In the last chapter I was a true dolt who took the liberty of reading Julia's journal.

A/N from Gabrina: Hermine inspired the very last lines of this. And Penkitten, bless her heart, reread and reread more times than any beta should ever have to. Thanks you guys!

Ch 47

Both Alex and Lisette were running about upstairs and rattling the floors when I stepped into the dining room. Julia had just walked in from the kitchen with two bowls that she set on the table.

Julia had dressed for dinner in a gown that matched her eye color. It was only the second time I ever remembered seeing her wear something elaborate. Usually she was prepared for bed. It seemed a shame that she had bothered to look so beautiful and I had trifled with a crisp white shirt, pressed trouser, brocade waist coat and cravat for sitting to dinner. I wished we could have sat at dinner to celebrate rather than discuss.

"Are Lisette and Alexandre joining us?" I asked.

"They are staying at your house. Madame Giry said Lisette could stay with her until morning and Alex has been clamoring about sleeping in his own bed." She half-smiled and waited for me to push her chair in toward the table. "It was a little mortifying to ask Madame Giry if she would watch the two. Obviously she knows of our previous arrangements…"

"Did she say something?"

"No, but she looked at me."

I knew the look. Anyone who had ever come into contact with Madeline knew that accusing, disapproving stare. "You survived the look. That's a good sign."

Alex and Lisette came galloping down the stairs before Julia could reply. The moment she heard them coming Julia pushed her chair out and marched out into the hall. She knocked on the wall and yelled at the two of them. Lisette the Timid stayed in the parlor but Alexandre the Bold ran down to the water closet. The door slamming shut startled me. I hated it when he did that.

"Why did they come back here?" I asked. "I thought they were helping Meg."

"Alex said he needed something."

"His books? Whatever he needed could have waited until morning when the rain stopped."

Julia silently began shoveling spoonfuls of chopped asparagus onto our plates. She glanced up at me and sighed. "He knows about lunch tomorrow with the vicomtess. I think he just wanted to see you again before the end of the day."

My eyes closed to her words. We had until 3 the next day before lunch. Less than nineteen hours before Christine would take him from me. I slammed my fist onto the table and nearly knocked my wineglass over.

Without entering the dining room Alex and Lisette raced through the kitchen, waving and squealing, before sprinting out the back door. We could hear them up until they entered my kitchen and Alexandre slammed that door as well.

I grit my teeth. "If she takes Alexandre with her I will never see him again. She'll never come to Paris. Not while I'm here."

"She said she wanted to see him. She never said she wanted to keep him."

"She insinuated that he belongs to her precious vicomte."

Julia thought a moment. "What do you think?"

"I don't want to think. I want to keep him."

"Yes, I know that, but knowing you as I do, you have nothing civil to say to Christine or her husband. You'll shoot yourself in the foot if you meet them tomorrow as a ranting, raving lunatic."

"He's not allowed in my house," I muttered.

"Who? Her husband?"

I turned away from Julia. Even the thought of Christine at my table was irritating and I had no desire to think of her little vicomte. "Nothing I say will matter. The gendarmes—"

"The gendarmes?"

She didn't know about the conversation I had with Madeline. Reluctantly I told her about Christine's threat to call the authorities if I didn't allow her to see her son. Julia paled when I told her they would send the gendarmes no matter what. My past had sealed my fate.

We picked at our food in silence for a while and the tension increased. My stomach was in knots just thinking about her taking him away from me. He would have two younger sisters, nannies, tutors, a suitcase with stickers from around the world. He would hear music as it should have been heard and not on one of those phonographs. The pyramids, the Sphinx, everything in Egypt he wanted to see. Algeria, I thought, she would take him to Algeria. And Russia, and Italy, and everywhere else he had read about in books.

"He would have the world," I said under my breath.

Julia glanced up at me.

"If he went with her he would have the world. He would see everything. Here…I can't give him anything." I looked past her at the mirror on the dining room wall. Alex was so much like her, each feature perfectly carved. They belonged together as a perfect family. What was I but an unfinished carcass, a thing meant to live in solitude?

Julia dropped her fork onto her plate and pulled her chair away from the table. I knew then when she looked at me that I had said more than I should have aloud. Her arms draped over my shoulders for a moment and she brushed her lips across the terrible side of my face.

"Why do you say such things?"

I made no attempt to reply. I grabbed her hand and ran it from my temple down to my chin, pressing her fingers over the lumps of reddened, scarred, unholy flesh. This was what Alex had in his life; a cold beast that had offered his seed to an angel.

"Come upstairs with me," she whispered. She moved her hand away from mine and tugged on my wrist. I rose from the table and bowed my head. My wineglass tipped over but Julia told me to ignore it. "There's something you need to see."

Julia took me to her bedroom and told me to sit down. I watched her open her dresser drawer and thought for a moment she had designs for sex. The only reason she ever opened that drawer was to retrieve something to prevent pregnancy. Before I could protest she held up the leather-bound book I had found several days earlier.

She hitched up her dress and sat down beside me with her legs folded under her body. I watched her flip toward the back of the book.

"What are you doing?"

"The 5th of June, 1885," she read. "Alexandre came over today and spent an hour telling me about how he and his father read an entire book about the Orient. Alexandre said 'The Orient does not interest me but Father says it is fascinating. I much prefer Egyptian civilization'. He is a little parrot of his father even at the age of five. The child could talk for hours about Erik. I wish Lisette could do the same. She still wakes up screaming at night thinking she hears her father pounding on the walls."

Julia glanced up at me and flipped through several pages. "The 22nd of July, 1885. Alexandre brought a book over to show Lisette. The two of them spent hours drawing pictures in the blank book. Erik had told me a week ago that he wanted Alex to start drawing and I can see why. He's very talented. Alex was beside himself when he showed me his new treasure. His initials were on the cover."

She looked up at me and tilted her head to the side. "How many more do you want me to read? There's at least a dozen more before the end of that year alone."

"What does it matter?"

"Not once have I ever heard him mention Christine. Not even once, Erik, but he could talk about you forever." I started to shake my head but she grabbed my chin. "You are everything to him whether you realize it or not."

We sat in silence again. Julia sighed at last and placed her chin on my shoulder. "Maybe if she knew she would change her mind, find some—"

"Sympathy? Compassion? Never."

She drew back and looked into my eyes. "Something in common with you as a parent who loves her son."

I scoffed at Julia and rose from the bed but she pulled on my belt and made me sit with her again. I hated her and loved her in the same moment.

"If she cares for him at all she'll see this is a selfish endeavor."

I stared at my folded hands and leaned forward on the bed. My head was pounding. Bile rose into the back of my throat. "Christine gets what she wants; the stage, the fans, a family. This will be no different. I meant nothing to her ten years ago. I will mean nothing to her tomorrow."

Julia flipped through several more pages and placed the opened book into my hands. Her hand ran along my shoulders and she kissed me once by the ear. "I'll be up in a moment." She paused and tapped the open page. "Here. October the 22nd. Since it interests you so much."

She closed the door and left me with her journal.

For a while I blankly stared at the page. For all intents andpurposes this had to be some sort of trick. Entrapment, I suspected, though I couldn't imagine Julia lurking behind a two-way mirror as she watched me succumb to temptation. Perhaps she didn't have vindictive reasons for handing over her journal. Curiosity won over prudence and I found myself reading the opened book.

22 October, 1884

Normally I don't write much but I can't stop thinking of Erik.

He was late. I thought for certain that he wouldn't show at all and I admit that the more I thought about it the more I hoped he wouldn't come over. How lascivious of me to take a man I don't even know to bed six months after my husband was buried.

Still he isn't like a stranger to me. For years I have heard his music late at night and, no matter what, I have not been alone. I imagine the melodies as arms wrapped around me, each note a kiss. His voice is the most magical thing I have ever heard. He could be reading a summons for my death and it would be heavenly.

Erik came through the back door just like a ghost and stood in the middle of the kitchen. I asked him if he wanted to come upstairs and he declined. He asked if we could sit a while in the parlor. That was nothing short of a relief.

We talked until nearly dawn. He said that his son's mother recently lost a child of her own. Even in the darkness I have never seen such melancholy in a person's eyes. He must care for her still.

He agreed to come back next week. For the crumpets and tea more than my company, I'm sure.

JCS

p.s.

The mask, though a bit eccentric, is mesmerizing. Something about his eyes has captured me. Everything about him stirs me. It shouldn't. He's the Phantom of the Opera. No one has said anything but I kept one of the clippings. Madame Giry's name was in the article about the fire. From meeting Erik and reading of his treachery certainly these are two separate people.

And of course the paper claimed that he died three weeks after the disaster.

Naturally I turned to the following week to see if I did return.

28 October, 1884

He was amazing all night long. Something must have inspired him. He is a master! A true master of the violin. I wish he had stopped by this evening but he must not have noticed the candle.

Again I flipped through the pages until I found some mention of sex in December.

28 December, 1884

Tomorrow will be the night he stays. I'm almost certain he will come to my bed. He will make love to me at last.

That last date mentioned I remembered. That was after Madeline received a letter from Christine and there was no message for me on the back. I had missed months of time spent with Julia fretting over Christine. I stared at the date, tracing my finger along her words. I remembered the 29th of December. I remembered walking through the snow and cursing my wet shoes and trousers. I remembered Julia greeting me at the back door in a black robe.

I remembered the 22nd of October, too. It was the first time I had tried Russian tea with lemon. Madeline only made tea the English way, with milk, which after a bit of lemon seemed strange to me. I must have told Julia a hundred times that I preferred Russian tea.

"I'm pleased that you like my tea," she had said warily. Our expectations had been polar opposites for that night.

We had sat as far from one another as possible in the parlor. I had purposely moved my chair into the shadows to keep her from staring. When she had left the room to boil water, I had stood and moved her chair to the far wall near the desk. She looked confused when she returned but said nothing. She poured my tea, set a tray down on a small table and went to her own seat.

"What are these?" I asked.

She craned her neck and squinted in the darkness. "Crumpets."

"Are they good?"

She pursed her lips. "I hope so. I…I thought I would make something for….after…."

It was beyond my wildest beliefs that she had invited me over for anything other than tea. Her words flew past me unnoticed. Christine had plagued my thoughts for the previous forty-eight hours. I thought for certain that Julia had invited me over to hear me moan about Suzette's death. Could there have been another reason to invite a man over to a dark house at midnight?

"They look like muffins," I had commented. I had picked and prodded them as well. "I don't much care for muffins."

"They're moist. Muffins are usually dry," she said. She looked at me curiously and moved her chair closer.

With a mouthful of crumpets I had nodded. "They are good."

"Do you like it? Really?"

"Better than a damned muffin," I had muttered before gulping down my tea and scalding the back of my throat.

I didn't remember ever mentioning music though I could only hope I said something far more worldly than rambling on about food. And Suzette, whom I distinctly remember mentioning.

Julia came back into the bedroom when I had just closed the book and set it aside. She had taken her hair down. The necklace she had worn earlier was promptly walked to the dresser and tossed into a small jewelry box.

"Well?"

"Crumpets."

She gave a closed-lip smile that contained her chuckle and walked around to the bedside.

I twisted around to watch her. "Why do you put up with me?"

She grinned. "I quite obviously suffer from delirium."

"You were twenty-two when you became a widow. Your brothers could have found you someone."

"A pox on my brothers. They would have found me another man like Louis and that was the last thing I wanted."

"Instead you pursued a phantom."

She stared at me from over her shoulder. "Instead I pursued what I wanted."

"A violin player?"

"A sweet melody," she countered. "The sweetest, most passionate sound I had ever heard in the world. I wanted to know where it came from."

"It came from a shadow in a window," I said skeptically.

"It was written and performed by a neighbor I hadn't yet met."

"From an unknown man," I said bitterly.

"By a man I didn't yet know."

"But you did. You said so yourself." I lifted the book and shook it at her. "You had seen the article."

"I put little faith in the newspaper." She closed the drawer and stood at the end of the bed. "We could argue all night and get nowhere, Erik. Is that what you want?"

"There are better things to do all night," I admitted.

She held out a plate that she had taken from the drawer. A plate of crumpets. "Better things indeed, but none of which you will be doing tonight, Monsieur."

I took a crumpet and stared up at her. "Tell me this. Did I do something right or did you do something wrong?"

She kissed me full on the lips. "December the 29th," she replied with a sly smile.

That had been a good night.

"Stay here. I should clean the stitches for you again."

"Wouldn't you rather reenact December the 29th?"

Julia turned her head to the side. "You are still in a great deal of trouble."

"For what?"

Her eyes narrowed. "For what indeed."

She disappeared for a moment and returned with a basket of cleaning cloths and amber-colored bottles.

"You gave me the book. I thought I was forgiven."

"Forgiven? No," she laughed and looked away. "Far from it."

I stood up beside her and locked my hands at the small of her back. She made no attempt to free herself when I kissed the side of her neck. "I could apologize," I said against her throat. She started to pull away from me and I released her at once.

"Or you could die of gangrene and stupidity. Now sit." She pushed on my shoulder until I was sitting again. Her hand ran across my chest but she didn't look at me. "Once your stitches are looked at….we'll see."

She unscrewed the cap to one of the bottles and held a cloth over it. Her movements were quick and sharp unlike anything I had seen from her previously. There was something wrong, and even someone as daft as I realized it. Before she began cleaning the wound to my forehead I took her wrist and pulled it back down, resting her arm against my knee.

"Erik—"

"Look at me," I whispered.

She did. And what I saw brought tears to my eyes.