My apologies to all the diehard E/C shippers...this chapter is needed. This is still PG-13 (as far as I am concerned), but later chapters will most likely be R. Read on and enjoy.
Chapter Two - One Word
Later that night, she lay alone in her bed. She knew that, at any moment, she would hear Raoul's step in the hall. And, suddenly, she dreaded that.
She knew now that she did not love him. She was fond of him and would always care for him. But that was not love.
She had known what it was to love for those brief moments when she had looked up into the eyes of her Angel and seem tears in them.
As she waited there in the lamplit room, her mind drifted to that evening's dinner with Theodore and Madeleine. Theodore de Jarret was one of Raoul's oldest friends and, like Raoul, recently married to the raven-haired Madeleine Lusignan. After dinner, Madeleine had asked Christine to sing for them.
Christine had so few chances to sing and had lost the desire to. But she smiled and, to oblige her guest, seated herself at the piano. She began with a light aria, one free of any memories. Her second song, however, seemed to come unbidden. It was one of his...Aminta's solo from the last act of Don Juan Triumphant. She had never sung the song on stage that terrible night.
And two souls do meet
Beyond forever, beyond eternity.
Only in your embrace in my freedom found.
She looked up to see Raoul's handsome face tighten into a frown. He had seen the libretto of the Phantom's opera and, no doubt, he recognized the lyrics.
She cut the song short and ended her little recital with a new song she'd heard in one of the fashionable cafes Raoul often brought her to.
Now, she wondered what made her thing of that song. It seemed she thought more and more of her Angel these days. The more attentions her husband showered on her, the more she dreamed of that lost Angel, of that night when he surrounded her with candles as countless as stars and gave her music like she'd never known.
She heard Raoul's step in the hall and the door opened. He extinguished the lamp and took her in his arms.
"You looked so beautiful, my Little Lotte," he said, as he slipped his hands beneath her nightgown.
"But," he continued in a husky voice against her neck, "I wish you'd leave off this mourning. People think it's odd, a happy new bride wearing black."
"Raoul, please, don't ask me that again. You promised me this."
He said nothing else to her as he slid inside her. As her body dutifully responded to her husband, she whispered a single word...
Angel.
