Hello :)

Thank you everyone for your reviews and thoughts! It makes me so happy.

Now, enjoy chapters 39-42. I'll add chapter 43 tomorrow ;)

Lovephantom83

Damned him. Damned him and damned the day she was found. Everything had gone so well and, just for a moment, she believed she was really happy. What a ridiculous idea, wasn't it? Thinking that he could correspond her feelings or at least that he was beginning to reciprocate them…

And all because of that angelic face, even though, to be sincere, deep down she had nothing personal to reproach her. She was even beginning to understand the reason why he had looked at her in the way he did, the reason why he had painted her portrait and she could imagine very well how they might have had a romance in the past. Christine possessed practically everything she seemed to lack of: an ethereal beauty, sweetness, gentleness and she probably had some special talent to top it all.

Still, somehow, she wanted to believe that She was nothing but part of a time that had passed for both of them. She simply couldn't bring herself to accept that someone who had arrived all of a sudden could shatter her newly started dream. She loved him!

Ah, all of that would only make her sink faster and deeper in her despair. As a lonely tear rolled down her cheek, she left the house. She had things to do, things he had ordered her to do, of course. Things for their beautiful guest.

'We won't get absolutely anything at this pace', Maurice sighed in exasperation. 'In the precious time we have wasted interviewing that girl, our objective could very well be in the other end of France by now, damn it!'.

'It was useless, anyway', Jacques turned his attention to his partner. 'That girl was shaking like a leaf and besides, she knew absolutely nothing that might have helped us'.

Édmond nodded. The truth was that things were going out of their hands. As more days passed by without finding her, their aims- his aims- looked harder and harder to achieve. It was not a question of getting his hands on a great family fortune or a title anymore, but to claim what was rightfully his. His place in the world and his true origins. He had found one of the best ways to obtain that and, taking into account that they had rejected his civilized demands, he had been forced to resort to drastic measures.

When he looked away, his gaze crossed with a familiar face again. The small girl seemed to walk all the streets of Paris very often.

And he might have found his source of information at last.

She was perfect for the job. Slightly lifting his hat in a gesture of greetings, he smiled at her and retired with the rest of the gang.

The girl had been really kind to her. Her body still felt sore and weak. She had helped her to get out of bed very gently. When she had left her in the bathroom, the girl had given her a hand to undo the ties of her corset, making it easier for her to undress. Then, she retired. Christine reckoned that she had heard Erik speaking to the girl. By what little she had seen when the two of them where together, she had guessed that there was quite a lot of trust between them and something else that escaped her. Complicity, perhaps?

She let the unconfortable corset slip down her body and onto the floor and submerged in the delightful warm water mixed with scented oils. She leant her head back and got lost in the smell of roses, which fused perfectly well with the ascending columns of vapour. She remembered how conforting the hug they had shared moments before had been. How she had longed for his arms through all that time.

The marvellous sensation disappeared and her mind turned to Erik again.

Had he forgotten her in all that time and was that girl the focus of his attentions, her replacement, now?