Even as he moved away, heading back to the principal chambers of his lair, he was painfully aware of her still standing on the rocky ledge.

Damn her! Damn her, damn her, damn her!

Grudgingly, he turned around, his face twisted with heart-rending bitterness.

"Come down from there," he growled, averting his eyes as she scrambled down the path to join him at his side. For the first time, he took notice of her damp hair, her stocking feet, the goose bumps on her skin.

Grinding his teeth in frustration, he motioned for her to follow him, trying not to listen to the sound of her teeth chattering. He was torn as to what to do for her. He did not want to take her into Christine's sleeping cove. That was sacred space. Christine's light perfume still clung to the red velvet blankets, and he jealously guarded what little of Christine's presence lingered in his home.

The organ stool wasn't very comfortable, and he suddenly felt very reluctant to have her sit at his desk where she could see his drawings, the stage, the figurines…He felt an odd pang, realizing he had never bothered to make a figurine for the dancer. He shook his head slightly, trying to marshal his thoughts back to the problem at hand.

No, the only place for him to put the shivering, irritating angel was his own bed chamber. Damn her! He felt a surge of irrational irritation with Rose. Why was it that whenever he was in her presence, she seemed to strip away the mystique of ghost and angel from him? She reduced him to a mere mortal, to being simply a man.

And yet, is that not what he longed to be? Just a man as any other?

Damn her! He frowned deeply as he picked up a candelabra and brought her to his bed chamber, which was nothing more than a small, dark alcove. The candlelight threw enough light into the room for Rose to see that there was a low, wide bed covered with black silk sheets and heavy black velvet blankets. There was an ornately-carved armoire that looked like it had come from one of the dressing rooms belonging to one of the stars. Piled around the bed were books. Some were half-open, some had quills stuck between the pages, some lay carelessly open to whatever page he had abandoned them on. There were no mirrors in the small chamber.

"Sit," he growled, pointing to the bed, hardening his heart against the sight of the ghostly white figure with angel's wings sinking down onto the edge of his bed. His bed…a woman sitting on his bed. He would have laughed at the deep irony of it all if he wasn't so damn irritated.

From inside the armoire, he took out another thick, black woolen blanket, exquisitely soft to the touch. He went back over to her and was about to drape it around her shoulders when he noticed a problem.

With a snarl, he sat down next to her on the bed. She didn't flinch. She didn't move. In fact, the only thing she did was look at him with her wide, weary grey eyes. He stopped, the color draining from his face. Suddenly, it was he who was frightened. What kind of girl sat so coolly next to a murderer, a monster, the devil himself? What kind of suffering had she endured that a man's sudden advance and proximity caused her no alarm?

For a moment, in the flickering candlelight, he almost believed that she was an angel. Silent and beautiful, she sat next to him like some otherworldly caller, a creature beyond the pale of ordinary fear and pain. She was not like his beloved Christine. No, that he knew. Christine was a cherub, a sweet bud on the verge of a seductive bloom. He had held Christine in his heart, safely cocooned by his total understanding of the orphan he had befriended so many years ago.

But this…this Rose…she was wild and beyond the grasp of his understanding. Or perhaps he understood her all too well because she was too much like himself.

"I am sorry."

Her gentle whisper broke into his musings. He started from his reverie, shocked to see tears begin to spill down her cold face. This was a girl whom he had never seen cry, despite the regular downpours from all the other ballet rats.

"What for?" he managed to reply in a strangled whisper, watching as her thin face seemed to crumple like a child whose world has fallen in around them.

"I am so sorry for everything you are suffering," Rose said softly, her voice hoarse from her encounter with the Punjab Lasso. "I am so sorry for what the world must be like for you. I am so sorry that you have to live like this, that you can't reach for things in the sun like other people."

He was stunned, and he stared at her in disbelief. Her words were the last thing he had ever expected to hear from her. He knew her tongue to be sharp and mocking, practical and honest. But never had he heard such soft words from her. Any lingering resentment he felt seemed to burn away like mist in the sun.

Without realizing what he was doing, he lifted his fingers to her face, the warm tips brushing the salty drops that rolled down her cheeks. The gesture seemed to be her undoing. She began to cry in earnest, her thin shoulders shaking as she still tried to hold in the surging grief she felt.

"Rose…Rose…" he whispered, making his voice low and soothing, as if cooing to a babe. He risked cupping her cheek with his hand, shocked at the difference between his warm skin and her icy flesh.

"You deserve to be happy, and it's not fair that you can't be," Rose croaked between hiccups and sobs. "I've seen how horrible the world is, and how unhappy people are, even when they should be happy or could be happy. And I know you want to be happy. We all do. And we all can't. It's just not fair!"

He listened to her rambling in silence. Closing his eyes, he sought to burn this moment into his mind. The proximity of a soft, sweet creature who blessed him with her holy tears. The words of genuine compassion that spilled from her trembling lips – words he had longed all his life to hear…words he wanted so badly to hear from Christine…words he would win from his angel of music no matter what…

"Hush, Rose," he whispered absently, his thought swirling confusedly between Christine and Rose.

"No!" Rose cried, lifting her face to look up into his. "You don't understand. I mean, you don't understand that I understand. I know what…they…do to you. I know how the world scorns you as something less than humor."

"Human," he corrected automatically, a slight smile coming to his lips despite the delicious agony of spirit he felt. Flashes of eavesdropping on Rose's mixed up French over the past few months flew through his mind, and his smile softened somewhat.

Rose smiled back through her tears and even managed a little self-deprecating laugh. She reached up and covered the hand that held her cheek with her own. He stiffened at her touch. Her hands were like ice, but that didn't explain the shiver that ran through him.

He knew he should pull away, walk away, drive her from his presence. Yet, his hand refused to move from her face, just as his eyes refused to stop studying the way the unshed teardrops clung to her eyelashes.

"I am so sorry," she repeated softly, coughing slightly at the irritation the act of talking caused in her bruised throat.

"Then you are the only one who is," he found himself replying more coldly than he had intended. He finally withdrew his hand and straightened his posture.

"Turn around," he said quietly. "I must take off your wings."

She obeyed with a little laugh, saying, "Yes, for I am no more an angel than you are a ghost."

"Ah yes, I have been meaning to have a word with you about that," he said with a chuckle before he could stop himself. But before he could go on, he was caught off guard by a spurt of irrepressible laughter from Rose – laughter that ended in her choking, coughing and clutching her throat.

She had laughed…with him. Not at him. With him. She had laughed with him as if they were old friends sharing a joke, as if they were simply a man and a woman, not an orphaned dancer and a monster of music.

He hoped she didn't notice how his fingers trembled as he untied the wings from her costume. He almost physically had to hold himself back from running his hands along her back, to feel the firmness of her body under the slippery silk of her dress. He gritted his teeth and pushed back memories of the feel of her body in his hands as they had danced together in the moonlight all those weeks ago.

He noticed that she had stilled, as if waiting for something to happen. With a weary, silent sigh, he picked up the soft black blanket and wrapped it around her, carefully avoiding touching her further.

She turned back around to face him, her tear-limned eyes searching his. Unable to help himself, he reached up and softly caressed her cheek again. He felt his heart jump into his throat when her eyes fluttered shut, and her body relaxed imperceptibly.

Traitor! His mind roared at him. How could he be doing this? It was Christine he watched to touch, to caress, not some runaway from the gypsies! It was Christine's music he wanted to have fill his heart, not the compassionate tears of a dancer.

Oh, but she was warm and soft, his heart whispered in the storm of his thoughts. And she was here, willingly. No trickery had brought her here, no spell kept her here. He could take her in his arms, if he wanted, his heart urged slyly. She wouldn't shy away. He could hold something warm and soft of his own…

He wanted Christine.

He wanted to be seen as just a man like any other.

He wanted the comfort of a woman's touch.

He wanted to feel Rose's heartbeat.

He wanted to hear Christine's voice soaring, calling for him.

He wanted to feel Rose's warm breath against his skin.

He wanted peace.

His chest rose and fell in hard, heavy breaths as he gently took Rose in his arms. Oh the agony of joy as he felt her slender arms wrap around his neck, to have another human being willingly embrace him! He shuddered as he tried to repress a sob.

Was he so weak a creature that he would take comfort where he could get it, even if it meant betraying what he believed to be his pure, unchangeable love for Christine?

A dark voice in his soul reminded him of the rooftop ardor his precious, pure Christine had shared with that boy-noble, even as she had told of how his voice alone could make her soul soar.

Love, he decided, was a strange and terrible thing. And with blazing eyes and burning lips, he claimed Rose's mouth.