Letters from home

After a few more days of organizing your setup, letters come for you. Two to be exact, one from each parent. You sit down in the skeleton of your estate house and open the wax seals, eager for the first contact of any kind you've had with your family in over a month.

To your dismay, mother's letter is less warm than you had hoped. Well, perhaps the problem is not that it isn't warm, but rather that it is scorching. Despite the deceptively formal introduction, the letter rapidly morphs into an angry diatribe centered around Juana, or as she typically refers to her in the letter, "that serving slut". Occasionally she mixes it up with a "commoner whore" or "serf seductress", for flavor you imagine. She seems particularly upset over the "shameful conception of my first grandchild", though more than a few lines are spared to the "weakness or your moral character". It ends by stating that she has lost her trust in you. It hurts, even though you know mother can be hyperbolic at times. You sigh, heart heavy at the fact that your first correspondence from mother marks the souring of your relationship.

Father's letter, while mainly focused on the same subjects, is a bit more sympathetic. He relates the fact that mother is very upset (good thing he let you know), but also states that he is prepared to comply with your wishes. The most likely outcome is that he will hire the child on as a servant when it is old enough, and its paternity shall remain a secret for the time being. Reading his letter makes you long to have one of your quiet conversations with the kindly old soldier.

You'll have to take the time to write to them when you are less busy. There's a lot to say however, so it will have to wait for now.