Chapter 27

Meg's POV

Erik's cousin, Christian, showed us around the Chateau. I knew that Erik had suggested that he do so both to get us out of the way so that he could be with Christine, and because he had noticed what had passed between Christian and I. The Phantom always seemed to know what was going on in the world around him. It was that same sense that he used to help rescue me from Buquet, and once again, he used it to my benefit. I appreciated his actions in this regard. I had never believed in love at first sight but I was a firm adherent of it now. Christian was magnificent. Every molecule of him was handsome; better yet he was a man of high spirits. While giving us our tour, he entertained us everywhere with old family stories and histories, many of them outrageous. He told so many that we wondered if he made some of them up just to amuse us. I couldn't remember a time when I had laughed more.

Christian seemed to be fond of Erik as well, boasting to us how he was able to get his ferocious cousin to open up to him and to even remove his mask and wig to work in the vineyards. Maman was shocked by this revelation, in all of the years that she had known Erik; few people were able to get him to remove them in a public place. Erik had spent much of his childhood enclosed in a cage like an animal. He was not permitted to hide his shame even when he was not on display. Because of this past, he was loathe to remove it for anyone; the fact that Christian had somehow pierced this shield in such a short time, showed that Erik was willing to trust him. I wondered if Christian realized the honor that had been bestowed upon him. I vowed to make him aware of how mistrustful that Erik could be and the reasons behind it.

Throughout the tour we glanced at one another furtively. I don't think that maman needed a seer to figure out why. She was there as our chaperone, making certain that we did not do anything too forward for people who had just met. I wanted to be very forward with Christian. Many of my fellow dancers did not strictly adhere to the societal strictures that required the rigid separation of the sexes and a prolonged courtship. We were already considered to be little better than prostitutes, which freed us, as well as stigmatized us. I was going to take advantage of my lowly position to get his attention. I had never felt that way before about anyone in my life. I was in love with the man and I had barely met him. If anyone were to ask me why I fell in love so quickly, I would not be able to answer them but from the moment I first saw his face I knew that this was the man that I was meant to marry. I just prayed to God that he felt the same way.

Raoul's POV

Two weeks. It has been two weeks since Christine and I last spoke. I felt for sure that she would come around before she left Paris. But she didn't do so. She was gone, headed to Alsace. How could she not have stayed with me when I did everything in my power to make her safe? I thought that it was what she wanted from me, to keep her safe from him; the beast, the so called Phantom, that monster. Everything that I had striven for was to rid the world of the horror that stalked the Opera. As she told me, he had hunted her, stalked her and finally dragged her down to his demon's lair in the darkest depth of the Opera. I knew that if I did not save her that the monster would devour her, like a savage wolf. I struck the final blow for her freedom. I could see her waver because the beast gave her a sob story about his past, his pitiful past. I could see him using her innocence to bend her will to his depravity. He had her so twisted that for a moment she forgot what a savage murdering beast that he was and gave him two kisses. I would have rather died a thousand horrible deaths than to see her kiss him. Remarkably he had let her go and me go too. She'd heard the mob approach and thought to comfort the fiend and perhaps save him. I could not let him continue to weave his vile spell into her malleable heart. I could see her expression soften, as she placed the ring, my ring into his claw. I used the distraction to do what I should have done at the graveyard, and plunged a knife into his back. My grandmother had upbraided me for failing to kill him in the graveyard. I should have listened to her.

The beast needed to die so that we all could be saved. I had told Christine the obvious over and over again. While he lives he could continue to stalk her and disrupt the opera, and murder and burn all around us. I thought that she finally accepted his fate. It was not us that decreed it but him, and him alone. He would not retreat back into the hole that he crawled out of and so I had to dispatch him, as I would have done with any rabid, murdering beast. So why then did her love turn to hate? Why did she not understand that I did everything for her and for our love? I have been a good and noble man, and acted on her behalf and yet she turned her back on me.

Worse yet the beast hunted me down and placed a hideous mark on my face: the mark of a demon. I will never forget the half crazed look in his eyes when he stole into my room and threatened to geld me and turn my face into the face of death that was his. I shuddered to think of such a thing. I wasn't sure if I wouldn't have preferred that he geld me. At least I would still look normal. After he left, I felt relief and then anger. How dare he violate me in such a manner and disfigure me with his mark? For the rest of my life I would have to stare at the scar and remember who put it there. I vowed to track him down and finish what I started. I did not believe Christine's protestations of his innocence. How could I? She had fallen under his dark influence once more.

When Christine came to see me, I thought that maybe she had reconsidered and was ready to get married at last; but to my supreme distaste, she had no intention of doing so. Instead she came to ask me for my help in leaving France. I could not believe her audacity in doing so. I had done so much for her and almost died and was now disfigured because of her, but she still defended that beast and would not return to me. I lost my temper, and to my regret, I almost raped her. I was not raised to be such a monster and was ashamed at what my rage and jealousy had done. I felt terribly guilty; so guilty that I asked my mother if she knew of anyone who needed a companion, as she requested. My mother looked at me as if I were insane and suddenly grew quite angry at me.

She told me "I told you time and again to forget about that girl. She was a nice playmate as a child, but she is beneath our family in all ways that are important. Her father was little more than a street performer who was amusing for a time until he fell ill. He was not even French but Swedish. She is little better than a common street walker and you were going to dilute our noble French blood with that of a commoner. She may seem innocent but she is the kind of girl that you take as a mistress, as your brother did with La Sorelli, you do not marry her kind."

I looked at my mother in disbelief, she had always taught me to be kind to those who were beneath us. She would never abuse a servant in anyway but treat them very well. She never forgot a birthday or other anniversary and always gave them extra pay for the holidays or the birth of a child. Yet here she was telling me that Christine was beneath me. Despite all that I had been through, and what her monster had done to my face, I could not abide my mother's low opinion of her. Christine was an innocent. I would not shame her by making her my mistress. She is misguided and not at fault for her actions. She is still being victimized by the Phantom, and being drawn back into his game, but she just didn't realize it. I suddenly did not believe that it was a bad idea if she was to leave Paris for a while and that I help her do so. Perhaps then the madman's spell could be broken and she would return to me. I just did not know how to convince my mother to help me do so.

In the end, I did not have to go to great effort to change my mother's mind. A week or so after my request for help; my mother surprised me by telling me that she had a placement for Christine. She told me that my 'cousin' the Comtesse de la Bois was looking for a companion. She never called her mother, despite the fact that she was. Her husband had passed away several years before and was lonely and she was eighty years old. It was an open secret in the family, that the Comtesse was my mother's birth mother. As a young woman, The Comtesse had been placed in a family way by an unscrupulous man who refused to wed her after impregnating her. He and his brother had both raped her and both refused to wed her. She turned my mother over to a distant cousin who had agreed to raise her as their own.

My mother did not know the truth for many years, but one day the Comtesse traveled to Paris from her home in Alsace and introduced herself to her. My adoptive grandmother admitted to her daughter that she was adopted by them. Ever since that time, the Comtesse would visit with us for a time. I was not overly fond of her, she appeared to be nice on the surface, but there was something about her that appeared to be insincere. I could not put a finger on it but it bothered me. She was, however, very supportive of my relationship with Christine which was odd given her preoccupation with noble blood. She told my mother that she should accept my decision to bring a new strain of blood into our noble family. She was the one who introduced me to the Opera and would constantly ask me about Christine. She gave me good advice on how to deal with the monster. She encouraged me to be strong and deal with him in a decisive manner by making a final settlement to the situation.

Despite my unfounded mistrust of my 'grandmother' I was pleased that she would take Christine in. It was the perfect solution to my problem. I could send Christine away and help her, and then pay a visit to my cousin to check on her. Perhaps several unpleasant months in the Comtesse's home would make Christine eager to accept my proposal. I would give her a month or two in Alsace with the old woman and away from the Phantom and then I would swoop in and rescue her once again. They say that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder.' I would test that theory with my dear Christine. I smiled to myself at the perfection of my plot. Now if I could only find the Phantom and finish what we began in the lair, my life would be sweet. I rubbed the still pulsing scar that he had placed on my face and I knew that my revenge would be sweet. The next disaster would be his.