Monsieur Richard sighed in the back of the cab; he cursed the day he had agreed to manage the old estate house in the country side. Every time he sold it, the owners ended up leaving, saying the house was impossible to live in, and he would have to go to work all over again. It always happened in the same way; he would receive a letter from the most recent owner saying that they had left, and he would have to go out and re assess the house and then put it back on the market.

When he had seen he had received a letter from Monsieur Beaumont, he had not even bothered to read it, he knew what it said. He shook his head, he had thought that this man might actually have stayed for awhile; he had been strange and secluded; a perfect match for the crumbling old estate. Apparently even he could not stand the place. Richard had heard the complaints from former tenants hundreds of times; all complaining of a ghost in the house.

He did not believe in ghosts, but it was true that the estate possessed a strange air; an uncomfortable feeling which he would not have wanted to live with.

As the cab turned down the drive he had to remove his glasses and rub them on his shirt in order to make sure he was truly seeing what he thought he was seeing. There was construction going on at the house. There were people coming in and out of the doors and milling about the lawn. The estate still held the power to emote strangeness, but it seemed so amazingly different; so lively.

He got out of the cab and watched the goings on with interest, and then he spotted Monsieur Beaumont; there was quite a change in the man he saw before him now and the man he had sold the house to a month before. He had more color in his skin and he seemed in a much better mood,

"Monsieur Richard, what are you doing here?" he looked quite perplexed, "I did not ask you to come out here in my letter did I?"

"Well, to be honest Monsieur, I did not read the letter," he admitted, feeling a bit foolish, "usually whenever I get a letter from this house it is to inform me that they have left the house for good,"

"I am not leaving," Erik said, "I simply contacted you to find out about the people you manage this estate for,"

"Oh," Monsieur Richard cursed his rash behavior and this whole wasted afternoon, "I see,"

The idea had come to Erik suddenly one night and he had not believed he could have been so foolish as to not think of it before; if he wanted information about the original owners of the house, all he had to do was ask the estate manager. He had written what he had hoped would sound like a very civil and unassuming letter to Monsieur Richard; asking his for information because in their renovation they had come across some belongings that he thought the owners might want back.

Erik had hoped it did not sound as though he was madly obsessed with the ghost in the house and wanted to find out as much as he could about her. He had not wanted Richard to come to the estate by any means, but as he was here already, there seemed to be nothing else left to say except…

"If you would follow me? I did have something I wanted to discuss with you,"

Richard followed Erik into the old estate house; the house was now close to being finished; the downstairs was half done and upstairs there were several rooms completed. Erik lead Richard to the living room,

"The reason I wrote you that letter," Erik began as they sat, deciding not to waist a moment, "Was because we found some things belonging to the former owners and I would like to send it all back to them, if that is possible,"

"Oh!" Richard said with mild surprise, "What did you find?"

Erik hesitated momentarily, "We found a chest of things belonging to an Annabelle Beaux; some of the things; bits of jewelry, seemed like they should go back to the family," it was true that they had found some pieces in the chest upon further examination, and Erik really did want to send them back to their original owners,

"Ah yes…" Richard began, "Annabelle Beaux was the mother of the current Countess Antoinette Dior; she lives in Lyon with her two daughters, I do have their address if you wish to contact them,"

Erik was a happy man that night. He had a real live connection to the ghost now; she was no longer a mystery to him; he knew her now. And he was going to know more. The ghost had been a good companion, for more reasons than one. But for the ghost, Erik realized that he would be dyed. He had wanted to kill himself; and he now knew, or wanted to believe, that the ghost had caused the noise that had made his hand jerk and miss his skull. The ghost had wanted him alive; and in this was the other benefit of the haunted dancing figure of Annabelle Beaux; she was a real ghost, and Erik realized, she was something he was not.

Erik was not dead, he was not a ghost. He had thought of himself as such for so long, he had truly believed it. However, faced with an authentic specter, he understood; he was part of the living world, and he could try to act like it.

And now he had a connection to this ghost which had been his motivating force behind his attempts at self improvement. He was going to write to Countess Dior.

The Dior family was wealthy and well known, but what was not so well know was that their wealth was slowly depleting. After the death of the Count Dior, the family had fallen on hard times. The Countess had slowly become less and less coherent, so aggrieved was she after the death of her husband. Receiving the letter from the mysterious Erik Beaumont excided her quite a bit,

"Oh my! Clair!" she said to her daughter as read the letter in her drawing room, "What do you think of this! Someone finally had the gall to stay in our estate! And they found some of your grandmother Annabelle's old things!"

"That is wonderful mother," she said as she sipped tea; she usually said things like this to her mother, using phrases like, 'that is wonderful,' or 'very good' or 'splendid' they were simply terms of appeasement, she actually did not care what things of her grandmother's someone had found,

"And he wants to know if we want them back!" Countess Dior paused a moment, then she turned to look at her daughter, "I told you about your grandmother, Did I not?"

"Yes mother, you did," She spoke though she knew that nothing she said would stop her mother from re telling her story,

"She was a dancer; she had a dream, and talent! My God she had talent! Talent that passed me over of course, but you and your sister have it!"

Clair shook her head and let her mother's tale wash over her, "She was as wild as the wind too, she had a lover she was going to run away with! Can you imagine?"

"No mother, I cannot," Clair said dutifully,

"Well, I am going to write to this Erik Beaumont and tell him you will be going to pick up my mothers things in person,"

"What?" Clair was shocked,

"Well, I am not going to send you along darling; your sister and her fiancé will go as well," Antoinette Dior spoke in a matter of fact tone,

"Mother, really, how can you do this? We don't even know anything about this man!" Clair cringed at the idea of going on a trip to see a strange man with only her sister and her sister's fiancé as company,

"We know that he can afford the estate house, and that is more than enough," the Countess told her daughter, and Clair looked away; she knew their funds were depleting, and that she needed to marry to secure a future, and the longer she waited the fewer men would consent to marry her because she had less money,

It was for this reason that Clair Dior climbed into a carriage one week after receiving the latter from Erik Beaumont. Clair sat with her hands folded and her clear, light blue eyes looking out the window. Her blond hair was pulled back in a loose bun and she straightened her skirts. Clair was by all accounts a beautiful woman, and she had once been a happy woman. She had fallen in love with a respectable Englishman, William Kent, but he had abruptly ended their courtship a month prior to receiving the letter, and Clair was still quite heartbroken.

She was not looking forward to this set up her mother had planned for her, and she did not look across her seat to see her sister.

Clair's sister, Adrienne Dior, was a phenomenon. As far as everyone was concerned, she had been born into the wrong family, and she should have been a princess or a queen. Her stunning beauty was admired by all who met her; she had long, sleek dark hair and deep blue, almost black, eyes. She had a cool manner which only came to people who thought they were of great importance.

Adrienne had taken Paris by storm the year of her coming out, and she had had at least fifty proposals of marriage in her lifetime. For years she had been given all she wanted, and this had left her quite jaded and her comments were usually dripping with sarcasm. Despite all this, everyone loved her.

The man she had finally chosen to be her husband was the most eligible bachelor in all of Paris; the Count Philippe de Chagny. Philippe had been convinced that the single life with many affairs was better for him, until he had met Adrienne. He had told his brother he doubted there was a woman more beautiful in all the world. Philippe had determinedly courted Adrienne until she had finally agreed to marry him.

However, Adrienne did not love him, she had never loved a man, and Clair knew this and she held it as the one thing she had over her sister. Clair took solace in the fact that even though everyone loved Adrienne; she lived a lonely life trapped in her own cynicism.

"Well, this should be entertaining," Philippe broke the silence of the cab,

"It will be everything but," Adrienne spoke, her voice cold and lazy, "It will be silly, pointless, and an utter waste of time,"

Clair said nothing; what could she say? She wanted to point out to her sister that if she was not doing this, she would simply be moping about something else being unentertaining. Clair knew that nothing amused her sister.

The ride to the estate was beautiful to Clair; she had been spending most of her time inside her house since her disengagement with William, and she had forgotten how beautiful the countryside looked in summer,

Clair had only been to the estate house once years ago, but she remembered it as a sad place; a lonely place into which none wished to enter. She wondered if it had changed very much over the years. Clair sighed, keeping her face toward the window, she doubted that it would have changed greatly; no one had lived in it long enough to change it…except this Erik fellow.

Clair hoped he would be a handsome, kind man who could perhaps make her forget William. She badly wanted to be rid of the memories of William's blue eyes and light brown hair. Clair let her mind go and she pictured an elegant man greeting her at the estate house, a man who would be completely taken with her and ignore her sister.

As the day came to a close, the cab turned down a now well used drive and Clair knew they had arrived. She felt nervous; Adrienne felt nothing at all, and Philippe de Chagny simply wanted to get this over with.

Erik was not expecting them. The Countess Dior had written him to inform him that her two daughters would be coming to collect the items he had found, but then on the next line she had written that they would be accompanied by Philippe de Chagny, who was engaged to one of the girls. To Erik this was simply unacceptable; he refused to have a de Chagny in his almost fully renovated home.

He wrote to the Countess, saying that he would happily ship the belongings of Annabelle to her, and that the girls need not be troubled with a trip up to him. Erik had thought Nadir had brought it into the small town nearby with the rest of the mail; the workers notes to family and friends in Paris, but the latter to the Countess had never been sent. It had been laid on the table with the rest of the mail, but then, in a strange occurrence, though perhaps in this house it was not so strange, the letter had blown clean off the table and out of an open window.

This was why Erik watched the now approaching carriage with curiosity.