Welcome to Noeple Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from

Aaron Manky, listener discretion advised.

In February 1792, reclined in a bed somewhere on the outskirts of Montpellier, France,

Georgina Cavendish lifted a shaking hand to dip her quill into the well of Crimson Inc at her bedside.

Quote, as soon as you are old enough to understand this letter it will be given to you, she wrote

to her infant son, it contained the only present I can make you, my blessing, written in my blood.

At 34 years of age, fearing her death, the Duchess of Devonshire wrote to her children overseas

in the hopes that these words, written in what would be the only lasting piece of her living form,

would be some comfort to them.

Quote, one of my greatest pains in dying is not to see you again, she wrote to her elder daughter,

I die, my dearest child, with the most unfained repentance for my many errors.

As her hands gripped desperately onto what she believed would be her last words to her children,

it's difficult to say exactly which of her many errors Georgina was referring to.

On the surface it seems obvious that she might be speaking of her thousands upon thousands of pounds in gambling debt,

especially when she later advised in her letter to, quote, learn to be exact about expense.

But if you were there with Georgina that day, if you were watching her fill the pages with her parting thoughts,

it would have been impossible for you to ignore the significant swell of her belly protruding from her otherwise slight frame,

a belly which alludes to one particular error, the one that had put her there in a stranger's home in the French countryside,

days away from giving birth.

But is that right?

Had it been an error to have followed her heart, to have fallen in love, to wish more than anything that she could keep this child that she was about to give birth to,

perhaps her only errors, lied in the circumstances outside of her control,

...