Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1 Read Free Page A

Like you when you speak the English tongue, he sounds a very different person. But whereas your English voice it is cold and uncompromising, when Ellicott speaks it he sounds friendly. So much so that I have decided to call him Martin. He tells me in a most pleasant way that I cannot do so without your permission. But as it is his name it is for him to decide to allow me or not, and so I told him.
    Martin is too loyal a creature to go against you, and I do not wish to distress him, so I will continue to call him Ellicott in public, but in private I will call him Martin. The name suits him.
    But again I digress from the incident I wished to tell you about. You may have guessed it concerns my grandmother. Parbleu , but I was very nervous about meeting her! I did not know what to expect, but what I did not expect was to meet a woman who looks much younger than her years, who has the most astonishing head of red hair and, most surprising of all, to find she and I are very alike in countenance and form. Incroyable ! Yes! Even I see that we resemble one another. I was very pleased by this discovery, but she was not. She looked me up and down with a frown and said to her friend Lady Paget in English that she was not at all sure she liked what she saw—which was I! Can you believe a grandmother would say that to her only grandchild upon first meeting? I do not think she realized then that I understand the English tongue almost as well as my own French, and thus her criticism of me. Lady Paget she told my grandmother in no uncertain terms that such a comment was ill-mannered, and that to criticize my appearance was to criticize her own. My grandmother was offended by this and not happy to be rebuked, and like a spoiled child she pouted and flounced to the window to hide her embarrassment. She then tried to make amends by giving me a light kiss to each cheek and patting my hand in a perfunctory manner I did not like in the least.
    Monseigneur, I have never met a more vain creature! She cannot pass a looking glass without peering into it! And her manner of dress is quite alarming in that her sizeable breasts almost fall out of her low-cut bodice, so that whenever a man walks into a room he cannot but stare at such magnificence spilling forth for his admiration. If she were not my grandmother I would take her for a harlot. But I think it is more vanity than venery.
    So this incident of which I have still to tell you about occurred when one of her male admirers came to visit and we were sitting down to tea and biscuits. Do you drink tea, M’sieur le Duc? I do not like it at all! It tastes as I suspect dishwater must. In fact there is no taste and yet here it is drunk in the best salons. Lady Paget she tells me English people cannot get enough of tea, and that it is so highly prized that the black leaves are kept locked away in silver canisters that require a key to open. Can you believe it? If I live to be a hundred, I do not think I will become accustomed to drinking this insipid beverage from China.
    So again this incident. I am sorry for delaying the telling, but I have so much to tell you that it is all dripping off the nib of my quill in no particular order because I do not want to forget one thing about my first few days here in London.
    Sitting down to tea and biscuits with my grandmother and Lady Paget, we were interrupted by a gentleman wearing the most absurd pair of breeches I have ever seen. And that is saying a great deal, given some of the ensembles worn about the halls of Versailles! This gentleman’s name is Percy Harcourt and he is Vallentine’s cousin, though they look nothing alike. Monseigneur, you must believe me when I tell you he was wearing spotted breeches! Yes! Spots! Black spots. The material itself was a velvet and woven in such a way as to appear like the skin of a leopard. A leopard I tell you! And with these spotted breeches he wore bright yellow stockings and black shoes. His frockcoat was yellow with