Chapter Summary: Val comforts Meg's nightmare and gives in to her request. And Erik beckons Tallis to a darkened garden.

Author's Note: Those - "things" - that Meg makes reference to were called "French Ticklers". These days we call them condoms.

CHAPTER FORTY

Val rolled over in the bed he shared with his wife, reaching out for her and upon finding nothing but empty space, Val sat bolt upright. "Meg," he called out, a note of panic in his voice.

There was no answer.

Val's eyes scanned the bedroom, the silver moonlight pouring in through the open drapes illuminating nothing but furniture. Val quickly got out of bed, throwing on his dressing gown before leaving the room. He moved quickly through the upstairs hallway, opening each and every door, unable to find his wife. Val ran down the stairs to the first floor and repeated his actions, still finding nothing. His heart began to pound in his chest and he could feel his whole body begin to tremble from fear. Val opened the last closed door on the first floor, the door that opened onto the stairs to the kitchen level and his breath stopped in his chest, Meg was sitting on the stairs, a shawl pulled tightly about her shoulders; Val could hear her sniffling. "Meg?" he said softly as he cautiously approached his wife, sitting down on the step next to her. "What are you doing?"

Meg just shook her head.

"You were not in our bed when I awoke and I became scared when I could not find my little ballet rat," Val told her as he reached out, his heart sinking as Meg pulled away from him.

"I would rather be that ballet rat again," she replied, her voice soft and trembling.

Val was slightly stunned. "What? Why?"

Meg shook her head and used a shawl-covered hand to wipe at her eyes. "Because then I would know what was expected of me. Because then I would know my place." She turned to look at her husband. "Because then I could not be hurt by loving someone." Meg's chin trembled as she looked at her husband and she burst into tears.

Val pulled his wife close, drawing her head to his shoulder. He kissed her head, rubbing her arm, trying to comfort Meg as her tears flowed freely. Val waited until he could feel Meg's slender shoulders stop shaking before he spoke again. "What is wrong?" he asked and felt the head on his shoulder shake. "Meg? Please! You know I cannot bear to see you like this!"

"I want to go back to the ballet," Meg whispered. "I want to go back to where I can take care of myself. I want to not have to ask servants to fetch and carry for me. I want to giggle with my friends and have men dance attendance upon me."

"Meg!" Val was shocked.

"I want to go back before I lose everything." Meg lifted a tear-streaked face to her husband. "I want to go back before I lose you."

"Oh Meg," Val replied as he placed a soft kiss on her forehead and drew her into his eyes. "Oh, my dear sweet little ballet rat. I love you. I love you more than my very life and you are not going to lose me."

"I am sure that Raoul said the same thing to Christine," Meg told him, her lips pouting.

Val shook his head. "What happened to Raoul, what has happened to Christine, is not going to happen to us."

Meg hit Val in the chest and pulled away from him. "You do not know that! Those types of people are everywhere! What if … what if there is another revolution? What if we get thrown in jail and get our heads cut off? What if some desperate men take you for ransom and kill you?" Tears streamed down her cheeks. "What if you find someone of your own class who knows all the rules and all the correct things to say and what fork to use and what dress to wear and …"

"Is that why you are sitting here – on the stairs to the kitchen?" Val wondered and placed a finger against his wife's lips as she nodded. "Meg," he began, a lone finger reaching up to brush away her tears. "From the day I first saw you whirling on the stage, I have wanted no one but you. I have never seen anyone but you. I have heard only your voice, your giggles since that day. I am the Baron whether my mother approves or not and nothing she can do can change that nor has she been able to dictate my life since the day my father died and I inherited the title and everything that goes with it. She could not have stopped me." Val smiled at his wife. "God could not have stopped me."

"Do not say that!" Meg scolded. "Please do not say that! God will hear and He will become angry and take you from me!"

"Listen to me!" Val added a touch of sternness to his normally gentle tone. "What happened to Raoul is not going to happen to me! I am here with you and I am staying here with you!"

Meg closed her eyes and nodded her head. "My head knows that," she said softly, "but my heart knows only the possibility – the fear – that it could happen to you." She opened her eyes. "I was so sure of everything when Christine was here. She and I were going to turn Paris on its ear. We were going to show them that where you came from did not matter. We would make plans and laugh about them. And now …" Meg shook her head. "And now she is a widow, with a child on the way, living in a place I do not know and she does not want me with her. I am all alone in this great house and all I can think of in the silence is that this is what it would be like without you and it frightens me!" Meg reached up a hand to palm her husband's cheek. "Why did I ever have to fall in love with you?"

Val melted into her touch. "Because if you did not, I would have died from a broken heart." He smiled at Meg. "I wish you would have told me these things sooner."

"I did not wish to worry you. You are busy with your life and you do not need to fret over the silly little no-account you married."

Val turned his head so that he could kiss the palm resting on his face. "I did not marry a silly little no-account." He turned back to Meg. "I married a silly little ballet rat who drives me to distraction and whom I am damned well certain I cannot live without."

"I cannot live without you," Meg replied and bit her bottom lip. "I want a baby." Now it was Meg's turn to place a finger against her husband's lips as he opened his mouth. "I know we agreed to wait but what has happened to Christine and Raoul has shown me that it is foolish to put things off. I do not know how I would cope if something were to happen to you and I did not have a piece of you to hold onto." Meg's lips turned down slightly. "I am sick of those … things … and I want a baby." She sniffled back her tears. "I want your baby."

Val studied his wife's face, her trembling chin, her tear-streaked cheeks, the pleading in her blue eyes. "You have no idea how much I would love to see you carry my child," Val shook his head, "but I do not want to have a child out of some desperate nightmare."

"I want your baby because I love you," Meg told him. "Is that not reason enough?"

"It is all the reason needed," Val whispered. He took his wife's hands and rose to his feet, bringing Meg with him. "I will never be able to deny you anything," he continued as he swept his wife into his arms.

Meg wrapped her arms about Val's neck, placing her head beneath his ear. "I love you," she breathed.

"I love you," Val replied as he climbed the stairs from the kitchen, carrying his wife back to bed. "And I am not going anywhere."

"I am not going anywhere," Erik was telling the woman who loved him at the same moment. He was sitting on the wall that enclosed the patio at the back of Madame Giry's home, Tallis next to him.

Erik had found sleep elusive since returning to Paris some five days earlier and on this night he had given up trying to find it. Instead he had quietly left his garret rooms and made his way through the sleeping town and into the dark woods. Eyes, used to years of opera cellar gloom, had no trouble in seeing through the deep shadows and haunted shapes. Erik moved quickly and easily through the woods until he reached the gardens at the back of Madame Giry's home. He had paused there, at the edge of the property, as he had done so many times before, questioning the sanity of his actions. What was he thinking? What did he hope to accomplish? It was the middle of the night! No sane person would approach a home in which they did not reside in the middle of the night!

"I am not exactly sane," Erik muttered, his decision made, his feet moving easily across the manicured lawn, his eyes never leaving one darkened second floor window.

He had stopped at the edge of the walled patio, his hand reaching into a potted plant and pulling out pieces of pea gravel. Erik had carefully thrown them at the window his eyes had never left, one after another, each tiny piece of stone making a "plink" noise as it tapped the glass. Finally, as his heart pounded to a stop, a shadowy shape appeared at the window, raising it, a head full of tousled hair poking out. "Come down!" Erik had ordered, the head sticking out of the window staring down at him. The head had disappeared and Erik had impatiently waited ten minutes until the shadowy shape from the window had walked through the kitchen door and into his arms.

Now Erik sat on that wall, Tallis beside him, trying to reassure her – and himself – that he was not going to leave.

"Of course, you are going to leave," Tallis told him softly, her hand in his, their fingers intertwined.

Annoyed by the noises at her window, Tallis had arisen, crossing her room, ready to shoo away the bird she was certain was pecking at the glass. She had been stunned to find Erik standing in the back garden. Angry when he ordered her down to his side. Giddy as she had thrown a simple dress over her night shift, running a brush quickly through her tangled hair and broken hearted as she had moved quietly through the darkened house, knowing that he was surely slipping away from her. Yet when she had rushed into Erik's arms, all Tallis could feel was the strength that always made her breath catch in her throat and her knees go weak.

"You want me to go," Erik said miserably, taking his hand back, standing, beginning to pace, unaware of the pained eyes that watched him in the darkness.

"I do not want you to leave," Tallis said softly. "I want to keep you here with me – always!" She refused to hang her head. "But I know that I cannot hold you."

Erik paused in his pacing. "Cannot or will not?" he wondered.

"Cannot," Tallis told him, holding out her hands, pulling them back when Erik did not reach for them. "I cannot."

"Do you even wish to try?" Erik snorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "All my life I have been searching for that one person to whom I could hold, the one person who would look past all my flaws and be willing to hold me back." An angry frown passed over his face. "I thought I had found that person in you. Perhaps, I thought wrongly."

"You did not think wrongly," Tallis replied. "I want to hold you. I think I have wanted to hold you from nearly the first moment we were introduced." She smiled. "There is something about you, about the sweet hesitancy that you hide beneath your gruff exterior, about the gentleness you insist you do not possess, that makes my heart pound and my blood race." Tallis sighed. "I see your face and I know your misdeeds and still I want to hold you; I cannot help the way I feel. I do not understand it. I do not know why it is so. All I know is that I do not wish to fight it."

"But you will not hold me!"

"I will not hold you here!" Tallis shot back, her voice rising with the emotion, the darkness of the night closing in upon her. "I cannot hold you here," she finished.

"Why not!" Erik demanded

"Because you are not mine to hold," Tallis said sniffling and wiping at the tears that threatened to overflow.

Erik crossed to her side, grasping her arms and lifting her to her feet. "I do not belong to Christine!" he told her angrily, reaching for her lips, determined to prove his words to Tallis. And to himself.

Erik felt as Tallis' arms snaked beneath his, her hands slowly creeping up his back to cling to his shoulders, her fingers massaging the taut muscles beneath his jacket. His own hands began to roam of their own accord as Tallis melted into his embrace, her body molding against his. Erik felt the uneven movement of her breasts against his chest, the sensation of their round softness – unhindered by stays or a corset – nearly driving him mad. His hands moved to the base of her spine, pulling Tallis closer to him, trying to pull her into him. Erik felt her hands move from his shoulders, down his back to the base of his own spine as she pulled him closer and closer, the touch setting him on fire. He opened his mouth against the lips pressed against his own, his tongue moving easily across them - the taste sweeter than any candy. Erik was surprised when those lips opened, allowing access, allowing his tongue to move across teeth, to intertwine with another tongue, to …

"Oh God!" Erik breathed as he shoved Tallis from him.

"What?" Tallis managed as her chest heaved from the sensations flooding her body, her hands reaching for him. "Do not stop!"

Erik took those hands and flung them away. "This is wrong!"

"Wrong?" Tallis breathed, unable to focus on anything but her pounding heart.

"This is all wrong!" Erik repeated as he turned his back, walking toward the break in the walled patio that lead to the gardens, to the woods - to home. He was surprised to find a hand grabbing his arm, whirling him around.

"You do not just do something like … like … that," Tallis began, glad for the darkness that hid her deep blush, "and walk away!"

"I should never have done that!"

"But why?" Tallis demanded, unable to keep the cry from her voice.

Erik reached a hesitant hand to her cheek. "Because I want better for you." He paused before taking Tallis by the hands and leading her to once again sit with him upon the wall. "Because for once in my life I have something that is pure and unsullied and mine alone and I do not wish to destroy it." He turned to look at Tallis. "I do not wish to destroy you as I have destroyed so many others in my life."

"That is not your choice alone," she told him.

"But it is," Erik insisted. "You will never be my mistress. You will be," he tightened his grip on the hands he held, "you are so much more to me." He took back one of his hands, allowing a fingertip to gently trace the contours of Tallis' face, her neck. "And when the time comes for us to be more than just friends, it will be under the rules that society and your God has set forth."

"It will never come," Tallis whispered, the words involuntarily escaping her lips.

"Perhaps not today or tomorrow but it will come!"

Tallis shook her head. "It will never come until your spirit is free. And your spirit will never be free until you can let go of Christine."

Erik thought in silence for a moment, listening to the woman beside him fighting back her tears. "You were correct," he finally said, "you cannot hold me here. And I am leaving." His heart broke at the sob that escaped from Tallis' lips and he ran a gentle hand down her arm, recapturing the hand he had freed. "I do not do this to make you weep!"

"I know," Tallis nodded, unable to stop her tears.

"Tallis," Erik began as softly and as gently as he could. "I destroyed a part of Christine in my quest to hold her, to win her, to keep her always by my side. I did even realize I had done such a thing until she turned her anger upon me - anger that I justly deserved. My sweet, innocent angel is gone and I had a good part in sending her away. I need to find some way to make it up to her, to try and restore that which I stole." Erik heaved a great sigh. "I owe it to the memory of her husband, the man I wanted to kill, the man I tried to kill. He is gone now and my angel faces an uncertain future, the only thing that even brings a smile to her face is the child she carries. I must make sure that she delivers a healthy child."

"But why!" Tallis interrupted.

"It is the only way I can hope to restore the innocence I stole from her, the innocence I stole from him, from both of them." Erik raised his eyes, vainly searching the stars for answers. "This child will be … is … the innocence I took and I will never be free until that innocence is restored." He raised a single hand to his lips. "I shall only be gone a week and then I shall return to you."

Tallis lower lip trembled. "But you will return to her again."

"And again. And again," Erik agreed. "I must be there for her until this child is born. Perhaps than …" his voice drifted away and he turned his head.

"Perhaps … than … what?" Tallis wondered.

"Perhaps than Christine will forgive me," he said softly, his voice lowering even more, "and I will finally be free to love you as you deserve."

"What?" Tallis squeaked upon hearing the one word she had longed to hear for weeks.

Erik turned back to her. "You have often said you love me," he told her, "and I know that you wish to hear those same words from my lips. Yet I will not say them to you until I am free to say them, to lay myself prostrate at your tiny feet, to offer up the black heart that you have so gradually changed into a healthy heart that is able to live, to love." There was a long moment of silence between them, Erik's impatience and frustration growing with each moment. "Will you not say something!"

"I do love you," Tallis replied. "I love you more than you shall ever know and I do long to hear you say that you love me in return." She sniffled. "It is the last thing for which I pray each night – that you will love me."

"I do want to love you," Erik said.

Tallis nodded her head. "I know, I know." Now it was her turn to sigh. "And I will wait for those words to pass your lips. As long as I know there is hope that you wish to be free of Christine and her memory, than I shall wait."

Erik lifted both of her hands to his lips. "Thank you ..." he began.

"But," Tallis interrupted him, "the moment I see that hope begin to fade, the moment I know that you would rather be with Christine, the moment I know she wants you back, I shall leave. I shall leave and you will never see me again."

"I would never!" Erik insisted.

"You would," Tallis told him as she shook her head. "You would do so and not even know you had done such a thing." Tallis leaned forward resting her smooth cheek against Erik's marred one. "And that is my greatest fear."

"I … I … I …" Erik could find no words, could only feel the softness that rested so willingly against the outward vision of his soul.

"It shall be all right," Tallis whispered into his ear, her breath a soft, loving caress against his skin. "I know you more than you know yourself and for now I am content to wait."

"Would that I had met you earlier," Erik whispered back. "I should be a far better person – a far better man – if I had done so."

Tallis turned her head, reaching for his lips, the kiss gentle and loving. "But I do not know that I would have loved that man," she said against the lips she refused to abandon, her eyes reaching deep through Erik's, into his soul. "I love you because of all the flaws, the complications, the darkness and not in spite of them."

Erik studied the gray eyes that searched his own golden ones, seeing in them calm seas, a safe harborage. He drew Tallis to him, placing her head upon his shoulder, resting his head against the brown hair that felt like spun silk. "You are my angel," he whispered.

And above them, Madame Giry listened quietly at an open window, ever vigilant when it came to those she loved. She turned and moved easily back to her bed, her eyes heavy from more than mere sleep. "Let him believe and trust in the words he so easily speaks," the prayer came from her lips; Antoinette raised her eyes to the ceiling, searching for heaven. "And let it be enough - for them both."