Author's Note: Once again, everybody actually belongs to me in this chapter!

The Patron of the Opera – Chapter Eleven

"What on earth is going on in here?" A voice called from the hallway. Enoch froze at the sound of the door opening; the glass shard glinting in the dim light of the lamp.

"Honestly, if you must entertain in your dressing room you could at least have some courtesy to keep your voices down. You could be heard all the way down the hallway..." the door completely opened and whatever was about to be said died on the intruder's lips.

"Oh dear lord...what is going on in here?" Turning the shard so that it would reflect the owner of the voice, Enoch saw Rose, looking like an angel in her white raiment and illuminated from behind by the lights of the hallway.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice low yet thick with horror. She took a step closer into the room and surveyed the situation, taking in every detail from the shattered mirror to the broken man before her.

"Oh God...Lieutenant, please...Mr. Simmons, I beg of you...please put that down...please..."

Shaking with humiliation, Enoch let the shard fall from his mangled fingers. Looking down at it, he could still see her figure reflected in the glass and his stomach twisted with the horror of being seen in such a state. His mask and wig were across the room; he was exposed and she had seen him. Putting his bloodied hands to his face, he folded his head down to his chest and tried to cover as much area as possible so as to spare her from the gruesome sight and himself from her burning gaze. He could hear the faint rustling of her skirt as she took more steps into the room and carefully approached him. Laying her hand down lightly on his shoulder, she felt the horrible tremors that ran through his body and began to caress him in an attempt to soothe his pain. Tears began to flow down his mangled cheeks and she tried to comfort him in a soft voice.

"Mr. Simmons, it's all right...I promise it will be alright...just relax now..."

Enoch barely had time to relish the feeling of her soft touch oh his shoulders before approaching voices from the hallway startled both of them. Whipping around toward the source of the sounds, Rose kept her eyes on the door as she offered her gloved hand to him.

"Mr. Simmons, we must get out of here. Come on, hurry..." she helped him to stand and ushered him toward the door after retrieving his mask and wig. She took his arm and pulled him quickly down a series of corridors until they stopped at the very last door in the least lit section of dressing rooms. Unlocking the door swiftly, Rose pushed him inside the darkened room before following him and refastening the bolts behind her.

"Don't turn around, Mr. Simmons. Let me fetch a chair for you." He stood in the absolute darkness and listened to her movements as she pulled the chair from her desk nearby and gently pushed him into it. She turned and lit the gas lamp on her desk but kept the light level low as she brought it over closer to him and examined him. Hanging his head in shame, his battered face burned with embarrassment as she stared at him as closely as she would a laboratory specimen while she checked the extent of the damage to his person.

It was hard for her to see with so much blood caked on his hands and on his face, yet it seemed as though the worst of the injuries were just a few deep gashes on his hands and not his wrists as she had first feared. Looking into his eyes, she could easily see that the damage inside was much worse than that which could be healed with bandages and stitches.

"Please, stay right here and let me fetch the doctor for you." Rose said as she backed away toward the door.

"No!" Enoch cried, reaching his arms out to her as he struggled to stand. "Please, no doctors. Please...I beg of you..."

Rose stared at him for a brief moment, taking in every detail of his person. Moving toward him slowly, she again examined him and took one of his mangled hands into her own and turned it over in her palms.

"You should have a doctor look at those cuts, Lieutenant. You may need to be stitched..."

"No...it will be fine. I will take care of this myself. Please..." Enoch backed away from her as far as her chair would permit and tried to pull his hand from her gentle grasp. Her eyes burned with anger and her grip tightened as she held the wounded appendage up in front of his face.

"Your hands are useless to you in this state" she said coldly. "And they will be even more useless should they not receive care. They need attention and I'm afraid that I can do little more than clean and bandage them for you. Even so, that may not be enough. If you intend to go smashing glasses then you had best be prepared to accept the consequences. And this time, you need a doctor."

She unlocked the door and moved to open the knob when he called out to her. "My lady, please..." his voice broke off as the tears began to fall again. She let his hand fall limply to his side and merely watched as the man before her hunched over and began to rock back and forth with silent sobs.

This display was too painful for Rose; her innards twisted as she was overwhelmed by pity for this man and her own emotions were in turmoil. She turned away from him and walked over to her desk and began to absently examine her notes in an attempt to ignore the agonized state of her companion. When his sobs had mostly been contained and her own emotions controlled, she quietly asked him "You truly believe that you do not require a doctor's aide?"

Rather than risking his voice, he merely nodded to her but with her back turned, she did not notice. Suddenly, he felt her fingers on his face as she held it up so that he could look at her and he could not help but flinch under her close scrutiny. "I asked if you truly believe that you do not require a doctor."

He nodded and she removed her hands from his face. Swallowing and looking straight into his eyes, she stated softly "I will clean and bandage these to the best of my abilities then, but I am no doctor and they may not heal properly."

Laughing to himself with the utter and complete irony of the situation, he gestured to his face and hands and bitterly muttered "None of this has healed properly..."

She answered his comment with a weak smile and, moving to touch his cheek, caught a glimpse of her satin-clad arm and pulled back. Before he could mistake her action as rejection, she gestured to her gown and with a weak laugh stated "We can't have me soiling this dress, can we? Stay right here and dry your tears, I will be right back." She handed him her cotton handkerchief edged with lace and stepped behind the dressing screen.

He heard the rustling of her gown as she unfastened her dress and laid it over the screen in a waterfall of white satin. She returned quickly, clad in a dark green dressing gown and stood before him with her auburn hair falling out of its plaits. "Where do you live, Mr. Simmons?"

At this, he hung his head even lower than he had before; he was completely unwilling to tell her that he lived nowhere, that he wandered about until he found his respective hole under a bridge.

"Well, if you won't answer, I'm afraid that I cannot offer you a ride home. You'll have to spend the evening with me here. I won't hear of you going off on your own tonight." She turned back to her drawers and pulled out two identical silver flasks. Opening one and sniffing at its contents, she closed it and instead opened the other and offered it to his twisted lips.

"Take a small sip of this. Only a bit, though. I should have something to mix this in, but I haven't anything proper at the moment."

Obediently, Enoch opened his mouth and let her pour a sour liquid in. Swallowing, he grimaced and fought to keep the syrup down before he looked back up to her with surprise in his eyes. "Laudanum? You keep undiluted laudanum?"

"I would've offered you brandy but I think that rest is what you need now more than alcohol. It will dull the pain, though. Come with me to the chaise and don't look to the right."

He knew that the huge mirror was hung on her wall and obeyed, not certain if he would be able to restrain himself should he see his twisted reflection beside her radiant one in the small room. She led him to the chaise and helped him to shrug off his coat and cloak. Turning back to her drawers, she gathered her washbasin, a roll of bandages and scissors, and the other silver flask and brought them over to him.

The strength of the laudanum was beginning to take effect as the pain lessened and a sleepy haze came over him. He became aware of her washing his face with the lavender scented water and barely felt the sting of the alcohol or the pricks as she pulled the slivers of glass out of his hands. She didn't speak until she had already begun to wind bandages around his twisted hands.

"May I ask what happened to you?"

He turned his head toward her, the drug numbing his senses so that he could no longer be concerned by the embarrassment of being seen. "In the army. I was captured."

She looked to him sharply, her mouth hardening as she contemplated this response. As her hands continued to deftly wind the bandages around his, she voiced her second question.

"And tonight, what happened?"

This question brought him to complete alertness once more and a sea of tears sprung to his eyes for what seemed like the hundredth time that evening. He couldn't possibly tell her the truth now; it would kill him. Repressed sobs tore at his chest and he turned his mangled face away from her and buried it in the cushions of her chaise. She laid her hands on his shoulder and whispered in the hole that had once been covered by an ear "Just cry it out...you will feel better after you have a good cry."

He turned to her with surprise and she opened her arms to him. Unable to resist, he threw himself into her gentle embrace. His tears flowed down and saturated the soft green velvet of her bodice while she continued to rock him in her arms.

"I will never go to one of these damn celebrations again…" William muttered to himself as he walked slowly through the halls of the opera. He reluctantly admitted to himself that he had taken far too much champagne while waiting for Rose's return to the grand foyer. Now, courtesy of alcohol, he was victim to one of the worst hangover headaches he had ever suffered. It was well after midnight and all he wanted to do was to collect Rose, give her a Happy New Year kiss, and then be driven home to where he could collapse in bed in order to sleep this off.

He had not counted on her disappearing for the remainder of the evening, nor had he anticipated the screaming match that Carlotta had with the managers regarding a shattered mirror in her dressing room and the imaginary apparition which had supposedly broken it. The soprano's shrill voice still rang in his ears even as he walked through the empty hallways to Rose's dressing room.

He blamed his inebriation on Simmons – he hadn't counted on him being here tonight. He hadn't counted on having to expose his soul and his secrets to Rose on tonight of all nights.

And he really hadn't counted on walking into her dressing room to find his fiancée asleep in the man's arms.

In his half-drunken haze, he really couldn't believe what he was seeing at first. But after rubbing his eyes and blinking resulted in no change in the scene before him, he was forced to concede that it was true. It was easy to see that something emotional had occurred in his absence; the tears on Simmons' face were proof of that. And speaking of Simmons' face…

'Dear God! What on earth happened to him?' William wondered as his eyes focused on the mass of twisted flesh before him. He had known that the man had sustained serious injuries, but he had never suspected something as horrid as this! Not wishing to disturb the two sleepers, he turned around and walked out into the hallway. He closed the door behind him quietly and sat directly across from it against the wall.

He would wait until morning to question the two; none of them were in any condition to do it now.

Warm…

Soft…

Safe…

For the first time in over five years, Enoch awoke with a sense of security and comfort. His sleeping position was a tad awkward but the softness and warmth of his bed and pillows certainly made up for it. Unthinkingly, he pressed his face into the softness and relished the feel of velvet against his poor cheeks.

Velvet?

His eyes snapped open and he forced himself to sit upright only to find Rose asleep next to him with her velvet-clad arms still draped limply across him. He was at once overwhelmed by emotions; the shock of finding himself in this position, the intense yearning for her, and the sadness, anger, and despair fell upon him like waves in which he might drown.

Fighting with himself to calm the mad beating of his heart, he carefully dislodged himself from her arms and quietly assembled his things which had been scattered throughout the room during the past evening. Awkwardly, he adjusted his wig as he looked in her mirror and moved to replace his mask when he regarded her sleeping form with a pang of regret. Walking back over to her, he stared at her as she slept peacefully; her beautiful hair had come partially undone and her scarlet lips were parted in a soft smile. Despite the protests of his conscience, Enoch leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on her cheek and allowed his bandaged hand to drift briefly across the length of her chin. He stepped back then and tied his mask, refusing to allow the tears to fall from his eyes again. After checking himself once again in the mirror, he fumbled a bit with her door and stepped out into the hallway.

He slowly began to walk away from her closed door when a voice called to him from the shadows.

"Have you the time, Mr. Simmons?"

Enoch whirled around, looking for the source of the voice only to find William Harrington sitting in the shadows of the hallway. He looked awful; his eyes were bloodshot, his thick hair in disarray, the beginnings of a beard showed on his unshaven chin.

Enoch was frozen to his place as the baron slowly stood and approached him with a stern, calculating expression on his usually attractive face. "I've been waiting to escort my fiancée home from last night's festivities. Perhaps you might know where she may be?"

The shock of William's words took the air out of Enoch's lungs and he struggled to regain his composure. His mouth had suddenly gone dry and he found himself unable to answer but for a croak. "Your fiancée…"

William folded his arms across his chest and stood back as he examined the man before him. He seemed about to say something but then thought better of it and merely responded.

"Yes, my fiancée. Surely, you have already heard; she finally accepted my proposal last night while in front of all Parisian society. It's bound to be reported in several columns by now."

Enoch's mouth seemed to be filled with cotton as he contemplated this answer. His entire being ached with this knowledge although he knew the truth; that he himself was responsible for this situation. At a complete loss for words, he merely hung his head while William looked on at him critically.

"If I didn't know better, sir, I'd say that you were in love with her!" William said with a slight laugh. Enoch looked up sharply, his dark eyes widening in horror and his poor mouth trying desperately to form words but fortunately, William chose that moment to become preoccupied with his missing cufflink and missed the slip in composure that would have easily betrayed Enoch.

"Where the Hell did this damn thing go off to? Oh well…so Mr. Simmons, please explain to me why you spent the night with my fiancée?"

Again, Enoch found himself speechless and looked down to his bandaged hands. There, he found an answer and he slowly lifted the mutilated appendages to William and muttered "I had an accident. She bandaged them."

William looked at the other man and although slightly suspicious of him, quickly quenched the thought and moved on to other matters.

"That is very grave indeed. But please excuse me, I am anxious to get her home. It is late enough as it is…or early enough, rather." He stated as he checked his pocket watch.

"Forgive me, baron, but what time is it?" Enoch asked quietly, placing his hands in his pockets.

"About seven…"

"Oh, God…" Enoch exclaimed with horror. "I am late, please forgive me…" He turned to run away but William's strong arm detained him.

"To where are you rushing?"

"To work, I'm already late…"

"Sir, the only people who work this early on a holiday are the prostitutes and fishmongers…"

"Which is what I am! I must go, please excuse me!"

"For heaven's sake! You simply cannot leave just yet…you told me that you had come to Europe for work. Surely there are harbors in the states."

Enoch tried to pull away without answering but William still held on to his shoulder. Looking at the masked man before him, William muttered "I will have my carriage take you to where you need to go. Come along, I'll wake her later in the morning."

He helped the former soldier hurry through the opera to the grand rotunda where his loyal coachman and footman still awaited their master. Enoch had difficulty ascending the steps of the carriage but the footman and William both offered their assistance to get him comfortably in the seat. William moved to close the door, but Enoch's bandaged hands suddenly grasped his sleeve.

"Please don't tell her where I'm going! Please! I beg of you…"

Looking into the tormented eyes of the other man, William simply nodded his head and fastened the bolts on the door. As he watched the carriage drive out of sight, an uncomfortable thought came to him; one that would easily explain the mysterious appearance of Simmons, his unfortunate disfigurement, and his intense desire to keep Rose unaware of his current situation.

He watched the smoke rise steadily from the Parisian chimneys and into the frosty morning air while this horrible suspicion began to take root in his heart. Manfully, he conquered his traitorous emotions; Rose had agreed to marry him, after all. Turning around and walking back into the Opèra, he was determined to not let his doubts taint his happiness.

A/N: Well, I'm back although only for a short while. Real life got in the way of things for quite a bit and now I'm at university with finals looming ahead. This chapter was probably the most rushed out of anything that I've written thus far and I hope that it doesn't seem too bad considering the timing. A complete rewrite of this story is under way and it will most likely be posted periodically over the summer along with my new fics 'Phantomesque' and 'Repetition'. Thanks to all readers and reviewers for your support and I hope that you enjoy this short installment.