Author's notes: Thank you for all the good reviews! I thought it was time to take a peek back at our old Vicomte before we get too wrapped up in wedding plans! Anyway, you know the drill, if you've heard the name before in ALW, Kay or Leroux context, not mine. Josephine and Sarah ARE...we'll see where that goes.
Raoul was not a happy man. By all rights, he should have been, as being back in his family's good graces meant that once again he was the most privileged young man in France. He had anything he wanted at his fingertips, from tables in the best restaurants to the best seats at the opera, not that he had dared return to the opera. The papers had not been kind to either Firmin or Andre, and the rumor was that if things didn't shape up, the opera house might have to close its doors for good.
For the first few weeks after the stage re-opened, things weren't bad at the opera house, because bad news sells tickets faster than anything else. People came from miles around to try and catch a glimpse of "the ghost," and as a result bought out every show, but were severely disappointed in both the lack of the ghost's presence and what they saw before them on stage. The male singer who had replaced Piangi was handsome but by no means overly talented, and was consistently overshadowed by Carlotta, who had been coaxed back but was visibly damaged by the events that had occurred on Christine's final night there. Her high notes were shaky, and if a stage hand caught her by surprise at any moment, she was prone to fits of hysteria and would refuse to come back on stage. Only the ballet corps resembled anything of what it once was, because Madame Giry was inflexible in her instruction. The day after the "Don Juan Triumphant" fiasco, the girls were amazed to hear that M. Giry had called for practice.
"Girls!" she had said, addressing the group of nervous ballet rats that stood tremulously before her, looking around the room as if to see Erik, ready to torment them. Only Meg stood silent, silently still reeling from her participation in things. "Girls!" This time, something in her voice made them snap to attention. "I don't know what you may have, I don't know what you may have seen, but that is irrelevant. We are here to dance, and we shall. We are not here for stories; I suggest that if you want to tell gothic mysteries you try your hand at a novel. Now, to the barre!"
"M. Giry," ventured Josephine DeSimone, a girl of 19 who had been brought into the corps only that year, "Are you sure it is quite safe to be here?" Indeed, the only people in the opera house besides the ballet corps were Firmin and Andre, who were frantically trying to make the police believe that a man had vanished into the basement. Of course, since the torture chamber and lake had been secured by Erik as soon as he'd let Christine and Raoul go, they were finding nothing.
"If I thought you were in any risk of your lives, I would not have brought you here," M. Giry said wearily, keeping herself composed as she thought of Erik and hoped he was all right, along with Christine and Raoul. She considered herself getting too old for this kind of thing.
"Anyone who is too frightened may go home," she said in a voice that suggested only a fool would take her up on the offer that would certainly cost them their place in the corps. "Now, to the barre!"
But it was not the flagging opera that had Raoul down in spirits. It was, of course, the absence of Christine that tormented him, namely, the fact that she had left him, not for another man, but for the memory of one. Raoul, of course, knew nothing of the events that transpired at Nadir's house, and only knew that he was not worthy to match a dead man in the eyes of Christine.
"Sir!" Raoul was startled by the voice of his housekeeper coming from the door nearest the garden where he was trying to relax.
"Sir, a visitor here to see you, a Monsieur Firmin and Andre from the opera."
"Tell them I will see them in the sitting room," he said, "and please, offer them something to drink."
"Of course," she said, walking back inside. Raoul followed her after a moment.
"Monsieur D'Chagney!" exclaimed Monsieur Andre as Raoul walked into the room. "What a delight it is to see you again!"
"The pleasure is mine," Raoul responded formally. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"
"Ah, business so soon?" inquired Monsieur Andre, a rather strange statement as that was all Raoul ever discussed with him. "Very well, then, we'll get down to it. I trust you are well?"
"Yes, now that I've finally had some quiet," he said in what he hoped was a lighthearted manner. The first few weeks following the disaster at the opera had been terrible. Besides his despondent fiancée- ex fiancée, he forced himself to admit- his face had been all over the paper as one of the key players in the evening's events. Between police questioning him and the papers looking for interviews and Christine's troubles, he hadn't been able to get a moment's rest.
"Well, quiet is good for some, but not so good for business," Monsieur Firmin said bluntly. "And as a patron of the opera, we're looking to you to help us out!"
"I beg your pardon?" Raoul said, growing impatient. "I was helping you out, it is not my fault we didn't catch Eri- that damned 'ghost,' and I have continued to support your theatrical efforts. What more can I do?" The managers exchanged glances and averted their eyes. Finally, Monsieur Andre shifted uncomfortably, adjusted the tie that suddenly felt entirely too tight in the mild spring air and addressed Raoul.
"Your face is very well-known in Paris, and you are very well-liked." That much was true. Since word had gotten around that Raoul's chorus-girl-turned-diva fiancée had left for good, there had been constant attention from ladies whenever he went out. It seemed that Raoul, by no doing of his own, had become one of Paris' most eligible, and most unwilling, bachelors.
"We have devised a way for that popularity to benefit us both," Andre continued.
"Yes? How's that?" Raoul asked, sitting back.
"We'd like you to come back to the opera." Seeing Raoul's startled face, Andre barreled on, not giving him a chance to speak. "It would be good for people to see a man of your station returning to the opera. It would speak good things about the place. You are popular, you are known, and everyone knows the story. If you returned, how many more would follow?"
"Gentlemen," Raoul protested, "I think you're missing something here. Who cares if I attend the opera? You have plenty of elite who still attend, no, not as many as before, but if the rich and wealthy are not attending now, I hardly think I will change their minds."
"You're right," Andre said smoothly, cutting off a red-faced Firmin who looked entirely too ready to belabor the point. "But that's where gossip comes in."
"Gossip?"
"We'd like you to be seen about town with one of the opera's newest leading ladies," Andre said. "Her name is Sarah Beckworth, she is an English singer who has impressed us lately, and- and this is strictly between you and me, you understand- within two months' time, will replace la Carlotta as our diva!"
"Now do you understand?" Firmin asked in a tone of voice that implied Raoul was rather dense.
"Oh, I understand how this benefits you, and your opera," Raoul said sardonically. "Lead the pretty thing around, make eyes at her, and everyone will come see who it is the Vicomte love so well! But I do not understand how you think this will help me!"
"Because," Firmin said firmly, "you need to get over this Christine Daae once and for all, and start living your life. Get out there and have fun, and forget about her."
"It's high time, man," Andre said in a friendlier tone. "She isn't coming back."
"I suppose you're right," Raoul said. "I've known it for some time. Where shall I take this Sarah to dinner?"
Back in Rouen, Christine was doing exactly what she had used for a pretense to get there in the first place: Shopping for her honeymoon clothes. Though it would not be the grand excursion Raoul had tried to plan for the two of them, Christine still wanted to look nice for Erik, and Erik had given her the money for her shopping trip with little question that morning.
"Here you are," he said, giving her his purse and smiling as he thought of part of his O.G. 'salary' going to pay for his fiancée's trousseau. "I want you to be sure to pick out the best things; after all, it's on the opera!"