Hi all,

I'm really sorry to have left you all hanging for six months... or however long it's been. I found out on Christmas Eve, of all times, that I'm expecting our second child! So I've been a bit preoccupied, to say nothing of exhausted. I'll try to post on a much more regular basis moving forward, though. I think we all could use something to read right now. Hope everyone is well and safe.

-The Countess

Chapter 33. July 1887.

When Christine reached the Girys' flat, she found the children absent and their mother drawn and obviously extremely troubled by something.

"Whatever is wrong?" asked Christine, setting her parasol by the door. "Have you had bad news about a relative?"

"No, no," said Adele, brushing the back of her hand across her forehead. "But Christine... I have had a visit from the Vicomte de Chagny. He has given me a letter for you. He said he did not know how else to reach you, and that he was desperate."

It was a jolting feeling to hear Raoul's name spoken. Christine had done her best to put her childhood friend out of her mind. She missed him and would have liked to have kept him as a friend, to reminisce about the memories that only he could enjoy with her. It had assuaged her grief for her father to be able to talk about the happy times of her girlhood with him, to the boy who had shared them, and the cares of adulthood had momentarily dropped away from her during those hours when she remembered the past with him.

But she was no longer a girl and Raoul was not a boy. And given all that had passed between the three of them, a friendship with Raoul was impossible if she were going to be Erik's wife. He would never be able to accept it, and Christine had told herself that this was her own fault. She should never have let her enjoyment of Raoul's company get out of hand. But she had, and so now, having made the choice to marry Erik, she was obliged to do her best to forget Raoul's existence. Living with Erik and spending so much of her time with him had made this relatively easy, and it had not been a pleasant feeling to suddenly see Raoul running toward her that day in the park, his voice and figure dredging up all of their history together that she had tried to bury. She had hoped that would be the last time this happened. But now Adele was holding out an envelope, and she must know what was contained within it. Christine tore it open, and read the note contained within it with an ever-increasing sinking feeling. Raoul's penmanship was excellent, and all too easy to grasp the meaning of.

When she came to the end of the letter, Christine closed her eyes for a second, and then opened them to see Madame Giry looking at her with trepidation.

"He does not believe that I married Erik willingly," said Christine hurriedly. "He thinks – he thinks I am a prisoner, and that I want to be rescued. He begs me to send him a note telling him how he may do so, and... and how he may bring my abductor to the authorities. He pledges himself as my protector, and says that he will flee with me wherever I wish to go."

"The boy's mad," said Adele crisply. "He can not flee anywhere. He is expected back on his ship in scarcely more than a month, to leave to look for the d'Artois's survivors. Though if you ask me, that is a wild goose chase if ever there was one. But he is an officer of the navy, and must go where he is sent. It was in the papers recently that the expedition will be leaving soon – finally, after all the delays."

"I would not... would not put it past him to be willing to ignore that," said Christine haltingly. The older woman stared.

"A member of the de Chagny family, shirk his duty, allow himself to become a deserter? Why would he do that?"

"Because he..." Christine took a deep breath and tried again. "Because he believes himself to be in love with me, and he is... of a sufficiently romantic bent to think that it is worth giving up family and honour to be with me. He told me so himself."

Adele's eyes flew wide open. "But you are a married woman! How can he think you would run off with him now? And how could he allow himself to commit such a sin as to tempt you to do so?"

"Because he does not believe my marriage was valid," explained Christine, her mouth twisting in disgust. "He thinks I was forced, and that even now I am in agony and wanting to be rescued."

"Well, you must tell him that is not so!" said Adele forcefully.

"I already did," said Christine. "It didn't work."

"Really? When?"

"I – we – met in a park. Completely by accident, you understand; after I sent him that note the morning of my wedding telling him I could not marry him, I did not expect to see him again. He was... once my friend, but I knew that in marrying Erik I had to cut myself off from Raoul. Erik would never agree to my seeing him again."

"No, I don't imagine he would," agreed Adele dryly. "So you told the Vicomte you were married, when you ran into him in the park?"

"Yes, I did. And he didn't – couldn't…accept it. He was convinced I must have been dragged to the altar and forced into a sham of a marriage."

"Why would he think you would consent to that?"

"Because he – he – " Christine took a step back and leaned against the wall, letting her head tilt back and closing her eyes. It was too hard to talk about this while meeting Adele's eyes.

"He thought Erik had... forced himself on me, and that that was why he had been able to make me go through a false marriage ceremony. And he thought that now I was being made to live as his... his concubine."

"But Christine, surely you told him that was utter nonsense!"

"I tried to," answered Christine, still keeping her eyes closed and choosing not to mention the thoroughly ineffectual job she had made of it. "It made no difference." She straightened now and looked at Adele again; the other woman was shaking her head in confusion.

"I don't understand," she said. "Why would he refuse to believe you?"

"Because... because I once told him not to."

Adele blinked, and Christine said, "Let's go have tea, and I'll tell you about it."

Over madeleines and tea with sugar and cream, Christine haltingly told Adele the story of the evening with Raoul on the rooftop, and of how she had assured him that he was not to believe her if she said she wanted to stay with Erik, and to help her run from "the demon" regardless; and of how she had repeated these instructions several times, and swore that she was terrified of Erik, too much so to try to leave him.

"Well, no wonder he doesn't believe you now either," said the older woman with great asperity. "Whatever possessed you to tell him that, you foolish girl?"

"I don't know," said Christine, shaking her head. "I…well, I was afraid. Erik was so jealous of Raoul, and so unpredictable, and I thought at any moment he might do something terrible. And I didn't... I didn't know what I wanted. And he wouldn't give me the chance to figure it out. I knew I was afraid, but I didn't know of what, I think..." She thought for a moment. "I didn't know of what, and Erik himself seemed like the most likely thing."

"You had good reason to be afraid of him," said Adele calmly. "Erik has the potential to be a very great man indeed, but at the time he was quite out of his mind, and even when sane, he can be an extraordinarily dangerous man if he decides to be."

Christine shuddered. "Yes, he can." This conversation was keeping the earlier encounter with Erik uppermost in her mind, and she would have liked to forget about it for a little while.

"And what else were you afraid of, Christine?" asked Adele steadily.

"Of... of how I felt when I was around Erik," said Christine quietly. "I didn't understand it, and it frightened me, and I thought it must surely be sinful. And I wanted to run away from it and pretend I never experienced... those feelings."

"And do you still have 'those feelings'?"

"Yes," said Christine candidly, "but it's all right to feel that way about a man when he's your husband."

Adele burst out laughing. "Christine, you remind me of myself when I was first married to Jules," she said. "Enjoy it. Being a newlywed is a wonderful thing. Will you have some more tea?"

"Yes, thank you."

Tea poured, Adele brought the conversation back to what to do about the Vicomte. "I think you must meet him – only once, of course – and tell him straight out that he is mistaken. Why did you not do so when you met up with him in the park?"

"I tried to," said Christine again, "but I didn't... I didn't do a very good job of it." Shamefacedly, she finally confessed to Adele the story of how she had stammered and wept, and in general only made Raoul more convinced that she was once again Erik's prisoner, and not in possession of her own mind.

"Well, that is unfortunate," said Adele, frowning. "But the thing must be dealt with all the same. Would it help if I were with you?"

"No, I can't meet him again," Christine insisted, shaking her head. "It's too risky. What if Erik somehow found out?"

Adele winced.

"Yes, exactly," said Christine. "I am lucky that he does not know about the one accidental meeting."

"But... surely he doesn't follow you everywhere?"

"No, I don't think so, but... I just don't want to risk anything. It's not worth it. I don't want it on my conscience."

"Christine, you must make the Vicomte realise that he needs to leave you to your own life." Adele leaned forward. "It doesn't sound like a letter will do the trick; you have already tried that and it did not work. I really think you need to meet him in person. Tell him face to face that you intend to stay with your husband, as a wife should. You are responsible for the Vicomte thinking you are a damsel in distress needing to be rescued." Christine stared at the table and bit her lip. This was quite true, but it was not pleasant to be told so in the boxkeeper's forthright tones.

"You must clear up the misunderstanding and force him to see the truth of the matter, and the words from your lips will make much more of an impression than another letter. Meet him once more. You can do it here if you need a safe place where Erik can not possibly overhear."

Annoyed and embarrassed, Christine repeated stubbornly, "No. I can't."

"Then what do you propose to do instead?"

"I'll write him another letter," said Christine stoutly. "I should have told him I was marrying Erik in that first note I sent him, the day of our wedding. I didn't... didn't want to go into all of it, so I just wrote that I couldn't marry him and I was breaking off our engagement, and I couldn't see him anymore. I thought that would be enough, but I suppose not. Maybe if he gets a... more firmly worded response from me he'll leave me alone. And besides, he's leaving in a month. I just have to avoid him that long."

"And if he chooses not to go?"

"Well... he probably won't go that far, if he has been made to accept that I am Erik's wife, and will remain so. You said yourself that it was unlikely that he would take that drastic a step."

"Well, I hope you know what you're doing." Adele shook her head dubiously as she sat back in her chair. "But I think you're making a big mistake."

Christine did not care to go over the ground they had already covered, and merely said coolly, "I appreciate your concern. Do please let me know if Raoul comes to you again."

"If he does, I shall tell him in no uncertain terms to abandon this absurd pursuit of a decently married woman," Adele said tartly, "but from the sound of it my saying so will make no difference."

"It might," said Christine, more confidently than she really felt. "Now, what was the name of that doctor you thought might be able to help Madame Valerius?"

Adele, no fool, took the hint and chatted pleasantly about other things until Christine took her leave. She went down the stairs of the apartment building slowly, thinking of how very much she did not want to be the prize in the tug-of-war game that Raoul seemed determined to start up again with Erik. That game had nearly been deadly once before. She did not doubt that it would be again if allowed to resume, and shivered even as she went out into the hot summer day. Raoul's letter had rattled her badly. But now it was time to go back to her husband, and find a way to raise the topic of his using his voice on her when she had not consented to it. Christine felt as if she were bouncing from one problem to another today.

At home, he was sitting in an armchair and reading, though she noticed he had not got very far in the book. Usually he read with frightening speed, absorbing the words with little effort. Had he been anxiously waiting for her to return?

"Ah, you are back!" he exclaimed, rising to embrace her. "Do not disappear into the kitchen; come and sit with me for a while first and we'll have some wine. You don't have to cook something elaborate tonight. Is there not some of last night's roast left over?"

"Yes."

"Well, then. We need to eat that, anyway, or it will spoil. Sit down, and I will get the wine."

She took off her gloves and bonnet, and sat in the chair opposite his. It was endearing, the way he was so often clearly glad to see her when she had been out for even a short time. He loved and needed her so much. How could Raoul expect her to leave her Erik? Didn't her desperate struggle to break away from the one man, and return to the other, prove where she wanted to be? It had been hard enough to convince herself to leave Erik before; now that they were married, such a thing was unthinkable. She would never, never leave him. It would destroy him.

And her too. Why could Raoul not see that?

Erik returned shortly, a bottle under his arm, two glasses held elegantly between the long fingers of one hand, and a bottle opener in the other. Once the wine was poured, he launched into a monologue about what exactly was good about this particular one and why. And Christine found herself unable to bring up a sensitive subject. It was far too easy to just keep things pleasant; pretend she did not, once again, have a dreadful mess concerning these two men and the nature of her relationship to each. So she sat quietly, and listened to Erik's voice – but not to his words. In all honesty, she could not care less about how the '71 vintages compared to the '74 ones. Instead she was letting the beauty of his timbre wash over her, deliberately not thinking about the need to tell him that he must guard against letting that beauty slip into sinister persuasion, and watching his animated features, the normal and the terrible, and the graceful movements of his artist's hands as he used them to emphasize his words. And she was looking at him, thinking how different he was from Raoul, and how overwhelming. His tall spare form, clad in one of his perfectly tailored black frock coats; never a lounge suit for Erik, like younger and more fashionable men. His shoulders, broad but angular and speaking of a strength that was not normal; his long lean limbs and the manner in which he arranged them when at leisure, like now; the proud way he held himself as he spoke about something when he was secure in the superiority of his knowledge about it. It was so different from the way he was when he was fearful of rejection from her. Then, he seemed to shrink miserably into himself, making her want to comfort him as though he were a small and mistreated child.

He had been like that the first several times he took his rights with her, touching her as though she were made of glass and might break at the slightest use of force. It had been patently obvious that he could hardly believe she was allowing him to do anything of the sort. He had trembled, and wept a little, and she had held him tightly to her, wanting to soothe his fear away but not really knowing how.

He was not afraid to touch her now. Or to be more forceful...

She returned her gaze to his thin hands, with their knobby joints and impossibly long fingers, and thought of them running over her, working the same magic on her flesh which they seemed to do with everything else he touched. Suddenly she wanted him with an urgency that nearly took her breath away, wanted to re-establish to herself that this was what she had chosen, and this was her husband. In their marriage bed, there were only the two of them, and a bond which was exponentially stronger now than it had been before. She wanted to touch him, feel his bare flesh quicken and catch fire under her hands, even more than she wanted him to touch her.

He was not what most people would have considered handsome, even without considering his face. If his body had ever been conventionally attractive, it was not now, with the scars both of injuries and of age marring most of it. Most women would not, perhaps, be able to look past that, or to be patient enough to discover that his weirdly cold skin warmed when touched with love instead of hate. But she could. She could because she loved him, with all of his odd habits and infuriating changes of mood, and she believed with all of her heart that he had changed and was no longer the vile monster she had wanted to flee from. He was her Erik, and there was surely no one like him in the world, and she could not bear to be without him.

He had broken off his discourse, and was staring quizzically at her. "Christine? Why are you – "

She stood up and went to him, and kissed him passionately. He responded at once, and she drew back and breathed, "Take me into the bedroom."

"Of course," he answered, and, rising out of his chair like an unfurling shadow, lifted her up into his arms and bore her toward the door. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

O-O-O O-O-O