It was only a few minutes after she and Erik left the river that Christine realized how spectacularly her alcohol consumption might backfire.
She was keenly aware of his solid form as they walked back to the inn, and she found that not only was she gladder for his company, but she also could not stop thinking about how badly she wanted to touch him: his sleeve, his elbow, his wrist, anything.
This had not been her plan—quite the opposite, in fact. She had intended to drive him mad with want. If she was to have any control in their odd partnership, then she needed to make him acutely aware of her presence at all times, to emblazon herself on his thoughts. Since she could not speak, she would have to rely on other methods: her looks, her movements.
It was manipulation, and it was beneath her; she knew that. She swallowed her discomfort by assuring herself that it was for her own safety and well-being. The pair of them had already filled the roles of maestro and instrument, of artist and medium; his general disregard for her personhood had set into motion a chain of increasingly more reckless behavior, one with a disastrous and fatal end.
A man could change only so much in eight months' time, and Erik was slipping back into old habits. She was slipping back into old habits. She could not let that happen. Thus, she had imbibed a fair bit of chianti. She could play the part without the wine, certainly, but not without first lowering her inhibitions enough to overcome her hesitation and guilt.
With the alcohol, however, came that unintended, desirous side effect. Her gaze kept drifting down to Erik's hand as they walked, and she ached to brush her knuckles against it, to slide her fingers through his.
"Perhaps tomorrow," he said, "we might tour the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, and Brunelleschi's dome."
He had pointed out the monstrous basilica, with its soaring dome and bell tower, as their train had rolled into the city earlier that day. She had not recognized it by sight, but she had heard of it and knew that it was very famous. Her spirits now soared to know that she might see it, and she grinned her enthusiasm, which seemed to satisfy him. There was, dare she say, a tiny spring in his step for the remainder of the walk.
The physical exertion and cool evening air cleared some of the fog from her head, so that by the time she and Erik arrived in their room, she had landed on the best possible balance of coherence and abandon in order to proceed with her mission. She mutely excused herself to the lavatory, hauling her carpet bag in with her.
So far, he had seen her in only full dress, or at least with a dressing-gown, for the night. That was about to change.
Christine had brought one nightgown, a creamy wisp of a thing with ruffled lace sleeves and a smocked neckline that was trimmed in pale-pink ribbon. In the right light, she knew, it was possible to see the outline of her chemise and drawers through the thin linen. She unbound her chest and slipped into those lacy underthings before she pulled the nightdress over her head. She still wore two layers of fabric, but she was not corseted. He would notice. She shuddered at her own salaciousness.
Now more than ever she felt herself longing for her hair, in all of its long-tressed glory, so that she might let it down in front of him and run a brush through the brown locks. For all his praise of how the new cut brought out her features, she knew that it was still a disadvantage, and she struggled to think of how else she could overcome it.
Finally, she decided to peel off her stockings so that her bare feet and ankles would be visible beneath the hem of the nightdress. She brushed her hair, scrubbed her face until her cheeks were pink, and bit her lips to give them a bit of color. Last, she pulled out her favorite bottle of perfume—down to the dregs, but she'd made it last two years so far—and dabbed the smallest bit of fragrance on the pulse points beneath her jaw.
There was an abrupt crunch of newspaper when she padded back out into the room. Still, she all but ignored Erik, reveling in the traces of her delicate and graceful former self that were beginning to emerge, if only through sheer force of will. She could see enough of him in her peripheral vision, however, to know that he was watching her as she set her carpet bag aside. She stretched upward as though preparing for bed, wriggling her toes a bit for show, and she heard him exhale a loud puff of air.
It became increasingly more difficult to focus, however, as the throbbing in her left pinky intensified. It had grown angry in the wake of her earlier movements: first in the music shop, then while she changed and primped in the lavatory. The tune she had played on the violin was simple enough that she'd been able to make adjustments and play without her little finger, but there had still been some strain on it, and she was suffering for it now.
She paused to tighten the small splint that bound the pinky to her ring finger, hoping that would placate the injury somewhat. It sent a shock of pain up her hand instead, and she winced.
"Ah, you are feeling the consequences of your earlier recklessness, no doubt?" Erik queried, nodding toward her hand. "Perhaps it is time that I examine your injury."
Christine shook her head emphatically. Later, she signed. She was unwilling to relinquish control of the room just yet; she could still salvage it, she thought.
From her satchel she withdrew the last of the evening's culinary treasure trove, a nut cake with raisins and rosemary, and she sat with it on the edge of the bed. His eyes seared into her as she used slender fingers to pick apart the paper wrapping. When at last she had unwrapped the slice of cake, she began to pull off small pieces and slip them into her mouth.
The dessert was delicious enough that she did not have to fake the euphoria she felt each time it hit her tongue—though perhaps she embellished a little. Even better, it had been drizzled with olive oil, which moistened her fingertips until she reflexively brought one to her mouth to lick it off. His eyes widened, and she flushed; she had not intended to stoop quite so low as to forget her manners. Quickly, she withdrew a handkerchief from her satchel and used it to wipe the remaining fingers.
Control, Christine, she chided herself after the blunder, and she had the notion to look up at him and raise the piece of cake in offering.
"Ah, thank you, but no," he said, putting up a palm in deference. He sounded uncertain, however, so she took advantage.
He tracked her warily as she stood and walked over to him. When she broke off another morsel of cake and raised it to his mouth, he frowned, and she could see a flash of panic in his eyes. She countered with a coy smile as she waited for his cooperation.
Finally, his lips parted to accept the cake. She smiled wider, but it was difficult to enjoy the heady rush of victory that followed when he held her gaze so intently, or when his dry lips moved against her fingertips to pull the cake into his mouth. She quickly retracted her hand.
Erik chewed slowly, deliberately, his eyes never leaving hers. He was starting to suspect, she knew. But then she saw it: a tiny crumb, adhered to one corner of his mouth, that remained there even after he swallowed and licked his lips. How could she waste such an opportunity?
She cupped a palm around the back of his neck and began to pull his head toward her. To her surprise, a strong arm wrapped around her back to draw her in closer. Her resolve faltered for the briefest of moments. Then she reached up to remove the crumb with pinched fingers, showing him the morsel as she withdrew her hand and her mouth curled into a sly smile.
His irises flared, and he huffed through the nose-holes of his mask. In an instant, he had spun her so that her back was to the wall, his long arms anchoring themselves on either side of her face as a mirthless chuckle rumbled in his throat. "Ah, Christine, you clever minx!" he said. "You nearly had me."
She felt the first stab of panic in her gut. She had clearly not thought this all the way through: another side effect of the wine.
"Was it not enough for you to play the role of coquette once before, when you unmasked me to all of Paris high society?" he hissed. "In fact, I have so often wondered whether that was a desperate maneuver or a planned humiliation. Now, it seems, I have my answer."
Her eyes grew wide at his assumption. Did he truly believe her capable of such malice?
How could he not, replied the voice in her head, after what you just did?
Oh, yes, there was anger in his eyes now, anger that could only be born of hurt and betrayal. "How far were you planning to take this little game, my dear?" he asked, his voice a quiet threat, and then his bloated lips stretched into a sneer. "Or perhaps I should ask, how far were you willing to go? For I suspect that you underestimate my appetite."
His broad palm was suddenly a finger's width from her face. It cut downward through the air as it followed the silhouette of her cheek, her jaw, her neck. "This body of mine," he growled, "aches for touch, Christine. And you!" His fingers splayed like talons over the center of her collarbone, lingering a moment before he groaned and snapped his hand back into a balled fist. "You are a culmination of everything that begs to be touched, everything that these lips and fingers yearn for and cannot have."
Perhaps it was the alcohol, but his words set her skin aflame, and it felt as though only his hands would cool her.
"But four times now," he continued, "your lips have touched mine. Four! The first two reduced me to ash at your feet, but the third was tinder, and the fourth a spark. Any more, Christine, and I will begin to burn." He leaned in closer until she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. "Do you truly want to ignite that all-consuming fire?"
The scent of spiced citrus, delicious and masculine, drifted across her nose. It was different from the paper-and-soap smell that had enveloped her when she was pressed against him the previous night. Was he wearing a fragrance, too? Had he put it on in anticipation of being near her?
The alcohol began to subdue her brain once more, and she could feel her body taking over, urging her to give in to new, impulsive thoughts. It wanted her to tell him yes. Yes, ignite the fire.
Her hesitation was apparently enough of an answer for him, however. He let out a short bark of bitter laughter. "Ah, I thought as much," he said. "You can only play at caring for so long. Well, my dear, you may dispense with the meager scraps of bare flesh and affection that you have tossed my way, now that I know they are a trail to my own slaughter."
He yanked his arms off the wall and backed up several paces, allowing her to see just how tensely coiled he was now. "If meaningless physical contact were all I desired, I could have arranged for it, this horrid face be damned! Even a corpse is appealing to some, if the price is right!"
Her eyes began to water out of both sympathy and shame. How many of her actions over the past few days did he now suspect of carrying malicious intent? All of the corset unlacings? The kiss in the luggage car? She so badly needed him to know that this was not the case, but she had no voice with which to protest. Even if she had, could she have found the words? She was utterly stunned and humbled by his fury.
He rounded on her again, his anger simmering beneath the surface now. "I have come to expect this sort of vindictiveness from the rest of humanity, Christine, but not from you." Here he jabbed an index finger in her direction. "Never from you."
Her tears began to fall in earnest. No matter her intentions, her method had been utterly cruel. She had given hope to a broken man only to take it away.
"We leave for Rome first thing tomorrow," he snapped. "No sense in dragging out this ordeal any longer than necessary." He crossed the room in a whirl of black fabric in order to fling the door open. And then he was gone, slamming the door behind him, leaving her to blink through tears at the wooden barrier between them.
How angry he must be, she thought, to leave her unguarded in a hotel room: that knowledge stung more than any of his words. But when she quietly moved to the door to peer through the peephole, she caught a flash of black hat and white mask to indicate that he was merely pacing the hall outside.
Christine had never weathered arguments well; the notion that someone might be upset with her had always been too much to bear. Her emotions would skitter out of her control, making it nearly impossible to articulate her thoughts. On the rare occasions when she and her father had argued, she could scarcely face him afterward without bursting into tears, and so she would write him a brief letter instead: an apology, usually, and perhaps some defense of her words or actions.
Her first instinct now was to write Erik such a letter, and it made even more sense in the absence of her speaking voice. Once she had calmed down, she fetched her supplies and sat on the bed to compose.
Why had she not thought to do this in the first place? Why leap to theatrics instead of opening a simple, honest line of communication?
Because theatrics were what he both used and responded to, she realized. She had known that, deep down, when she set her plan into motion. But that did not necessarily mean that it always had to be the case.
In her letter she apologized, and she explained everything as succinctly as possible, starting with the moment when she decided to wrest control from him. What it boiled down to was this: she was no longer his ingenue. She wanted a partnership.
She did not broach the topic of kissing, and she hoped that he would not ask.
He was gone for nearly half an hour, and he sought her out the moment he slipped back into the room, his face softening when he saw her on the bed. Before he could speak, however, she shot to her feet and handed him the note.
He was clearly surprised, his gaze flitting from the page to her face more than once. Without protest, he sat at the foot of the bed to read it, and she perched on a chair nearby, crossing the ankles that felt more and more exposed by the minute.
"Oh, Christine." He set the letter beside him and sighed. "Always such a good girl. My dear, I believe that I deserve all of your wrath and none of your kindness. Forgive me." He reached out to pull her knuckles to his lips. "I was angry not with you but with myself, for I had foolishly allowed myself to hope for forgiveness. Forgiveness and perhaps...something more."
That did little to ease her conscience, as she knew that both options were contingent upon her. As if reading her mind, he added, "I should not expect that of you, and you should not trouble yourself over it any further. But if you still feel the need to exact revenge"—and here he gave her a small smirk—"please know that it is terribly difficult for me to keep our pursuers at bay when my operation is being sabotaged from within."
She nodded and flashed him a sheepish smile. Something seemed to pass between them: an unspoken truce, perhaps, though only time would tell whether they could both abide by it.
Christine reached over and, with mock impatience, tapped on the postscript at the bottom of the letter. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, she had written, then perhaps you will reconsider our departure time. There is a cathedral that I have been so longing to see.
At this, he produced a faint but honest-to-goodness smile. "Ah," he said. "Well, what is one more day in the grand scheme of things?"
Sightseeing with Erik was just as amazing as she had expected, if not more so. She recalled hearing somewhere that he had been an architect once—though he had never told her as much—and to hear him talk of the sights of the city, she could believe it.
They spent the entire next morning wandering the cathedral complex: the octagonal baptistery where, he told her, Dante and Machiavelli had been baptized, and the freestanding bell tower, which housed seven bells on seven levels. Erik not only spoke of the construction and design of each landmark, but also spun tales of the city's rich history, leaving in sordid details that she would likely not have gleaned from any sort of reputable source.
The cathedral itself was a stunningly elaborate edifice of marble in white, green, and pink, with floral and geometric patterns, statues and reliefs and mosaics, and both rounded and pointed arches. The interior was more spartan by comparison, but it was breathtaking in its own way. She nearly gasped at the enormity of the nave, whose gothic arches soared infinitely higher than any ceiling she had ever seen. Stunning stained-glass windows were built into every wall.
Worshippers were filing into rows of wooden benches before the pulpit, and a pipe organ blared to signal the beginning of a mass. Christine tugged at Erik's hand and gestured eagerly toward the activity.
He shook his head. "Come now; we both know that there is no place for me at a religious service," he said. "You go; I shall wait for you just outside. Unless I grow restless, in which case I may try to discreetly supplant the organist. Either way, I will find you."
She headed for the aisle and located a seat on one of the benches. She had assumed that Erik was joking about usurping the organist, but now as she watched the small and ancient-looking man who sat at the instrument, she wondered whether she should be more nervous. Her eyes continued to dart in the organist's direction for the duration of the service.
Christine had been raised a Lutheran, as was typical in Sweden, and she had yet to truly familiarize herself with the Roman-Catholic faith despite its prominence in France. She understood little of the Latin being uttered and could not receive communion. Still, the words were beautiful. The music was beautiful. The surroundings were breathtaking, and she could readily take comfort from a place of such tranquil devotion, and among others who worshipped.
When the mass ended and she joined the crowd trickling out of the nave, Erik located her and gestured for her to follow. "I have saved the best for last," he said.
They had not climbed to the top of the bell tower because he had insisted that they save their strength for the dome, and now Christine understood why. There were so many steps, hundreds of them, and she was grateful to be in men's clothing because she could not even imagine ascending the landmark in a bustle and skirts.
On the way up, Erik offered her another history lesson. Construction of the cathedral had started at the end of the thirteenth century, he said, but it was more than one hundred and twenty years before construction of the dome began, simply because no one knew how to erect it.
"It was designed without any guarantee of completion!" he said. "A large part of the cathedral had a hole in place of a roof for more than a century. How is that for a test of faith?"
Seems foolish, she signed.
One side of his mouth curled back into a wry smile. "Or genius."
Perhaps both.
"If I did not know any better," he said, with a mischievous glint to his eyes, "I would think that you were speaking of me."
She merely proffered an innocent shrug, as if to reply, Who can say?
Finally, as her breaths came in shallow gasps, they reached an open-air observation deck, and there it was: all of Florence and beyond. It was a sea of pale rectangular buildings and terracotta roofs, surrounded by rolling hills and pastures and vineyards, and it seemed to her that she could see the very curve of the earth in the distance. They were so high up that the deck almost felt like it was swaying, and she moved to grip an iron guardrail, trying to anchor herself against an onslaught of dizziness.
Erik caught her arm. "Are you alright, Christine?"
She panicked; had someone seen or heard him? She glanced around, but the only other gentleman on the deck was now leaving, his back to them as he descended the stairs. She took a deep breath and nodded, and he released her.
They spent the next several minutes gazing out at the city and the surrounding Tuscan countryside from all angles. Just as she had in the Alps, Christine became acutely aware of the vastness of the Earth, and of her own insignificance in it—but this time, it drove her to tears. How could a single country contain so much beauty? And to think, how much of the world she still had yet to see!
And, just as she had in the Alps, Christine was tempted to reach for Erik's hand—but this time, she did.
It twitched in response, but his fingers were quick to curl around hers as he turned his head to regard her. She was still crying, and she knew that he could see.
"This is when we turn to music, you and I," he said softly. "When mere words will not suffice."
She inhaled sharply, and then she moved to embrace him.
Her hands slid under his tailcoat, along the slick silk of his black vest, until her arms encircled his waist. Her cap fell off as she lay her head against his shoulder, but she did not move to recover it. After a moment's hesitation, he folded her into his arms, enveloping her in his cloak to block out the brisk wind.
He pressed his lovely, misshapen lips to the crown of her head. "Ah, see, this...this is why I love you, my dear."
For only the second time in her life, she wished that she could say the words back to him.
The cathedral tour was not her only treat for the day.
Erik took her to see Michelangelo's David at the Galleria dell'Accademia, and they strolled through several of the city's public squares. He had her sample various local wines and delicacies, including a heavenly brandy-soaked sponge cake with whipped cream. She knew that he kept a watchful eye, with one hand inside his tailcoat (no doubt closed around the Punjab lasso) the majority of the time. Still, he seemed to be enjoying himself. She felt like a queen.
Was this what it would have been like to be married to Raoul, she wondered? A life of leisure? But then, a life of forced social functions was hardly a life of leisure after all. No, it would have been nothing like this.
She was exhausted when they returned to spend their final night in the inn, but she was happy. It was the first time all year that she could recall feeling truly happy.
Thank you for today, she signed once she slid under the covers of the bed. It was a longer sentence than usual; she was getting faster and more adept at the hand movements.
Erik nodded solemnly from where he sat across the room, clutching his now-folded newspaper. "It is suddenly tempting to stay here indefinitely," he conceded, and his gaze settled on her with such palpable admiration and longing that her stomach flipped. "But you know that we must move on." It was both a question and not a question. She nodded.
"It will be dangerous."
I know.
"And you may once again find yourself in the company of La Carlotta."
She sighed dramatically, which made the corners of his mouth twitch. I know, she replied again.
"Good," he said, and the glint in his eyes returned—but this time, she thought, it spoke more of malice than of mischief. "I am rather looking forward to it."