Free Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1 by Lucinda Brant Page B

person two steps behind him. He became his shadow, and wherever he went, whatever he did, the spy he was there too.
    Am I not the most wretched of wives to do this? But I tell you when the spy he reported all that he saw after just one week of being Lucian’s shadow, my mind was far from put at ease. My suspicions they were inflamed further and I fell weeping upon my couch. The spy told me that not only had my husband strayed across to the left bank, but that he visited the same house upon three separate days, and spent two hours within its walls on each of these days.
    The spy he had even managed to procure the name of the owner of this house. That a man owned it did not lessen my fears. For all I knew then, this man could have been a pimp and the woman Lucian was seeing his bawd. But the story it becomes worse, and my fears justified when the spy told me that Lucian he was not the only gentleman to visit the house, and often.
    So now I am thinking that it is not a mistress he has, but that he is visiting a brothel! For some reason this made me feel a little better, to think his wandering was not restricted to one woman, but then of course I reversed this notion, for if he was seeing multiple women what did that say about him and about our marriage? And oh! a thousand other impossible things that go through the mind when it is in turmoil.
    Please, you must try to read this without giggling, Antonia! For I am very sure, as night follows day, that is precisely what you are doing, to think of Lucian visiting a brothel. In truth, the man could be standing outside such an establishment and have no idea as to its function.
    But I have not told you the rest of this sorry tale, and why I am such an imbecile to even have one bad thought about my dear husband. But you must remember—at the time his behavior was so odd that my fears he was up to something were justified, even if those fears headed down completely the wrong alleyway!
    So to clip a long tale short. This house was not a brothel. It was not even occupied by a woman of ill repute. I had the spy discover all this for me by throwing more coins at him to find a way of gaining entry to this establishment. It took him a few days more, and in those few days my headache was so bad, my apprehension so acute, that I hardly ate or slept. And do you think Lucian he noticed my deteriorating state? It took our son remarking at dinner one night why I was not eating what was put before me for his father to repeat the same question to me, and then add that if I was not partial to the slice of pheasant pie on my plate, perhaps Evelyn he would like to have it; after all, there was no point in wasting good pie. To which I threw down my napkin and stormed out of the room to a big silence from my husband and our son.
    But their enormous appetites are nothing new to you. It infuriates me beyond measure that those two could eat until they burst and they would still be as thin as a rapier, when I need only glance at an éclair and my arms they are a little tighter in my silk sleeves.
    But returning to Lucian’s visits to this house and my ridiculous fears. And now as I am writing this, I am starting to giggle, too. Not only with relief that my dear husband is as devoted as always, but thinking on what he was doing, and why. So now you have my permission to laugh with me. Though promise me again, you will not laugh at Lucian, or breathe a word.
    So who were these men coming and going from this house, and why was my husband one of them? It turns out this house is a club, and its members pay a small annual fee, to come and go as they please, for use and upkeep of the refreshment rooms, and of course, the playing areas within the walled garden at the back of the house. The spy found all this out when he made an attempt to enter the premises and was told that the clientele was exclusive, though not limited to our kind, as most of the gentlemen are from the professions. I suspect Lucian thought that