A/N: Thank you for the wonderful reviews! And now...
LXI
.
Christine eagerly donned her cloak over the dress Arabella had brought her from the theatre. At last the day had arrived for her return to the opera house, and she was eager to leave. While she waited for her self-assigned escorts to join her, a soft knock came at the door of the suite. Glancing toward the closed bedchamber where the cousins had retreated to hold a private discussion, Christine approached the door and opened it a crack.
The maid, Giselle, stood in the dim corridor, a bucket of coal and a bucket of cinders clutched in her hands.
"I have come to tend the fire, mademoiselle."
"Of course." Christine pulled the door open, allowing the girl entrance into the sitting room, then closed the door and returned to the table to wait.
Giselle approached her instead of moving to the hearth. Christine's curious attention went from the maid's bright blue eyes to her swollen lip, the morning light coming from the window bringing her face into prominence.
"Are you alright?" she asked in concern. "Did you hurt yourself?"
The girl seemed flustered and pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, licking the small bead of blood away. "It is nothing. An accident, I was clumsy." She hesitated, her manner tense. "Your name is Christine, oui? You work at the opera?"
"Yes, that's right." Christine looked at her in smiling confusion.
"Then you know my friend Jolene?" she whispered, her eyes darting around the empty room as if afraid to be overheard. "She spoke of you."
At the name of her dogged rival, Christine's expression went grim. She had forced all thoughts of the lovely redhead hiding a great distance beneath the earth with her passionate husband far from her mind, and had no wish to recall it now. Seeing how the maid intently awaited her answer, Christine gave a curt nod.
"Yes, I know her."
"I've not seen her for days, we were to meet this week, but please, if you would tell her not to come. It is much too dangerous."
"Dangerous?" Christine recalled all that Erik told her about Jolene. "She used to work here, didn't she? For her uncle?"
Giselle's face blanched, her eyes going wide. "You know about that?"
"Does her uncle still work here?"
"I must get back to my work. I have many hearths to tend." Giselle retreated and moved to kneel before the fireplace.
Christine followed, unwilling to let it go. "You did not answer my question, Giselle."
"Please, mademoiselle, I have no wish to get in trouble." She shoveled ashes into one bucket, her movements swift and deft from practice, then shoveled more coal into the open grate.
Christine watched the young maid as she started a fire. "May I assume by your silence that her uncle does still work in this hotel?"
Giselle hesitated as if she did not wish to speak but gave a short nod. "He is the concierge," she all but whispered.
Christine remembered the short, awful man with the piercing black eyes. "And did he do that to your lip?" she asked gently, looking at the girl's injured mouth.
"No, it was a customer." Her eyes glistening in fear, Giselle cut off her explanation. "I- I was at fault." She grabbed her metal buckets and hurriedly stood to her feet. "I must go. Please tell Jolene what I have said. She will be at risk to come here again."
Before Christine could state that she no longer had contact with the little French maid, Jolene's friend hurried away and out of the suite, as if the fire had caught to the walls and raged throughout the room. Having also been the target of violent mistreatment, through her cousin and the stagehand, Christine stared after the browbeaten girl in sympathy, then returned to the table and picked up her costume wrapped in parcel paper and tied with string. She heard the door open behind her.
"Are you ready to leave?" Raoul did not look one bit pleased about the prospect.
Arabella walked in behind him and moved toward Christine. "I'll come to the theatre this afternoon, to keep you company."
Christine aimed a terse nod in the direction of his cousin, disgusted that she must endure forced companionship at Raoul's unwarranted instruction. If she wasn't so upset with the woman she once called friend – due to Arabella's long ago interference in keeping Erik and Christine apart – she would not mind sharing that time together.
Christine looked at Raoul. "Shall we go?"
She did not miss the flash of hurt on Arabella's face at Christine's outright rudeness, but felt too angry to speak. If she did speak, she would surely say something to wound ten times fiercer than remaining distant, so silence really was the best option.
Outside the hotel, they barely made it to the waiting carriage before an elderly gentleman hailed the Vicomte. Raoul released an exasperated breath at the interruption and addressed Christine. "Lord Cavendish. It's important that I speak with him. This cannot wait - I'm sorry. I'll be only a moment."
He held out his hand to help her up into the closed carriage, but she shook her head, barely managing to mask her impatience.
"I'll wait."
The air was brisk, the day bright, and Christine wished to take a moment to enjoy it, knowing she would be confined inside the dark theatre all day. Only during actual performances did the managers spare no expense in lamp oil and tapered wax candles, for the convenience of their guests. The rest of the time the theatre used only enough light by which to see. Despite its dim surroundings and the chaotic life backstage, the strangeness of which still had not entirely worn away, the opera house was exactly where Christine wished to be. To be one with the music and nearer to Erik …
While Raoul conversed with his friend, Christine's idle gaze wandered across the street to the pedestrians who strolled in front of the shops there. A tall, thin woman with a white poodle on a leash moved into view. Christine lifted her brow in wry amusement at the garish collar of jewels around the dog's fluffy white throat, and La Carlotta came to mind. She had worn a necklace somewhat similar to the pup's when Christine last saw her.
Her eyes drew casually downward ... and considerably widened. Her heart lurched to see an object at the edge of the stone paving over which the dog trotted. What appeared to be a flower … a rose, with what looked like a narrow ribbon of black wrapped around it and at the end of that, a piece of parchment. A note!
Erik!
Her breath escalated and she felt faint.
Erik had been there?! When? And why had he not come up to see her?! Yes, she had sent him away, telling him she needed more time. To hide from the gendarmes, (though she'd not told him that). To absorb all of what happened, all of the horrors he'd so grimly told her, and determine what she must do. He had not been at all tolerant of the delay – leaving her with a heated kiss and words to remember that had stirred her longing throughout the past empty nights, as he'd intended – but when had anything she ever said stopped him from doing as he wished?
She must see that note, must know what he wanted to tell her.
With no thought but to retrieve it, she stepped into the street.
"Christine!"
She felt her arm grabbed and turned to look at Raoul in surprise. He had hurried up beside her and regarded her with shock. A closed carriage rumbled swiftly past where she would have stepped.
"What do you think you're doing?" he asked incredulously.
She blinked, for the first time realizing exactly what she'd done, and hurried to think up a viable excuse for her rash behavior.
"I couldn't see the display in that window across the street and thought to take a closer look while I waited."
"You must be more careful," he chided. "The drivers don't always pay close attention, as you have just seen. This isn't the wilderness of the heath, Christine."
"Yes, yes of course." She glanced longingly toward the discarded rose, realizing that no possible way existed for her to retrieve the note without arousing his suspicion.
The note had to be from her Phantom! The rose bore his signature black ribbon.
"Did you wish for some of those bon bons?" Raoul motioned toward the Candy Shoppe window.
She shook her head. "No – no thank you. I only wish to go to the theatre. I'll barely have enough time to get into costume as it is." She forced her troubled gaze away from the street, lest her stalwart guard notice where her attention was so deeply fixed.
"I still don't like this."
"But you won't prevent it," she reminded.
"No, I'll keep my word. But only if you hold to our agreement."
Not that she'd had any true choice, but she nodded in reluctance and he helped her into the carriage.
The entire drive to the opera house, Raoul brooded in silence, something clearly upsetting him, which was fine with Christine who spent those fast-dwindling minutes attempting to figure out why Erik had not come up to her bedchamber and again made his presence known. He had arrived at the hotel with the rose and the note – surely for her… Oh, what had that note said? And why had he disappeared without leaving the rose, as he had left the similar one in her dressing room what seemed ages ago? Instead, he had discarded it, dropping it carelessly to the ground.
A terrible thought invaded her harried introspection.
The spot where the rose lay faced the third-story room in which she resided. Raoul had visited her bedchamber in order to speak with her, something he seldom did in all the time she'd known him, and never at the hotel. But surely, in those short few minutes, Erik could not have actually been there and seen them together?!
Inwardly she groaned, letting her eyes fall shut. With the dismal Fates that had been assigned to her existence, surely he had. It was all that made sense with regard to the carelessly abandoned rose.
Christine simply must seize the first opportunity available to find Erik, somehow, and explain that he had misconstrued all of what happened. Again. Not that her task would be simple by any means, not that he would even listen, as frustratingly stubborn as he could be – but she could be just as dogged in her pursuits to achieve the impossible.
x
At last they reached the welcome sight of the theatre. Christine's eager relief to arrive at her dressing room dampened when Raoul appeared intent on accompanying her inside. She turned at the set of coral-colored doors painted with roses.
"Raoul, really! I need to change into costume, and you cannot be there when I do."
"We had an arrangement, Christine."
"I'll be just inside," she insisted. "Locked in and alone."
Though she hoped that would not be the case and her Phantom would come through the mirror and speak to her.
"You have disappeared from a locked dressing room once before," Raoul continued as if reading her mind, "and incidentally, you never told me how that was accomplished."
Chagrined that he would not relent on the mystery of her first months in Paris, when it had nothing whatsoever to do with him, she shrugged indifferently.
"With Madame's aid, it was not so difficult," she said evasively.
"But why keep it from the rest of the cast?"
"Must you bring this up again? My disappearance was achieved in secrecy to protect my identity, because I thought I saw someone from England who knew my father. I told you, Madame Giry and I both did. And all turned out well in the end. Besides, a little adventure can be exciting. Now, I really must dress …"
"Bon Jour, Christine!"
Never had Meg's cheery voice been more welcome.
"Meg, how wonderful to see you again!" Christine flashed her an exuberant smile, glad to see the girl was already in ballet costume. She grabbed her wrist and looked at Raoul. "Meg will stay with me, so you may go and do whatever it is you do here and no longer feel any obligation to watch over me."
Without giving him the opportunity to respond, Christine hustled her friend through the door and closed it behind them. Leaning her back against the smooth wood panel, she exhaled a loud sigh of relief, eliciting a giggle from Meg.
"Surely it's not so bad to be so carefully tended by a Vicomte …"
Christine groaned in contradiction. "I have felt like a china shepherdess, locked away out of sight and put up high beyond reach. Endless days of being inside that hotel suite until I thought I would tear out my hair and go mad! And that is not the worst of it – here, at the opera house, I'm to be accompanied wherever I go, never to be alone. Can you believe such nonsense!"
"It does seem extreme," Meg commiserated with a sympathetic glance. "Maman told me of the Vicomte's orders this morning. I'm to keep you company much of the time. I hope you don't mind."
"Do you?"
"Mind? No, not at all. I welcome the chance to know you better. I'd like it if we could become good friends."
"I'm glad it's you that will keep me company," Christine admitted with a smile, "and twice as relieved, since you know my secret. You can help me get a message to Erik."
"Erik?"
"The Phantom. I told you before…"
"Yes, I remember now." Meg tilted her head in reflection. "It still seems odd that he should have a name, though that statement sounds even more bizarre, I suppose. But for three years I've known him only as the Opera Ghost."
Christine wondered what the ballet dancer would say if she told her just how long she had truly known Erik.
Her gaze wandered to the looking glass. If she called out would he answer, with Meg in the room?
She laughed inwardly at the foolish notion. Surely he did not spend his days lurking behind the mirror door, and she had only entered the theatre a few short minutes ago. His home lay far beneath the earth. Likely he was still unaware of her return.
Christine stared hard at her image, as if to see beyond the thick layer of glass.
If he did know she was there, would he come to her? Her earlier sighting of his discarded rose seemed to suggest otherwise. Yet after her dark Angel moved heaven and earth to bring her to Paris and trap her under his shielding wings, surely he would not surrender so easily …
She shook her head at another thought, one far less hopeful. He thought she had betrayed him in ways she still did not fully understand, and he had surely seen Raoul with her in her bedchamber window. Damn it - Why was every moment of time stacked against them in some horrid, formidable wall that seemed insurmountable in allowing them a future together, as was always meant to be?
"Christine …?" Meg reached over and touched her arm. "Where did you go?"
Christine blinked and tore her gaze away from the long mirror. "I … I should change into costume. I don't wish to be late on the first day of my return."
She hurried to the changing screen and slipped behind it, still leery of sharing too much with her new friend, especially on the heels of learning Arabella's treachery. She just wasn't certain who she could fully trust anymore.
"I'm not sure what you think I can do," Meg softly called out. "I have no contact with the Phantom or any way to reach him. He hasn't shown his presence in the theatre for weeks – well, except for that day in your dressing room..."
Meg giggled and Christine's face heated at the memory of the ballet dancer's interruption, and all of what followed.
"It's not unusual for him to be silent for months at a time. He usually only corresponds with his weekly notes - to Maman on matters of the opera. She speaks with him at times but only when he wishes it," Meg continued. "She is his go-between."
"Yes, I know that …" Christine struggled with hooks and laces, donning her gypsy costume that had been hung there for the first act. "And I know how to get a message to him. I'll need to do so while the other cast is busy elsewhere – perhaps at the midday meal. If the Vicomte has his way, as he always seems to, I'll likely be whisked back to the hotel directly after rehearsals are done."
"You mean to miss luncheon then?"
Christine noted the reluctance in Meg's voice. "Not all of it. My task shouldn't take long. But I can go alone, if you would rather. I know how to get there and can slip away without being seen."
"The Vicomte made it clear to Maman that while you're at the theatre, you're to be accompanied by myself or Maman or someone equally trusted. Everyone is still nervous from what happened with Monsieur Buquet, some more than others … do you think he did it? The Phantom, I mean." Meg lowered her voice so that Christine almost didn't hear her.
She inhaled a tight breath. She knew he did and why, but out of a lifetime of loyalty mixed with no small amount of grievous guilt for her own foolish mistakes, Christine could tell no one the truth of what happened that night. She could not even allow Meg to stray down that path of her own accord, if she was able to curb the girl's curiosity.
"The Vicomte told me it was an accident. Monsieur Buquet had been drinking. It was all a horrible accident, but an accident is all it was," Christine stressed.
"I suppose …" Meg didn't sound so certain. "The gendarmes were here for days with their endless questions. You are fortunate you were not here to suffer through that! Some of them were very rude and direct. You would have thought they assumed us all to be delinquents with no morals and worthy of imprisonment."
Christine shuddered at her words. "I suppose that is the silver lining in the dark cloud I have lived in this past week, that I wasn't here for any of that."
Her careless quip did not cover the tremble of dread in her tone, and she hoped Raoul was correct with his latest pronouncement that the policemen would not return.
"Yes, well, Maman would be terribly angry if his orders were disobeyed," Meg said. "She seems to have eyes everywhere, as much as she always knows. I doubt there's a secret in this opera house that Maman hasn't gotten wind of. So, yes, alright. I'll be late to luncheon this once and help you. Maman usually goes to her office, so she won't notice if I'm not there, and I doubt anyone would tell her of my absence since I'm sometimes late to rehearsals." She took a deep breath. "So, what is your plan?"
"I wish to revisit Box Five."
"Box Five?" Meg repeated in surprise.
"I plan to leave a note for him there. I know where to hide it so he'll find it." She did not to go into detail.
"Oh. Well, I suppose. If anyone would be at the theatre during luncheon, it will be the maids cleaning. But they'll be focused on their work and won't question what is none of their concern."
Exactly as Christine remembered during her short stint as one of the help.
Now she had only to dash off the note to arrange to meet with Erik and leave it in its secreted cubbyhole; everything was falling into place. But how was she to speak with him and alone if she was forever being guarded? She must have complete privacy with no risk of being overheard, to engage in the crucial talk long overdue them. Madame knew of their relationship, she had been present at Christine's wedding, as had Meg – so surely the ballet headmistress would thwart the Vicomte's confounded rules for at least one hour and award them some seclusion?
"I should pop into the corridor and let Jammes know where I am, since I told her I would be right back," Meg said. "She's been so anxious, jumping at every little sound and worried if someone disappears for too long. Will you be alright?"
"Of course." Christine shook her head at the absurd idea that she was in any danger. Buquet was dead. The police were gone. She no longer had anything to worry about.
"I'll be right outside the door," Meg said before it closed.
Christine didn't need any such reassurance and was thankful for even a few minutes alone. Well, perhaps not entirely alone … maybe there would be no need for a note.
Hurriedly, she stepped from behind the dressing screen while continuing to fasten her skirt, and walked toward the tall mirror.
"Are you there?" she half whispered, doubting his presence but nonetheless hoping for it. "Erik, are you there? I must speak with you."
Her heart beat fast as she waited expectantly for the mirror to slide back on its track. It remained regrettably still, and she exhaled a quiet breath of disappointment.
"I suppose it was too much to hope that you would be waiting. Oh well, never mind ..." She moved to the dressing table, to gather inkwell and parchment to dash off her note. "We'll talk soon enough."
Her self-made vow again bolstered her optimism, and the expression in her eyes as she studied herself in the vanity glass appeared calmly assured. Now that the shock of the stagehand's attack and all of Erik's dark revelations of murder had somewhat dissipated, and she'd had time to make her decision – a decision that never truly needed to be reached as much as realized – she felt confident that she and her Phantom could breach this new impasse, as they had after she had unmasked him and ended his agenda in disguise. And hopefully this time they could do so without further complications.
First, though, she had to find him. A task easier expressed than accomplished. But she had reached him before and could certainly do so again.
Her composure lasted as long as it took for the door to her dressing room to be thrown open with such force that it hit the papered wall. Christine whirled in shock to see a red-faced Carlotta bear down on her with all the finesse of an angry bull whose sights had landed on the matador waving a red cloth.
And Christine was the sole target for her wrath. Hastily she rose from her chair, to put herself on an even keel with her advancing trespasser.
"You leetle beetch!"
Carlotta brought her arm up and slapped Christine's face hard. Christine reeled a step back, stunned by the attack, and put a hand to her stinging cheek.
"You think to waltz back in here and steal my role and my Piangi? You leetle slut!"
"What are you talking about?" Christine took another step back, away from the outraged diva's curled fingers outstretched with their long, talon-like nails. "The role was given to me, and I have absolutely no interest in Señor Piangi!"
Christine doubted anything she could say would matter. Carlotta was obviously out for her blood and cared nothing for lucid explanations.
"What? You think you are too good for him?" Carlotta seethed. "You are notheeng. A sleeep of a chorus girl so horrible you failed in your audition! You speend time with ze Vicomte behind closed doors and sleep in his hotel room. Did you share ze Phantom's bed to ween his favor also – and ze role zat should have been mine?"
Christine's face flushed, betraying the act but certainly not the cause, and a wave of icy calm washed over the heat of her rising temper. "Yours? Ha! The role is years too young for one of your great maturity."
The diva's kohl-lined eyes widened at the intended slight. "How dare you!"
"I speak only what everyone here knows – and what you choose to overlook." Christine drew herself up, stiffening her spine. "I need to prepare for rehearsal now. You should leave," she said with as much authority as she could manage.
"No – you should be ze one zat leaves!" Carlotta raised her arm again. "You will take nuzzing of mine again!"
"I wouldn't try that a second time," Christine rapidly warned, taking another quick step back, her wary eyes on the erstwhile diva's outstretched hand.
"Phhtttt!" Carlotta hissed. "YOU will not tell me what to do – I will tell YOU what to do!"
Before the enraged woman could again strike, Christine took the upper hand - literally. Hauling back with her arm, she acted on impulse and punched the pampered woman square in her long, bent nose.
"Oh my…" The stunned exclamation came from the doorway, followed by a nervous giggle.
Meg's timing, as usual, was impeccable.
Carlotta covered her injured feature with both hands, her dark eyes horror-struck. "You broke my nothe!"
"I doubt it."
Christine had heard no betraying crack, and there was only a slight trickle of blood. A lifetime with her cruel cousin taught her to react in defense, and she had learned to bite, scratch, slap and pull hair through his bullying and brutish ways. But never had she struck someone with her fist. She shook her hand gingerly, her knuckles throbbing, her fingers on fire –
– and never had she felt such satisfaction from engaging in so petty a scrap.
Christine felt no remorse. The great La Carlotta had needed taken down a peg after her supercilious and unwarranted attack. And after having been confined to the hotel for six tiresome days and enduring one after another of unimaginable disclosures, Christine was bound to explode after dealing with so many unresolved frustrations. Hell, she was entitled.
With her arms hanging down at her sides, Christine lifted her chin.
"Get out."
The shock of Christine's retaliation died in the displaced diva's eyes upon hearing her unruffled words.
With a howl of rage Carlotta lunged and grabbed hanks of Christine's hair. The impact of the stocky woman throwing her weight at Christine sent them both crashing to the rug. Christine painfully winced at the new bruises that were sure to form. She wrapped her fingers around Carlotta's thick throat, choking her to force her to loose her hold …
Loud, rapid thumps suddenly banged against the floor near their heads.
"What is the meaning of this?!" Madame Giry's irate voice broke through the red fog of Christine's defensive rage, though neither woman let go, and the ballet headmistress banged her cane on the floor again. "Stop this - at once!"
"Mia Cara!" Piangi cried as he came into view and pulled his mistress off Christine.
"Get your hands off me, you beeeg oaf!" the furious woman hissed, jerking from his grasp and turning on him. "You deeespicable whoremonger! How could you betray me - with her?"
"But I never –"
"ENOUGH!"
Madame's voice hit the air like cannon fire, stunning them all into silence.
"Señor, you and Madame Gudicelli will come to my office at once. Mademoiselle Grendahl, your presence is required on stage in five minutes. Meg, attend to her and do not be late. I will remind all of you that we have a rehearsal to perform and have lost much time and room for improvement, due to the delay of the gendarmes' investigation. So cease behaving like unruly children - and get to work immediately!"
With that, she whirled away and out of the room.
Evading Piangi's touch to her arm, Carlotta glared at him then at Christine but did as told and also swept from the room, a groveling Piangi in her wake.
Meg approached Christine and held out a hand to help her stand. A swift appraisal reassured that her costume was intact and surprisingly not torn. Except for her coiffed ringlets now in wild disarray and a badly reddened cheek, there were no betraying marks that she had been in a scuffle.
"I don't know what happened or why she attacked you, but I fear you have made a dangerous enemy," Meg cautioned. "Carlotta thinks the entire world owes her homage. She doesn't easily forget anything she considers an insult."
With a careless shrug, Christine eased a hairbrush through her tangled curls. "I have dealt with far worse than La Carlotta," she said beneath her breath, more to herself than Meg. "What concerns me now is how to arrange a meeting with my elusive husband."
Somehow she had to avoid Raoul's efforts to contain and lock her away. She must let Erik know she was back to stay and would speak with him …
Whether he wished it or not.
xXx
Five levels of stone beneath the floor of Christine's dressing room, the Phantom stood near his mini theatre and critically surveyed his latest sketch for the costume he would need. He must go above, tonight, to tell Giry of his plan and make all the essential arrangements. Doubtless, she would not approve, but it failed to matter. She would aid him; she had little choice. The Vicomte may think he had triumphed, and temporarily he might have done so, by keeping Christine locked away. But his was a small victory. In a fortnight, the final card would be played …
And the Phantom held the winning hand.
He felt a tug on his sleeve and glanced down near his elbow. Jacques looked up at him with soulful blue eyes. He held up one of his carved angels and Erik took it, looking from the boy's woebegone expression to the blank, smooth face of the carving he had fashioned for the child. Lightly he ran his thumb over the grain.
"I miss her too, lad," he whispered, grateful the boy could not hear him or see the movement of his lips. "But I vow to you, she'll be back. You can be sure of that." In a rare show of tenderness, he tousled the boy's hair, bringing his palm to the back of his head and drawing him close. Jacques hugged him tightly.
"Monsieur Phantom?"
He tensed at the apprehension in Jolene's tone and released the boy then turned to look at the maid. Since the night she had disrobed, offering herself to him, and he had told her the truth of his identity, circumstances between them had been strained.
"I have never heard you speak like that …" She clutched her hands before her, in her skirts. "Not the words, themselves, but the way you speak them."
The Phantom gave a short nod. "I have lived three years in France and one year in Persia, but almost the entirety of my life I spent in England." It had been necessary to masque his native accent in Christine's presence, keeping up the charade from the moment he arrived in Paris, so it would become commonplace to him. But the reason for subterfuge no longer existed now that she knew the truth of who he was.
"In England," she repeated in quiet defeat. "With her."
He did not respond, only waited impatiently for what more she would say.
"What you just said, after what she told me about – th-that is, surely she would not come back here? She has made her wishes known and always tried to escape before."
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion, taking a few steps toward her. "What are you saying?"
Jolene wrung her hands, averting her gaze to the lake. "I only meant – we must live down here in hiding, we have no choice. But she can live above. Why should she wish to live in a cave underground? She doesn't belong here and doesn't want to. Can we not just keep things as they are, monsieur?"
"After what she told you about - what?" he insisted in a low voice, ignoring the rest of what she said. "Christine spoke to you? About me?"
Jolene hesitated then gave a slight nod. "Yes … Yes," she said more strongly, as if coming to a sudden decision. "When she was very ill, she cried out your name in her nightmare. I did not know you were Erik then."
He winced, knowing he should not be surprised that Christine linked his name with horror, though that truth still hurt. And certainly any remorse she may feel for her misdeeds would lead to frightening dreams.
"Is that all she said about me?" he asked quietly, his gaze going to the calm, cold lake and the spot where Christine once threw his dagger. She had never been able to endure physical harm to anyone or anything – even to a Phantom ogre who'd made her his prisoner …
He snapped his attention to Jolene when the girl did not answer.
"Is that all she said?"
"I – no. Later, she spoke of Erik – of, of you and …" she blinked fast and looked at the stones. "And regrets."
"Regrets," he said through his teeth when she became silent.
"Oui. She regrets the past you both shared. The way she spoke, the things she said, she wishes it never happened, that – that you two would never have met. I am sorry, monsieur."
With each soft, tremulous word, the leaden ball inside his chest grew heavier.
Christine herself had said those words to Berta four long years ago; his would-be executioner had told them to his face before pulling the trigger one final time. Upon his escape from Persia and return to England, he'd heard rumors bandied about the countryside, rumors he had later seen, of her close involvement with the highly esteemed damnable Vicomte.
How foolish that he had entertained the fragility of hope, that he had actually yearned for Jolene's admission of Christine's feelings to be favorable toward him.
How could the Phantom, no more than a monster and villain, expect his former captive to think of him with anything but nightmares and regrets?
With a stiff nod toward the French maid, who stared at him in wariness of what he would do, he strode to his pipe organ, intending to lose himself to one of his darker arias.
He flipped through his latest score, his mind absent from the notes, his thoughts falling into the deep rut where they had churned for weeks.
Never once had Christine said she loved him - in or out of disguise, in the past or in the present - and he did not expect she ever would. The Phantom had experienced complete physical intimacy with others, without the heart being involved, and presumed that carnal desire was all she could ever feel for him, that truth in itself astounding … though he could not say the same about his feelings for her.
He had lived in a hell of emptiness once he carried her back to her dressing room after she ripped away his mask. Continually persuading himself that his love for her had died four years ago lacked substance, his heart calling him a liar. Trying to forget her existence had been impossible when memories of her filled every inch of his lair. To have seen and heard his little Angel calling out for him, in the garden, at the mirror, always begging to understand, had eroded his grim resolve, her pain becoming too much for him to bear. And he had crossed the gulf he'd sworn would remain wide between them…
…again, foolishly becoming vulnerable to her feminine wiles.
Yes, he was a damned fool.
He should simply let her go, give her what she most wanted – a prosperous future with that wretched boy aristocrat – and never cross paths with her again. Except it was not so simple. His tortured heart, finally demanding its way, had again shackled him to old feelings, feelings once renounced but now made stronger with their passionate union, what to him had become a silent exchange of vows as sanctified as those they had spoken in the church. Since learning of Persia, Christine might want nothing more to do with the coldhearted murderer he was, the title by which she now knew him, and likely she would hate him for all that would transpire in two weeks' time ...
Yet he was willing to endure her anger and abhorrence, if only to have her with him again. She was his air and his breath and his existence. His muse and his life. Always, she had been. For years, while planning his cruel vendetta, he had soundly rejected that truth and attempted to disregard their past – but without her he truly was no more than a living corpse.
With his resolve iron-clad, the Phantom abandoned his music and went to his writing desk to prepare the notes to take above. It was time to set his plan in motion. The managers must be told to prepare for a gala event that would soon take place, on a night set aside for lovers …
The Phantom uncapped his inkwell, a smile twisting his lips at the irony.
.
xXx