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Chapter 14: Interludes

Erik held her longer than was perhaps polite, but Christine let him, not pulling away until he began to loosen his arms from around her. Already, she missed the span of his hands at the curve of her waist. When he turned back to the piano, she swiveled her eyes to those nimble digits, eagerly watching them begin again to glide across the keys.

He changed the melody, slowing the pace of his fingers upon the ivories to something much more soothing. Christine felt the press of his fingers as surely as though he was pressing upon her own skin. How she remembered how those strong tendons felt wrapped around her own wrist, the bones digging tightly against hers.

How she wondered how they might feel elsewhere.

Sighing, she leaned against the side of his shoulder, feeling him tense beneath her cheek. The music slowed further and then stilled, the vibrations evaporating from the air around them.

"You are tired," he said quietly.

"A bit," she admitted. "I did not want you to stop."

"We can come again." He seemed to freeze on the edge of indecision, and then he twisted and pressed his lips to the side of her hair. Before she could react, he leapt off the bench, extending a hand to her. He stared down at her as though daring her to say something.

Christine, I love you. Her heart thudded within her chest. How much longer could she play this game with herself?

Instead of taking his hand palm-to-palm, she interlaced his fingers with his, a much more intimate press of hands that sent a thrill through her. They walked like this through the doors to the lounge, where the steward still waited.

Erik nodded his head in the man's direction. "Thank you, Monsieur Laurent."

The younger man's lips twisted in a smile as he gave a small bow. "My pleasure, monsieur, for you and your lady. Shall I see that morning tea arrives a bit later?"

"That would be nice," Christine said, stifling a yawn. Now that she had found Erik and was bringing him back, the long day of exploring the ship was weighing on her.

Laurent bid them both goodnight and hurried off to a nearby staircase, while the two of them made their way to their stateroom. They saw few people in the narrow passageways, and few sounds could be heard in the rows of cabins. Christine knew there was little to do aboard the ship once the sun set and dinner was over – a little card playing, listening to the piano or four-person band, or gossiping.

Once back inside their room, Erik excused himself to the deck while she undressed for bed. She hurriedly slid her dressing gown over her underclothes and slipped on her thick wrapper, which covered her head to foot. Then she tapped on the door to allow Erik back in while she washed up and brushed out her hair. She pretended she did not notice his eyes upon her, and she tried to not appear self-conscious at his attention.

His own routine for preparing for bed was once again brief: a little washing up before reclining against the wall beside his mattress with a book written in English.

She looked him up and down – he was still fully dressed. "Do you even own any nightclothes?"

"Admittedly, I do not," he said, not taking his eyes off his page. "For a man who rarely sleeps, they seemed a waste of funds."

She laughed out loud at that, gaining his full attention. Luckily, she did not seem to have insulted him. Instead, warmth had highlighted the golden tint to his brown eyes. "Even you, monsieur, must rest. I daresay you would do so easier without at least your tailcoat."

"If you insist, mademoiselle." The playfulness in his tone delighted her. He sat up, pulling the thick fabric from his shoulders and shrugging out of his coat. Smoothing the arms, he laid the garment across a chair, and then, to her surprise, also tugged off his bowtie and flicked open the top button of his collar. It was as undressed as she had ever seen him, even in the crypt. She openly stared.

He swung his tall form lengthwise across the mattress, his feet hanging off the end, mimicking the position she had seen him in that morning.

She huffed at him. "You can hardly relax in your shoes."

Immediately, he straightened again and began to untie his shoes. He slipped each off with practiced precision, aligned them next to the bed, and laid down once more.

She hated to ruin their game, but she had one more item she wished to ask of him. "And," she added, now in a whisper, "your mask."

Nothing had rushed in to fill the silence that followed. Erik laid frozen upon the bed as though he might be able to vanish if he stayed still long enough. His mind had spun through a dozen responses, none of them appropriate for a gentleman, most of them harmful to the woman across the room.

The moments of his life… they always came back to his mask, did they not?

Christine shifted upon her bed, her bare white ankles appearing for a brief moment before the hem of her dressing gown and wrapper fluttered to the floor. She padded across the carpet upon quiet feet and knelt before him.

In a flash, he was upright again, but her hands flew to his knees, pressing him down even as he tried to bolt.

"Erik," she said softly, and he did not dare look at her, not yet. "Wearing that mask every day… it cannot be comfortable."

No, it was not. But he had spent too many days without one, too much time in her presence uncovered, having to angle his face just so to avoid giving her the brunt of it.

Her hand lifted and cupped the rough leather of the mask. He lashed out and grabbed her wrist lest she try to remove it. But she only caressed the shape, traced the outline of the roman nose, and he dared to briefly flit his gaze to her face: she seemed only curious and slightly despondent. Her unbound hair curved around her shoulders like a halo.

When she spoke again, her warm breath fanned the other side of his face. "I understand why you refuse to wear the white mask again, I do. Yet this new mask…" She trailed off, the flash of a white tooth digging into the edge of her bottom lip. "From far away, it seems much like a face might look, but it is not what I would like to see. Wear it if you must, but when we are alone together, I would much rather see your face, Erik."

Alone together. She let those words hang between them. They had spent much time alone since the events of the opera, and for most of that he'd had no mask. As soon as he had found this one – and the full black mask – within his returned trunk, he had clung to their security.

He forced his thick tongue to work. "I can hardly believe this does not matter to you." He did not bother to clarify or gesture what he meant.

"I suppose it once did," she said, contemplative even as he struggled not to despair. She ran her fingertips along the edge of the mask, touching the seam of where leather met flesh. "However, I have seen it enough to recognize the man beneath. And I know enough of masks to know that this type can rub the skin raw. Please, Erik." Her fingers and thumb gripped the mask, and he knew what she was asking, knew her request came from a place of compassion.

And yet.

Still gripping her wrist, he gently pried her fingers free. "Go to bed, Christine," he murmured abruptly.

Her face fell, but she did as he asked. He averted his eyes while she unbuttoned her wrapper and draped it across her mattress, and he waited until she had pulled her blankets to her chin before he moved. Such a simple request: take off the mask. And yet his hands trembled as he untied the straps behind his head.

He felt the air slap against the open sores that had rubbed upon his eyebrow and cheekbone. Some time without the mask would aid him in quickly healing these. He had purposefully left the light on, knew Christine was watching, and now he crossed to reduce the lamp, the mask still in hand. As he settled back into his own bed, he rested the mask next to him, within easy reach.

It was a long time before he chanced a look at the woman across the room. Her eyes glittered in the dim light. She was smiling.

Despite his discomfort, he did sleep that night. Each time he woke, he expected to find her eyes upon him, but she was always deep within the throws of her own dreamscape.

She moved often in her sleep – something he had not known about her. Sometimes she murmured aloud, never anything he could discern, not even a name. Sometimes he admired how she could sleep in any position, but his favorite was when she stretched out like a feline upon her back, her hair in silky piles around her face, one hand thrown carelessly over her head.

Erik let her sleep well past breakfast, shushing Laurent when he brought a late tea. Soon enough, she began to stir in waking, kicking off her blankets in a huffing effort to free her legs. He caught a flash of pale, bare leg before she became aware enough to tug the blankets back upward, shivering a bit at the sudden snap of cold.

"Good morning," he said, going to the window to let in a bit of sunlight.

"Morning," she said, still foggy with sleep and sitting up. Oh, how he loved that messy spill of brown curls in the morning. He could drink in that sight for eternity – the image of her blinking the sleep from her eyes.

"Tea?"

"Please."

He poured her a cup as she shrugged into her wrapper. "Laurent managed to get you a hot bath scheduled for earlier than your assigned time, if you would like."

She lit up at that, and a smile tugged at his own twisted lips. Soon, she had gathered her change of clothing into her carpetbag and headed just down the hallway to the bathroom. He was reading a newspaper when she returned; they would not get any recent news until they arrived in New York, but there were enough foreign papers to be had on this ship with such a variety of people on board. This one was written in German, and he was pleased with the opportunity to practice the language.

After a while, he noticed she had been sitting and observing him as he read. He lowered the paper and pressed his lips together to withhold a sigh. Honestly, he was not sure why she had not already left to explore more of the ship or meet with her new friends.

"Yes, my dear?"

"Do you ever only read?"

He snapped the newspaper to attention again. "When I have little else to do."

She seemed to consider this, then she went over to her trunk and dug around in the contents, her back blocking his view. He caught sight of an instrument case, long and narrow, that she drew out of her way for a moment before she replaced it inside the trunk. He guessed it must be her father's violin, though he had never seen the instrument itself.

"I saw this and thought of you," she said, thrusting a wrapped parcel into his lap and sitting next to him on the small divan.

Nimbly, he parted the thick wrapping and stared down at the contents. Held together with a cover, the loose sheets of parchment were filled with thin black lines: blank musical sheets. His angel had purchased him paper meant for composing.

She shifted uneasily next to him. "I bought a dip pen and pot of ink as well. It is not much, I realize. The quality is probably not up to your usual standards, but- but I did not have-"

He held up a hand, silencing her with his broad palm against her cheek. Her flesh was warm and soft, flushed with her unwarranted embarrassment, and he allowed his fingertips to dip ever so slightly into the silky curls above the curve of her ear.

"Thank you," he said hoarsely. "I have not written since…"

"Don Juan."

"Yes."

Reaching up, she took his hand from her cheek, giving her fingers a squeeze before kneeling back at her trunk's edge. "I am not sure how you will react, but it is yours, after all." From the bottom of her trunk, she pulled out the large composition, which he instantly recognized.

He took it from her, the heft and smoothness of the parchment at once familiar and foreign, as though he was holding something from a long time ago instead of mere weeks. The full composition of Don Juan Triumphant stared up at him, perched on his knees like it belonged there.

"How did you come by it?" he asked.

"Our lovely managers were about to put it on display. I may have stolen it back." She stared down at her hands, clearly unsure about his response. "I do not know why, but I did not want them to have it. It is your life's work, after all."

"It is rotten," he snapped.

She flinched at his harsh tone, lips parted in surprise.

"A madman wrote this," he continued heatedly. "I suppose at some moment, early in its development, my opera might have had merit." He thumbed the pages, every stroke of the red pen a lash upon his heart. "However, in those last months before the new year, I twisted it – and myself – into something dark and horrid. The resulting music – if you dare call it that – should never have been showcased upon a stage."

Christine sat still, contemplating what he had said. Then she laid one of her small hands upon his, the delicate bones a sharp contrast with his own. "I saw beauty in some of it. The way Amnita's voice stretched the coloratura range. The heavy layers upon layers of emotion. The complex characters. Your opera in all its strangeness was not afraid."

He snorted at that. "Don Juan himself had to hide in order to seduce Amnita. I believe he was the very definition of afraid." Turning his hand under hers, he raised her fingers and pressed a kiss to the smooth skin. "I find I want to destroy it, but I should keep the reminder of how far I can truly fall."

"We all have our faults," she whispered, riveted on their entwined hands. He had not missed how her breath had quickened, the swell of her collar pressing against the top of her corset in time with her nervous tension.

"Yes, my dear, but not everyone's faults result in the death of an innocent man." He gripped her fingers, perhaps too hard, but she did not draw back.

"What happened that night?" she asked softly. "Erik?"

He had not wanted to tell her the truth of why he had killed Piangi. As his own rage had faded, as her innocent kisses had brought him back to himself, he had realized everything he had done had made him more of a monster than anyone else who had tried to force him into that role.

"It is a difficult thing," Daroga had once told him, back in Mazandaran, "to come back from murder."

But Erik had come back, tugged back from the brink of madness by the woman sitting in front of him, her concerned blue eyes shimmering in the morning light.

"I lost control," he said. "I had not intended to kill the man, but in my haste to replace him on the stage… I have suffered greatly in my life, Christine, but that was the first time I realized perhaps I deserved it."

She twisted on the divan so she faced him more fully. Her free hand gripped the lapel of his tailcoat, crushing the fabric. "Piangi was a good man, Erik."

Her gaze swept over his face, his bare cheek, his mask, his wig, taking in his entire visage. He trembled beneath the weight of her judgement. When she tugged her hand free of his, he was left to clutch at his own thigh. The warmth of the press of those fingers as they slipped beneath his cravat and dove between buttons to seek his cold skin took his breath away. She was steady with her intentions, and when mere fingers did not seem like enough, she swiftly undid a button and dove a full hand inside his shirt.

Her palm, supple and warm against the left side of his chest, caused him to gasp aloud.

"Your heart is the one that still beats," she said, close enough to kiss, close enough to break him into a million pieces if she wished. In that moment, he would have allowed her anything. "I feel it, fast and strong." Tears finally leaked from the corners of her eyes, thinly carving down both of her cheeks. He knew those tears were not for him. "You have the rest of your life to do better."

Do better.

He could do better, for her, because she believed that he could be someone other than the Phantom, the ghost, who had terrorized everyone who had stood against him… including her. As his heart pounded beneath her palm, he knew with every certainty how he wished this trip would end. With her by his side, he could do anything.

He glided her hand free of his shirt, pressed his deformed lips to her fingertips, her knuckles, the middle of her palm heated by his skin, the bones of her wrist that he had often grabbed so roughly, feeling her own fluttering heartbeat. His body thrummed for her, his senses taking in her quick breaths, her smooth skin, the faint scent of her perfume. Could he dare to atone enough to have her?

"This- this I will do." He pressed the words of his promise into her wrist.

Do better. He would spend the rest of his life trying to do so.

"Will your new companions not miss you?" he had asked, when Christine said she would not be venturing out for luncheon that day.

"I will send them a note," she replied. "I thought maybe I would see them for afternoon tea instead, and spend some time here in the room."

With you, she thought but did not say. After the moment that had happened between them earlier, Christine was not prepared to open anymore doors. Her own boldness had terrified her. She could still feel the lingering tingle of his lips upon her wrist; the contrast of thin, firm skin with the roughness of stretched, thicker malformation had thrilled her. When she closed her eyes, she remembered how those lips had felt upon her own.

Staying in the room today was perhaps a risky move, but she had wanted to spend more time with him, even if they were currently silently reading their own books. Too seldom had they shared regular, daily life with each other.

After an hour of reading, she paused to rub at her tired eyes. She heard Erik snap his own book shut and set it aside.

"Might you show me what is inside that instrument case of yours, my dear?"

"Oh! Gladly." She guessed he had seen it when she had been searching for his set of writing tools. She quickly fetched it and handed the long, sleek box to him.

He flipped the latches, and his dark eyes widened when he saw the violin inside. "A Mittenwald."

"Yes," she said fondly. "Papa bought it when he sold our house in Sweden. It cost nearly as much. We started traveling soon after Mama died."

With a gentle touch, he lifted the violin, turning the sleek body this way and that so he could admire the golden-orange varnish and large scroll at the top. The strings were only slightly used as Papa had bought them only a few months before his death. Christine suppressed a shudder at the way Erik thumbed them, testing the sound with a practiced ear.

"Almost perfectly in tune," he murmured. "Sycamore maple?"

"The back. The top is spruce."

"You have done an excellent job in the upkeep. He taught you well."

She smiled at the praise. "I can at least do that. I admit I have no skill with the violin. My fingers could never manage it."

"Ah, but your voice more than makes up for the lack." Musingly, he plucked at the strings, forming a few chords. "Such a warm sound. Large and well-balanced."

"Sounds like Papa. He often received those same compliments. His violin was always as warm as he was." She sounded wistful, she knew, but at least now she could speak of him without weeping.

Erik pulled the bow from the case. "Alas, no horsehair, but I expected as much. The wood here is in perfect condition as well." He caressed the strings one more time before placing the pieces tenderly back inside the case. "Thank you for letting me see it."

"Of course," she said. "I do not mind. Do you play?"

She was hopeful, and when he nodded, she was even more saddened by the fact that the horsehair had deteriorated years ago. If Erik could play a violin half as well as he could the piano… she would love to hear her father's sound once again.

He set the case aside and stood, stretching his popping joints. "Shall we practice your English? If you are to live in America, you will need to be able to communicate with the locals."

"Oh, yes, please!" She only knew a few basics. She found the translation book she had bought, wanting to learn to read it as well, and they spent the next hour practicing her conversational language.

All too soon, the bell for afternoon tea sounded. Christine frowned, a bit disappointed at having to leave, but she had promised Marie and Henriette that she would join them. Rising to fetch her gloves and pin her hat, she was confused when Erik also rose and set his own hat atop his head.

"Going somewhere while I am away?" she asked.

"Actually, I thought I might join you."

She could not help it; her mouth split in a wide grin. "You are? That would be fabulous, Erik, truly!"

The corner of his mouth tilted upward. "I cannot promise how long I might stay, and I do not… relish being among so many other passengers."

She heard the unspoken truth behind his words: he was going to try for her. A surge of something hit her, straightening her spine and warming her belly. Tucking her arm around his elbow, she grinned at him. "Shall we go?"