Chapter 2: The Ginger Duchess

It was a cold, windy winter day.

Freya adjusted her shawl. It was getting late, and her grandmother still had not arrived. She wanted to head back inside, but based on experience, she won't hear the end of it from her grandmother if she arrived without Freya receiving her at the door.

She took solace in the fact that her father was also waiting not so patiently outside. Despite the big woollen coat he wore, he was shivering like a newly fallen leaf.

But luckily for this father-daughter duo, a car was fast approaching from the horizon. The gates opened for a Rose Royce and its occupants to drive through.

Freya sighed. She wonders how long the Dowager Duchess would stay. She usually left-back for London in the spring, but you were never quite sure with her grandmother.

She loved her grandmother as any good granddaughter does, but there was no denying that Duchess Rosalyn Helen Willa, the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, was a difficult woman to love.

Born to a small-town Baron but with lots of fortune. Rosalyn always knew that she needed to advance her family position as the only daughter of her parents. Money could get you far, but a prestigious title would open doors that one could not even imagine.

So Rosalyn toked advantage of her debutante season to make a huge splash that all the potential suitors present at the ball could not take their eyes off her.

Rosalyn was a sight for sore eyes back in her day; tall, pale, blue-eyed with fiery red hair. There was no one quite like her. She was declared that season's diamond of the first water. Everyone tried to dance with her at every ball, from young noblemen to widowers.

But it was a shy young man in his late-twenties, handsome in his own quiet way, which caught her eye. He walked towards her a little shaky, obliviously very nervous yet somehow confidently asked her for a dance.

She obliged, and they dance the night away. They were so lost in each other that he forgot to tell her his name, and she forgot to ask.

Hence, it was to her great surprise but mostly pleasure when she was informed at a tea party hosted by a prominent Countess the following day - that the young man she has danced with was none other than the favoured son of the Duke of Bedford.

The Bedford dukedom was a powerful one, with land and riches to spare, and now it seemed that its heir had taken fancy to her.

Rosalyn and the Duke's son, William, went on to court. Although they faced opposition from his family as she was just a mere Baron's daughter. In the end, they were wed and had two children, Edward and Matilda.

Rosalyn got what she always wanted, a good match and a prestigious title.

Thus, you would think that that would have made her content, but no, to her, she had worked hard to reach where she was now and would do anything to maintain that.

Hence, it was no wonder that this sentiment complicated her relationship with her son and his scandal-born daughter. Even after 23 years, the family was still reeling from the effects of the Bedford controversy.

Freya stood up straight, posed gracefully as you would expect of a noblewoman and waited for her grandmother to emerge from the car.

Soon enough, a footman opens the passenger's door.

Red curls were the first to appear, followed by an elegantly dressed woman in a velvet fur coat and enough diamonds to blind even the sun.

Duchess Rosalyn looked over to face her offspring and his offspring.

"What are you two doing outside? It's freezing! I will not be responsible if you two fall to your deaths because of a cold."

Freya chucked. Her Grace, Rosalyn Helen Willa, Duchess of Bedford, had indeed arrived.