A/N – A long one, this one, I'm afraid; but all in preparation for the end: there is only one more chapter to come after this one, and then I swear I'll stop.
Christine Persephone – the return of Sarah, just for you …
I'm running out of chances to say this, so just one more time: thank you to all who review. Love you all. Hugs and cookies to be given out liberally next chapter!
St Cyr found himself forced to speed his natural pace to keep up with the dark-clad figure striding away from the Giry house.
"You!" he called out. The figure – the Phantom – gave no sign of having heard.
"Phantom." At this – a name which the man surely had not heard in the better part of five years – his back flexed as though upon receipt of a blow, and it almost seemed to St Cyr that the man slowed his pace deliberately; that he allowed himself to be caught.
St Cyr threw himself on top of the living shadow, pinning him to the ground, a small but wickedly sharp dagger emblazoned with the St Cyr family crest at his throat.
"Don't move," he ordered.
The spectre below him did not appear to have had any intentions of the sort; he did not struggle.
"So still you haunt her." St Cyr tried to force calm into his voice, but his heart was racing now, and he could still hear the sound of Christine's sobs, overriding his reason as anger rose in him. "You turn her away, you torment her until she almost manages to get herself killed, and still you return?"
The man did not respond, and St Cyr lost his temper.
"Answer when you're spoken to, damn you!" He struck the Phantom across the back of the head, and saw that the man's face, when he raised his head, was bleeding from the contact with the rough ground.
"What is it you want from me?" he asked, his voice expressionless. "A confession of the wrongs I have done her?" He raised a hand to touch his face, and looked at his fingers with distaste as they came away wet with blood. "I fear you would tire of the recitation long before I had catalogued them all."
Rage flooded through St Cyr. "Do you think you are funny?"
The other man lowered his head with a barely perceptible sigh, and turned his face away from the Marquis to rest on the cold ground, now stained with his blood.
St Cyr pressed his dagger closer to the man's throat, eliciting no sound other than a sharp intake of breath as the cold metal bit into the tender skin exposed above his collar. "Tell me you will stay away from her, and I will spare your life."
The man beneath him laughed. "Just even to the end. How like her husband you are, Monsieur le Marquis."
"How dare you speak of him!" The Marquis struck his victim again, the barbed reference to the dearest friend he had ever had striking home and ridding him of his self-control.
The heavily ornamented dagger was pressed sharply against the Phantom's throat now.
"If you have any sin to confess, do it now," St Cyr said, his voice shaking a little. "I would not condemn your soul."
The man began to laugh. "You need not trouble yourself. Someone far greater than you has made it His mission to do that."
St Cyr shook his head. "I will not give you another opportunity. Make your last confession."
"Yes, Othello," the other man muttered with wintry humour.
The reference was not lost on St Cyr, whose tenuous grip on his temper snapped.
"So be it!"
Erik closed his eyes as the younger man raised his dagger.
"Armand!"
Erik glanced up in amazement to see Christine rushing along the street towards them, with Meg not far behind her. Her hair whipped around her head, coming loose from her headscarf. She reached out for St Cyr.
"Please, Armand, don't."
"This man is a monster, Christine. A murderer."
Erik rolled his eyes, and glanced away from the Marquis to see Christine shaking her head. "No, Armand. No."
"This would not be a sin!" he shouted, suddenly furious. "All he has done …!"
"Don't hurt him!"
Sobbing, she flung herself down in the mud beside the two men, grasping St Cyr's hand. Erik stiffened at her sudden proximity, and for the first time, St Cyr felt him move as though he might struggle for escape.
"Please."
His dagger still against Erik's throat, St Cyr took Christine's face in his free hand, forcing her to look him in the face.
"Why?" The one word reverberated in the suddenly still air.
Christine looked down at Erik, tears shining in her eyes.
"I love him," she whispered.
The dagger slipped from St Cyr's hand, the point scoring a shallow cut down Erik's neck. Christine gave a gasping sob; but neither of the men appeared to notice.
Erik shrank away from the two young people kneeling at his side. St Cyr was shaking his head.
"No. No …"
"I'm sorry!" Tears had appeared in Christine's eyes. "I told you I couldn't marry you!"
"What?"
"Be quiet!" St Cyr pushed Erik roughly. "You be silent!"
"Don't!" Christine reached out to shield Erik from St Cyr, moaning as she saw the abrasions on his face from the Marquis' earlier blows. She withdrew a handkerchief from her pocket and – hardly giving Erik time to feel astonishment that she should actually be carrying so mundanely essential an item – made to stem the bleeding. He shrank away from her, turning the expressionless plane of the mask to face her, and she recoiled as if she had been struck.
"Christine." St Cyr reached out desperately for her, but she pulled her hand away from him.
"Go home, Armand," she said. Both men started: for the first time, the delicate little girl kneeling on the ground before them sounded like an adult. "We'll talk tomorrow."
The Marquis rose like a man in a dream, defeat etched on his countenance. He tried to speak, but abandoned the attempt, and at last, he turned and stumbled away. Meg, still hovering in the shadows, hesitated, and then, at Christine's nod, followed him away down the street.
Left alone, Christine took the grazed side of Erik's face in her hands and inspected the wounds. When she spoke, she no longer sounded fully in control; tears again threatened, and her voice trembled.
"Did he hurt you?"
Erik was staring at her with frozen eyes. "I hardly know … I feel the strangest pain …"
Christine coloured under his gaze.
"Why …" He hesitated. "Why did you tell the Marquis you wouldn't marry him?"
Christine made a sobbing sound of frustration. "Weren't you listening? I told him I couldn't marry him because of … you …" She could not look him in the eye.
There was a long silence. When Erik's voice finally spoke, it was hushed, bewildered, pained: childlike.
"Why?"
Christine closed her eyes. "Because I love you. Because the thought of being with him when all I want is you makes me feel sick … and because I would rather all my life love a man who feels nothing for me than take the heart of one for whom I will never care."
Blinded by tears, feeling that her heart would break within her, she stumbled to her feet and began blindly to walk away from him.
The touch of his hand on her arm only made her sob more.
"Don't … I can't bear it …"
His voice caressing, velvet in her ear.
"Any man who can look on you and feel nothing for you is a fool."
She stopped blindly, amazed, bewildered, and turned to look at him with the big, tear-filled eyes of a child.
He kissed her.
He whispered her name over and over again, and then, the words fulfilling no other purpose than surrender to seven years' longing to say them, "My love …"
Christine was weeping with delirious joy, and he held her away from him, tilting her face up. Erik kissed each eyelid, and brushed away her tears with gentle fingers. He kissed her fingertips and smoothed his own hands through her hair, discarding her flimsy headscarf which fell unheeded to the ground behind them.
"My love …"
Christine pressed forward to rest her head against his chest, and he felt her stumble as her strength gave way. He caught her and lifted her with infinite care into his arms, and she lay against him with her head nestled into the crook of his shoulder like a small, sleepy child.
"I am dreaming," she mumbled, rubbing her face against the soft skin where his hair met his neck.
"Then pray we never wake," he whispered, pressing his lips against her hair.
It was the first time he had ever dared to pair them together in words.
Antoinette cast her eyes shrewdly over the pair who entered the Giry household – Christine still resting in Erik's arms like a beloved child – and allowed herself the smallest of smiles as she met Erik's eyes before ushering Christine back to bed.
The doctor was furious with them all: Christine for having left her bed when she was so clearly still in need of medical attention, and with the two women for having let her; but one glance from the tall silent stranger who assumed his place of honour at her bedside was enough to silence his querulous complaints.
Meg, who had followed St Cyr back to his Paris house, arrived home very quietly, much later that night. Erik observed that she and Antoinette closeted themselves in the parlour and talked in low voices for quite some time; and Meg continued to absent herself from the house at frequent intervals over the next few weeks.
St Cyr drew Erik aside several days before the wedding and apologised with aristocratic formality for all that had occurred between them. He shouldered all of the blame; he had been entirely in the wrong; and his only concern now was Christine's happiness. Erik, who sympathised with the Marquis most heartily as he prepared to watch the woman he loved marry another man, accepted the apology without elaborate words which would have only worsened the situation.
It was only as the Marquis took his leave that he suddenly turned back to Erik, and his voice was for the first time free of the conscious mantle of good breeding that he took upon himself whenever he felt uncomfortable.
"You have loved her longer than I, Monsieur; I hope very much that you will be happy together. And … when I look at her today, I think that Raoul would have been glad to see her as she is today."
Unaccountably moved, Erik could only nod over a sudden lump in his throat. He stepped forward and grasped the Marquis' hand in his own.
"Thank you," he said earnestly.
St Cyr nodded, and gave a little half-smile that made him resemble Raoul more than ever.
Erik and Christine planned to marry, very quietly, at a small church outside Paris. Christine was faintly surprised at the ease of the business, until she learned, through the unguarded conversation of a young verger, that only an extremely generous donation from a wealthy and reclusive benefactor had allowed the rebuilding of the church after the devastating storm that had ravaged the neighbourhood four years ago.
The only guests were to be the Girys, the Persian daroga Nadir Khan, Christine's faithful butler Reeves, and the Marquis de St Cyr, who had agreed to give Christine away with a fixed smile that did not quite disguise the lines around his eyes.
The morning of the wedding dawned bright and sunny, and the inside of the Giry household was absolute chaos. Expensive dresses were strewn over the beds like so much confetti, and Meg was engaged in trying to arrange Christine's hair and direct Annette in finding her bouquet at the same time as pinning up an errant hem on her own bridesmaid's dress.
The arrival of St Cyr restored some semblance of normality to the house: as Meg showed him in to the room in which Christine was getting ready, she saw his jaw tighten and his hands momentarily clench as he first beheld her sitting at Meg's dressing table, resplendent in her beautiful dress. Her hair was still tousled around her shoulders, but with the sunlight spilling through the window onto her slight figure, Meg could well imagine the sudden torrent of emotion pouring through the Marquis.
"My dear," he took a step towards her, and she rose with an eager smile to greet him. "You look …" He broke off, and made a gesture with his hands that spoke volumes. "Very pretty," he concluded, reining himself in.
"I'm so glad to see you," said Christine, and meant it. St Cyr gave her a slightly odd smile, and retreated a step or two.
"You must forgive me for disturbing you in the midst of getting ready; I come as emissary from your fiancé."
Christine frowned. "Oh?"
St Cyr handed over a pristine white envelope with Christine's name scribed in elegant swirling handwriting on the front. She took it and drew out a sheet of thick white paper. Frowning, she read:
My dear,
I write these words to you rather than speaking them to your face partly to preserve the delightfully eccentric custom of separating the bride and groom on the morning of the wedding – it would surely be foolhardy of me to court disaster at this late stage! – but largely, I confess, through sheer cowardice. I cannot put off what I must say here any longer, and I fear my self-control is not always what it should be when I find myself close to you.
Here I offer you one last chance of freedom: should you have changed your mind, a single word via the Marquis will be sufficient to release you unconditionally from a foolish promise made in a moment and repented at leisure.
Regardless of your answer to this letter, I must thank you for the happiness you have brought me these past weeks – and indeed years, for no pain can quite obliterate the lingering happiness that is a memory of our time together – and know that I remain,
Yours, etc.
Erik.
Christine closed her eyes on tears, and pressed the letter to her chest. She swallowed hard, and smiled through her tears, her heart too full for speech as she realised quite how much he was prepared to sacrifice for her happiness.
"Am I to infer from your silence that your answer is as I told him it would be?" She opened her eyes to see St Cyr smiling at her, and nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks like the most exquisite sort of joy.
The Marquis bowed formally and turned to leave.
"You know, my dear," he said in the doorway, "I cannot quite make up my mind which of you is the luckier: him for having you ... or you for having him."
Meg, who had cried all the way through Christine's first wedding, spent this second casting anxious glances at St Cyr, who sat across from her with an unceasing, rigidsmile that wavered only momentarily as Erik bent to kiss Christine, fanning his fingers through her hair.
Christine's dress was a delicate shade of off-white which satisfied both propriety and her own wish to show respect for Raoul, but as she stepped out of the church on Erik's arm, the sunlight caught the silk and it blazed so brightly and so purely white that Meg could not interpret it but as a divine blessing on their new beginning.
Meg waved at the retreating carriage bearing Erik and Christine away to their new home in Carthau, a small village outside Paris. Christine's house in Paris was to be sold, and her household dissolved: the couple were taking with them only Reeves, Christine's faithfully devoted butler, and a small dark-haired servant girl named Sarah to act as Christine's maid, the long-suffering Carmen having announced earlier that year that she intended to marry Frederick, the second footman.
She turned back to the small party standing outside the church, and her eye was caught by the Marquis, who stood apart from the others, following the carriage with his eyes as it sped away into the bright sunshine. She walked over to him, and silently pressed his hand; he looked at her and gave her a pained little smile which wrung her heart.
It was some two months after Erik and Christine's wedding that she announced that the Marquis had asked her to marry him, and that she had accepted.
Christine had never been happier than in those first few delirious weeks after her wedding. Erik was as kind, as fascinating, as tenderly attentive as ever, and now that their final barriers had been stripped away, their time together was richer, fuller, and so much more precious. She was overjoyed, if briefly astonished, to hear of St Cyr's proposal to Meg – her little friend had always longed to be swept off her feet by a romantic young nobleman, and if circumstances were not quite ideal, she had no doubts that Meg's sunny disposition and St Cyr's kind temperament would soon render them so – and found herself and Erik making frequent trips into Paris to visit them.
Their holidays in Paris also, of course, included prolonged periods at Nadir's house. During these visits, Erik and Nadir would drink brandy, play chess, and argue; and Christine would make brave if undistinguished ventures into the field of cookery and watch them with growing amusement.
When she looked back on that sublimely happy period directly after her marriage, she could pinpoint the exact day that things began to go wrong: it all began with a really very ordinary dinner at St Cyr's town mansion, which was beginning to bear evidence of Meg's handiwork, with increasingly floral colour schemes and what seemed, even to Christine, an unusual profusion of white kittens.
Meg herself spent the entire dinner apologising flutteringly for the state of the food. Her cook – she explained several times – was young and very inexperienced, and there had been some unpleasantness in the kitchen earlier that week about Gladys and the fish, which naturally had upset her very much, and Meg didn't like to complain, because she was really so very young, and she tried so hard …
Erik, as usual, ate and drank nothing, unwilling to lift his mask, but smiled to see Christine attempting to force down the rubbery whelks with gusto.
The next morning, Christine was violently ill.
"Poor Meg will be so embarrassed," she laughed weakly as Erik held her head over a bowl, stroking her hair gently. "She'll …" She was convulsed with another spasm, and Erik winced to see her in pain.
"Shh, my love," he murmured, tenderly stroking her hair. "It will pass …"
Christine looked up at him and tried to smile. "Oh, I know." She coughed. "It will just teach me never to eat at Meg's again!"
Erik laughed softly and kissed her hair.
But Fate proved Erik an incompetent prophet. Christine's illness did not pass; and by the end of the first week which had seen her largely bedridden, Erik was sick with anxiety. He had no idea what could cause such sickness; and the prolonged period of illness served to weaken Christine, always frail, to the point of collapse. She was not strong enough to withstand such an onslaught of ill-health, and he was terrified for her. His every waking moment was spent at her side, silently and desperately trying to subdue the rising sensation of dread that grew every time she moved restlessly on the pillow.
God would not be so cruel as to take her from him, he told himself repeatedly. Not now.
He was infuriated at his inability to convince even himself; and he knew by the look in Christine's eyes that his constant reassurance did no more to ease her own growing anxiety.
And then, quite suddenly, her illness lifted. Erik awoke one day to find Christine on her feet for the first time in what seemed like months. She was a little shaky, and frail from her long period of inactivity, but after a few days she seemed stronger, and the tight knot in Erik's throat began to ease a little.
By the time a week or two had passed, she seemed to have completely forgotten that she had ever been ill, and was pottering happily around their house with renewed enthusiasm.
Even Erik, who watched her closely, slowly found his fears beginning to ease. She was so obviously happy; she brought a lump to his throat every time she came bounding into his study with some fresh excitement: a crocus patch in the garden; a bird's nest outside her window; there was always something to be found to entertain and delight her. She was utterly beautiful, and enchanting in her joie de vivre; and Erik loved her more deeply and more helplessly than he had ever dreamed he could.
A/N – More to come. Oh, come on – you didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?
