A/N: I do not own the Phantom of the Opera, although one day if I'm really, really rich I might.
Here is the new chapter, and yes, it explains a bit what went on those two years. I shall be off wassaling and making Christmas cheer the next few days so updating will take a bit longer than usual.
Erik walked the gardens when every one else was asleep. He liked to feel the cool night breeze and watch the moonlight shine on Katerina's potted roses.
The notion still made him smile; her roses. He still mused as to how he had come to be with her in the 'temporary' house and how he had come to be the legal owner of the theater, or the Opera Fantome, as Katerina had christened it.
She had stayed the evening with him and for much longer after that. At first she had stayed in her dressing room, but after three months she decided that she simply was not going to keep traipsing up and down the catacombs, she claimed that a decision needed to be made. It was the first time he had seen her so frank with herself and she had found all the right words on the first try.
So, subsequently and without his answer, she had moved into the bedroom with the swan bed. There he had grown used to her tutting and her painting. It became as a familiar noise to him as his music. Although he found that when he played she would quickly go silent, as if to catch every note that echoed through the chambers.
It was a few months after that when she sold her first painting, a scene of a couple walking along an alleyway at night, to a duchess with an eye for the mysterious. Other people sought her out and for a time she sold paintings from her brothers shop. Erik saw the attention that she could gain. The wealth and the prestige. He had urged her to leave him, to find solace in her paintings.
He had never seen her angry before.
She had returned after almost a week and had gone to sleep in what was now her swan bed and promptly forgot that he had said anything to her.
He let the matter fall, but a year passed with him growing more nervous by the day. He wanted to know of a future, and if there was none he did not want her presence to remain.
But he could not bring himself to cast her out.
She had wound her way into his heart like not even Madame Giry or Christine had.
Somewhere along the way she had become his friend and confidant.
And he had become hers. He now understood the look in her eyes when she glanced up at him. Peeking over a canvas or book. She was in love with him.
It scared him to think of it.
It scared him to know that he was the reason she smiled, that he was the reason she spoke more, that he was becoming the reason that she painted.
He, who had so longed for love, found it seemingly presented to him, had quickly snatched himself away.
He had hoped that his silence would drive her to leave. Yet, they remained living in that uneasy tension for a time until one morning he was awoken by her screaming. He came out of his room long enough to see her launch a painting into the underground lake and storm into the tunnel that led to the city.
He dredged the painting from the lake to find most of it smeared but still clearly outlined was a couple embracing. A couple painted in deep blacks and reds. He had sighed and propped it up on the shore to dry.
The next act in his little drama had come completely unexpected.
Katerina had returned that night sobbing, saying that she heard they were going to tear the theater down. They were going to sink it into the lake beneath. It was when she sat sobbing on the edge of the swan bed that she had cried out to him,
"Erik, they are going to destroy our home!"
He had taken her in his arms and swiftly resolved to right this matter, if only to not see her face lined with tears and sorrow.
A plan was quickly made, rumors spread through the city, rumors that might discourage the fops, Firmin and Andre from destroying their shame, rumors of a potential buyer. Why sink the opera house if they could turn a profit from it instead? It was what their predecessor had done, and why not they as well?
It had been a risky venture, but Erik was wealthy, wealthy enough to buy what he had long ago tried to bully into his possession. Katerina was thrilled and aided him wonderfully at every turn.
It was she that had come up with their 'marriage'. She had come up with it quickly while speaking to the estate agent that was in charge of selling the theater. They had arranged their meeting in the very opera house so that Erik could stand by and listen.
"I see your offer is quite adequate, but I wonder how a young lady like yourself came into such money."
He had cursed himself for his ignorance of Parisian society. She was a woman, she was unwed, and she had no name for herself save as an independent painter of some regard.
She had just laughed gaily.
"Oh Monsieur, it is not my money, but my husbands."
Erik had held his breath as she constructed her ruse.
"I see…"
"Yes, we are new to the city, we originally had an estate in Marseilles but he felt the need to come to the city, wanderlust, you understand, and he simply fell in love with the theater. We saw it on the carriage ride to our temporary estate. He found out all about its history and I daresay became quite enamored with such a mysterious past."
"Ah, I did not know, you are listed here as a Mademoiselle Katerina LeSuran."
Erik had watched her clasp her hand to her mouth and noticed that the golden ring of her mothers she usually wore had suddenly switched hands and fingers.
"Why on earth are they using my maiden name? I shall have to have that corrected immediately."
"Well, Madame, since you are wed, your husband will have to cosign on this building."
To this she had simply giggled again, "Oh non, I manage my husband's estates, you see he has a chronic illness and is not able to leave our home."
What a liar she had been!
A brilliant liar, for after he forged the right papers for her, she now had power of attorney over a faux estate.
And so the person of Madame Durand had been born.
She had impressed him with her acting, playing the part of devoted wife by day and illicit collaborator by night. It was quite obvious that she was doing this for her theater; and for him. Over the last month as their plan had come together he felt the need more and more to make her lie, a truth.
He clutched at the ring in his pocket. Three nights past he had bribed a jeweler to remain open after hours and purchased a proper ring for Katerina. It was a silver band etched in a swirled pattern that was to remind the wearer of waves. It reminded him of her Icarus. It reminded him of the circumstances of their first meeting.
What if Icarus had been found before he had drowned?
What if someone had taken the man, broken wings and all, and cared for him?
These thoughts tore at his heart and his mind. He would risk his current relationship with her if he asked her to wed; he didn't know if he could take that risk.
"Get out of my garden you vagabond!"
Her voice knocked him off his train of thought. He looked up at her window which she now sat in, looking deliciously tousled.
"Erik, go to bed before I have the gendarmes come and drag you off."
He smiled at her and called up, "What light through yonder window breaks?"
"I'll break your window… Come inside before you catch a chill."
With a sigh; he let himself back in through the garden door before 'Madame Durand' woke the entire block with her yelling.
"Of course we will have an opening gala," Madame Durand addressed a few scattered members of the press while standing on the theater steps.
The sign with the new name of the theater had been erected that morning and it had seemed to cause some excitement among the community.
"The repairs to the theater will take as long as three months. The building was in considerable disrepair and we do not want to take our chances with any more… accidents."
A hush fell over the press and the eagerness glittered in their eyes.
"Thank you, that is all for today."
Katerina slipped inside the theater grinning like a cat.
"You know exactly how to play those people," Erik wandered his new study, pulling books from crates and placing them on the shelves as Katerina dusted.
"Well, I'd have to know or else all this would be for nothing."
"Your pride may get you in trouble."
"Black, said the pot to the kettle."
A wiry smile crossed his lips as he knelt beside a crate and flipped through a medical journal he had found scattered among his things.
"Ah, that would be mine," Katerina said taking it from his hands and settling on the divan.
He watched her stretch her dainty legs out on the red velvet and thumb through the book, her eyes glittering with anticipation. She had worn a crème colored dress with more frills than she usually allowed on her clothing, for she had known that the press would be about today. There was a smudge of plaster in her dark hair and her slender hands were discolored from the wood stain she had been fiddling with that morning. He knew that Giovanni's would be stained as well. She had taken the little orphan under her wing after he had gotten a job in the stables that was beyond his ability. Now you could not see Madame Durand without little Giovanni trailing behind her, his arms filled with papers or taking short scrawling notes on things he needed to remind her of. Erik's hand clutched the ring in his pocket once more; the woman's kindness seemed to be unending.
It was the child's tiny knock and voice that broke him of his reverie.
"Madame? The plasterer is here."
Katerina spoke without looking up from her book, "Thank you Gio; now go show him the plans for the entrance hall and I shall be down in a moment."
"Yes, Madame."
Erik listened to the child's uneven footsteps make their way down the hall.
"Katerina, just how does that tot know where the door to my study is?"
She studied a passage for a moment before looking at him, "Well, I did not drag all your things up here by myself."
"So now I can be undone by a five year old?"
Katerina snorted, "He's eight, he's just small for his age and he's too clever and adores me too much to tell anyone. I made him promise."
"Vanity, Katerina, pride."
"Since when did you become a priest?"
Over the last month, with her new found confidence, she had quickly figured out the right words to make him silent. Swiftly, she jumped up and kissed the top of his head before pressing the hidden latch and gliding out into the hallway.
Yay! New chapter! It's always exciting. I simply adore all yor reviews, they are a wonderful deterrent of writers block. So please keep them coming, I love hearing from you.