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. 

"How do you have this?" Nate's eyebrows curled at her slicing tone more than her question. 

"Why, I was just handed this by a hooded woman in our backyard." He replied cautiously, "said you must read this before you marry the Duk-" he paused and pursed his lips, "Edward, I mean. I assumed this can perhaps- help?"  He suggested vaguely, himself having no certain idea as to what it was that he wished to provide her help with. 

Esther's tension faded as she realised it was not the letter she was looking for, it was a different texture. It was in fact, an envelope, deep violet in colour, she realised as she squinted her eyes using whatever feeble light entered her room from the hallway to read the message scribbled on its crumpled, partly drenched surface.

'To Esther, 
Who chooses a hurtful truth over a comforting lie...'

Esther did not need telling to know who the sender of that letter was, she was however amazed by it. She had not expected to hear from the Marquess of Rosevale, not after what Rebecca told her that morning. 

"Did you ask for her identity?" She asked Nate still looking at the message on it. "The woman who delivered this?"

"I did, but she ran off before answering. She seemed to wish well so I let her go." Esther could feel Nate's eyes searching her face for an answer as she pulled a pair of roughly folded papers out of the envelope and began to run her eyes on the lines. The sheets were all wrinkled and also torn at the edges like they were crumpled, forcefully. "Please tell me this helps?" Nate begged. 

Esther raised her head to meet his eyes and replied with the most reassuring look she could manage. "Yes. Thank you, brother," she said and closed the door on him once again. Another bolt of bright gleam flashed through her room and she covered her ear in time to muffle the noise of thunder.

Her heart was throbbing in her chest to throw itself out. Although she had not read much of it yet, she knew whatever that letter read, it was to change everything for her, once and for all. She bolted her door this time and walked to her bed only to find herself a seat on the carpet on the floor, her back rested against the cushion. 

Edward is the Duke of Dales, her head repeated to her again. The thought had somehow found stronger grounds in her head in the past few hours and it no more sounded like a ridiculous statement and that was not a good sign. 

She took in a deep breath and flipped the paper open. 

'Esther, 

You should know before you read ahead that I write this letter not because I have come to love you more than I have ever loved anyone and more than I ever knew I was capable of ever loving someone, and neither so that I can prevent you from uniting with the man you are probably now set to marry for life, for I can never live with myself knowing I robbed you, the woman who has my heart, of man's biggest wealth- love that is. 

However, I have come to realise only too late that I cannot as well live with myself knowing that I watched you have your heart broken into a thousand pieces and did not do anything to prevent it. And that when I myself, the most shamelessly, played a huge role in it, it is preposterous and deeply maddening. 

Must I also add that I have prayed till the very last moment until I finally decided to pick a pen and ink down this letter, that I should not have to be the one breaking this to you and I have wished and waited for you to find out, for I know- this knowledge that I am to now share with you is deemed to cause you the most excruciating pain and so will it do to me. 

Anyone sane would tell me to let the lie sustain for as long as it can, and so did Rebecca my sister, however, I was told once by the most intellectual woman I have ever come across that a hurtful truth must always be picked over a comforting lie. 

I am the most apologetic to be causing you this hurt and pain Esther, but it is about time I stop adding more unnecessary words to this page in my feeble attempt to delay the impact and tell you finally what you must now know. 

Edward David Montague is the Duke of Da-' 

The letter ended there, abruptly. There was not one letter written past that, as if the writer had suddenly stopped moving his pen and decided not to complete it. But even though incomplete, those partly finished words caused something to break inside Esther and it was not her heart. It could not have just been her heart, it hurt so much more than just a heartbreak. It felt as if she broke, as if her entire self had shattered on the inside, as if her soul had been hammered on leaving all that she had ever known and felt in bits and shreds that were to never come back together. 

Her eyes kept going back and forth on that statement at the very bottom of the page in a hope that the missing letter would magically appear there if she would just keep trying until she could not see any of it clearly anymore. A pool of warm, burning tears blurred her vision and she heard herself whimper as she had never in the past many many years.  

She could look at herself in the mirror and she would see blistered on her face where the tears had formed a line. She could tear her heart out and she would see blisters all over it. She was burnt, every last part of her.

The Edward she knew was not the Duke of Dales. The Edward she loved was not the Duke, she knew of it, and no one could convince her otherwise. But Edward David Montague, that name was as alien to her as was the man known as the Duke of Dales. She did not know him, she had not ever met him and she did not, ever love him. And now that she tried to look back at the face of the man who had her heart, she saw nothing, there was nothing, no one. 

She had lost her heart to a man that did not exist. There was no Edward anywhere, there was only- Edward David Montague. 

She sucked in a shallow breath and wiped her drenched face by the end of her sleeves. There was one more sheet of paper apart from the incomplete letter. She tossed the first sheet on her bed to search for the answer to her questions on the other, like why did Reuben stop writing there? Why would he send her an incomplete letter? Was it a fake letter that he was writing to mess with her head but decided otherwise? Why was it so torn and crumpled like it was almost eaten by a horse? Why did he write 'probably' when it is good knowledge in the entire London that she is definitely marrying the Duke tomorrow and why was it delivered now of all time?

Esther had to squeeze her eyes and duck nearer to the window for more light to read the text on the second sheet. The rain had turned stronger in the past few minutes, from a drizzle to a bold downpour but luckily the clouds had dispersed the moonlight across the sky giving her enough light to read the words on the second paper. It was in different handwriting, the letters were sharper, more tilted, and the inking seemed fresher and a lighter shade too. It was not written by the same hand, or at the same time, Esther could guess in a matter of minutes, however, when she read what it said, she was no more left with any questions unanswered. It was clear, all of it.

Esther, 
We do not deserve everything that happens to us. Just remember that.
Rebecca Valentine.