Ch 14

When it had started to rain I have no idea. I stayed in the parlor and glared at the boy until I heard Charles and Alexandre finish morning studies in the library.

"Very good, Alex, very, very good!" Charles praised my son. "Now try this last one and you'll be excused for the rest of the day."

"Really?"

"Quality is rewarded," Charles replied. He was a good teacher and a good man. He enjoyed teaching and it showed with the exuberance he displayed each day he spent in the library. While deserved to teach at the finest of universities in halls filled with a hundred brilliant scholars, I would like to think that Alex proved a worthwhile student.

It wasn't until I heard Alex working out an arithmetic problem that I realized it was almost noon. I had spent almost three hours in the parlor, my thoughts divided between the smiling, ignorant face in the paper and the lovely woman he had stolen from me. Thunder rolled in the distance, the smell of rain wafting through window cracked open.

He was not supposed to be here. He was supposed to be in Belgium or Munich or the moon for all I cared. Anywhere but here with Christine. My desire to see her turned into frantic need. This could not wait another day. I could barely think of waiting until nightfall.

I wouldn't wait, I decided.

That damnable aristocrat accompanied Christine merely to mock me. He returned to throw his triumph in my face, to gloat that he had my greatest love in his arms night after night while all I had was newspaper clippings. I opened the desk drawer, unable to bear looking at his jovial expression for one more moment.

I drove the letter opener into his forehead and slammed my fist into the desk top. There was no desire in me to stop there. I would strike him a thousand times, this paper and ink image that continued to smile despite the glaring wound through his skull.

She chose him over me, the beautiful one over the beast, the angel over the devil. A little playmate over a lover. Did he even know how much I still wanted her as mine? Had he ever seen the notes I sent her, the intricate words of love woven onto cold, flat sheets of paper? I hoped he knew and I hoped he loathed me for it.

Again I raised the letter opener over my head and stabbed at his handsome, youthful face. I had no idea how many times I had struck him. The paper was torn. I could barely see him but I knew he was there. Always there. Always watching. I hated him. I had always hated him and his perfect face, his angelic laugh his...I hated him more than anything in the world.

I would show him my apathy, my vitriol, the utter blackness of my writhing soul.

This time I would impale him straight through the heart and make him feel my pain, my terrible anguish, the burden I have carried since birth. For once he would suffer, but it would not compare to all I had endured.

Never was I loved. Never was there a soft hand, a warm caress, a kind word. My mother turned her back while my father stole my childhood with every merciless beating. Raoul de Chagny had everything, the ungrateful son borne of privilege. He had no idea how precious a gift he was given the moment he came screaming into the world. He had not known the sheer look of terror my appearance drew just as I had never known the joy of someone meeting my eye and not recoiling from my presence.

He deserved pain. He deserves my hate. He did not deserve Christine. He had not suffered to earn her hand. How I despised him with every boiling drop of blood in my body. The rain outside pelted the windows, the wind rattling at the panes. My hatred grew like the storm outside only my rage was contained to this small room. I could not hold back a moment longer. I would gouge out his eyes.

Splinters ricocheted from the table surface below as I stabbed through layers of paper into the fine cherry wood. I let out a gurgling scream of bloodlust as I struck him again and again, cursing, howling like a damned animal.

Then I stopped and I stared. There was nothing left of him there before me. He was only in my head. In my head. Always in my head. Every day, every night he had plagued me. Never again, I swore. I screamed it, too, I think. I would finish him for good.

Only God knows how the letter opener remained in my sweating, trembling hand.

Or perhaps, more fittingly, only the Devil.

Madeline took my wrist before I could stab his likeness again. It was then that I realized how violently my hand was shaking and how my nose had started to run. I blinked and color returned to the room. There was blood smeared across the table and what was left of the newspaper. Blood. Not the vicomte's blood but my own crimson stain. I had stabbed myself between the thumb and forefinger without even realizing it. Damn him! I had bled because of him.

"Your son is watching,"Madeline whispered as she took the letter opener from my grasp and shoved it into the drawer. She leaned against the desk, keeping me from retrieving my weapon. The damage, however, had already been done.

Alex had watched everything.

I glared at Madeline, my nostrils flared and body tense. She was moon-white, shaking as well at my display. She swallowed hard, keeping her eyes fixed on mine, fearing to look away, to break the trance, to release me from her hardened stare. If she had backed away, I dared not think what I would have done. Her free hand rested lightly on my arm, gentle and reassuring in a moment of utter madness.

She didn't say it but I saw it in her eyes. Don't you dare do another damned thing, you ignorant bastard.

For once, I obeyed.

From the corner of my eye I saw Alex standing in the doorway, a mute ghost unable to move. He said nothing as I turned to him. His jaw tightened, his lips straightening as he looked me over.

The look in his dark eyes was something I had never seen before, at least not in my son's eyes. He had seen the monster that had sired him, he had seen the very worst I could possibly offer. For eight and a half years I had kept my temper in check. I had weighed my every move around my son, careful to be the man he deserved. Always in the back of my mind I thought of my father, of the apathy he'd felt toward me.

My eyes closed and I shuddered, feeling something worse than loathing. Alex was slipping away from me. No, that was not quite true. I had pushed him away. Day after day for the last twelve months, I had nudged him further from my side.

Before I could even speak, Alex took a step back. Madeline gripped my arm and pulled me away from the desk and toward my son, but Alex turned away once he saw me walking toward him. I silently followed him into the hall and saw him turn his back on me. He returned to the library where Charles sat in his wheelchair. Charles, the most placid man in the world, staring at me in disbelief. Perhaps he had not seen my actions, but he had heard my senseless wrath.

"Would...would you care to continue your studies, Alexandre? Charles quietly asked my son. He tore his gaze from me and focused his attention on Alex.

Alex glanced toward the doorway in my direction, his face pale and features taut. He nodded automatically and looked to Charles, who had already opened a book and set it in front of Alex. Together they pretended to read, my son and his teacher. Charles placed his hand on Alex's shoulder and pulled him closer while I stood at a distance, too ashamed to step forward and address my own child.

Alex had seen a darker side, a violent side, something he had never quite seen before. Once, I had dumped him on the floor and walked away from him. The extent of my anger had been ignoring him for several hours in the study, but now he had seen the difference between anger and complete madness.

He had seen the beast I could not contain forever. Now he had seen the truth.

From the window overlooking the back garden, I watched lightning splinter down onto Paris. Julia's house stooped in the rain while the light in kitchen windows showed that she must have been downstairs. I had often watched her before in the summer when she had the windows open at night. There is something alluring about watching someone who doesn't know you are there.

But I didn't want to think of Julia and I had no interest in looking into her windows. I was trying to forget her.

The sky darkened as evening approached. My appetite had vanished despite not eating at all throughout the day. If not for Madeline, I would starve. She reminds me when it is time to eat as quite often I have no interest in food. But not even Madeline cared to see me have lunch.

She was right in denying me a meal. I deserved to starve.

The more I pried away at what had happened in the parlor, the more I felt the weight of shame upon my shoulders. It is unbecoming of a man my age to lose his temper so easily, no less before a child. Not once in the eight years since he has been mine have I ever lashed out so violently in front of Alex.

My mind went blank. Thunder rolled through me and I drifted with the sound, unable to keep the thought from my mind that Christine had made a terrible mistake in giving him to me.

The pity I felt for myself was short-lived. Meg came tapping on the door.

"Alex wants to know if he may go to Madame Seuratti's home for supper," she said when I opened the door to her.

"Why didn't he come and ask me himself?"

We both knew the answer though Meg would not say a word. Fear and good manners made her shake her head. Compared to her mother, Meg is the most compliant creature on Earth. Everything that happened with Christine makes her obedient to me.

Around the time I noticed Christine, I took notice of Meg as well. She was angelic with her blond hair and doe-eyes. But there was such a stigma attached with her being Madeline's daughter. Each time I noticed her beauty or how well-endowed she was becoming, I wanted to vomit. If Madeline was a mother to me, Meg should have been a sister. Now she is only a wary little mouse who cares for my son and treats him like her nephew.

"Did Julia invite him?"

"I believe so."

"He may go. Tell him to see me first."

"Yes, of course."

"Tell Madeline not to set a place for me. I will not be here as well."

Meg gave me a strange look, a sense of alarm passing through her eyes. She nodded once and started to leave but stopped and gathered her nerves.

"Will you be gone long?" she asked.

"I have not yet decided," I retorted. And that was the truth. How long my venture took depended on whether or not the boy was with Christine, and how much of a struggle her husand would put up once we were reunited.