A/N: This chapter had to undergo several serious rewrites from the top down, which is one of the reasons it took so long to post (and I did promise one wonderful reader in particular that it would be up a lot sooner—and I mean a lot—so I really, really apologize for that). Life got spectacularly in the way, as it tends to do, and apart from that, I just had an incredibly difficult time with this chapter, for some reason—there was a lot of awkward/slightly boring stuff to slog through at first. I kept second-guessing myself at almost every turn, and whenever I found myself making progress, I would re-read and totally scrap/rewrite a big part of the scene I had just written (sort of a two steps forward, one step back sort of thing—progress, incidentally, went at a snail's-pace). Even now, I'm not convinced it's up to par.
At some point, though, I just realized that if I kept being a total perfectionist, it was never going to get posted, and I didn't want you to have to keep waiting (you've already been waiting for almost three months, after all)! I finally just had to say "Good enough" and post the darn thing—I did cut it off a bit shorter than I originally intended. The 2,000 or so words that I cut from this chapter are going to end up in the next chapter—they still need to be worked over, so I just made the decision to shift them to the next chapter instead of taking even longer to give you this chapter. Apologies for this chapter subsequently having a kind of "filler" nature-the bulk of it is made up of Christine's private reflections, and some might find it quite boring, but I promise the next chapter will be much more...ah...interesting.
Christine sleepily heard a grandfather clock chiming ten, as light filtered through her eyelids, red and hazy. She rolled over, her hand finding nothing but cold, rumpled sheets. She groped for a moment, and then opened her eyes.
When she suddenly realized with certainty how late in the morning it was, she was briefly chagrined. She was generally accustomed to rising quite early, but for the exhausting events of the past few days—as Erik was nowhere to be seen, she wondered if he himself had been accustomed to it as well, despite the fact that living underground would hardly have conditioned him to the rising of the sun.
She remembered his promise not to wake her, but even so, she was mildly irked at being left alone without a word. Still, it was not unreasonable for him to have done so. Even at his most poetic, she sorely doubted him to be the kind of man who might watch a sleeping woman for hours at a time.
Imagining him sitting as still as a cat on the bed and staring at her slumbering form for any length of time proved to be and in of itself highly unnerving, and Christine hurriedly sat up, sliding her legs out of bed and gingerly putting her bare toes on the cold wooden floor.
The full portent of what had occurred last night came back to her in the form of the still-dull ache both around her thighs and between them, along with stiff muscles from being cramped in the carriage and having had to walk much further than she had been accustomed for a long time. She stretched painfully, flexing and bending her limbs as though she were still making ready to go onstage to dance as a member of the ballet corps.
She abruptly caught sight of a hastily scrawled note on her night-stand, and picked it up gingerly, as though she were handling a snake. The familiar hand it was written in brought back far too many jolting memories, which she didn't care to dwell on just then—and indeed, tried her level best not to.
My dear,
Should your own clothes prove insufficient, you will find a supply in the wardrobe which ought to be an adequate supplement for the present—although you must excuse any changes in fashion which might have occurred during the span of one or two years. I am unsure as to whether you have already discovered the contents of the wardrobe for yourself, but thought it prudent to inform you, in the event that you were unaware.
Do not be alarmed if I am nowhere in the house when you awake; I plan to go to town to procure groceries, as the cupboards are of course alarmingly bare.
In the event that I am gone, I must request that you stay inside the house—until we are more firmly established, I would prefer that you not stray outside, even close to its walls, for even a moment. My concern is purely for your welfare. You will not find the front door locked, as I have made the decision to trust you implicitly. Do not disappoint me.
I remain,
Yours,
E.
Christine was mildly disgusted at this turn of events. "Implicit" trust or not, the request—more appropriately, the insistence—that she stay inside the house should he be absent from it seemed a rather eerie echo of his past jealous attempts to control her actions, as though she were an automaton with no will of her own. She was terribly unsure as to whether such a present gesture was yet another indication of his dreadfully possessive nature, or if it indeed merely indicated a genuine worry. Was he truly "concerned" for her welfare, as he had attempted to insinuate, or was he merely concerned that she would escape from him, perhaps attach herself to another man? Did such an idea worry him so, after she had submitted to him in every way imaginable? She had fled with him, consented to a marriage performed by a religious cleric, given herself up to his—
This last thought made her blush in a way she was glad no-one could see. A glance at herself in the mirror, however, revealing the slow, steady spread of color in her cheeks, seemed to condemn her in front of the entire room of silent, staring objects—as though they were a kind of wooden tribunal, bound to try her for her deeds.
I took a murderer into my arms, she thought, and as she closed her eyes, a kind of shudder passed through her. I let him fill me with his body, I let him plumb me as though I were the parched ground and he were the long rod seeking water in its depths, untapped, untold.
Did God, she wondered dully, feel the same sort of wrathful disapproval about willingly becoming one with an unapologetic taker of human life as He did about the taking of human life itself?
A little chill passed over her. Silly thoughts, she said to herself with clenched teeth, silly, stupid thoughts. Pointless, useless. None of us will know until judgment-day. Erik had said so himself, and she believed him.
"Forgive me," she whispered to the air, to the unseen God, even so. "Forgive me for what I have done, if indeed it was at all a sin in Thine eyes, and for all that will happen in future."
Privately, she thought that God might rather look kindly on the dutiful upholding of her marriage vows, and her willing acceptance of a tortured soul, in lieu of casting a steely eye on her fleshly passions with a hunted man—but it was, after all, better to be safe than to be sorry.
Her bare arms prickled, her flesh quivering a little. She stretched out her fingers, brushing them against the smooth wooden knob of the armoire, opening its creaking doors to see what lay inside. She pulled out a gauzy dressing-gown almost at once, marveling at how completely useless it seemed—the material itself was flimsy, almost transparent. Either of the purposes one would generally assume a woman's dressing-gown might serve—protecting against the cool air or providing a modest covering—could hardly be served at all by this piece of frippery. She tossed it aside, feeling more and more annoyed.
Not bothering to search further within the wardrobe for similarly disappointing articles of clothing, she reverted to looking through her valise for a suitable outfit—although, she thought grimly, he had been somewhat correct in his assumption that the clothes she had seen fit to bring were hardly the kind she liked wearing best. Her own clothes were anything but the elegant costumes and borrowed gowns she had frequently worn about the Opera—Mamma had not been particularly rich, and Christine had spent much of her own money to provide for her, particularly where a nearly constant caretaker was concerned.
She assumed what remained of her salary would be sent to the old woman—since Mamma resided at the address known to the management as being Christine's—but she felt a sudden pang, wishing she had been slower to action, wishing she had taken the time to make utterly sure that Mamma Valerius' needs were seen to entirely. Oh, why had she not written that in her letter to Raoul? He surely would have seen that Mamma lived comfortably off for the rest of her days, had Christine requested it. Such a thing had not even crossed her mind when she had written the letters.
Of course, had she actually requested such a thing—which should have made it disturbingly clear that she herself would be in no position to provide for the old woman, or too far removed to do so—it might have aroused Raoul's suspicions. She wondered if he would guess the truth of the matter even so, if poor, dear Meg might perhaps let something slip to the wrong person, if it would reach Raoul's ears, and—
She could not think of it. She would not.
Besides, even if Raoul suspected the truth, even if he somehow came to know it for a surety, he'd hardly be able to trace them here. No-one had seen the two of them leave Paris together at all, except the cab driver—and what were the odds of Raoul being able to track down that very driver, being able to get him to remember the young lady on the arm of a strange, foreboding man? It was not possible. Even if he could—it was laughable to assume that the driver would recall the precise destination of those two particular passengers, when he surely had so many, and despite the fact that the inn-keeper's wife in Éperon had known that they were traveling to Culot…oh, why had Erik let that slip?...even so, Raoul would never be able to follow all the leads. It was impossible—improbable even to assume that he or the police should learn anything of the affair at all. At any rate, this train of thought served no purpose but to confuse and frighten her. She tried with all her might to abandon it as quickly as possible.
Taking her time, as there was no hurry, she made her toilet and dressed in her plain, ordinary clothes—the same kind she had worn to the Opera, the day she went to seek him out—and was rather appalled when she saw, upon closer inspection, the dark circles under her eyes in the mirror. It seemed unfortunate that there was nothing she could do about that at the moment, but she pinched at her pale face to give it a little more color, and smoothed her furrowed forehead with her hands, trying to relax her wan, strained features as much as possible. How she missed the old days, when she was always blushing and happy with the attention from admirers and friends, and had never wanted for color in her cheeks or sparkle in her eyes. She had been so painfully young and naïve.
She remembered how she had tried, after that very first dreadful night and morning in his elegant grotto, to desperately cling to her old self, had tried to imagine that the universe was not crumbling about her head, had tried to imagine that all would be well, despite being the passionate object of a deceitful madman—but even in those moments of brilliant hope, on the roof with Raoul, or swirling in the grand hall during the Bal Masque, it had been utterly certain that her existence could never be as blissful as it had been before she had seen, before she had known that everything was an illusion and a lie.
"Time cannot be changed, cannot be erased, cannot be repeated," she whispered to the ghoulish reflection in the mirror.
She tugged miserably at her hair, which was badly in need of washing and brushing—it rather resembled a lion's-mane, and she didn't like the look of it at all. She fussed with her bangs, and elected to bind some of her hair up—not all, of course, as the school-marm look was all well and good when she wished to disguise herself, but served no purpose here in Erik's house.
His house. And mine.
The thought gave her a little jolt. Of course it belonged to him legally, but for all intents and purposes, it was hers as well. She was not merely a guest, but a permanent house-mate.
Christine took a few hair-pins from her valise and went to work pinning up most of her hair, letting the rest of it dangle down her back as it usually did. Apart from the fact that there was no need to disguise herself any longer, she had no wish to hide the thick curls completely from his view, even if they were slightly lacking in luster at the moment.
Did his worship truly appeal to her vanity so keenly?
She knew that it did, no matter how she might try to deny it. It was, after all, flattering, in a strange way—the idea that he so keenly desired her, and her alone.
Her face felt hot and tingly again, and her eyes spied once more the note sitting on her end-table—a reminder of his brash insistence that she stay inside the house. A sudden awful memory sprang up in her, a memory of the last night of the Old Life, before he had let them escape.
Buy his freedom with your love.
Refuse me and you send…
She pressed her knuckles into the unforgiving wood, making them yellow with pressure. "No," she whispered. She would not think of that—she must not think it. He was no longer that tall troll from the underworld. He never had been, not really. He had, of course, possessed plenty of monstrous qualities, but even so, surely now such impulses were utterly suppressed.
Doubt caused a seizing, icy band around her throat and stomach, doubt that he really had changed at all.
She had cherished a rather foolish notion that he had begun to change the moment she had let her lips touch his. He had let them go, following The Kiss, after all…had seemed to shrink into himself, seemed to recognize the futility of further violence, the pointlessness of coercion. It had seemed to indicate the beginning of some fundamental alteration of character—or at least a return to humanity.
Even so, had it been permanent? She had seen plenty of evidence of his former frightening nature in days past—and plenty to indicate that he might, indeed, be a changed man after all. Was he the same roaring, unreasonable beast at heart, or had he truly undergone—or at least, begun to undergo—a legitimate transformation? Aside from the unbearably trite notion that a single kiss might have really been the catalyst for such a thing, it was nigh impossible to believe that even her decision to flee with him, to become his wife, could have conquered his baser nature so completely in so short a time.
Did the monster lurk, still? She had a terrible inkling of it, a kind of cold, coiling dread which settled in her stomach like a lead weight.
I mustn't think about these things, she whispered in her mind. I must not dwell on what may be, rather than what is. If I do, I shall go mad.
She felt dreadfully alone, all of a sudden—not to mention starving half to death. Christine fumbled with the door-knob and made her way into the hall, gratified to see how much friendlier it seemed in day-light, although there were still plenty of eerie shadows cast upon the doors to her left. Not daring to try any of them—despite her fleeting curiosity—she quickly came to the stairway and paused for a moment, listening for any sound of him.
Oh, why had he left her alone in this strange house? She had already imagined such frightful things in his absence, and more would surely follow. He might, she thought wryly, come back to find her an imbecile, driven half out of her mind by lack of company.
She was not accustomed to being alone for any lengthy period of time—she had always been surrounded by chattering, bustling people. Did he not know this—was it impossible for him to understand, having lived alone himself for so many weary years? He, at least, had been accustomed to it—but she was not in any mood to be alone to-day, and wished heartily that he had at least put off his errands until she awoke.
He had mentioned in his note that the cupboards were quite bare—even so, she made her way downstairs to the kitchen and endeavored to search them for anything to eat.
At length, after enduring the blank stares of several yawning, empty shelves behind white cupboard doors, she came across a few jars of peaches. They were sealed tightly—it was doubtful they had spoiled, even if they had been there for years. It took her a little while to find a knife; after she had done so, she pried one of the lids open greedily, feeling a sweet relief when she lifted the jar and the ambrosial nectar spilled across her tongue, the sliced fruit squishing delightfully between her teeth. Propriety was of no consequence when one was half-mad with hunger, not to mention the fact that no-one was standing about to witness such gluttony.
Her hunger satisfied, she rather gingerly made the decision to explore the house, as she would have no other occupation while he was gone.
The downstairs hall was darker than the upstairs; even so, she felt oddly drawn to it, as though a secret beckoned which she had no business knowing.
Pooh-poohing the idea—after all, she was mistress of this house, and had a perfect right to open the doors to the rooms—she tried the first one, and found it locked. This irritated her beyond expression, and also filled her with a kind of nameless horror—what could be hiding behind the door which would require it to be barred from public view?
The brief notion that she was Blue-beard's wife made her laugh with derision, but she could not shake the insipid feeling that something lurked behind that door, something to which no-one but Erik was privy, and it made her cold all over. She backed away from it, trying the next one. This led to a small closet, dark and stale, with nothing inside but moths and spiders. She closed it quickly and passed over the next door in favor of the one at the end of the hall, which—to her relief and delight—turned out to be a modestly stocked library. Heading to the window at the very back of it, she pushed aside the heavy curtains and tied them up, sighing when the sun shone on her skin through the glass.
A good deal of his book collection, she noticed, were leather-bound; some were more cheaply made; still others looked as though they should fall to pieces at any moment.
Christine ran her hands across the volumes on the built-in shelves, feeling the coolness press smoothly against her fingers. She pulled one from a relatively high shelf that had no title on the spine, and began to flip through it, wondering what it could contain.
Her curiosity was soon sated. The blush began at the back of her neck and quickly spread all the way up to her cheekbones. She almost dropped it, but then reflected that she was quite safe from discovery; after all, he would likely not be back for some time.
She pulled the white sheet-cover from an elegant, comfortable-looking chair and sank into its welcoming embrace, taking her shoes off and curling her legs beneath her. Slowly opening the cover of the novel in her hands, she elected this time to start from the beginning.
Two hours later, when she had gotten halfway through, Christine felt unbearably warm. The novel was frightfully risqué, though not wholly explicit, and rather badly written to boot.
Why on earth should Erik have had such a thing in his house? He had impeccable taste—she had noted this on more than one occasion. Was it merely the ribald excitement such tawdry entertainment posed, lacking in quality or no? She was unsure—it was not her privilege or talent to exercise any sort of clairvoyance regarding his mentality—but she couldn't bear to read any more.
As Christine shoved the book back into its place on the shelf, standing on her tip-toes in order to reach it, she heard the front door open, and started in surprise. She fought down a rush of excitement and chagrin.
Back at last, she thought sardonically—it had certainly taken him long enough, though she supposed, despite her loneliness, she was a little glad of the brief respite from his presence—and quickly put her shoes on to go and greet him.
She kept her steps measured, her breathing calm. As she was almost out of the hall, she was shocked to see not only Erik, but his half-brother as well. Etienne's shirt-sleeves were rolled up, revealing his bulging forearms and powerful, ropy wrists, a large sack of flour in his arms.
Staring at anybody was not Christine's general habit; despite this, she found herself looking at Etienne with a strange new awareness, a slippery almost-knowledge. He must have it too, like Erik, that hot, seeking organ—for that matter, so did Raoul, so had all men who had been properly formed. It was a startling thought, and a vaguely sobering one.
Would Raoul have clutched at her in the dark, as Erik had done? Would his lips and hands have been so awkward, so fervent?
This embarrassed her greatly, and the thought was suddenly replaced by a strange new image—Etienne's broad, calloused fingers gliding over the soft nude back and buttocks of some nameless, faceless woman (her visage blurred in Christine's imagination), who arched like a cat beneath his touch.
She tripped over her skirt, nearly falling to the floor. Etienne himself gave a little start at her newly announced presence, nearly dropping the bag of flour he held in his arms. Christine steadied herself and tried with all her might not to look as though she had been caught at something—she was not at all sure she was doing a very good job of it. "Good day," she said as calmly as she could. No more lurid novels, she thought.
"Erik required the use of my horse and cart," Etienne said, apparently feeling the need to explain his presence. "Stocking cupboards is not a light affair for one man, after all—particularly when the town is two-and-a-half miles from your dwelling."
"Of course," Christine said awkwardly.
Erik gave Christine hardly more than a few glances as he and Etienne brought in dozens of sacks, paper and burlap, near to overflowing with goods—she tried not to be hurt by this, especially as she would have given all she possessed not to be noticed by him at all merely a week ago. It seemed a ridiculous thing that she should want his attention so badly now.
She did not stare any more at Etienne—that had been a short-lived bout with shameful, new-found curiosity, easily stifled. She tried not to look at Erik, either, but it was almost impossible to ignore the fluid movements of his broadly angular, leonine body as he carried in the paper sacks. Christine felt an urge building up to touch him, to feel him shiver under her hands again as he had last night in the dark.
Several minutes of strained silence followed as more supplies were brought in—no-one offered up a word. When the cart had been emptied, Etienne lingered for a moment, and then bid a stiff farewell, which Christine returned in an awkward murmur, and Erik acknowledged only with a brief, curt nod of his head.
The front door closed, banishing the sight of Etienne's retreating form. Silence fell, thick and clotting, and Christine abruptly felt as though she were swimming in clay. Her body felt sluggish, contained. Erik seemed impossibly tall and foreboding, all of a sudden.
"Hello," she said stupidly, and then bit her lip.
"Bonjour," he said, his eyes flicking over her briefly. "The clothing in the wardrobe didn't please you?" he asked softly.
"Oh!" Christine felt her color rise. "I—I confess I did not look it over thoroughly," she said. "I felt more comfortable wearing my old clothes to-day."
He regarded her rather coolly; Christine thought he might have been vaguely offended, but it was impossible to tell for certain. He had, she thought sardonically, perfected the art of bland expression. Was this particular trait yet one more of the defensive habits he had learnt throughout his youth? Had he trained himself year by year, week by week, to show next to no emotion when it seemed uncalled for?
The fresh memory of his horrific tale last night penetrated her mind with abrupt force, reminding her of the circumstances under which he had lived a good deal of his life, the kind of treatment to which he had been accustomed. She drew a little closer to him—but slowly.
"I didn't like this morning," she said haltingly, "waking up to nothing but a note—I wished you had woken me. I felt so dreadfully lonely until you arrived. I'm—I'm so used, you see, to being with other people…working at the Opera, living with Mamma…"
"I did not think the matter through," he said, sounding altogether chagrined. "Forgive me." He took her hands, drawing her closer. She shivered—his own hands felt like ice.
"I am all right," she said. "I—" She paused, slightly embarrassed. She had been going to say I missed your company, but had it really been his company she had missed? More than he, it had been Mamma, her friends, the comforting streets of Paris that she was pining for—and she was afraid, more than anything, of being caught.
"You ought to think about, perhaps, fashioning a new m…mask," she said, feeling slightly uncomfortable mentioning it. "If someone were to come here from Paris, and recognize it…"
His lip twitched, and she was afraid for a moment that she had offended him. "You are right, of course," he said smoothly, to her relief. "I know of a man in town, who is skilled at such things. Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall pay him a visit."
They were silent for a moment, and Christine felt her cheeks grow warm. "How much food is there?" she asked abruptly, sliding her hands from his and making her way into the kitchen.
"Enough to last us several weeks, at least," he said. "I also bought seeds…I thought it might please you to have some kind of small garden, with flowers and vegetables."
"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. "It's been years since I planted anything properly—my parents had a farm, when I was quite young, but he sold it after my mother died, and we went on the road, living by our voices and Pappa's violin-playing." Christine was lost in thought for a moment, missing and yet not really missing those days of bundling her small shawl about her against the cold, of sleeping in hay-lofts and on hard wooden benches inside of silent churches. "I should like very much to have a garden," she said. "It will give me some occupation, at least, and I like to feel dirt between my fingers."
She felt a cold hand rest gingerly upon her shoulder. "You look weary, almost as though you were ill," he said curtly. "I don't like it. It isn't fitting for you to have such a sickly look upon your lovely face."
Christine closed her eyes for a moment. She remembered how his presence had used to suffocate her, how it had always been difficult to breathe. A little of the feeling lingered still, and yet she craved his presence, hungered after his familiar company as one might frenziedly desire a piece of bread when starving.
"No matter," he said. "You will be quite rosy and well in short order. Erik will see to it."
"What shall I do?" she asked, slipping away from his hand. "What shall be my occupation? It's such a long walk to town, and we haven't any near neighbors of whom I am aware, except for Etienne."
"Don't talk to me about that pup," he said sullenly. "Bad enough I was forced to ask him for his horse and cart and then endure his company."
"You have not reconciled, then?" she asked, turning to face him. This seemed a silly question. Of course they had not, or Erik would not have acted so coldly towards him as they unloaded the groceries.
"Oh, he made a few half-hearted attempts at winning back my favor," Erik said with an air of disdain. "But he is jealous—I know he is jealous, and he could not hide it from me, no matter how he tried."
Christine was about to gently suggest that perhaps he did not give Etienne enough credit, that perhaps such attempts at reconciliation were indeed genuine. Before the words left her mouth, however, she stopped herself, thinking it was likely that such suggestion would plunge him even deeper into sullen sulking—and that it would probably do her no favors, either.
