A Season of Masks and Masquerades

Chapter 58: A Long Night

As Esther sat against her bedroom door on the floor doing nothing in particular, she saw the shadows cast by the curtains of her window shift from falling to the west to pointing east. The sun was moving towards the west faster than usual, and every passing minute brought Esther closer to the moment she was to take her wedding vows with a man she didn't know anything about anymore. 

She was to marry Edward tomorrow. 

But Edward was the Duke of Dales. 

Edward, perhaps that name was the only thing he was ever true to her about. And even though this thought seemed the most easily absorbed, the same when turned around to say that he had been lying to her about everything else, sounded absolutely incomprehensibly absurd. The war happening in her mind was maddening. No matter how much she tried she was unable to conclude him a fraud. 

The entire concept was just insane. 

Edward is the Duke of Dales, Nate had said earlier and she had just like that repeated it countless times and still, it sounded Latin. It just didn't fit, anywhere. In all truth, Esther just couldn't bring herself to make it fit in because that one statement changed so many things. So. Many. Things.

She did not, most honestly, have the scope to accommodate that kind of change in her life. Not when she was to marry in half a day. 

She pushed her head back against the door for the umpteenth time. If only someone could push that door on her and she would realise that it was all a dream, a bad nightmare. But again, where exactly would she want to wake up was a question she dreaded. 

Before Nate told her all that truth about Edward? Or perhaps before he brainwashed her into realising she was in love with him. Or maybe before Edward gave her that letter and requested her to be a part of a fake masquerade? Or maybe- wait. 

The letter. 

Esther sucked in a deep breath at the thought of the letter she received from Edward all those months ago. She was certain he had clearly mentioned in it about him pretending to be the Duke and he had more clearly asked for her cooperation in the said facade. It was either that, or she had misread the entire situation and brought this upon herself. For some funny reason, she found herself trying to accept the latter as true. 

She had to find out. 

Before that breath had even completely set in her lungs, she pushed herself off the door, pulled off her gloves and rushed toward her study table. She must have kept the paper well hidden in the depths of her books after she had agreed to play with his plan, that was where it had to be. She had not touched it again. It had to be in there somewhere. 

She was only flipping through the last few thickest books, she was certain it was in one of those when the door to her room flung open. "Nate!" She exclaimed soon as he appeared. "I told you I'll be back." 

She hadn't realised she had thrown the book that she was holding across the room knocking down a couple of candlesticks while she said the above. Luckily they were unlit.  "Esther, I just-" Nate's eyes wandered the dark room, there was no light in the room apart from a thin streak that entered from the now partly opened door, the occasional gleam of thunders that were each followed by a dreadfully frightening noise from the sky and the faint moonlight creating a picture of the window on the floor. 

"I just came to give you this," Nate said, holding what looked like a folded sheet of paper from its silhouette in the dark. A letter. 

The letter?

"What is that?" 

"A letter. I don't know if this is what you need, but-" Esther lunged to pick the letter out of his hand before he could complete.