The first few acts of the Gala went by in a spectacular display of dancing and music.
Up to the present moment, they had been treated to two ballet sequences from La Sylphide and the conductor had led the orchestra in a performance of, so far, three of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
The first few rousing notes of the 'Winter' movement were beginning to grow in volume when Grace heard another knock on their Box door.
She turned around briskly, just about able to see the outline of a figure through the dark window.
"Oh, the champagne..." Javert said quietly. "About time, too. I was beginning to think your footman was crushing the grapes himself…"
He began to rise out of his seat, but Grace wasn't going to be beaten to the door again.
"I'll see to it. You stay put." She said, leaping to her feet.
"But, Mademoiselle-"
"You bought it! Let me do something." She cut in quickly. "Please, Inspector. Relax and enjoy the music…"
After a moment, Javert reluctantly lowered himself back into his seat and Grace hurried towards the Box door.
Slipping out into the red plush corridor, she almost gasped aloud when she found Enjolras waiting for her. His face was as hard and firm as the bucket of ice he held under his arm. A bottle of champagne sat amongst the ice chips, sweating with perspiration, much like the cold sweat that Grace had suddenly broken out in. She nervously glanced back into the Box, and found Javert still facing out towards the stage. She was quick to close the door and drag Enjolras out of his line of sight. The ice bucket clinked and tingled as he stumbled and he almost sent its contents spilling all over the red carpet.
"You shouldn't be here! He'll recognise you!"
"Courfeyrac informed me that you'd made contact with your courtier." Enjolras replied with a wry smile.
"Didn't you hear me?! You can't be here!"
"Apologies for interrupting your little rendezvous, Cousin." He hissed at her. "I trust it's going well? Enjoying a delivery of champagne to your private Box! What a lucky young woman you are!"
"Oh, shut up." she growled back at him.
"You didn't tell me this man was wealthy…"
"He's… I don't really know, to be honest." Grace said hesitantly. She knew Javert wasn't exactly poor, like the likes of Eponine and Gavroche, but he had told her once that he wasn't born with a silver-spoon in his mouth either. "But… if you're thinking of begging him for funding too, I wouldn't waste your breath." Grace said tartly. "He wouldn't be seen dead within five miles of your operation."
"So, you think he cannot be swayed?" Enjolras asked, looking her dead in the eye.
Grace thought for a moment about the conversations her and Javert had had on the Pont au Double. He believed himself to be a pillar of civilisation. The representative of 'the Law'. She knew that Javert found his purpose and peace and justification in upholding the Law and fighting all who stood against it. But recently she'd sensed something of a shift in him. Especially tonight, especially since he'd recovered from his wounds.
"His loyalties are to the Law." she said quietly. "Just like your loyalties are to freedom and justice. Do you think you could be swayed?"
"Me? Nothing can sway me from the path of freedom."
"Well, there you go-"
"But, for other men, you would be surprised just how…convincing the charms of a woman can be." Enjolras said, slowly looking her up and down.
"What…what are you implying?"
"Cousin, don't be so obtuse. If I were in your position, and our genders reversed, I'd do everything I could to try and… sway an influential gentleman's thoughts to my liking."
Grace looked at him in stunned silence for a long while.
"You want me to seduce him." She said flatly.
"Cousin, think about the benefit-"
"Where do you find the gall?" She stated so coldly her tongue could have spat icicles into him.
"Cousin, I never said 'whore yourself out!'" Enjolras said hurriedly. "I only meant-"
"What did you mean?" Grace asked, anger rising inside her. "Because I'd really like to know what you're asking me to do in the name of your revolution."
"Grace, he is a Préfecture!" Enjolras cried exasperatedly. "Just think what we could do, knowing we had the police on side!"
"If I do what?" Grace asked pointedly. "Touched his thigh? Brushed his shoulder? Laughed at his jokes? Opened my legs?"
"Now you're just being impertinent, Cousin."
"No, you are taking fucking liberties, Marcelin!"
"Well, perhaps I was wrong all along. I was under the impression that you were just as committed to the cause as we were." Enjolras said, levelling her with a dour stare.
"My body was never a weapon for you to deploy when you felt like it!" She shot back.
Acid rage crackled along her veins. She felt like she was burning from the inside, wishing that it would somehow leak out of her and burn Enjolras too. That acid rage also burnt through the last strands of patience she had for Marcelin and his lofty ideas. She felt it snap inside her, the sensation both at once feeling liberating but also like a terrifying freefall.
"You know what.. from now on, count me out." Grace said firmly.
Enjolras blinked at her twice. "What?"
"Count me out of the group. I don't want any part of your revolution if all you see in me is a toy, or a pawn, or a strategy."
"Grace-"
"No. I'm done." Grace said firmly.
"So, you are faced with one trying task, and you choose to give up?" Enjolras asked her, his eyes searing with fire. "Did you expect our work to be easy?"
She wanted to scream at him. Make the walls of this Opera house shake with fury. But she didn't. She centred herself and swallowed hard before she spoke:
"Before you ask me that question, just think, Cousin, if you would have asked any of your band of brothers to do what you asked me to."
Enjolras's answering silence was confirmation enough.
Grace would have felt victorious, if the victory wasn't a hollow one. And sadness crept in where the rage had once been.
She heard movement coming from inside the Box. With a quick thrust, she snatched the ice bucket from his arms and turned from him.
"Go! Before he sees you!" She hissed back at Enjolras.
"Can I at least ask you to make sure he doesn't interrupt us tonight, Cousin?" He called after her.
"Oh, get out of my sight!" She shouted angrily.
"Grace? What's wrong?" Javert asked, suddenly appearing at the door. He looked her up and down, taking in the bucket of ice and the red flush to her face in one swoop of his dark eyelashes.
Grace snapped her head down the corridor, letting out a small sigh of relief when she found it empty of Enjolras.
"Grace?" Javert asked again.
"Uhh…" she stumbled. "The footman. He forgot to bring glasses for us." She added, hoiking up the ice bucket in her arms.
She barged past him, shuffling back into the Box and laying the ice bucket down on a vacant chair. Javert frowned but demurely closed the door behind her. When he turned to face her again, she still seemed flustered and taut. Her shoulders were tense and her jaw was set unusually firm. She seemed much more riled than she should be for somebody who'd just dealt with an incompetent footman...
Grace unstoppered the bottle and exclaimed as the champagne fizzed out the top.
"Oh!"
Without thinking, she smothered the neck with her mouth, drinking the foam before it could spill down her hand.
Everything in Javert tensed. He watched with a stir in his guts as she wrapped her lips around the bottle. Puckering them so fully. Placing them so evocatively… A quaver of something base and raw rippled through him and he felt embarrassed at himself for feeling it. For enjoying it.
Grace looked at him and pried her mouth off the bottle.
"Sorry." She said bashfully. "I didn't want to soak the carpet."
Javert couldn't have mustered a reply if he'd tried. He cleared his throat and tried to unscramble his mind. Tried to think of anything other than the shape of her lips around the neck of that bottle…
"Do you want a sip? I promise I don't have anything infectious." Grace cringed at herself and scrunched her eyes tight. "Wow, that makes me sound classy… Forget I said that."
She extended the champagne out to him and he reached for it, still in quite the stupor.
Their hands met on top of the cool glass.
The whisper of his leather glove glided over her skin and Grace couldn't ignore the crackle of lightning that rippled up her arm.
Their eyes met. Those beautiful October-sky eyes staring into her face with a look that sang with hunger and longing.
She dropped her gaze to the floor, slipping her hand away from his and shuffling on her feet awkwardly. Enjolras's words screamed in her head:
'Sway an influential gentleman's thoughts to my liking'
'Think of the benefit'
'Just think what we could do'
Suddenly she felt very cold. She backed away from his touch as if his hand was a cobra. How she wished that he didn't look at her like that. How she wished that Enjolras was wrong, and there was nothing here for her to exploit. How she wished that she didn't suddenly feel so cheap.
"Perhaps…" she started, her voice quiet. "Perhaps I shouldn't have come tonight."
Something broke in The Inspector's face. Where there had once been warmth, there grew a hard frost, smothering it wholly.
"I see." He said stonily. "Well, I apologise, Mademoiselle, that you seem to find my company so disagreeable."
"No, it's not that. I just-"
"I admit that this…little display has been full of frivolities. And I am not a man who indulges in this sort of meaningless vacuity often. Quite frankly it doesn't suit me, and I have most likely come across as foolish."
"No, tonight….tonight has been wonderful. Incredible. But-"
"Mademoiselle, you do not have to dance around with your words. You have suddenly realised who you are here with. It would be a sobering realisation for even the stoutest of women."
"No! No, it's not that." Grace began, feeling her heart constrict when she saw the flicker of pain underneath his veneer of frost. "It's just that I was…I don't want to…I wouldn't want you to think…"
Each stuttering sentence stomped down harder on his heart.
"Mademoiselle, don't embarrass yourself further."
"Embarrass myself?!" Grace asked with a deep frown.
"I think you know you belong here just as much as I do." He said, gesturing his head to the popped bottle of champagne in his hand.
Grace's eyes flared with fire. That same acid rage rose up inside her again and she pointed a finger into his face.
"That…That was rude."
Javert had the good sense to feel a touch fearful of that finger. As if a witch had just pointed a curse directly into his face, but he dared not show his nerves, and he doubled-down on his hurt. "Rude? Or honest?"
"Look, this is all still new to me." She said heatedly. "I know I've been here a good few months now, but I'm not from this world. The manners, the rituals, the expectations…"
"Do they not teach you grace and decorum in Oxford?"
"Well, they certainly don't teach it here in Paris either, apparently!" Grace cried, looking him up and down.
"Shh!" Hissed a voice from the neighbouring Box.
"Shh, yourself!" Grace hissed back.
She blew the fattest raspberry she could back at the voice who had shushed her, flicking a few 'v's that way, just for good measure. Like a petulant child, she turned away from the voice and huffed herself down into a chair.
Silence settled over the Box again, with the violent, crashing violins of the 'Winter' movement crashing over them both. The music sounded sharp and angry. It was almost like the orchestra was soundtracking their argument…
Javert took his seat beside her, sourly grinding his teeth together. The music stretched on in a maddeningly complex dance of strings. Melodies wove in and out of each other, until Javert found it difficult to follow just the one line of song. He found himself questioning why he had come here at all. Music was something he'd never indulged in. It was a hobby for the rich, the un-busy, the gainfully unemployed… It was all just noise. Loud, grating, complex noise.
"I'm sorry." Grace suddenly said quietly.
The sound of her voice took him by surprise. He inclined his head just a fraction towards her, waiting for her to continue.
"I didn't mean to sound like I…Like I didn't want to be here with you. I just…don't want you to get hurt."
The faintest quirk of a smile pulled at his lips. "Mademoiselle, I am made of stronger stuff than most. Pain is something I am familiar with, as you are well aware."
"Yes, but-"
"And please…" he said, cutting her off swiftly. "…do me the courtesy of acknowledging that I, and I alone, know which pains I can and cannot stomach."
She dared to glance over his way. Grace saw a knowing look in Javert's eye, and perhaps he already had an idea, an inclination, as to what Enjolras had asked her to do. Maybe he'd known all along. And he still wanted her to be here regardless.
And what was a bit of harmless courting really? There didn't have to be an agenda behind it, like Marcelin had suggested. She didn't even have to mention the boys and the cafe and their plans to him, if she didn't want to.
If I want to flirt with The Inspector, I damn well will. Grace thought to herself. Not because of Enjolras's revolution, but because I want to!
Grace nodded her head.
"Will you accept my apologies too?" He asked her.
Grace remembered that he'd insulted her manners and pointed out just how imperfectly she fit in this place. She pulled herself up a little straighter and haughtier. But after a moment, she slumped herself back down in defeat.
"I can't accept your apology if it's true." Grace said, dropping her tight shoulders. "I thought I was getting better at this place, but you're right. I don't belong here."
But then, Javert raised the bottle of champagne to his lips and took a swig straight from the neck, just like she had done.
"Good." He said, once he'd lowered the bottle from his mouth. "I wouldn't want you to belong to these people anyway."
Grace laughed as he handed it back towards her.
They passed the bottle between them as the orchestra completed their symphony. Grace liked that she could still taste his warmth and his breath on the glass when she pressed it to her own mouth. And each time the bottle passed between them, she let their hands touch, not afraid of it anymore.
They both clapped along with the applause as the conductor took his bow.
"Shall we order snails next and flick them onto the Vicomtes and Counts below?" Grace asked, leaning in close to Javert.
"Mademoiselle, you are incorrigible." He grumbled back to her.
"Do you think you could hit the Box on the other side to us?"
"I take that back. You are devilish."
"Devilish?! Little old me?" Grace asked, daring to throw a sideways glance his way.
She found him already looking her way, something roguish and warm in his eyes.
"My mentor used to tell me often that God makes a woman, yes, but the devil is the one that makes them beautiful."
Grace blinked, a little lost for words, as her face grew flushed. It was a shock to hear Javert speak like that. Maybe the champagne had helped loosen his tongue, maybe the whole evening had made his coldness thaw a little. Nevertheless, she felt the burn of something strong in those words. Something in Javert merely implying that she was 'beautiful' made her insides turn molten.
"Your mentor?" She asked with a raise of her brow. "I bet he was fun at parties…"
"Oh, the absolute spirit of mirth. Just like I." He said sardonically.
Grace laughed. A real, genuine laugh that had Javert grinning with triumph.
"Shh!" The voice from the neighbouring box said again.
"I said, shhh yourself!" Grace hissed back.
She picked up the champagne's cork and threw it over the wall, into the complainer's Box.
Javert tutted as he heard it land with a small thud, amidst exclamations and sighs of displeasure.
"I say! How staggeringly ghastly!" The voice from the other box said.
"Devilish, indeed." Javert said, fixing her in a stern but also somehow playful glance.
They would have become lost in another prolonged and heated staring competition, had the next performance not suddenly begun.
There was a sudden stab of music that made Grace's jump, and she dragged her eyes off The Inspector's October-sky irises to look towards the stage.
Still, as the new performer began to sing, her expression dropped.
Javert noticed the change in her face, wondering initially if she was in pain or discomfort. But it wasn't that. The look on her features was more like an enthralled kind of stupor. Like the look a child might have when peering at the presents under the Christmas tree for the first time. A delighted sort of bewitchment.
"Is-is this…Mozart?" She asked breathlessly, leaning forwards in her seat.
"I believe so." He answered coolly. "Although music was never really my forté."
"I… I love Mozart." She said with a small, quiet laugh.
Javert's eyes darted to the stage, watching as a white-clad singer stood shrieking on a set of stars and moons.
"Die Zauberflote." Grace said, almost to herself.
"I'm afraid German was not my forté either, Mademoiselle."
"The Magic Flute." She translated for him.
Javert gave a huff of understanding and nodded his head.
She had become so captivated, transfixed even, in an instant. Their strange flirtation abandoned, her composure gone, leaning almost completely over the balcony to get a better view of the stage. Javert could not help but wonder what kind of power this music had over her.
His eyes once again travelled back to the opera singer on stage, and he tried to look through Grace's eyes at this frivolous spectacle. But this time, when he looked again, he really looked.
The singer's dress was a brilliant, luminous silver, and it shone with the same glitz as the glitter-painted moons and stars around her. It was as if she was made of stardust. Like she had descended from the heavens to stand before them.
Javert had never had time for music and trivialities when he was a boy, nor when he was a soldier. He did not pretend to be a man of refinement and culture. But watching this woman, her enchanting, soaring voice ricocheting off the gilded ceiling…
He could see why Grace was so seemingly entranced by her.
"The woman." He asked tentatively. "Who is she meant to be?"
"The Queen of the Night. She wants her daughter to kill Sarastro."
Javert's brow knitted into a frown. "Why?"
"Shh!" She hissed, reaching out and suddenly grabbing his hand. "Listen!"
The soprano began a series of soaring melodies, bouncing through a seemingly impossible range of complicated scales and high notes as if it was nothing.
The music was breathtaking, but all Javert could focus on was Grace's hand clasped tight around his own. It wasn't fleeting and quick, like the quick brush of fingers when they'd passed the champagne from one to the other. He locked his jaw tight, his whole body stiffening with surprise.
Grace watched in utter awe as the vocal fireworks danced and exploded before her. She had heard this aria before, understood how complex and difficult it was to sing, but seeing it performed before her- in this place, in this time- it was nothing short of magic.
Grace scoffed and gently shook her head in amazement.
"That vocal control..! That range…!" She whispered.
And all without a microphone too. She added silently in her head.
The singer soared into the stratosphere. Those wonderful sopranic scales seemingly whizzing and popping around the auditorium.
From the corner of his eye, Javert watched as the smile of awe and wonder spread across Grace's face. He forced himself to relax his shoulders, pushed down the wriggling but oddly pleasant sensation of discomfort in his guts, focused on something, anything, else other than the position of Grace's hand atop his. He cleared his throat awkwardly.
"What… what is she saying?" He asked Grace in a whisper.
Grace turned to him, eyes locking for the briefest of seconds. His fiercely blue eyes seemed to smack straight into her and the intensity of his stare almost had her breaking out in a blush.
"Well…" she began, a little flustered. "…Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen. It means 'Hell's vengeance boils in my heart."
"Goodness." Javert said with a raise of one eyebrow.
"And then she goes on to say something like… If you don't kill Sarastro, you'll no longer be my daughter. You'll be disowned forever. All the bonds of nature will be broken between us."
"So, this is a song about… murder?"
Grace nodded her head.
It was Javert's turn to scoff and shake his head in disbelief.
"How can something so awful sound so beautiful?" he asked quietly.
Grace turned to face him once more. This time, those intensely blue eyes were cast out somewhere onto the stage. His look was soft, gentle, relaxed. She'd never seen this look of tenderness on his face before.
"You think this is beautiful?" she asked with the hint of a tease.
Colour rose in the Inspector's face and he looked away quickly, darting his eyes to the floor and then, finally, back to Grace.
"In a…purely subjective way, of course." he stumbled. "I wouldn't know about such things of refinement…"
"I think it's beautiful too." she said, smiling broadly at him.
His shoulders relaxed a fraction and he felt the tugging of his own smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
Not as beautiful as you, though. Came his own, uncontrollable thought, crashing violently through his mind.
Emotion roiled inside his chest. Something wild and untameable. Tearing down all semblance of order and self-control that he had built around his heart in his forty-seven years of life.
The emotion, the exposure, should have frightened him. But it didn't. Like everything about Grace, it was a contradiction. A pleasant ache. A comfortable vulnerability.
His life of order and discipline and self-flagellation and routine seemed to fall apart in that smile of hers.
The champagne cork that Grace had thrown earlier landed back in their Box.
"Take your rubbish back. Plebeians!" Hissed the voice next door.
Grace and Javert both stared at it, rolling on the floor.
Grace snorted with laughter, covering her mouth with her hands. Javert too allowed himself a smirk of amusement and felt his shoulders moving as he tried to suppress his own delight.
"Would you like to… leave?" He asked her, breathy with mirth. "Would you like to…see something equally spectacular?"
Grace was a little lost for words, frowning at him in surprise. There was a hint of something in his voice that she couldn't quite place. What was it? Playfulness? Coquettishness? And in Inspector Javert's voice, of all people!
When she said nothing, he continued, nervously tripping over his words: "I.. I had a squadron of men positioned here. This was during the days of the July Revolution, you see, and…"
He paused, catching the look of pleasant surprise in her eyes. She let out a small laugh and extended a gloved hand to him.
"Show me."
Her hand slid into his, naturally and easily again.
Javert tucked her arm through his. Each brush of her delicate silk against his coarse leather coat sent shocks of lightning up his arm. His legs felt oddly heavy as he led her out of the private box and into the foyer.
"This way." he said simply, leading her back down the elaborate golden stairs.
Grace scooped up her voluminous dress into her arms, doing her best to follow the Inspector without tripping over and falling on her ass. Still, she kept one hand free to hang on tight to Javert.
To her surprise, he led her away from the gilded rooms and the ornate wealth. Through hidden doors and back passages. Until Grace looked around and the two of them were firmly in the backstage areas of the theatre.
There was chatter and noise. People rehearsing their lines and stage-managers cueing on the performers. Actors, half-dressed and covered in rouge paint, rushed around them, paying them no mind. Dancers rubbed at their aching feet and dusted the chalk from their ballet-shoes. Both of them bobbed low to avoid the hanging ropes and set pieces. A roll of applause floated through the backstage area from the auditorium, with calls of 'bravissima!' and 'bella prima donna!' being thrown at the performer of the Queen of the Night aria. Grace watched as the soprano exited the stage, her brilliant white gown floating behind her, and in one fluid movement, she removed her huge silver wig and handed it to a nearby stagehand with a heavy huff of relief.
And then, they started to climb.
A set of iron spiral stairs had them climbing and climbing, until Grace felt dizzy with the constant twists and turns. She clasped at her bodice as her breaths became faster and deeper, letting out a big huff.
"We're almost there. Keep going." Javert said. He squeezed her hand tight with reassurance.
"You try doing this in stays." she huffed back at him.
Javert was glad that she couldn't see the deep blush that spread up his neck. The mention of women's undergarments had him feeling sweaty and itchy in an instant.
Still, he pressed on, leading her up the stairs and through the secret passages that only a few people knew of. Grace tried to count the steps, losing her patience when she passed seventy. She was about to demand of Javert exactly where he was leading her, when the suddenly happened upon a small, squat door.
He lay a tentative hand upon the handle, glancing back at Grace from beneath the rim of his hat. Again, she found herself blindsided by his stare as he looked down at her, poised on the other side of the door. Despite her breathlessness, she found herself holding the air in her lungs, waiting for respite from those blue eyes so she could let loose.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
She nodded.
And he turned back to the door and let it swing open.
A rush of cold air flowed over Grace's face. It soothed her hot skin and caressed the bare flesh of her neck and her chest. She let out a small moan of pleasure, and again Javert found himself colouring red at that sound. Nevertheless, he quickly re-composed himself and led Grace, by the hand, out into the naked night.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim, but the Inspector led her onwards with a sure and steady hand. Her feet touched cold metal, her eyes saw a flutter of angel's wings, the sky exploded in a swarm of stars above her, and as the cold wind whipped around her, she realised where she was.
"The roof!" Grace exclaimed.
He had led her all the way up to the roof of the Opera House.
Javert couldn't help but let out a small, dry laugh. He relinquished her hand as she went rushing to the ledge. Her purple dress billowed in the breeze as she stared out over the sprawling city at their feet. Paris was an expanse of glittering light before her. The various avenues and boulevards of the city spread out beneath her like veins of lightning. Life and light pulsed beneath her. And she stood atop it all. A god looking down on creation. And Javert had brought her here to lay it all at her feet.
She clasped on tight to the hoof of a celestial horse; one of the many statues that adorned the rooftop terrace she now stood on, sighing deeply as the spectacular sight before her truly settled in.
"I told you it was beautiful." Came Javert's low, melodious voice from behind her.
"This…this is more than beautiful." She breathed, unable to take her eyes off the view. "This is…bloody gorgeous!"
The Inspector huffed a laugh. "Another one of your English parlances, Madame?"
Grace giggled. The sound of her laughter made Javert's stomach fizz, as if he'd just taken another hearty swig of champagne.
"You… you said you were once stationed here?" She asked, trying to divert attention away from her modern turn-of-phrase.
"It was the event that led to my promotion to Inspector of the Prèfecture de Paris." He explained. "The Legitimists were trying to advance up the Seine, you see.."
He pointed out into the spread of lights, gesturing towards where Grace presumed the dark river was.
"... and my battalion, and a number of other Orleanists, had been stationed throughout the city to stop the enemy advancement."
The factions and names meant little to Grace, but still she nodded along and made a mental note to ask Eponine about it all later…
"At night time, we'd keep watch up here because, well, you can see the panoramic views it gave us of the city. And after the former Chief Inspector of Paris raided the pro-Orleans newspapers, the people became enraged. After that, it was safer for us to stay up here than it was to roam the streets."
"Even though… you were Orleanisist?" Grace asked tentatively.
"I find that once an emboldened, angry mob gets an aggrievance between their teeth, they don't care who they throw bricks at."
"Oh, I see…"
She looked around awkwardly, thinking back on how this conversation had turned to politics again. Javert sensed her discomfort and he searched internally for something else to say.
"But…when I was up here…" he began gently, casting his eyes out over Paris. "I could look out over the city from so high up- so far away- that I couldn't see all the squalor and the poverty and the violence that's down there…"
Grace heard his voice change again. That gentle, softness that had so surprised her before. She studied his face carefully and saw the lights of Paris reflected in his eyes. An unreadable expression sat underneath the dark brim of his hat.
"...Because all you can see up here are the lights and the stars and the beauty. No people. Nothing of the cruelty of mankind."
"And here was me thinking you enjoyed being down there amongst the… dirt and delinquents." Grace said, casting him a sidelong glance.
Javert's back straightened before her, the soft look on his face gone in a flash.
"Despite what your friends may have told you, Mademoiselle, I do not enjoy punishing desperate and hungry people." He said through a locked jaw. "But I am the Law. And the Law must be upheld."
She swallowed down whatever retort she was going to come back with, casting her eyes out over Paris silently. She slightly hated that what she'd said to Enjolras earlier had been right: He was loyal to the Law, through and through. To break it, for Javert, would be to break the laws of nature.
Javert closed his eyes and sighed, acutely aware that he had somehow spoiled the mood. The quiet seconds stretched on, and the cold wind that had gone unnoticed before sent a chill through them both. The Inspector kept opening his mouth, turning towards Grace, and closing it like a dying fish.
"I'm sorry." She said suddenly.
Javert blinked at her, even more lost for words than before.
"This is your place of peace." She continued. "I didn't mean to-"
"No. Don't apologise." He interrupted her swiftly. "You should not have to suffer at the end of a bitter old man's temper, who has too many grudges and gripes to count."
They both turned to face each other. Her delicate updo was slowly being spoiled by the wind, a rogue curl escaping the pins here and there. Javert suddenly had the urge to brush a curl out of her face, but he controlled it, like he controlled every diversion of emotion. But he saw the stars above reflected in her eyes. Her beautiful, upturned, honey-brown eyes. And he felt that sense of calm and confidence the stars gave him.
In the chaos and misery he'd endured before, the constancy of the stars had grounded him. When he was adrift, they anchored him.
But this was a tempest that he wanted to remain lost in. It defied reason and rules and constancy. When he had felt lost, he looked to the stars' positions in the heavens above to find himself again. But he didn't want to find his way back to himself, not his old self. Not without her. So, he would have to make the stars follow him into the tempest.
After all, if a man like him could fall in love, then perhaps even the stars in the heavens could move positions.
He reached a hand to her face and delicately, purposefully, brushed away a flapping curl.
His fingers lingered on the curve of her neck, the touch making her skin erupt into electric goosebumps.
Grace stared into his eyes. Each line and frown concealing a thousand stories and a thousand unsaid things. She was tired of unsaid things. Tired of people not really saying what they want to say… or asking what they want to ask.
"Why did you bring me up here, Javert?" She asked, so quietly it was almost lost to the winds around them.
Something fired deep within his ice-blue eyes. And he went still. So still and quiet that Grace felt like a wild deer caught down the barrel of a hunter's rifle. Any second he could pull the trigger and she'd be helpless to stop her downfall.
"Surely you know why." He whispered back to her.
Her mouth was open before him. She was open before him, like the city at their feet.
And before he could convince himself not to, he was kissing her.
She was soft, and warm, and everything he had dreamt she'd be.
And she did not pull away.
Grace embraced all his lips and his whiskers and his gunpowder scent in an instant. A hunger for him rose up her throat. Pulling her deeper into him, like a grappling hook had been cast from her to him, and now their two bodies were on a collision course with one another.
His first kiss had been naïve and perhaps a little delicate. Her return fire was passionate and insistent. Yet he stepped up to her challenge like a true soldier and they soon found themselves desperately lost in each other.
He could taste their shared breath. Feel the thud of her heartbeat as his hand caressed her neck. The spilling tickle of her hot breath over his face was intoxicating.
She relished in his coarseness: his scratching stubble on her face, his woollen coat on her bare skin. He was real, and rough, and rugged. Yet his kiss was shy and unsure, but hopelessly ardent and passionate.
She opened her pillow-soft lips for him, just a fraction wider. It was her permission, her invitation for his tongue to come and dance with hers. And so he did, fire igniting his bones when he felt her moan beneath him.
But both were wrenched from the bliss of each other when they heard an almighty crash.
Javert wrenched his mouth from hers, turning towards the source of the noise. Grace stood before him in shock, feeling like an infant whose umbilical cord had just been cut. Still, her eyes flew open when she heard the sounds of screams in the distance.
Javert cast Grace a sidelong glance and went charging for the small, squat door that had led them to the roof. She followed after him, scooping up her dress again.
The noises grew louder as they descended the iron stairs and pushed through the backstage area. Screams and shouts, and the crashing noise of what sounded like tinkling glass. Grace pushed through the throngs of panicked people, desperate to keep her eyes on the Inspector. He ploughed his way through the crowds, shoulder-barging actors and pushing men of the ton out of his way.
"Javert! Javert! What's happening?!" Grace screamed after him.
But no sooner had she asked came the voice of somebody she recognised, out somewhere in the chaos beyond.
"Vive la revolution! Down with Louis-Phillipe!"
"Enjolras…" Grace breathed.
"So, you did know this would happen." Javert growled, turning on her with fury in his eyes.
"I…I don't know what he's done!" Grace stuttered.
"The chandelier! They brought down the chandelier!" a ballet dancer cried beside her before rushing for safety.
The colour drained from Grace's face as she locked eyes with Javert.
"Oh my God…" she breathed.
"The King is a tyrant! Freedom to the people!" Cried another voice over the panic, probably Combeferre.
Javert snarled and stormed off towards the auditorium. Grace struggled to keep up, with all of the afraid and fleeing people around her treading on her dress and barging into her in their hurry to escape. However, soon she emerged into the theatre area itself… and gasped in horror.
The chandelier was a beautiful mess of smashed crystal and twisted iron. Bent and broken in the centre of the stalls. The neck of the beautiful ornament was drooping into the orchestra pit, spilling hot lamp oil into the space. Around it, hundreds of leaflets fluttered in the air. Their leaflets. The ones that Feuilly had made in the ABC cafe.
They floated like doves through the air, almost pretty in the hellish surroundings of the smashed chandelier. She cast her eyes up to the ceiling, hoping to see either Enjolras or Combeferre or anyone of the ABC friends, as someone must have thrown the leaflets from on high. Yet her eyes found no one. She didn't know whether to feel worried or relieved…
A heavy hand thudded on her shoulder, making her flinch.
"We need to evacuate this whole place." Javert ordered.
"Is… is anyone hurt?" She asked, her throat thick with emotion. "Or…or dead?"
"I don't believe so." The Inspector said coldly. "The braggarts who did this seem to have committed their little demonstration during the interval. No one was in their seats beneath the chandelier."
"Oh, thank God." Grace sighed, but a small pop and a rush of flame from the orchestra pit soon had her crying out in alarm.
"Come! I said we must evacuate!" Javert said forcefully, grabbing her arm with an iron grip. "This whole place will be up in flames shortly."
"Wh-why?"
He pointed menacingly at the chandelier, at the cracked vials of lamp-oil leaking out everywhere. Almost to prove his point, another small burst of flames spewed out from the chandelier, making a set of three seats catch fire nearby.
Oh God, it isn't electric… she realised with a sickening twist of her stomach. Enjolras has just spilt lighter fluid all over this auditorium, and sprinkled paper all over it just for good measure!
She looked around briefly at the velvet curtains, the plush seats, the wooden carvings… This whole place would be an inferno in moments.
"Come, I said!" Javert shouted.
"But the boys…! Enjolras, Combeferre..! I don't know where they are!"
"Then pray they made it outside before I could sink my claws into them!" He snarled.
Javert hauled Grace through the auditorium, away from the burning and shattered mess.
More pops of exploding lamp fluid erupted in their wake, and turning back once, Grace saw that the whole orchestra pit was now a trough of flame.
When they both emerged onto the grand staircase, the Opera House was deserted. The Inspector did not slow or halt as he pulled Grace down the gilded stairs, his brow set into a permanent scowl.
"I suppose you can scurry back to your friends now with a job well done." he grumbled through gritted teeth.
"What? I had no idea they were planning this!" Grace exclaimed.
"Oh please. Spare me your feigned ignorance. I know now that this is why you attended at all tonight."
She wrenched herself free from out of his grasp, standing in the middle of the golden staircase with her mouth agape. He stared back at her with his unmoving expression of contempt.
"You…you think that I-"
"Played your part very well as a nice little distraction for the Inspector, while your friends wreaked havoc behind the scenes."
"Um, I think you're forgetting something, Inspector. You brought me up to the roof!" she exclaimed, pointing a finger into her breast. "You kissed me up there!"
"Be quiet!" Javert's eyes bulged and he took a step towards her, hand raised in urgency.
He looked around him with a quick jerk of his head, looking for anyone who may have overheard, but there was no one.
Grace scoffed at him. "Oh, you're embarrassed of me now, Inspector?"
"I..I am not the one who should be embarrassed, Mademoiselle." Javert stuttered.
"Excuse me?"
"Is that the limit of your revolutionary talents, Mademoiselle? To flaunt yourself in front of the men of the ton like a common whore?!"
She slapped him. Hard.
Straight across the whiskered face that she'd been kissing only moments before.
Tears from the sting of pain rose up in his eyes. Hot, angry tears rose up in hers.
"How dare you." She breathed, barely able to fight back her sobs.
Shame bubbled up inside Javert, acrid and bitter. He regretted his words no sooner than the moment he'd spoken them. Just like how he'd regretted speaking those words to Camille, despite the anger he'd felt towards her. But now, there they were, laid out in the space between them. His jaw already ached with the consequences of those words. A consequence he'd apparently failed to learn since he was an eighteen year old boy…
Christ. He thought. She has a terrific swing.
With her remaining dignity, Grace scooped up her dress and descended down the stairs before the Inspector could see her start to cry. There was no way she was going to let him see just how much his words had upset her.
She had verbally flayed Enjolras for implying she do the things that Javert had just accused her of. But now it had all come to fruition anyway. Like some awful Greek tragedy on the ruined stage of this Opera house. Intentionally or not, she was leaving this place cast in the role of a scheming, conniving little temptress. And worst of all, Javert had been so quick to believe it was true.
She couldn't hide the slight bob of her shoulders when she reached the bottom step as she began to sob.
He watched her go with a sinking feeling of dread. Had his temper finally cost him too much?
His legs ached to follow her. Rush to her side and demand her forgiveness, but his stubbornness had him rooted to the spot. When she had finally disappeared from his sights, he let out a single word that only the carved cherubs and nymphs around him heard.
"Damn."
Grace searched the street outside the Opera House. It was full of people who had escaped the chaos of the chandelier crash. Smoke was already billowing from out of a few of the upper windows and she could hear the far away tinkle of the wagons of the Sapeurs-Pompiers- the Fire Brigade. She scanned the panicked faces around her and saw finely dressed men, fainting women, the dancers she'd glimpsed backstage, even the Prima Donna Queen of the Night, still dressed in her resplendent white dress.
A carriage came rushing through the amassed crowd, the beating horse hooves adding to the cacophony of noise.
"Grace!" The driver hollered at her.
She twisted around to face the voice and saw Enjolras astride the carriage. She let out a sob of relief.
"Oh, thank God."
She was angry at Enjolras. Livid that he had not disclosed his real plans for that evening to her, but her anger could wait till later. She rushed towards the carriage, skirts billowing behind her.
"Combeferre and Courfeyrac?" She asked Enjolras.
"Inside the carriage."
The door swung open and there, with hands outstretched, was them both.
"Come, we need to be shot of here before the rest of the Prèfecture turn up." Combeferre called out to her.
Grace cast one last furtive glance back to the Opera House. She became breathless when she saw Javert's silhouette, stark and black, against the golden light of the building.
She closed her open mouth, hardening her beating heart to him, and took Combeferre's outstretched hand.
"Go!" She commanded Enjolras before slamming the carriage door.
And Javert watched her ride off into the unforgiving night, unable to take his eyes off her until the city swallowed her up.