Nina woke the next morning to someone gently shaking her arm. She thought it was Erik and was going to tell him to go away before she looked up and saw the little maid with the empty eyes.
"Your husband is waiting for you Madame. He is already ready in the carriage." The maid murmured these words softly without blinking and Nina felt again that there was something wrong about her. She was missing something, she was empty.
Nina nodded and stood from the bed and retrieved a dress from her brown, leather case, a red traveling dress she hadn't worn since Rousseau had taken her from London promising anything she wished for. He had given it to her immediately after he had asked her to return to Paris with him. Nina had been delighted. It was the most beautiful thing the working, orphan girl had ever worn and now that she was used to such grandeur she had completely forgotten about it.
"Help me into this contraption, will you?" Nina said with a humorous air, hoping to get a comical reaction from the strange girl. She was rewarded with only a nod and a glossy stare. Nina began to unlace her night dress and the maid made to touch her but Nina wrapped her hand around the girls surprisingly warm wrist before she could. "What is the matter, dear? You are not feeling well?"
The maid shook her head and Nina let go of her wrist.
"Something bad has happened in one way or another. Tell me, darling. Why are you so empty? It is like you have lost your soul."
"It is not that I am empty Madame, it is that I am numb. I feel nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Perhaps I have lost my soul. I do not know." She paused. "I am numb in the same way your husband is numb."
Was Erik so numb? Nina had never noticed before. Perhaps she had not been paying close enough attention.
"Then tell me, why did my husband not wake me beforehand?" Nina felt a prick of irritation about this. He hadn't the nerve to wake her himself and he hadn't the nerve to face her in the vicinity of a public place; he would only confront her in the privacy of a carriage.
"He said it would be best to let you sleep as long as possible. I have brought you breakfast as well."
She motioned to an open platter of breakfast foods and Nina felt her stomach clench. The girl handed Nina her once forgotten gown as she let her night dress fall to the ground at her ankles. The maid helped Nina step into the skirts with a thinly fragile arm and began to tie the back laces tightly.
"I'm afraid I'm not feeling very hungry." Nina said wearily, lifting a hand to her temple after slipping it through a satin sleeve.
Eating was the last thing on Nina's mind right now. Her head was pounding with a terrible head ache and her eyes hurt from crying last night. And why had she been crying? She did not know the answer. Something about Erik's dismissal had hurt her deeply. She remembered his abrupt disapproval of her actions and she felt her eyes begin to ache even further, but she had no more tears to cry.
"Madame should eat, especially if you are in for a long carriage ride."
Nina shook her head drainedly as the maid tied off her dress laces.
"Why don't you eat it, dear? You look like you could use something to eat."
The glassy eyed girl looked at her as if she had just said the most outrageous thing ever, her pale lips parted just slightly, and with an almost imperceptible slight shake of the head.
Nina smiled gently and took a pale, cold and bony hand in her own.
"I won't tell your father if that is what you're afraid of."
The maid reclaimed her hand. Nina watched her calmly as a wave of pity over took her. She had been a maid too, once upon a time before she had met a sadistic french business man, but something had ruined this girl that had never happened to her.
"If you won't be eating this morning Madame, then you should prepare to leave. You're husband will be missing you. He is eager to start the days journey, I know."
She lost the girl's eye contact and Nina watched as she turned and straightened her ragged apron and crouched down as if avoiding a beating or something along those lines. Poor posture formed from habit, Nina was sure. The girl reminded her of a Cosette she had read about in a book.
"Fine then. Tell me your name girl." Nina commanded this with authority and watched as the maids posture stiffened and she looked up at her warily.
"Lora." She said softly and Nina repeated the name while smoothing her red skirts.
"Do not fret, Lora. Light is coming your way. It always does. For everyone."
A few minutes later, Nina was being helped into the carriage with a gentle hand from Erik.
When she caught his eye, he looked at her seriously suggesting that they were in for a long conversation. Nina thought she caught a glimpse of guilt in Erik's expression, but scarcely before she noticed it, it had vanished beneath his stony composure. She wondered for a moment what he was feeling. This dark entity of a man was completely beyond her empathetic skills and she was completely bewildered when it came to his emotions. On normal occasions, Nina could read people like playing cards, but the Opera Ghost was no regular deck. If he were a book, he would be in a completely different language then the ones she knew, Nina decided thoughtfully.
Erik watched Nina closely. Whoever had lost bought her clothes was certainly a man of fine taste, though the arrangement of the dress seemed to suggest a frivolous nature. He was struck with the feeling that Nina did not care much what other people thought of her.
"An apology is in order, I think." Said Erik quietly as Nina sat down in the seat opposite him.
"Then I apologize for my previous behavior." Nina answered and Erik was struck dumbfounded and this Nina could read clearly. She watched as he clasped his hands together, hunched over, and began to shake with silent laughter. "What is so funny?" She asked with a slight twist in her tone.
"If anything," He began to explain, a smile still spread across his face, golden eyes closed. "It should be me apologizing to you, my dear. Ii never planned to be quite so rude."
"Well, I never imagined I would be flirting with a wanted murderer." She said quietly.
Erik twisted his lips and suddenly straightened and laid his arms lankily across his knees.
"Now, who said anything about being flirtatious?"
"You, when you called me, what was it, your rose? Sweet rose?"
He said nothing.
"You made provision to sleep in the same bed."
He said nothing.
"You held me while you slept."
Still, he said nothing.
"You called me upon being infatuated with you. I think it is you who are infatuated with me, my dear Phantom."
Erik sighed and his sigh was one filled with such sorrow that Nina immediately felt her chest fill with a shared kind of anguish.
"I am not capable of love or infatuation. Only an all consuming obsession. It has always been my ruin, besides that one flaw of my face. I loved Christine, but not like a man loves his lover. I loved her like a man caught in a web of sin, feeling nothing but the thought of making her mine." He sighed again, and Nina felt he chest ache with an even greater feeling of despair. "Perhaps I loved her once. Before the madness consumed me. But now I am capable of nothing of the sort. I am sure that if I saw my beloved again my heart would surely cease beating and I would go back to my Father. And not your God either. They called me something when I was on display as a boy. They called me the Devil's child. And that is what I am, wouldn't you agree?"
"Come here then, my loveless demon," Nina said tiredly patting the space beside her with a dark skinned hand. "Sit with me."
At her wish, Erik sat next to her and she yawned before stroking his jet black hair. He sighed again and rested his head against her shoulder.
"All is forgiven, then?" She said softly.
"That depends, do you forgive me?" He asked in a murmur.
"How could I not?"
Erik was completely exhausted before he remembered something.
"Oh yes, I have something or you." From the inside of his black frock coat, Erik withdrew a yellow rose tied with a white ribbon. She wondered where he had found one in bloom during the end of Winter. "A rose for a rose, my Bohemian beauty."
She took it from his hand and Nina examined it carefully. It was a gardened thing, something cultured and pruned from a shop, with perfect petals and stripped completely of thorns, but one small flaw lay on its stem and she pricked her finger. Erik watched, as if hypnotized, while a bead of blood surfaced to the skin of her finger.
"Let me tell you something about women, Erik." She said, not taking her eyes off of her bleeding finger. "Women are like roses. Very beautiful, yes, but if you come too close, you will prick your finger. It seems that your Christine was more then just one rose. No, she was a full summer garden. All the more beautiful, but amidst her beauty you were caught in a thicket of thorns."
"Saturnina?"
Nina smiled at hearing her full name, still stroking his soft hair.
"Yes?"
"You are a God fearing woman, I know. Do you think I am the Devil's child?"
It was her turn to sigh.
"Erik, when God made you, he simply wanted something unusual on his Earth."
"Your God tortures me."
"He tortures everyone at one time or another. But he has given you things hasn't he? Like your voice, for example." She answered with all the sincerity and gentleness of that love particular to mothers.
"And you." He whispered. And again, like the night he spent intoxicated, he slid his head into her lap. Something about this posture seemed absolutely comforting to him. He had never been so close to a woman before. "I have never experienced the grace of a loving mother, but surely this is what it must feel like."
"And I will never be a mother, but I think having a child would be something like taking care of you."
"But, have you thought of what I offered you?"
Nina struggled to remember what he meant. She cursed her bad memory.
"You could live in my home, you know." Oh yes, that was what he meant.
"Erik, what would people think? An unmarried man and woman living together. . . ."
"You would not care what they thought, I know, for one. And, who knows? Our society is changing. The Bohemians are taking over." Erik grinned from her lap with a gleam in his eyes while quoting her.
Nina smile and rested a warm hand against a cold forehead and soon Erik was asleep.
She looked down at his face in her lap and Nina remembered how on first observation she had thought him simply a man of ordinary looks. Now, he seemed handsome. He was kind, charming, sweet, intelligent, and talented. But, Nina reminded himself, he was no prince charming. He was a wanted criminal, a man who had taken lives and tortured others. And was really no handsome being.
Nina still yearned to see what lay under the mask.
But as she watched Erik she began to feel an inexplicable feeling in her stomach that if she really did want to become a nun, she was in trouble.
At least while Erik was around.
A very short chapter I know, but this was really just tieing up some loose ends from the last chapter. And I must apologize again for the late chapter. It was my birthday this weekend, and somehow my mother convinced me to drive up and spend a few days with her and my father, which really just consisted of my mother nagging me and my father awkwardly saying hello when I arrived at the ol' homestead and then not talking to me for the rest of four days which I mostly spent in my old room sleeping. I also had a minor episode i Penney's today where I started having chest pain and then collapsed against my friend who had to drive me home to my roomate/ sometimes nurse.
So it has been a rough week.
But here it is. As always, love to all of you.
