ALDERSBERG'S FOURTH: THE LINNET

[celina 145]

 

Spoiler

@aldskar

 

[aldskar 842]

From the heart of Castle Highbury's nursery cradle, nestled within bundles of stark-white linens, the Linnet lies wakeful and quiet. She does not wail, only watching over the great ceiling beams and drifting shadows that crept from corner to open window, where from the child breathed in rosemary, and birdsong, as the careful household kept vigil over this unforeseen fourth child.

[Cheese 8892]

A bedridden Constantina received the news of her niece's birth quite bitterly, as any of her tending servants might have noticed by the scrunch of her face. Some vague bout of jealousy, perhaps, that her brother was able to welcome a beautiful and healthy daughter into the world, just as she had lost hers.

 

Another ache rotted in her alongside that envy, though. Three girls, now, had been welcomed so joyously into the Aldersberg fold. They would be loved and celebrated throughout their lives by the warmth of their parents. Constantina knew that her own boys would never be afforded such a luxury from herself. Any future daughter could expect less.

 

"Margrait and Marie," the ailing woman murmured in her haze. "Cousins, born only days apart... Perhaps-- yes, perhaps this was a blessing." Maybe Margrait, that poor babe, had been spared of the negligent and apathetic mother Constantina knew herself to be; spared of being a daughter unwanted. Maybe Eugenie would care for her better.

 

Superstitions had never been commonplace for Constantina. But this time, unlike the other births of her nieces and nephews, she bid a servant to deliver well wishes and gifts for both her sister-in-law and little Marie. That, she could manage, even from a heart that couldn't bother to grieve her own.

 

Edited February 12 by Cheese