Hi everybody! The good news is: there is an update this week. The bad news is: there might not be another one for 2-3 weeks. I know, I know, I am bad. :-( I hope you will still stick with me despite the long wait, and maybe leave me a review or two? You know, readers are a writer's inspiration! So, every favorite, alert, review is a motivation... (Thanks to all those who already do support me with such small signs of appreciation!)

I do hope, though, that you will be happy with the new chapter, after all, things are going to look up for our love-birds! And keep in mind that I dont own those characters...

Chapter 27 – Love Me, That's All I Ask Of You

A week later Christine and Mme. Giry arrived in London. Christine was a nervous wrack. In a way she was looking forward to seeing Erik again and to explaining the whole situation to him, but on the other hand she feared their encounter. She had no idea how he would react to the revelations she was going to present him with. Would he understand that she had not had much of a choice in marrying Raoul? Would he accept that she had been tricked and thus willing to forgive her? Or would he blame her for her lack of trust and faith in him?

Christine sighed. How could he not blame her? Now that she knew the truth she blamed herself every minute of every day for having walked into Raoul's trap that easily, for having believed Raoul's lies.

But even if Erik believed her and found it in himself to forgive her for her betrayal, could he ever get past the fact that she was not only damaged goods but had allowed another man to treat her like a whore in public? Wouldn't he be disgusted with her now after having watched her with Raoul? After he had witnessed that she never objected when Raoul's hands were all over her in public?

The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that no matter what she would say or do, Erik would never be able to forgive her. At best he would be able to understand why she had done what she had done, but there was no way he would want her now. He would still despise her the way any honorable man despises a loose woman.

"Don't worry too much, child," Mme. Giry tried to comfort the brooding young woman. "His love cannot have died that easily. And once he knows what you have been going through, he will not be able to keep up his cold distance any longer. He will take you into his arms and make sure no harm will come to you ever again." She smiled. "If I am not mistaken, I think our boy might even feel guilty for not having been able to protect you and keep you safe, and he might blame himself for everything that has happened."

Christine was not convinced. But she nodded bravely. The dreaded moment was approaching. She had just packed all the evidence into her huge bag again and was about to set out for "The Music House" to meet Erik there. She would have to go there alone. For some reason Mme. Giry refused to accompany her. When Christine had asked her to come with her, to help her convince Erik, her surrogate mother had just smiled. "This is between you and Erik, my dear," she had said. "An old woman like myself would just be in the way. The two of you will be more comfortable without me, discussing your private problems."

Christine was not sure the Madame was right. Somehow she thought that the presence of a third person, somebody that he respected, might help keep Erik calm and make him more willing to listen to her. But Mme. Giry had made her decision and could not be swayed.

"I will try and help you in another way, though," Antoinette promised. "I will go and meet this friend of Erik's, this Nadir Khan. I will try to find out how Erik saw things when he did not receive our letters any longer, and then I will explain the situation to him. He seems a reasonable man and might be able to help your cause. I am sure his word does carry some weight with Erik, so in case your first meeting does not go the way we hope it will, maybe this Monsieur Khan might be able to talk some sense into the man."

Christine nodded. Mme. Giry was probably right. It could not hurt to get the Persian's support. But she was not too convinced either that having him as her ally would help. "If Erik thinks of me now as an unfaithful woman and a shameless whore, nothing and nobody will make him change his mind," she thought sadly.

Xxxx

When she arrived at "The Music House", she immediately asked for Monsieur Givenould. She was told that Erik was busy inspecting the painting of new sets, but would be available shortly. Would she mind waiting in Monsieur Givenould's office? Christine nodded, nervously playing with her gloves. She was glad the concierge had not asked for the purpose of her visit. He had most likely recognized her from her previous visits with Raoul and probably assumed that she was here to discuss future production exchanges or maybe even negotiate for another recital.

When Erik returned from the painter's workshop half an hour later, he was told that a lady was waiting for him in his office. "The French lady," the stagehand, who had shown Christine to the office, explained. "The wife of the nobleman, the one who did a recital once."

Erik stared at him. Christine? What was she doing in London, and in his office? He could not quite believe it. "Ch... You mean, Madame de Chagny?" he asked.

The stagehand nodded. "Yes, that's the name. That singer turned aristocrat or whatever she was. That one. She's in your office."

Erik suddenly could not reach his office fast enough. He could not imagine what reason Christine might have for coming to see him, but he was eager to find out. He had a feeling that something important might have happened that had brought her here.

When he entered his office, Christine stood to greet him. Erik stared at her in wonder. The dress she was wearing was elegant, but extremely modest, not showing off too much cleavage. What a difference to her very low-cut dresses during her previous visits! She seemed a bit nervous, but if possible, even more beautiful than ever.

For a moment they simply stared at one another, then Christine averted her eyes and began to nervously play with her glove again. This was now the decisive moment, her one and only chance to explain to Erik what had happened. The next few minutes would either condemn her forever or bring some hope back into her life.

"Erik," she began hesitantly, then quickly corrected herself. "I mean, Monsieur Givenould,..." It somehow seemed wrong for her to address him by his first name after she had betrayed him by marrying Raoul.

"I... that is... ," she stammered, wringing her hands. "I wanted to tell you... show you..." God, this was more difficult than she had thought. She felt Erik's scrutinizing gaze upon her and became even more nervous. "I... Mme. Giry meant... um... "

She finally broke down, fell into the chair again, pressed her hands to her eyes and sobbed. "I can't do this," she whimpered.

"Christine," Erik's calm voice interrupted her crying. "What is the meaning of this? What are you trying to tell me? Calm down, nobody is going to hurt you."

"This," Christine sobbed, pointing at a bag he had not noticed before. "I.. see for yourself!"

Erik hesitated for a moment. Should he check out the bag or try to comfort Christine? The woman was clearly hysteric. She behaved as if she expected him to bite her head off the next moment or something like that. He was curious about the bag, yes, but that could wait. Christine needed him. If he did not manage to comfort her, she was in danger of suffering a nervous shock or breakdown.

His love for the miserable woman won out. Erik quickly went to the chair she was sitting in, knelt down next to it and put his arms around her. "Christine," he cooed into her ear. "Calm down, you are safe. Whatever it is you are upset about, will be taken care of shortly. Just tell me what it is that makes you cry so hard."

Christine shivered. It was so good to feel his arms around her, to hear him speak to her so kindly. Oh, how soon this all would be over, once he knew how she had lost all faith in him and had allowed Raoul to trick her.

"You will not be so kind to me once you know everything," she wailed. "You will hate me, spit at me, despise me, for I betrayed you in the most terrible way!"

Erik continued to talk to her, while beginning to caress her hair. "Sh, Christine, just tell me what is troubling you," he told her. Seeing her so miserable almost hurt him physically. Her tears broke his heart.

"Just open the bag," Christine sobbed. "And then... " She turned away from Erik's caresses. "I don't deserve your compassion," she cried. "Just open that bag and let's be done with this! I … I cannot … this is too much for me!"

Erik finally realized that she would not calm down until he had had a look at the bag and its contents. He could not imagine for the world what could be in there that could upset Christine so much, but in her opinion it obviously was of the greatest importance that he have a look at that damned bag.

In order to reassure her, Erik therefore approached the bag and cautiously opened it. It seemed filled with all sorts of papers. He carefully put out the first folder and opened it.

"Christine!" Erik was not sure what it was he was looking at. Letters, all sorts of letters, most of them unopened. Letters he had sent to Christine and Antoinette through Nadir, that had clearly been posted but never had been opened. Letters to him from both ladies, that were sealed but had never been mailed. "What is the meaning of this?"

Erik had no explanation for all this. He somewhat understood that he was looking at letters the ladies had written to him before Christine's wedding, during the time he had been waiting for news from them so desperately, but for some reason those letters had never been posted. But why and how? And why for Heaven's sake, had the two ladies not opened the letters he had written to them? For the post stamp on his own letters clearly indicated they were from that time period when he had implored them both to finally write again, to tell him that they still thought of him and cared for him.

"Raoul!" Christine spat.

"The Vicomte?" Erik still did not quite understand. "How does he enter into all this? What has he to do with those letters?"

"Everything!" The hatred for her dead husband that had tricked her so badly finally took over. "He intercepted our letters. He must have read some of them, for he always knew where you had gone. After a while he apparently decided that neither of us should receive another letter. He must have had help from Firmin and André. I never knew until … he had a hidden compartment in the desk. I was looking for notes from negotiations with a soprano when I found..."

"Christine, I do not understand one word you are saying," Erik once again tried to make her tell her story in a more coherent way. "You say Raoul must have read our letters, but at first he kept forwarding them. After a while he must have confiscated them, even without reading them, is that what you wanted to tell me?"

Christine nodded. "Yes," she admitted. "I only found out a few days ago. I was looking for a document he had been safekeeping for the managers. I am still their patron, you know," she explained. "I could not find it, so I searched everything and finally discovered this hidden compartment in his desk, behind the third drawer. That's where I found those letters and..."

She pointed at the bag, unable to continue.

"There is more?" Erik asked incredulously. If what Christine had told him was true and Raoul had intercepted their letters, he could understand how she might have felt abandoned by him, how she might have doubted his love and finally had accepted the Vicomte's proposal.

Christine nodded. "Take out that package," she said, "and then tell me if you have ever before seen such a leaflet. Though I guess I know the answer," she added dejectedly.

Erik pulled out a rather large bundle, obviously some papers, still wrapped. When he removed the outer wrapping, he stared at the announcement of a concert to celebrate his own engagement to his dear Amanda-Ann. His eyes widened. "What is that?" he asked Christine. "Where did you get that? We never had such a concert to begin with, and the … the date is all wrong!"

Christine nodded. Ever since she had found those hundreds of copies of the leaflet, she had known that the one Raoul had used to make her marry him had been forged by the Vicomte to make her believe that Erik had abandoned her for another. But she needed to be absolutely sure about that.

"Can you swear this?" she asked. "That... that this is a fraud?"

"Of course it is a fraud!" Erik exclaimed. "Ask my father-in-law! We never had such an announcement printed, we never had such a concert, Amanda-Ann's health would not have allowed such a public celebration of our engagement anyway, and the date is all wrong. I only proposed to Amanda-Ann weeks later, and only because..."

"Because I had married Raoul by then," Christine finished for him, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes, that, and because her father begged me to marry her," Erik confessed.

"He what?" Christine's mouth fell open.

"He had realized that Amanda-Ann loved me," Erik explained. "He was fairly certain that my feelings for her were not those of a lover, but rather of a brother or friend. He asked me if my heart was free or if another woman had my word. I had just learned about your marriage and therefore told him that the woman I had hoped to marry had betrayed me, and that I would therefore remain unmarried for the rest of my life. Then he told me about Amanda-Ann's feelings for me and asked if it would be too much to ask of me to make her happy."

Christine almost cried again at the thought of Amanda-Ann. "She never knew you only married her out of pity and because her father asked you to do so," she said.

"She was the most wonderful wife any man could hope for," Erik admitted. "And I did love her more than I myself realized, just not... but I miss her every minute of every day. If I did not lose my mind when you married that Vicomte, it is thanks to her. Her love was like the healing balm on my broken heart."

"Raoul showed me such a leaflet," Christine mumbled. "He said he had received it from a contact of his in London. I thought it was genuine."

"You had not heard from me in months," Erik began to understand what had happened. "And when you saw this apparent proof of my infidelity..."

Christine nodded. "And then Meg broke her ankle," she explained, rummaging through the bottom of the bag and producing a doctor's bill proofing that Meg's accident had happened around the same time. "And Raul said that as the patron he could fire her during her convalescence, and that he would make sure she was out in the streets and her mother as well, if I did not marry him. And that he would tell the police where "the Phantom" had gone."

Erik nodded. "So you agreed to marry him."

Christine nodded, her cheeks burning with shame. "Yes. I believed his lies. I lost my trust in you and rather believed him, even though I should have known better. It is all my fault, Erik. I am not here to beg your forgiveness for my betrayal, but because I think you deserve to know the truth as well. That's why I came immediately after I found all the evidence and figured out what had really happened."

"You are not at fault," Erik tried to comfort her, for now that he knew the truth, she seemed to him as innocent and blameless as ever. And if possible he loved her even more than before. She had betrayed him only to keep him and Meg safe, and he knew that she had suffered a lot during her marriage to the Vicomte. "There is nothing you need forgiveness for," he reassured her. "You were young and lonely, you were confronted with what seemed like proof of my betrayal and you tried to protect those you love, me, Meg and Antoinette. That was a noble motive of yours."

He once again took her into his arms. "Do you still love me, Christine?" he asked tenderly. "Can we pretend none of this happened and start again? Will you give me a second chance?"

"I do not deserve you!" Christine tried with all her strength to wiggle out of Erik's embrace. "There is no chance for us now, not after what Raoul did to me, after the way he treated me! No man wants to marry a dirty whore, and he turned me into one!"

"You are no dirty whore, Christine," Erik tried to calm her. "I know he treated you like one, I saw how he touched you inappropriately in my presence. I also understand that you could not protest, that he had probably threatened you to inform the police about my true identity should you not endure his shameless behavior."

"But I was his whore in a way," Christine explained.

"Did you enjoy it?" Erik asked pointedly.

"Enjoy it? Are you mad? How can you insult me so?" Christine slapped Erik hard across the face, making his skin-like mask fly off. "Of course not! How do you think I liked it having to open my blouse and bare my breasts for him whenever he felt like it? Once he even rang for the butler with my breasts completely exposed and laughed at my embarrassment. And in our bedroom... " She was too embarrassed to describe her ordeal in more detail. "He once said, he would prefer if I never had any clothes on. Ever..." she sobbed. "And you think I enjoyed that? Being a piece of flesh to him he could grope at will, a body he could use for his own pleasure and satisfaction whenever he felt like it?"

Erik laughed. "Listen to you, Christine!" he said. "Don't you realize that every word you say confirms that you are nothing like a whore at all? You let him use you because he had means to ensure your obedience. You did not enjoy it, on the contrary, you still feel humiliated and sullied because of it. You are not missing his inappropriate behavior in the least. Therefore stop calling yourself a whore. I know you are not. You are still worthy of love. That an evil man has mistreated and abused you does not make you unworthy in my eyes. On the contrary. It only makes me want to make it all up to you, to fill the rest of your life with love and happiness after all you had to go through for my and Meg's sake."

He reached for Christine's chin and turned her head so that she was facing him. "Once again, Christine," he said, his voice full of love. "I still love you. Will you still have me? Will you allow me to try and erase those terrible years from your memory with my love? Will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?"

"Oh Erik," Christine sighed.

"Is that a yes?" he asked, looking her deep into the eyes. As she did not seem to object, he lowered his lips to meet hers.

Christine answered his kiss by opening her mouth to him, her tongue meeting his halfway. They could not seem to get enough of each other. After a long while they finally broke apart, both breathless.

"I love you," Christine whispered. "I have always loved you!"

"I love you, too," Erik confessed. "I think I loved you even when I thought you had betrayed me."

Christine suddenly stiffened. She had spotted a small drawing of Amanda-Ann on Erik's desk. "But," she whispered. "Amanda-Ann, your first wife. I know you cared for her deeply and that your marriage was a much happier one than mine. Will you not feel like betraying her if we..."

Erik smiled. "Amanda-Ann believed in you when I doubted you," he told her. "She always said that you were a good, warmhearted woman, that she did not understand why you had married the Vicomte, since the two of you had nothing in common, that she suspected that you were in love with somebody else you could not have." He sighed. "She never knew it was me you loved or that you were the girl I had told her about that had left me for another man with a handsome face. But the last thing she said before dying was that she wished you could be as happy as she was. I think she would approve."

"She said that?" Christine asked. "She was such a sweet darling. I am so sorry she had to die so young. I will never forget her and always honor her memory. But if there is one good thing about those past few years it is that at least she had some happiness in her life thanks to you."

Erik nodded. "I will never forget her either. She will always have a place in my heart. I hope you will not begrudge her that."

Christine smiled. "Never!" she promised, knowing that she loved Erik even more for the way he had treated his first wife.

Their lips found each other again in a loving, passionate kiss.