Duchess of Winter

Ernest, Duke of Winsterby

Ernest looked at the beautifully wrapped packaged on his lap. He had been gone  two weeks after he was wed earlier this December and was hurrying home to Wintersby manor to his bride. It was going to be a busy week of festivities at the manor. And he had asked his cousin Lady Agnes Wintersby who was his only close confidante in that unwelcoming mansion who honestly  cared enough to treat him with good will and to do him the favor of planning the holiday feasts and to watch over his new bride while he tend to business in London. His new wife seemed too distraught to even care to put up the holly branches on her study. So he did not expect her to  be filled with holiday cheer anytime soon.

He had stopped at an inn just only for a day from London finding himself asking his otherwise wise brain what was the matter with him. He was exhausted with the caring of his  own business. And now thrust unwillingly to add the business of running  the Wintersby estate to his hands was already too much for his mind to keep up to. Had he not earned a day or two of actual physical rest?  Then finding himself unconsciously hurrying home to a young bride who seemed to be lost in her  own agony to their  arranged stature, set up by a very cunning old man, to even give him the time of day?

He Closed his eyes and calm the maddening voices in his head. The curtain of darkness faded away and all he could see was the sad young lady with raven hair and green eyes and him wishing against hope to be at least comforted by her welcoming embrace.

Ernest shook the image off and smiled as he looked out his carriage to the view of majestic Wintersby manor all a glow against the dark backdrop of trees and hills and snow. Finding himself smiling and actually excited to see his young Duchess,  though he knew that her, impatiently waiting for him was as far fetched as the snow melting this Christmas. He will be patient with her. He promised himself. She is young and innocent and not to mention beautiful. But also speaks her mind as clearly as day to his astonishment. This should not come to be such a surprise. She was after all His grace's Charles Wintersby's grand daughter. And was well known to be his favored among the lot.

He had known all about her. Though the Wintersby's cared not to even send news of her birth   twenty summer's ago to his side of the family. To the Wintersby his family was better off estranged to them as the plague would. Until  ten years ago.  His mother the Baroness Rothcer, his twenty autumns old self  and his father, the unwilling James, Baron of Rothcer, were summoned to Wintersby manor upon the death of His Grace.

The Lord Duke knew that his cousin Edward, Lord Wintersby, Agatha's father would never give up his commoner bride for the the duchy, not even if one would crown him Emperor of all countries. Had he been formulating a plot to give the coronet to his beloved grand daughter. But complications arose to his dismay.  There was no other choice.

Left with only females as his heirs apparent. He favored Agatha to inherit. A latter of patent to the House of Lords asking for such, drafted before his untimely death was sent to the King himself. The King himself agreed. Only to the condition that His Grace finds himself an eligible near kin to marry the young Lady Wintersby for her to keep the title within the blood. Finding only two. A distant cousin who was famed to be a drunk and a rogue, was it not for his healthy inheritance form another noble relation, was penniless, useless and too old to even be considered marriage to young Lady Wintersby. And his own nephew from a half sister whose commoner mother was the second wife of his own father, the previous Duke of  Wintersby. 

Married  to a penniless Earl whose only estate was a small villa by the sea and a  descent income exporting spices and silk from the far east. However was of good home and character. And whose only wealth worth braging about,  was a good looking young man with brown hair and dark eyes. Known to be a hard working and polite young man of all Rothcershire.   Thus was Ernest of Rothcer.