A/N – It's been far too many months since I updated this phic (does anyone even remember it?!) This is partly because of my perpetual complaint of writer's block, and partly because this story has undergone a bit of a revision, including a change of title. This is because, listening to Linda Eder's beautiful version of Only Love from The Scarlet Pimpernel), I realised that it really epitomises everything I want this story to be. The song itself is used later in this chapter, and will be again in later chapters. (The lyrics are now in my profile, if anyone's interested enough to want to read them.)

I'm still not happy with bits of this chapter, and if anyone has any ideas of how to make it better, I would be grateful to hear them; the entire story is under revision at the moment and all advice is gratefully received!

Likewise with the formatting – anyone know how I can get my multiple spacing back?!

Having actually thought about it, I've realised that while Marguerite is a suitable name for Erik's cat, he would actually be more likely to have named her after Faust than Pimpernel.

Gratitude to everyone who likes St Cyr (I promise, Riene, he's not predatory!), and hugs and cookies each to Maya and Stemwinder for recognising Matthew, and to Lavendar for predicting exactly how Erik will behave in this chapter ;)

As always, much love and thanks to all my reviewers!

As Erik followed Christine back through the streets of Paris bearing Meg in his arms, wretched with misery and confusion, he wondered with no little irritation whether there was something in the water that ballet girls drank to cause them to wreak as much havoc as they inevitably did, or whether it just came naturally.

Christine did not look back at him as she hurried anxiously back towards her house, trusting him to follow, and he wondered unhappily whether this unthinkable meeting had affected her as it had him.

Of course not. She had always affected him more deeply than she had ever imagined, whilst any small regard she might once have entertained for him had been based solely around her voice and a desire that he should continue her lessons rather than any genuine affection.

He saw her sweep back a lock of hair from her face with an anxiously distracted motion of her hand and felt his heart constrict, betraying exactly that which he had been fighting to quell since his first glimpse of her, furious at the shameful weakness he had worked so hard to suppress these last four years.

They had reached a large, secluded house off the main street, and Christine stopped and turned anxiously back to Erik.

"I'll just … go and have a word with the servants, ask them to make themselves scarce," she said, all in a rush.

She ran up the steps, looking like a child again, and disappeared into the house.

Erik set Meg gently down on a carved stone bench in front of the arbour that graced the front of the house and turned to go, unable to bear the thought of being in the same room as her again.

Close enough to touch …

He was halfway down the drive before her voice called him back.

"Erik?"

Against his better judgment, he turned back to look at her; realising only too late what a mistake it was, and what a fool he had been to ever have thought he could forget her.

She had come down the steps towards him, and the expression on her face, a mixture of confusion and distress, hurt him unbearably.

"Don't go," she said softly.

He was silent for a long time.

"Please," she said.

Her voice melted his irresolution, as it always had. He nodded once.

Erik laid Meg carefully on a chaise longue and moved away as Christine knelt beside her, passing a hand across her forehead and brushing a lock of silky blonde hair out of her face.

"I thought I had some smelling salts around here somewhere," she murmured. She looked up at Erik, her blue eyes earnest but still a little anxious. "Would you check in the dresser for me, please?"

Erik swallowed hard over a sudden lump in his throat, and crossed to the dresser.

Her voice reached him as if from a distance. "The third drawer to the left, I think."

He opened the drawer, and indeed, among a scatter of papers and various oddments, there lay a bottle of smelling salts, tipped on its side. He picked it up, feeling the shock of cold glass against his hands, and returned to the sofa.

Christine ran her hand lightly over her little friend's hair, and took the bottle from Erik with a murmured word of thanks, seeming not to notice his momentary confusion at the touch of her hand. Gently she uncapped the smelling salts, and held the little cut glass bottle to Meg's face.

For a moment, there was silence, then Meg's eyes flew open and she sat up hurriedly, coughing as she pushed the smelling salts away.

"What ha-"

Then her eyes lighted on Erik's face.

Daniel Reeves, the English butler St Cyr had employed for Christine, stopped short in the hall at the sound of a woman's scream, sharp and raw with terror. He hastily handed the tray he had been carrying to the parlourmaid Daisy, who looked at it with complete blankness before wandering vaguely away in the rough direction of the kitchen. Daniel reflected irritably that the tray was as likely to end up on the front lawn as it was in the kitchen as he hurried to the drawing room to see what the matter was.

As he neared the drawing room, he could hear a confusion of noise from within; a woman - Mademoiselle Meg, of course, no one else could make so much noise at such a high pitch - was still screaming, the sound muffled by the mistress' attempts to calm her down.

Somewhere in the confusion he heard a man speak - "I think it would be better if I left" - and the mistress' frantic reply. 

"No! Meg ... Meg, do be quiet, for heaven's sake!"

Daniel recalled with wry amusement the horrendous noise that Meg had made a month or two ago at the sight of a mouse skittering from behind the sofa. He tapped lightly at the door and pushed it open gently.

"Madam ..."

Christine looked up from the sofa, anger lighting her eyes.

"Reeves, I asked you to leave us alone!"

Daniel looked around the room in confusion; Christine rarely, if ever, spoke sharply to her servants, and was customarily gently patient with even the half-witted parlourmaid Daisy.

"Forgive me, madam ... I assumed ..."

"Don't assume, Reeves!" Christine snapped, looking close to tears as she pressed Meg's face to her shoulder and frantically stroked her hair in a vain effort to calm her. Meg's screams had dissolved into gulping sobs, and she now clung desperately to Christine like a frightened child, hiccupping every now and again into her friend's shoulder.

Daniel drew himself up to his full height, confused and offended by Christine's inexplicable sharpness.

"If you will forgive me, madam, I was coming to tell you that the Marquis de St Cyr is here, and requests an audience with you." He paused, before adding coldly, "Am I to inform the Marquis that you are not receiving?"

Christine covered her face with her hands in a gesture of anguished agitation. "Yes ... no ..." She shook her head fiercely, as if to take control of herself. "No, that's right, tell him that I am not receiving and that I will ... see him tomorrow."

Daniel nodded stiffly and withdrew, closing the door behind him a little more firmly than was perhaps necessary.

Christine flinched and raised one hand to her temples to brush away the dawning headache. Meg lay still in her arms now, her sobs having subsided into silence, and Christine wondered briefly if she had fallen asleep. She looked up and met Erik's eyes, dark and unfathomable but quiet, understanding.

"I think I had better go," he said softly, graceful hands taking up his cloak and hat.

"No!" Christine sat up, alarmed. "Please don't go."

"Far be it from me to keep you from your friends, my dear," he said coldly. "I am sure the gentleman is very anxious to see you, and it will not do to keep him waiting."

"Oh ..." Christine made a dismissive gesture in the air with one hand. "It doesn't matter. I'll see him tomorrow, or some other time ... Erik, please."

Erik felt a tremor run through him at the sound of his name on her lips, and halted in his progress towards the door. He looked back at her, irresolute and hating himself.

No, no …

"Please."

He hesitated a moment longer. Finally he nodded stiffly and stepped back into the room, turning to close the door and using the moment it afforded him to collect himself again and assume some semblance of calm to allow him to face her.

"Do sit down," she said at last. "I can't bear to have you towering over me like that."

Erik raised one eyebrow, unseen, behind the mask. She had, however unconsciously, employed the only tactic by which she could have induced him to take a seat. Did she really still know him so well?

He moved to the deep armchair she indicated and sat slowly, folding his hands in his lap in an effort to hide the fact that he could not keep them from shaking. He kept a watchful eye on Meg, silently praying that she would not panic again.

Erik had barely taken his seat when there came a knock at the door, and he sprang up again, a reflexive movement that betrayed his tension.

A rather gawky girl of about eighteen entered the room, her dark hair pulled back rather untidily beneath a slightly grubby cap. Christine sighed, seeing that Erik had retreated to stand with his back to the girl by the fireplace.

"Yes, Daisy?" she asked.

"Please, ma'am, Mr Reeves sent me."

There was a brief pause.

"Yes, Daisy. Why did he send you?"

"Please, ma'am, he said that he thought Mademoiselle Giry might like to lie down for a while."

Christine offered a silent prayer of thanks for Reeves' common sense.

"Very good, Daisy." She murmured something in Meg's ear that even Erik's preternatural hearing could not quite catch, and helped her friend up. Meg went out of the room as if in a daze, followed by Daisy, who did not look much more awake herself.

The door closed behind them, and for a long time, the silence in the morning-room was broken only by the sound of a bird chirping outside the window.

At last, Erik turned from the fireplace to face Christine.

"I see Mademoiselle Giry's vocal cords have not been weakened by time," he said wryly. "I always felt she might make rather a remarkable singer, if anyone could have the patience to train her."

Christine gestured to an armchair and was relieved when he sat without protest. She had forgotten how difficult he could be when he felt ill at ease, and, keen though she was that it should continue, even she had to admit that this unthinkable encounter was uncomfortable beyond her experience.

It was in this awkward moment that Christine looked away, embarrassed, and her eyes lighted on his hands, always compelling, folded tightly in his lap. It was with a shocked flash of memory that she realised he wore a plain golden ring on the little finger of his left hand. Her eyes flew immediately back up to his in confusion, and she saw him stiffen, his right hand closing over the fingers of his left. She looked hastily away, feeling her cheeks burn scarlet with embarrassment, and when she had recovered herself sufficiently to look back at him, the ring had disappeared.

Had it not been for his suddenly tense posture and the discomfiture in his eyes, she might have thought she had imagined it altogether.

Embarrassed now beyond calm, Christine looked around for something to distract Erik's attention until she could stop her cheeks from flaming. She glanced up, nervous and uncomfortable, to see Erik looking at the grand piano tucked away at the far end of the room, and knew a moment of relief.

"Will you play for me?" she asked shyly, gesturing at the piano.

Erik looked up sharply, evidently startled. "I'm sorry?"

Christine rose and drew the dust cover away from the piano, passing a hand over the polished wood. "Will you play for me?" she repeated. "It doesn't get nearly enough use: I'm the only one to play it and, well –" she laughed "- you remember I was never much of a pianist."

Erik rose slowly and drew a hand lightly along the piano, a caressing motion that made Christine shiver somewhere deep inside with the embrace of memory. Finally, he nodded shortly in acquiescence and sat down at the bench, lifting the lid and passing his fingers soundlessly over the keys for a moment.

"What would you like me to play?" he asked without looking up at her.

"Anything," she said softly, feeling her face flush again as he glanced up at her with one eyebrow raised.

Seeing her embarrassment, Erik looked away to shuffle through the sheet music lying on top of the piano. He smiled as he glanced through them; they were indeed all Christine's: vocal scores all, happy, easy music for a mediocre pianist and – he thought wryly, noting the minimal range required to sing the majority of the pieces – a woman with far too little confidence in her own ability.

He selected one at random, setting it on the ornately carved music stand before him and beginning to play.

As the song went on, he felt Christine kneel on the floor beside him and lean her cheek on her hand. He stole a single glance at her, and felt his heart wrench; she was utterly lovely: her eyes closed, her hair spilling over her arm, her lips curved into a slight smile that tore at his heart and made him ache to take her in his arms.

And suddenly, it was no longer enough to play while she listened; suddenly, he found himself unable to repress the madness that rose up in him, born of the memory of another time, in another room, with a piano much like this …

"Will you sing for me?" he asked, keeping his eyes fixed steadily on the sheet music he had long since stopped reading as he began to improvise, wordless melody expressing what he dared not say.

Christine opened her eyes and sat up, and he felt her eyes on him even as he dared not look at her. She laughed a little, embarrassed. "I can't."

He looked down at her, and the music stopped. "Tell me why you think that." He looked away again, and his fingers began to move lightly over the keys again, a sweetly soft melody rising from the piano like smoke.

She made a nervous, agitated little gesture with her hands. "I haven't sung for years, not properly." She sighed and passed a hand absently through her hair, unaware of his eyes, tender on her. "I have no voice anymore."

The music changed subtly, becoming simpler, gentler, soothing. "You used to say that when you first came to me," he said. " 'I have no voice'." He glanced up at her. "You were wrong then, too."

Her eyes moved sharply up to meet his, and for one brief eternal moment, their eyes met, and the heart of each reeled with remembrance of old emotion. She took a step back in involuntary confusion, and Erik looked away, breaking the unfathomable contact of their eyes.

Erik drew one silent, shaking breath, willing his heart to slow as he fought to keep the music pouring from his fingers steady. He was suddenly very aware of how impossibly foolish he had been to follow her home, to sit in her house with her, to allow her to wind herself around his heart again: to lose her once had broken his heart; but now, now that he had, by some deity – malevolent or forgiving he had yet to find out - been granted what amounted to a second chance, a few more precious moments with her, to lose her again on the wings of fear and loathing would destroy him.

Wordlessly, he offered her a sheet of music selected at random from the pile on top of the piano, shuffling the piano accompaniment to the music stand in front of him.

He felt her draw a deep breath, then nod, and he began the accompaniment, his heart tightening in anticipation.

"I see you try to turn away.

I hear the words you want to say.

I feel how much you need to hide

What's happening inside you tonight."

Erik found himself suddenly unable to breathe over the sudden hammering of his heart, his fingers blindly seeking the keys. She was right, of course, her voice was not as strong as it could or should be, and the timidity that prevented her from opening her throat and giving the song the full power of which she was more than capable was deeply reminiscent of the first time Erik had ever heard her sing, shy and irresolute on the deserted stage of the Paris Opera.

Oh, but even so …

Her voice was still that of an angel, if an ever so slightly rusted and tarnished one, and the old emotion that he had always fought so hard to suppress rose up in him again like smoke, absorbing through him once again into his very core.

"Come meet my eyes one moment more;

Our eyes are different than before.

This night, so beautiful and strange,

This night begins to change who we are.

Don't turn away, it's only –"

Erik and Christine started jointly; the door had been flung open, and a man was standing there, the beam lighting his open, handsome face contrasting glaringly with the sudden dismayed shock registering on the faces of both Christine and – could it only be seen through the mask – Erik.

Erik rose immediately, and Christine's voice abruptly ceased.

"Armand!" she said, her voice registering confusion and discomfort. "I told Reeves to tell you that –"

"Oh, he did," the man said cheerfully. "You mustn't blame Reeves; he was deeply apologetic and frantic that I shouldn't be offended but absolutely resolute that I mustn't come in. The fault, I fear, is all mine; I've behaved horrifically badly, and I shall have to beg on bended knee for forgiveness at a later date. I was fully intending to go home and sulk for a week until you came to see me again, but then I was passing the drawing room, and I heard the voice of an angel; and I just couldn't resist just popping my head around the door to say hello and tell you that you simply must perform for me one day. But forgive me; where are my manners?" He held one hand out to Erik, who regarded him with disdain for a moment before St Cyr withdrew his hand, bewildered, and looked uncomfortably at Christine.

"Erik, this is the Marquis de St Cyr," she stammered, glancing anxiously at Erik, half-expecting him to disappear as he was, she knew, so capable of doing. "Armand, this is … my singing teacher," she concluded, with a sudden burst of inspiration.

Both St Cyr and Erik looked at her in astonishment. St Cyr was the first to recover himself, and smiled.

"Well, how wonderful!" he said heartily. "I didn't know you had started having singing lessons again, Christine … although I suppose I should have guessed when I heard someone playing the piano without constant stops and starts and complaints of how impossibly difficult the piano is!" He looked at Erik for some response, but Erik was standing well back, silent and stoic in the corner. Confused and uncomfortable, St Cyr glanced back at Christine with one eyebrow raised in silent question.

Christine was twisting her hands nervously together, her eyes flickering from one man to the other with anxiety.

"Well, er …" St Cyr forced an awkward smile. "I suppose I had better be off and leave you two to your lesson … Christine, if I call tomorrow …?"

"Yes," she agreed quickly. "Yes, that's fine."

"I'll … er … I'll show myself out."

St Cyr held out his hand to Erik and then, remembering his earlier response, withdrew it and made an awkward gesture of parting towards him. "It was very nice to meet you, Monsieur … I hope we may meet again."

He left the room hurriedly, and after a moment of exchange with the butler, Christine heard the front door close behind him.

She crossed the room and sank into a chair, passing a hand across her forehead.

"I'm so sorry," she said at last. "It never even occurred to me that he would come in after Reeves had told him I wasn't receiving …" She sighed, drawing one slender hand back through her hair, unaware of the expression, hastily suppressed, which flickered momentarily in Erik's eyes as the light caught in her curls, turning them for an instant into spun gold.

Erik still had not moved, and still stood straight and unbending in the corner over by the piano. "It's hardly your fault, my dear," he said stiffly.

The word reverberated through both of them; Christine struck to the heart by the unexpected wave of emotion his casual term of endearment engendered, Erik appalled at his inability to keep himself from falling back into old patterns.

"I … think that I had better go," he said finally, looking around for his cloak.

This time, Christine made no attempt to stop him.

Erik gathered his cloak and hat into his arms and stood, irresolute, for a moment. He felt Christine's eyes on him, saw her arm curled around her waist, her fingers picking anxiously at the skirt of her dress, and his mind reeled at the awareness that she was, inconceivably, standing less than a foot away from him for the first time in the longest four years of his life.

"I would appreciate it if you could ensure that your friend does not publicise details of today throughout the corps de ballet," he said at last. "There has been no trouble at the Paris Opera for over four years; I see no value in creating any now."

Christine nodded. "Of course," she said softly.

She hesitated for just a moment, and Erik made as if to leave, inclining his head to her in a familiar gesture of courtesy that tore at her heart, and moving towards the door.

All of a sudden, she came to a decision, and took a step forward.

"Erik!"

Startled, he turned back to her, his hand still on the door handle.

Christine hesitated a moment longer, her hands tangled anxiously at her waist for a moment, and then quickly stepped forward and pressed a kiss against his cheek.

"Come and see me again," she whispered, pressing his hand.

Erik stood utterly still, stricken, unable to credit the feeble evidence of his senses, a fire he had long thought extinguished rising in his heart. He almost took a step towards her, almost stretched out his hand to her, almost opened his mouth and spoke to her: almost.

But he had too long relied on the walls he had so long ago set up around his heart, and had, somewhere in the anguished darkness of life ever since Christine, found solace in protecting his heart against the torment of loving anyone as he had her ever again. The pain of the months of nightmares, utter despair and incapacitating loneliness following her loss was still too fresh, and he could not bring himself to allow her back into his heart.

Struggling to take back his composure, and trying desperately to slow the frantic hammering of his heart, he nodded blindly to Christine and went out of the room, barely even seeing the butler hovering outside as he opened the big front door and strode out into the street.

The imposing stature of the tall man swathed in black with a wide-brimmed hat drawn down low over his eyes as he strode away from Christine's house betrayed nothing of his inner agitation to the curious eyes of the servants as they watched his departure through the scullery window, until Reeves shooed them away to continue their duties.

Only Sarah, a small kitchen maid with curly dark hair not unlike her mistress', escaped the butler's wrath, and crept away to watch out of the small circular window in her bedroom. As she crouched at the window, she was sure she saw the figure stop and make an angry motion with one gloved hand across his eyes, throwing his head back to stare into the sky, grey and overcast with clouds threatening rain.

She heard the voice of one of the maids outside in the hall, and in the half-second in which she took her eyes away from the window to glance anxiously over her shoulder to make sure she was not observed, he vanished into thin air.

Sarah pondered a good deal over the mysterious caller. At dinner that night, the servants discussed who he might have been, and why he had come; the general consensus seemed to be that he was an old acquaintance of the mistress' late husband, an old friend from England or Sweden or – a theory put forward by the footman, who had a penchant for lurid murder mysteries – a blackmailer who had come for the sole purpose of driving their mistress to the edge of her sanity until she cracked and terrible things ensued. Sarah shook her head involuntarily; the man had seemed to her to be sad rather than villainous or – God forbid – ordinary: a tragic figure worthy of the penny novels she bought at the grocer's. She decided he was a shadowy figure from the mistress' past, an unsuccessful suitor in the days before her marriage, and still desperately in love with her.

All her suggestion gained her was a lecture on respecting the privacy of one's betters and the evil of inattention to one's duties.

It was perhaps appropriate that, of all the educated and intelligent servants in Christine's house, the only one to suspect the truth between Christine and Erik was a teenage kitchen maid who had never met her mistress, and had never been to school.