an occasion? While you would not join in, you would never stop another from such enjoyment.

  So this game of Bullet Pudding. Let me tell you about it.

  Firstly, what is needed for the game itself is—A quantity of baking flour, a large silver platter, and a bullet. Such strange things to bring together. Incroyable, no? The platter it is put in the middle of the table, and the quantity of flour is piled high into the shape of a steep mountain on all sides, a volcano of sorts. There is skill involved in making the shape, and the flour is tightly compacted so it neither slides down nor collapses in on itself, but remains in this volcano shape. Atop this flour volcano is carefully placed the bullet, and in such a way that it does not sink immediately. This perfect little round ball of lead must remain at the apex until the game, it begins. The placing of this bullet requires a steady hand so that it does not immediately fall through the flour to the platter and is lost. Which means the game it is over before it begins!

  Theo has the steadiest hand, so it was left to him to place the bullet without disturbing the pyramid of flour. He took his time and was very careful and slow. But he was too slow for Grandmamma, who would not stop complaining that he was taking too much time, and that perhaps one of the servants would be better at placing the bullet. I do not know how Theo he kept his temper, but he did. I suppose there were a great many people standing around the table eagerly waiting to play this game.

  So the bullet it was put in place, and then the fun it truly began. Everyone who is playing the game is given a butter knife. Each person then takes a turn to carefully insert their knife into the mountain of flour, and then withdraw the knife just as carefully so as not to disturb the flour and thus disturb the bullet from the apex. Once everyone has had their turn, it all begins again. Of course we all became impatient and this makes us falter. Most of us are laughing at the others as the flour it begins to subside and the bullet it begins to sink!

  And what do you think happens when the bullet it disappears into the flour? We abandon our knives and take it in turns to poke our noses and chin into the flour to find the bullet. Using our hands is forbidden. The only legitimate way permitted to extract the bullet is using our mouths.

  Of course by this stage, there are fewer of us playing at Bullet Pudding. Charlotte for one would not dip her face into the flour, neither would Lady Paget. Theo, he too was not eager to do so, but I said I would be more than a little upset with him if he did not join in the game. After all, if M’sieur Harcourt was brave enough to stick his face in the flour to find the bullet, as was I, why not Theo? So that just left the three of us with the others withdrawing and watching on in astonishment, because, Monseigneur, I was as determined as anyone to find that bullet, regardless of the flour to my face or gown!

  But let me tell you that laughing and flour do not mix! I was having such an enjoyable time that I could not stop giggling to see M’sieur Harcourt and Theo, their faces covered in flour with only their eyes blinking out at me! I realize I too must have presented the same ridiculous sight to them, for we were laughing so hard, that we were blowing the flour all over the table! And poor M’sieur Harcourt, he ended up having a coughing and sneezing fit because he breathed in some of the flour, and it went straight up his nose, and his eyes they would not stop watering. Soon his face it was covered not in flour but a strange dough as his tears mixed with the flour, causing it to clump. The sight was most hideous, and because it was hideous we Theo and I laughed even harder. And so the cycle of silliness it could not be broken!

  Naturally, Grandmamma she was not pleased to see the game turn to the ridiculous, and tried to call a halt to it, when at that moment, Theo lifted his head up out of the flour with an almighty dramatic whoosh, and there, clamped between his grinning teeth, was the bullet!

  Everyone applauded wildly, I suspect with relief, but most of the laughter was directed at Grandmamma, because when she stepped over to put a stop to our silliness it was at the same time as Theo he lifted his head, and the flour on his face shot out like a great white cloud when he breathed out, and covered Grandmamma from head to foot in flour!

  So you see why I think Vallentine he must play at Bullet Pudding with me.

  I will tell you about one other game before I conclude this letter and try and sleep, because it is now very late and my candle will soon gutter. I could light another but Grandmamma she now has the maids counting my candles and reporting back to her, so that she can determine for how many hours I remain awake at night when I should be sleeping.

  I would like to think she is doing such a thing because she is worried after my welfare, but I am not so naïve. She worries, that is true, but worries that I am still awake late at night when she is entertaining one of her lovers, and that I might hear the comings and goings from her room. These lovers, they do not stay the night, and so the footmen they must wait up to show these footlickers (not a nice word I heard Theo use for these men who visit his mother) the door when it is time for them to leave. One night there was a very loud noise on the stair outside my room, and I am sure it was one of these men tripping, possibly over their own feet, as he scurried off into the night.

  But I will not write any more details of that, because I think I have already mentioned these nocturnal comings and goings in a previous letter, and to repeat it will bore you. But what I will repeat about these carnal encounters is that while my grandmamma and her lovers gain a temporary satisfaction for the body, her heart, I am very sure, remains dissatisfied, and her mind empty. I do not see the point in satisfying oneself physically without engaging the heart and the mind in such pleasurable activity. Only then can one truly be satisfied. These men are young enough to be her sons, and I am very sure they are not thinking with their brain at all, and certainly their hearts are left outside the door. But I cannot deny that these nocturnal trysts do make me miss you all the more, because I miss making love with you very much. But this feeling is all the more empty because my mind and my heart are even more bereft without you. I miss most lying wrapped in your arms in your big bed, half asleep and yet half awake, with all the covers and pillows around us and we two snuggled in, away from the world, away from everyone and everything. Just the two of us.

  See, I have wet the ink with a tear, and you will think me a great baby for my sentimentality, but I cannot help it. It is the way I am and the way I feel.

  I have dried my eyes now, and will continue for a little bit and then will sleep. Perhaps tomorrow I will wake and find that there is a letter from you waiting.

  So this other game we played tonight, after we had cleaned ourselves of the flour—though not very successfully because Theo and I were still finding amusement in our appearances an hour later. We must have been grinning at each other, because Grandmamma she wanted to know what the private joke was, and it did not matter that we told her there was none. She thought we were keeping something from her!

  This other Yuletide game requires a bowl of brandy, some raisins and almonds, and flame to set the spirit on fire. The raisins and almonds are put into the bowl and then brandy poured in, just enough to cover them. The brandy is then set alight! Yes! So that there is a blue flame and the bowl glows! What stops the breath and heart is that the players are then required to dip their fingers through this flame to pick up as many of the fruit and nuts as they can before their fl
esh it burns. Each player takes a turn, and depending on how many almonds and raisins are scooped up at each turn, more are added, and so is brandy, and relit!

  I assure you none of us had our fingers burned. And the gentlemen with lace at their wrists removed it or tucked it up so it would not catch on fire, as apparently this happened to a guest at another party, who caught his lace on fire and then ran around the room screaming. Theo says he was not even badly burned, but it was the shock of the thing.

  I managed to scoop up five almonds and two raisins for my efforts. But I was giggling, which did not help. The greatest part of this game is watching the faces of the others as they dip their fingers through the flame, at first horrified and transfixed, then when they are not instantly burned they relax a little, which is the wrong thing to do because they become complacent, and that’s when the flame it will burn, if you linger.

  I must go now as I am very sleepy. In tomorrow’s letter I will tell you all about the hanging of mistletoe and how if you walk under it, it is mandatory to kiss the person who is standing beside you (if they are of the opposite gender). I have decided that when we share a house one day and it is Christmas time, I will direct the servants to hang mistletoe in every doorway, which will give us an opportunity to kiss as we pass from room to room. Do not worry, I will make certain not to linger in doorways this Christmas…

  I miss your company so very much, and more so, if that is possible, at this time of year with all the family gathered enjoying themselves hugely. It does not seem right to do so without you here with us.

  All my love,

  Antonia

  SIX

  Mlle Moran, Hanover Square, Westminster, England, to Signora Maria Giovanna Casparti, Fitzstuart Il Palazzo, San Marco, Venezia.

  [Translated from the Italian]

  Hanover Square, Westminster, England

  February, 1746

  Gentile Signora, Please excuse that I do not write you a detailed letter about my stay here, or that this letter does not answer all the many questions you put to me, which I know you are owed. But in my present state I cannot think of anything but my predicament, which, when I confess all to you, you will think me very bad indeed. But I pray you, dearest Maria, will forgive me this, and much more besides.

  Why do I write in such a dreadful scrawl? Because my heart it is breaking. I have had little sleep, so I ask that you excuse my handwriting and my poor Italian. Oh, how I wish this were all that you had to forgive! It is the least of my worries.

  Maria, last night I went to the theater and who should come in at interval but M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton! Yes, I tell you, it was Monseigneur come home at last. And without a word spoken by anyone to me that this event was to occur. They—Grandmère, Theo, Lady Paget, Charlotte—they all conspired to keep his return a secret from me. Why? Why should they do such a thing unless perhaps he wanted it kept from me? But then again I ask myself why, as I have asked myself many times over the past few months why has he not answered one of my letters?

  Oh, Maria, my head and my heart ache so. My eyes have no more tears to shed but I cannot harden my heart. I was so very happy to see him that I rushed up to him without a thought to where we were or who was with us, and blurted out how I had missed him. I expected him to at least acknowledge that he was pleased to see me. But he did not. He accused me in not so many words, but I saw the look in his eyes, of embarrassing him in a public place. I should have remembered that the nobleman known to the public is so very different from the gentleman I know in private.

  Of course M’sieur le Duc d’Roxton would be displeased to be so set upon in such a manner in a public place, whereas were we in his bedchamber Renard would readily have scooped me up into his arms and spun with me about the room until we were both giddy and had to fall amongst the pillows to stop ourselves collapsing to the floor, and all the while laughing!

  I convince myself that whatever happens from this day forward, I will always have the memory of those six wonderful days spent together, just the two of us alone in his apartments. I told you in an earlier letter how I gave myself to M’sieur le Duc and still I do not have one regret. Not one. Not even this morning as I write you this letter with my eyes all red and puffy from crying and still not knowing if he truly does love me as much as I love him.

  But before I continue, please, you must believe me when I tell you he did not seduce me. I remember that was one of your questions to me. Did I truly orchestrate my own seduction? I tell you emphatically that I did! He would never have trespassed into my apartment. But I trespassed into his, at night, in my chemise, and with my hair down my back—how could he then resist me? Ha! There, writing it down in this way has made me giggle at my wickedness, and I feel a little better for it. Imagine me, an ignorant little fool of the ways of the bedchamber, seducing the greatest roué in all Paris! I also imagine that now M’sieur le Duc he has had the time to reflect upon it, he is startled to discover the reversal of our roles in the game of seduction. For surely a great rake should be the seducer, not the pretty ingénue? Perhaps his so great arrogance cannot abide that simple truth, and that is why last night he treated me with the cold contempt he usually reserves for others?

  But I do not care who initiated our affair. All I care is that it happened! But I do not blame him or myself, and would not change a minute of that time. Even now, now that my life is about to change in the most shocking of ways.

  My dearest Maria, just when you think I cannot shock you further, I will, I know it, when I tell you I am almost certain, though I want to deny it, enceinte.

  I have told no one, though I suspect my maid Gabrielle she knows. But of course she must! You no doubt think me an even greater fool for allowing this to happen. But how could I not? How could I have anticipated such an outcome? Now you think me even more foolish. But to be honest, the last thing on my mind while making love was the possibility I would fall pregnant! Now that possibility is almost a surety I do not mind in the least.

  If my condition does one thing, it will end the Comte de Salvan’s plans to wed me to Etienne. Though I would not put it beyond my grandmother’s scheming to use this to marry me off even more quickly to the Vicomte. That is why I must leave here before my condition it becomes apparent. And because I do not want to be a burden or an embarrassment to my family, or to M’sieur le Duc, particularly if he does not truly reciprocate my feelings.

  That is why I hope you will agree to my plans to come to you, so that I may have my baby in Venice.

  Will you have me, dearest Maria? I can think of no one else who will be sympathetic to my predicament, who will look after me, and when the time comes, care for my baby, too. For I mean to keep it, not give it away as I have heard happens to the children born out of wedlock to females from good families. Why should I give up a child of mine, who is of my flesh, and which was conceived in love; of that I am convinced! I have the means to give it a good life, if one without a father, so it will never suffer from lack of love and comfort, even if its opportunities will be limited by its lack of birthright…

  Oh, Maria, I am so sad. I cannot help my feelings for him, and for this baby that is yet to be born. I know you think me a little fool, but I suppose that when one loves deeply, the fall into despair, if it ever comes, is great. I doubt my heart will recover. Though, for the sake of this new life, I am determined not to wallow in self-pity. All our choices have consequences of some sort and thus I must abide by these, and make the best of them.

  Now I must not write another word. Gabrielle has been in to me twice as Charlotte is due here to take me away to her brother’s house. I will send this from that house, not this one, as I suspect my letters are being read, or so Gabrielle suspects. I do not know for certain if that is so. I hope to have your reply within the month. In the meantime I will make plans for my departure.

  Love and kisses,

  Antonia

  SEVEN

  Renard, Duke of Roxton, to Antonia, Duchess of Roxton.

 
; [Left on Antonia’s dressing table the morning after the wedding night.]

  Antonia, I love you. Three simple little words, and yet never uttered or inscribed in ink by me to another living soul, only to you. I will never love another as I love you. I will never cherish another as I cherish you. I will always love only you.

  This is the happiest day of my life. For it is the first day of the rest of my life, with you. Not yesterday when we were married, with witnesses in attendance, up before parson and reciting what others have done before us and will do after us. Me nervous, and you serene and steadfast. I could not wait for the ceremony to be over with, and our guests to leave. Yesterday was still the getting there, but today, now, here, just the two of us, today I am your husband and you are my wife. It still leaves me dazed to write such words, for I truly believed I would never marry. And then into my life you stepped, or should I say twirled, in your whirlwind of silks and smiles…

  You sleep peacefully in our bed, while I cannot sleep at all. I fear falling asleep and waking to find you gone, of finding myself alone. I am sure this apprehension will ease with every night we spend together as a married couple, until one night I will fall asleep with you in my arms, and wake to you still snuggled in my embrace, and think it the most natural state in all the world. But do not ever think for a moment I will take you or our marriage for granted. It is precious; henceforth I pledge to nurture our union for the rest of my days.

  You told me that once we shared a bed you found you could no longer sleep without me. I can no longer live without you. For with you I am truly who I am meant to be. I wonder now if I have been walking about as one dead, or as a specter, with sight, hearing and touch, but without the ability to feel. It is as if I have floated through life without experiencing any of it. When did I become like this? How have I walked the halls of kings in such a paralyzed state: Eating without tasting, looking without seeing, touching without feeling. And all the time with a heart that was disdainful, and a soul that was wasted. Until you.