Chapter 241: The Duke Of Arches
That morning, Duke Connor Arces was pacing inside the drawing room while waiting for his concubine to arrive. Last night, he received word from General Norse’s mansion that they had his son and that they would send him back the following afternoon, or he could come in the morning to pick him up.
A son. His son.
Connor almost laughed when the messenger delivered the news the night before. He’d half a mind to accuse the man of mockery. Who would dare prank him like this? But the message was from General Odin’s son. Would he dare toy with him?
For twenty years, he had tried—oh, how he had tried—to produce an heir. His wife, Eloisa, had borne him two daughters. After seven long years of waiting, she conceived once more. He had celebrated for days, certain that the gods had finally smiled upon him. But fate was cruel. The child, a son, was stillborn, and his wife’s body was ravaged beyond repair. The midwife’s grim expression haunted him still. She will not bear you another, the woman had whispered, as though afraid the words themselves might bring bad fortune.
His two concubines also bore him daughters. In his desperation to father a son, he kept impregnating them, so that he now has six daughters from the two of them in four years.
And then there was the beautiful and gentle Linnea, the one who used to be his favorite, who gave birth to a daughter seven years ago but was kidnapped two years ago. Their daughter, who was called Sandara, was their only daughter. Her abduction had caused severe mental stress to Linnea that she fabricated a story, telling him that the child was a boy and she only hid his identity because his wife had not given birth to a boy yet, and she was scared that her child would be harmed.
Then Linnea had become a shadow of her former self. She could not eat or sleep, and she aged ten years. She was the youngest of the Duke’s concubines, but she stopped caring about herself when she lost her son, the only child she could have, because the first wife made sure that she could not have another one.
Connor sat down on the chair, but then he stood again. He was craning his neck toward the back door that led to her concubines’ houses.
"Is she not coming yet?" He asked the butler.