A/N: Thank you for the reviews! :) … (caution: strong moment of violence at end of chapter. When you get there you'll understand why I felt a precaution necessary and will be able to skim if you can't handle that type scenario…)

XIII

.

Series of gunshots…

There had been more than one.

Series of gunshots…

The hunter had fired more than once.

Series of gunshots…

Dear God, had the rider gotten away?

In the days, Christine desperately prayed for the possibility, but the precious, awful scrap of cloth she carried near her heart made a mockery of such hope. Erik never, never would have let anyone get close enough to take his mask from his face if he could prevent it…

The mask streaked with his blood.

In the nights, the image of Erik's beautiful body riddled with loathsome bullets tortured her dreams. That he had died in and of itself was a tragedy, the thought of one bullet hard to bear.

The thought of many was excruciating.

Sometimes she felt resigned to his death. Other times she warred with the idea that he could have escaped, that he might still be alive. On one such afternoon she could refrain no longer from approaching Henri with her suspicions.

"My friend wanted to make sure the wretch was dead," he callously stated. "One bullet doesn't always do the job, my dear."

Swallowing through the mist of pain and the lump of her bitter anger as all frail hope crumbled, she refused to give Henri the satisfaction of seeing her grief. Wishing to visit the place where her dear Erik rested, she glared at her vile cousin.

"Where is his grave?" Her query came soft and clipped.

He waved her away with his usual impatience. "Don't know, don't care. Alongside the road near Gimmerton more than likely, if he even took the trouble to bury the corpse. Might have left him for the birds and wild animals. Even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you."

Christine gritted her teeth. "Why are you so hateful? Have you no respect for the dead?"

To his family and servants, Henri was a monster, having treated Erik the worst. To his few reprobate friends that rarely visited, she'd seen a different side, almost kind, as if he actually cared.

"That leech deserves none of my respect in this world or in the hereafter," he practically roared, the drink loosening his tongue. "Damned gypsy should have never come to The Heights - your father should have never brought him! He stole what belonged to me!"

Christine regarded him in absolute disbelief. "Stole from you? You left him nothing! Not a room in this house! Not even decent clothes to wear or a bed!"

"Uncle thought that damned gypsy was so smart, so much better at everything than I!" Henri went on, lost in the past. "That excuse for a human with its twisted face - he thought better than I! Well, now see who's had the last laugh! He brought the gypsy cur that night and didn't bring the penny whistle he promised! Said it must have fallen out along the road - and all because he tended to that filthy vagabond beast."

"A whistle?" Christine blinked. "You despised Erik because of a whistle?"

She had the insane urge to laugh but the truth was too petty and tragic to believe when held up against the enormity of all Erik had suffered.

"That, and more. He should have never come… didn't belong." He took a shot, draining his glass.

She looked down at him with stone calm revulsion, lifting her chin high. "I actually think I pity you. You are the beast, alone and drowning in your whiskey with no one to care if you live or die."

He shot up from the chair and grabbed her arm. "I don't want your pity! And I sure as hell don't want you trying to reform me! I got enough of that from Joseph and your dearly departed father."

Rage lit her spirit. "I would much rather bury you and have done with it!" she hissed. "Or leave you rotting to the birds and wild animals!"

He lifted his hand to strike, but she didn't flinch, only lifted her chin and glared harder. A sudden step at the door and creak of planking had him abruptly look up and behind her. She swung her head that way.

Joseph stared at them, bug-eyed, nodded nervously and shuffled away.

"I hate you," Christine seethed, turning her attention back to Henri. "I hope you die!"

Before he could react, Christine wrenched her arm from his hold and turned on her heel, leaving the parlor. She would get nothing more from him. And she had said all that she came to say.

x

The months passed, as the seasons slipped one into another, though Christine was kept much too busy to give more than a fleeting notice to the outdoors. The changes indoors demanded her full attention.

Elizabeth's condition worsened as her pregnancy progressed. Christine feared for her but kept her qualms hidden. To keep the woman's spirits up, she spoke of bright and happy things, each morning relaying the scene from the window of the beautiful moors she no longer visited, also reading to her from the classics that made up her father's small library. His tastes had been diverse, from Shakespeare and Dante to the works of Dickens and Milton - and her favorite dark tales as a child, those by Hans Christian Andersen.

Many were dark, twisted, and she kept the English translation of the book Eventyr absent from Elizabeth's reading repertoire, due to her delicate condition, deciding to share with her only the more heartening works of classic literature. Later in her bedroom, Christine would light her lantern and revisit the ghastly stories of ogres, imps and beasts. It was foolish, even childish; but engrossed in a world of such morbid fantasy, night after night, almost made the reality of her wretched life easier to bear.

Christine learned to keep house and help Berta with the cooking, asking Joseph to take over as many repairs as he could manage. With Henri in a drunken stupor half the time or off on his jaunts to God knew where, and Elizabeth confined to her bed, Christine had become mistress of The Heights and the two servants looked to her for every instruction.

She may have achieved the fleeting title of mistress, but she felt every bit a scullery maid.

Along with Berta, she pushed up the sleeves of her fine frocks and got down on her hands and knees to scrub floors. At first the older woman was horrified, but Christine was adamant, determined to make The Heights into the proud home it used to be and knowing every pair of available hands was necessary for that to happen.

She washed the pots and polished silver. She shoveled ash from the hearths and set new kindling to burn, tidied rooms, and threw out the refuse. She even fed the chickens and pigs and curried the horses when Joseph felt too poorly, which had been often of late due to "his old bones complaining" as he said every evening. Christine didn't doubt it. The man must be seventy if he was a day.

Her one reprieve, and afternoons she greatly enjoyed, was when Arabella would visit. Raoul also came when he could, though Christine felt a trifle uneasy to be around him as they sipped tea and ate crumpets in the parlor. From those things he said, he still considered her a friend. From those things he didn't say, he still hoped for more. And if she tried to ignore it, the hope was always there, shining in his blue eyes. At times, when the days became unbearable, Christine seriously thought of accepting his proposal - an escape to The Grange sounded like an oasis in the desert her life had become. But desert or not, her home was at The Heights, and her heart was still - would always be - with Erik.

x

Late one night in early summer, Christine woke from exhausted slumber by a screech that could wake the dead.

Throwing on her wrapper and lighting her lantern, she hurried to the door where she'd heard the panicked scream. She swung it open to see Elizabeth sitting in the middle of the bed, pale, the bedding wet and blood spotting the sheets. The young woman looked up at Christine like a fearful child begging her mother to tell her what to do next.

Christine pushed back a surge of fear. "Rest easy, Elizabeth. I'll fetch Berta to tend you."

Christine ran for the servant's quarters and woke her old nurse. "It's Elizabeth's time," she explained hurriedly, before doing the same to Joseph's door. "You must ride for the doctor."

The old man moved sluggishly, shuffling out of bed.

Henri was nowhere to be found.

By the time Christine dressed, Joseph had only just made it downstairs to the parlor. At this rate, Elizabeth would have the baby before he was out of the stable, and Christine heard thunder in the distance, heralding a storm. The arthritic old man didn't need to be out in such foul weather.

"I'll fetch the doctor," she said decisively.

"Mistress, no! Ye should not go out there! Not with a storm brewing."

"Berta, when has a storm ever stopped me from doing a blessed thing?"

"But your health – and 'tis been so long since you've ridden. "

"I'm in better health than anyone at The Heights, and I certainly remember how to sit a horse!"

She threw on her cloak and ran for the stables. There, she saddled the gray, relieved that the steps Erik had taught her came back without thought, though it had been years since she'd ridden. She was more anxious than she had let on.

Once seated, the saddle felt natural. She prodded the mare at a gallop out of the courtyard and down the road, her hood falling back and her hair tangling in the wild wind. Grateful that she'd not forgotten how to ride, a sense of blood-tingling freedom she'd not felt since her days with Erik when they rode along the moors enlivened her. The night was dark as pitch with the oncoming storm, but the urgent need to find help smothered out old fears.

Confident in the saddle, the land familiar to her, she gave the horse its lead and arrived in Gimmerton before the storm could fully unleash. She found the doctor's house, but he wasn't there. She informed his housekeeper that Elizabeth's time had come then took her search into town, asking for the doctor from those who were about the streets. No one seemed to know where he was.

After what must have been a fruitless hour wasted, she returned home with the storm now lashing against her. Impervious to the lightning that shimmered inside dark, boiling clouds and ripped through them to strike the earth, she pushed her horse at a wild pace. The rain pummeled her unmercifully, the storm fierce.

By the time she reached The Heights, she was drenched despite her heavy cloak. Joseph doddered out as fast as he was able, to take her horse, and she hurried inside.

Berta drew her into a swift hug. "I feared the banshees stole you away!" She looked behind her, to the door.

"I couldn't find the doctor," Christine admitted somberly. "It's up to you."

Berta's eyes widened. "But, mistress, I've never delivered a babe! I've been nursemaid, even sat by your dear mother's side when the doctor brought you into the world, but I've never been midwife!"

"You have no choice," she said impatiently then more softly. "I'll help."

Berta looked panicked but nodded at Christine's instruction. Outwardly she maintained the authority to control the matter and issue orders to the servants; inwardly her insides shook as fiercely as Berta trembled. She tried to remember all she had read and heard, which amounted to very little.

"Boil water. Find clean towels. And we'll need a sharp blade, I think. I'll change out of these wet clothes and join you."

Berta nodded, her face pale, and rushed to the kitchens.

A scream shattered the stillness, followed by a pitiful cry for help. Christine looked grimly to the upper landing and the door that stood parted.

Taking in a deep breath, she took the stairs.

x

Four times in her young life Christine had been affected by the swift and merciless hand of Death.

She had been much too little to remember her mother well, but her loss had left an empty ache in her life growing up as a young girl.

Her father's death tore from her all the reassurance she had clung to as a child in knowing Papa would always be there to hold her close when she was sad or afraid.

And then there was Erik … he had come into her life, gradually taking the place of her father, until Papa's death, when she had then relied on Erik for everything: comfort, companionship, love. He often had understood her when she didn't understand herself. He had tolerated her tantrums, fought toe to toe with her, but even then she had been confident that their bond was strong enough to withstand all of it.

The third time Death struck it seized her life as well as her beloved Erik's. Not in body, but in spirit. No death could ever be as traumatic as the loss of her soul mate.

It was for that reason she could feel nothing now. As coldhearted as others might think her, after experiencing the worst Death could deliver, she could no longer summon the emotion to feel, now that Death had swept into her life a fourth time, claiming its next victim.

With dry eyes, she stood solemn and quiet, the smell of freshly dug soil pungent in the air. Crying audibly, Berta held the sleeping infant, Henley, swaddled in a blanket. Henri stood, sober for once, and stared dismally at the fresh mound of soil. Joseph stood a short distance from them, next to the sexton, his battered hat held over his chest as the minister spoke from a prayer book. A bound cross of sticks that Joseph had fashioned was all that commemorated the short life of Elizabeth. A headstone to match Papa's would soon be carved to display the year she had come into the world and the year she had left it.

The doctor had finally arrived, toward the end of Elizabeth's travail, but he'd been too late. He managed to save the baby, but Elizabeth was too weak from blood loss and slipped quietly away, without ever having laid eyes on her newborn son.

That night a storm blew in on a fierce wind, strangely absent of thunder. Henri retreated to his room with a bottle of whiskey. Berta was soon in her element, caring for a babe again, and Christine enjoyed listening to her former nursemaid rock Henley by the fire and quietly hum a lullaby while outside the rain struck and the wild winds blew and blew and blew, keening, then whispering, a haunting melody.

Listen Erik, do you hear? The night wind is playing for us … or is it you?

"Christine, love, come away from that window."

But Christine remained, unaware of Berta, who only sighed and shook her head sadly while Christine listened to the storm play on.

x

Throughout the months that followed, Christine helped Berta care for the child. A gentle lad like his poor, dear mother, he rarely cried, and Berta doted on him, treating him as one of her own. For all the attention Henri paid, the child might as well be Berta's to raise.

Reunited with the saddle, Christine found peace in riding. While the weather remained warm and when time permitted, she sought brief moments of freedom, and returned to her beloved moors. There, she felt one with Erik. There, she found a sense of bittersweet calm that had been missing. Yet her visits with the rugged land had changed from when this had been their playground. She felt far older than her age, the lonely, haunted years having made her wiser, harder. The land, itself, had not changed, but she would never be the same again.

A blizzard brought the first of winter, and the months followed suit to its arrival, cold and harsh and dreary, until at last spring colored the land. Summer followed, bringing the first anniversary of Little Henley's birth, and then autumn blustered in, marking the time as four years since Erik's death.

It was on an unusually warm day in September, when Berta had gone to market and Joseph was visiting the minister, (Henri missing for two days on one of his licentious jaunts), that once again Christine's world dropped out from under her.

She had just laid Henley to sleep, weary from a night of walking the floor with him, trying to hush his cries from feverish teething and give Berta a rest. Deciding that a warm sponge bath would help ease her aching muscles, she filled a washtub with steaming water. Behind her, she heard the door open.

"Berta?" She set down the kettle. "Back so soon? Did none of the sellers have food worthy of selection?"

With a faint grin, she turned and gave a start of shock when Henri appeared at the kitchen door. His eyes lowered, taking in her shift. Angrily she crossed her arms over herself.

"As you see, I'm busy," she said through stiff lips. "Go away."

Instead he closed the door and approached. She backed up a few steps, trying not to let him see her fear.

"I said go, Henri!"

"I think it's time we discuss the conditions of you livin' at The Heights," he announced, clearly having been drinking.

"Conditions? What conditions?" Indignant, she lifted her chin. "This is my home."

"You forget yourself. The house was my father's. Your father was only caretaker until I came of age. But I'm sure we can come to some sort of suitable … arrangement." His smile was lecherous. "I may even take you as a wife."

Appalled at the idea, she scowled. "Go away, Henri. You disgust me!"

His oily smile disappeared. "You might change your tune once you find yourself without a bed to sleep in. The de Chagnys don't want you, to send you back here. You have nowhere else to go. Truth is, my generosity is all you have. Seems you owe me, and you could give some of your own ..."

Before she fully understood what he meant he lunged forward, more quickly than she would have anticipated for one in his condition.

Christine suddenly found herself flattened against the wall, his doughy body pressed hard against her, his hand taking liberties that filled her throat with bile. She struggled to get loose, but he was stronger.

"You gave it to your precious gypsy! You gave it to the Vicomte! Now I want my share!"

She tried to turn her face aside, but his mouth brutally descended, his lips grinding hard against her tightly drawn ones until she tasted blood. He ground his hips against her. Panicked, she struggled more violently, slashing her nails down his face. He cursed in pain, pulled back and slapped her hard across the face. Immediately he backhanded her, his ring slicing her other cheek, then slapped her again. Momentarily dazed by the blows, she couldn't fight as his mouth invaded flesh and his brutal hands tore her shift. She beat at him with her fists. He pinned his arm against her throat and she couldn't breathe. Hauling up her shift, his hand groped between her thighs, forcing them to part.

"Not so high and mighty now, are you, Little Lotte?" he sneered and stared at what he'd exposed of her breasts straining at the torn neckline. She gasped to breathe, revolted to feel his thick fingers violate her as her hands frantically grabbed his wrist to force him away.

His hand went to his trouser fastenings.

Terrified, feeling she might pass out and desperate to stop him, her hand flailed out beside her, seeking anything for a weapon. One hand connected with the handle of the kettle of hot water - and she used every ounce of strength left in her to bring it up and hit him over the back of his skull.

She heard the crack of metal on flesh and bone followed by his harsh grunt as he slumped to the flagstones.

Gulping breath into her lungs, her mind and body paralyzed with shock, she stared at his sprawled body … and the blood oozing from the wound she'd put there.

He groaned. His hand moved against the floor.

His act of reviving startled her into panicked awareness. She snatched her cloak from its peg by the door and made a mad, awkward dash for the stable. The bile rushed to her throat and midway she fell to her knees to vomit, then struggled to her feet again.

Escape was all that drove her. She had to get away from the Heights! She could barely think, hardly knew what she was doing, took no time to saddle the horse, fearful Henri would stir and come after her. He was bigger, he was stronger. He could overpower her next time…

God- there could be no next time!

Outside the front gates in the distance, a lone horse and rider came up the path, the bay she recognized as belonging to one of Henri's friends. Wishing only to hide and anxious to be seen in such a state, Christine leaned over the mare's neck and kicked in her bare heels. Forcing her horse at a mad gallop, she took a shortcut along the grasses to safety.

xXx

A/N: Those that aren't sure what to think about this odd little PotO phic yet…I ask that you give it a few more chapters before deciding. I know there is a plethora of PotO phics out there to read - many much better. I appreciate you giving mine a chance.