The Lord's Forced Bride has been in the top one hundred historical romance and historical books. This morning it was number four in kindle and number seventeen in books (historical).
Very exciting for me!
|Now read the latest in Regency Letters.
An entry in Lady Horatia’s diary
I cannot write this in a letter to anyone for my dearest Robert told me in confidence and I would not betray him for the world. Yet it is too hard to keep inside and so I must put down what he told me.
I understand now why he has been so ill and why for a time he did not seem to wish to recover. I suspected that Robert had been disappointed in love but it is so much worse, so painful that I can hardly bear to write the words.
Robert was and is in love, but the object of his affection was a chambermaid who worked at an inn, a girl of no breeding and little education. My brother tells me that she was the sweetest, kindest girl in the world and I believe him for he wept as he told me. He knew that to marry his darling Alice would mean that his mama would never forgive him. He would have received no further preferment in the army and might have been ostracised by his friends. It is his grief and his shame that he let these things weigh with him yet still embarked on a clandestine love affair with the girl. Even when she told him she was to have his child, my brother begged her to keep their secret, which she did until the last. When her employer at last discovered the truth she was dismissed. She went away and hid herself in shame telling only Robert where she lived. He visited her and promised to take care of her but his regiment was out of town when she gave birth, alone and in great distress.
Robert wept bitterly when he told me that on his return he went to visit her and found both Alice and the child dead. She had bled to death after the birth and the child died either at birth or soon after of neglect.
No man could bear such guilt. I do not wonder that my beloved brother was close to death when I reached him. Had I not pledged to stay with him I think he must have given up. I do not think that he will ever truly recover for how could he? His pain is mine and I feel his shame and his despair. He has told me that I must never do as he did, never hide my love for the person I wish to be with.
‘If you send him away and something should happen you will never forgive yourself,’ he told me as I held him while he wept out his sorrow and regret.
I shall write to my dearest love later. Robert’s story has broken my heart. For now I can write no more.
