A week before the break up.
At the Belle Boutique, Aishlinn was waiting for Cassandra fitting for the dress that she would wear to the tea party host by Cassandra's soon to be mother in law, Marchioness Lombardi. The dress was beautiful but her heart was somewhere else, so she felt bad she couldn't focus her attention on helping her best friend. Cassandra knew what was bothering her best friend. It was about the wedding. She has been engaged for 3 years so the wedding should have been done earlier, considering nobles with fiancé usually marry by the time they hit the legal age which is 18, and they are 20 years old now. Cassandra remembered how happy her best friend was to be engaged to her first love at the age of 17, she knew Aishlinn was hoping to get married a year after they graduated from the academy. It has been two years and the duke seemed to not have any intention of getting married.
Aishlinn has been trying to keep everything cool but since Cassandra getting engaged 3 months ago and the wedding has been set to be held 6 months from now, her cool façade started to cracked. Aishlinn was happy for her best friend obviously, but she started to questions about her relationship since then. It was glaringly obvious that she was the only one in love and she has been telling herself that later he would fall for her too. But now, she seemed like a fool even to herself.
Cassandra got out of the curtain after changing and found out her best friend staring at nothing.
"Okay, that is enough. Tell me."
Aishlinn came out of her trance and just looked at Cassandra. Cassandra came to sit beside her on the sofa and held her hand.
"You know you can tell me everything, right?"
"I know, it just…."
Aishlin sighed again.
"Do you think I'm stupid?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know he doesn't love me."
"You love him."
"I do."
"Loving him is not stupid, you can't control your feeling. But you can control what you would do about that feeling."
"What should I do, Cass?"
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know. I want him to fall in love with me so I wait. But now, I don't want to wait anymore. I'm tired. I'm tired of being invincible to the man I love. I don't deserve this. I want to be loved back."
Aishlinn closed her eyes and tears fell out. Cassandra hugged her best friend and make her lean on her shoulder. She let Aishlinn cry her heart out. She knew it wasn't easy for Aishlinn to finally admitted the truth. She knew how hard her best friend has tried to make everything worked out. But it seemed her best friend were really not mean to be with her first love.
After letting Aishlinn calmed down, Cassandra finally said.
"You don't have to wait if you don't want to. You can rest if you are tired. You can do whatever you want to do. And yes, you deserved all the love in this world, sweetheart. So what if that jerk doesn't love you. You have me, your parents, and your annoying but overprotective brother. We all love you, you know that right."
"I know." Aishlinn gave a smile to her best friend.
"So?"
"I want to know why. I want to know why he proposed the engagement when he clearly have no interest in it. Maybe knowing will make it easier to help me let him go."
"Then you know the best person to ask." Cassandra gave playful smile of her own.
"My annoying and overprotective brother." Aishlin wiped her tears and her eyes shined with determination.
That was the beginning of the investigation on the duke's past. A day before the break up, the result of the investigation finally on Aishlinn's hand. Turn out the duke has a lover. How he kept it for years were beyond her, or maybe she was just too stupid to realize it. His lover was a fallen aristocrat and supposedly an enemy of his own family. How sweet (or tragic) that he fell in love with his enemy. But 3 years ago, his family found out about it and his way of protecting his lover was by being engaged to her as planned by his family. She was a decoy!
If she was angry, she didn't show it. Instead, her father and brother were enraged. Her brother wanted to go and beat the duke but she held him. She told them that she would go find him by herself. They tried to talked her out of it, but she was adamant, and as usual they relented to her wish. She told them she would go tomorrow but didn't tell the reason was so she would be able to calm herself a little.
*****
A week after the break up.
Aishlinn found her father in his office. She finally decided to travel and today would be the day she told her family. She was the baby of the family so she knew they would try to talk her out of it. As expected, her father looked shocked and then sad. He knew he wouldn't be able to change her mind so he made some rules for her and agreed as long as the knights would go with her. He suggested 25 knights, but obviously Aislinn refused. After arguing for a while, they settled with 8 knights.
The fact that her father agreed made her ecstatic, but before she could tell her mother and brother, his father beat her to it. That was how she ended up with her crying mother for 3 hours and angry brother for 2 days. But at the end they relented to her wish. It was just her brother would come along with her. Fine by her, as long as she could leave. At the prospect of leaving, she could see herself be free and truly letting go everything which was not meant to be.