A Season of Masks and Masquerades

Chapter 61: The Climax

It took a while but then Esther contained herself again, perhaps the concept of the ticking clock clicked in her mind as well. She took a deep breath before she spoke, her eyes not on him the entire time.

"Exactly when were you planning to tell me?" Her voice shot daggers into Edward's heart though her words rendered no sensible meaning. 

"Tell you what, Esther?" 

"That YOU are the Duke of Dales!" 

A clangorous thunder had rumbled the sky simultaneously as she spoke and yet her every word reached Edward above the thunder. He just knew it hurt her to produce that noise and she confirmed it when her throat choked as she tried to speak after it. She looked away, her eyes pressed and her teeth probably clenched at the shot of pain, while her hand reached to massage her chest just at the end of her throat.

Edward could not move from his spot, he was petrified. "Pardon?" He heard himself blurt and his voice stunk of despair.

"No, you do not get to talk your way out of this." Esther shot back with a voice that was now coarse. "Answer my question. When, were you planning to tell me?" 

"I do not und-"

Esther took a step toward him causing his words to die midway, her cloak dragged after her wetting the floor behind and her dress, which was the same gown from yesterday, clung to her body. "Was it when I would have walked down the aisle, so I would not have a return?" She asked, her chin pinned up and her eyes fixed on his. "Or even after we had said our wedding vows so I would spend the rest of my life living a lie?" She took another step and her head tilted further back to keep her eyes on his. "Or perhaps," She stopped and the most cruciating look flashed her eyes for a moment but she gulped it down before he could read it, "were you perhaps, not planning to tell me ever at all? Forever banish me to a life of lies and betrayal?" 

"Betrayal?" Edward repeated unconsciously loud and offended as his eyes watched her in bewilderment. After putting in all the possible attempts he still couldn't understand what she meant by any of that. She knew. There was nothing he was yet to tell her, she knew everything. 

"I-" Esther was waiting for him to respond but what was he to say? He did not understand the whole conversation. And even though she made no sense, he knew whatever he would say was only going to make it all worse, but he had to try. "Esther, what betrayal do you speak off? I-" 

"I speak, sir, of your masquerade!" 

"You know already about my masquerade," 

"I know what you told me. I know only the lies that you fed me because I foolishly believed you, only to realise hours before my wedding that the man I am to wed is not the man I know him to be, AT ALL!" 

"That, is non-sense," Edward remarked briskly with an unconscious cock of an eyebrow before she had even completed speaking. 

Esther stepped back, multiple steps. Her tongue grazed her dry lips and her eyes blinked fleetingly and Edward realised what he had said had sounded all wrong. It did not sound like the Edward she had known at all, it sounded like the old him. The one all men dreaded to face and the one he wished to never reveal in her front. 

"Are you, the true Duke of Dales?" She looked up at him from the distance she had now recreated between them and asked.

"I am." His words had only reached her and a big round drop of tear rolled down her cheek and she almost dropped herself on the floor when Edward reached ahead to hold her. She let him catch her and dropped the side of her limp head on his drenched chest letting the already soaking cotton of his shirt consume her tear that appeared out of nowhere. He could swear it wasn't even there all this time, her eyes were dry, as dry as her face and her voice, and now they were all drenched.