Le Blanc Duchesse

Part 1

"Jesus Christ." Sebastian Valois-Angoulême shivered, his teeth chattering together. He grunted out the words, his body trembling from head to toe. Hours previous had his feet turned completley numb from the cold and the wet. The snow came up half way up his shins, showing no signs of decreasing in stature. Only increasing, if the gentle flakes floating from the equally as white sky were anything to go by. Surely, they wouldn't be able to handle much more of this torture, yes? "Father," he grunts, casting an angry green eye behind his shoulder. "you have had some ridiculous ideas in my lifetime, but this one has to be the largest yet." he grunts. "What were you thinking? Work in a manor thirty miles from where we lived, our only means of transportation walking?" he grunts. From his position at the back of the large litter, Henry de Valois-Angoulême narrows his eyes at his firstborn. By all the Gods, he was cold! "When are we getting there?" he asks grimly, looking to his side in which his eldest, younger half brother stood.

The eldest two spawns of Henry Valois-Angoulême headed the pack of offspring, matriarch and patriarch. The second-born was much more of a navigator than his elder half brother, whilst the unchallenged eldest got to work on finding the easiest path for the children to walk past. So, they continued to trudge through the thick layer of snow that blanketed what was once a footpath. Sebastian cringed again, feeling another patch of cold water come straight through ruined leather breeches and equally as defeated boots. The boots were old and long since worn in, they truly stood no chance against weather such as this.

"I don't know." his younger brother said, shivering, pulling his cloak closer to his body. His blonde curls were defaced with small snowflakes, his nose and cheeks rosy red with the chill in the air. Good God, how much longer could this last? The weather, or the unfortunate family walking through it? "It could take hours," he says, pulling the map down from his pretty face, looking at his brother. Gleaming green met burnished blue, similar, yet so different. "with the weather and whatnot." he says, shaking his hair free from a few snowflakes. Within a half-minute, they had returned with full force.

The year was seventeen hundred and forty seven. Leading the large pack were the two half brother, the elder, Sebastian, and the younger, Francis. They shared the same father, and not much else. Henry's first wife, Diane de Portiers, had died in childbirth with young Sebastian. Devastated and widowed with a young son, the Frenchman had rushed down the alter for the second time in England, to Francis' mother. Two and a half years later, their firstborn entered the world. To him, the woman had borne ten children, equal amounts sons and daughters, but soon after the twins' had been born, their family fortunes fell through. Kicked out of the Valois-Anguleme manor by the banker, they were left to find work for themselves.

Months of living in practical squalor, with the eldest children working each and every hour God could give them -their father was hardly the most employable man in the world, as was their mother- to support the younger children and their parents. Odd job after odd job for weeks after weeks, until lady luck finally cast a light upon them, pointing them north.

Now in the pay of the Duchess of Edinburgh's household were most of the Valois-Angoulême members. The daughter of long dead Duke and Duchess Stuart, James and Marie, who had died of consumption when the girl was young, had given permission for her former guardian grandmother, Margret Tudor, to accept the new family into her home and within her service days ago. So, off went the large family, walking within the frozen wastelands of the Scottish-English borders and into the welcoming arms of the Duchess.

Rumour had it that the young Scottish Duchess of Edinburgh was humble, kind and caring, even within her place in society. Thanks to her irrefutable wealth, the Duchess had built the largest schools in Scotland. One of the only ones, in fact. Owing to the fact that the girl had been risen to have fierce intelligence, she worked as headmistress of the establishment in eastern Scotland. The twenty one year old woman had found comfort in one of the best paying positions a woman could be in, during these suffocating patriarchal times of history. Financial independence made her one of the richest woman in Europe, a coveted prize for Kings and Princes all over Europe. It helped that she was rumoured to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. Yet, she wed none.