Chapter 17 #2
I couldn’t be Serafimo. That part was meant to have gone to Meg.
Blessedly, she didn’t notice my distraction.
“You’re really doing it. You wanted to become a singer, and look!
A triumph of a debut and a solo role in the next opera.
I know it’s not the part you—or any one of us—thought it would be, but…
” Her brow furrowed again, and she looked as if she was going to say more, but then she shook her head, clearing away the discomfort. “You’re an inspiration, Christine.”
I balled my fingers together. Her praise was too much. “I…I thought the part would go to you.” I said the words slowly, testing the waters to see if she knew there’d ever been a chance of it.
But she only gave me a curious stare. “I’m just a year into the corps. Maybe next season.” Her mouth widened into an irrepressible grin. “Can you imagine? Next season, you’ll be singing in every show, and I’ll move up to featured roles…We’ll take Paris by storm!”
Her daydream so closely echoed the wild fantasies which had played out in my mind I wanted to cry.
It didn’t seem fair to celebrate my good fortune when it should have been hers. And she was so effusive with her praise, so wonderfully, genuinely happy for us both.
I was a terrible friend.
“Has the cast list been posted on the call-board yet?” It was the only thing I could think to contribute to the conversation.
She shrugged. “Maybe? I heard it first in the managers’ office, with Mother.” She let out a sniff, as if holding back a burst of laughter. “You should have heard the madness. It seems as though the Opera Ghost was quite busy last night.”
I froze. “Oh?”
“Everyone—the managers, Carlotta, even the new patron—received letters from him this morning.”
I wanted to know more, wanted to know what the letters said, but couldn’t get past the one detail. “Raoul was there?”
Meg’s blue eyes sparkled knowingly. “He came looking for you.”
“Me?” I squeaked.
With glee, she nodded, and whatever else had happened in the managers’ office was forgotten. “Oh, Christine! It’s so romantic!”
My smile fell uneasily. “Is it?”
She clasped my hands. “Of course! You were childhood sweethearts, and now…and now…” Her whole body wriggled, her excitement impossible to contain.
“It’s not like that,” I began, hating to see her face fall. “He did come to my dressing room last night, and he did remember me,” I admitted. “But…it’s been years since we last saw each other. I was barely sixteen. It’s not as though—”
Another knock sounded at the door, interrupting whatever sensible denial I was about to fabricate.
Meg tilted her head toward the entry. “Early in the day for deliveries, isn’t it?”
I pushed off the couch, extracting myself from our tangled skirts. “I just hope it’s not my landlord. Rent isn’t due until the end of the week.”
But when I opened the door, an enormous arrangement of flowers greeted me. The bouquet was so big—bursting with fat roses in every shade of pink imaginable—I couldn’t see the delivery boy carrying the fragrant mass until he turned sideways. My mouth fell open.
“Raoul!”
Meg scrambled off the settee and raced over to lean heavily at my back. Her gasp rang loudly in my ear. “They’re beautiful!” she exclaimed, filling the gap with the words I should have said.
Raoul’s smile widened; he was all but beaming.
“They are,” I agreed, recovering from my surprise.
“I wanted to send over a little something to celebrate last night,” he said modestly, shifting his weight from foot to foot and causing the flowers to sway wildly.
“Come in, come in,” I said with haste, then recoiled, wondering if I might have offended him with my familiarity.
He was not a colleague or a close friend stopping by the apartment after a rehearsal.
He was a gentleman, an actual vicomte, and the opera’s most esteemed patron, and—though we’d once been sweethearts—I did not know the particulars behind this extravagant offering.
Perhaps he’d come as a representative of the theatre and its board. The flowers might be a tangible token commemorating a job well done, an appreciation for stepping up in the midst of a tricky situation.
But as I noticed the hopeful look in his eyes, I thought not.
In that moment, just before he stepped into my apartment, filling it with a riot of color and perfume so potent it made my head spin, Raoul smiled at me again, and all I could see was the sandy, summery young man who’d given me my first kiss and stolen my heart in the process.
It was as if no time had passed at all and we were back on that beach in Deauville.
Father was still alive, and my world was nothing but afternoon picnics, flavored ices, and dappled sunlight.
I couldn’t help but return his grin as I stepped to the side, allowing him entrance. “Please come in,” I invited, this time warmly and with a proper sweep of my hand.
He stepped inside and searched for an appropriate surface to put the vase upon.
I hurried to clear away a section of the kitchen counter.
Cups of tea had piled up, littering the space.
I always abandoned any notion of housekeeping during the week leading up to a show opening.
Endless hours of rehearsals would keep me at the theatre, and when I finally could return to my apartment, I’d be too exhausted to do anything but fall into bed.
Now, I flushed scarlet, mortified to guess at what Raoul must think of me.
“I’m sorry to have come over unannounced,” he said as if reading my mind. “Perhaps I…” He glanced toward Meg and then at the little capelet I still wore over my shoulders. “Perhaps I came at a bad time?”
“Oh…no,” I began.
“Of course not!” Meg said over me. She grabbed her purse. “I was just on my way out.”
“Meg.” I drew out her name, trying to stall her, but she easily slipped past me. I turned back to Raoul, hoping he might convince her to stay. “We were just discussing a bit of casting news.”
Meg jabbed a long pin into her hat with fluid ease. “Exactly. And now I must be off. So many other people to tell!” She stopped to press a quick kiss to my cheek. “Congratulations again.”
“Don’t leave me!” I hissed in her ear.
She lowered her voice with impish glee. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”
“Please stay.”
I grabbed at her hand, but she was already off, bustling out the door with a cheery wave of her fingers. “See you back at the theatre, Monsieur le Vicomte,” she called back blithely.
I stood on the steps of the apartment as she left, not even turning around for a final goodbye. I could sense Raoul watching me. When I shut the door, I felt as though I’d sealed myself into a tomb.
I’d never been alone with a young man in my apartment before. Frederick and Jean-Luc and the other ballet boys were regular guests, but there was always a group. There was always laughter and merriment.
There’d never been just…this.
My skin felt too hot and yet somehow chilled, and my mind raced; I was unsure of how to act, unsure of what he was expecting.
Did he think I was now some grand singer, elevated with a level of sophistication that outranked my lower-class standing and set us on equal terms?
Would he lord his new status as the Vicomte de Chagny over me with a swagger and bravado I couldn’t dispute?
But when I turned, all I saw was Raoul and his sweet smile, his kind eyes.
“Well,” he began, clapping his hands together and giving me hope.
Was he as nervous as I was?
“I…I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come to the party with you last night.”
He waited for me to give a reason, an excuse, and an awkward silence passed as I did neither. I couldn’t begin to explain all that had happened since I’d last seen him.
“It was a splendid gathering,” he finally said, then let out a short laugh. “Though everyone kept asking where all the opera’s sopranos had run off to.”
“It’s wonderful to see you,” I said instead of elaborating. “And thank you for the flowers. I’ve never seen a more beautiful bouquet.”
He shrugged, though I could tell the praise pleased him. “I remembered how fond of pink you were.”
“Those pink pralines!” I exclaimed, recalling the cones of candied almonds he’d bought during afternoon walks along the pier.
A rush of nostalgia warmed me, and I could all but taste the sugary confection now.
“My best pair of gloves was stained and sticky for the rest of the summer because of them!”
Raoul looked unsure if he should laugh or apologize. “I would have bought you more if I’d known.”
I waved off his worry. “A happy memento. And you were so good and generous to me that summer. I still have the hair combs you gave me,” I confided, and gestured him toward the settee. I hovered, indecisive, before taking the wooden cane chair at its side. “And the charm bracelet.”
“From La Touques?”
“I wear it every time I have a big audition. That little silver horseshoe has always brought me luck.”
His eyes sparkled as brightly as the white-capped waves along the beach where we’d met.
“It is wonderful to see you,” he said, echoing my earlier words. “When you first came onstage last night, I couldn’t believe it. There you were, my first love—so radiant, so brimming with talent and beauty.”
“First love?” I repeated with disbelief. I’d assumed Raoul had forgotten me as soon as his family departed Deauville, certain I’d been nothing more than a summer fling.
“Oh, yes,” he confirmed readily. “Our time together was so dear to me. Mother spent all fall trying to convince me it had been nothing but a passing fancy, but I had fallen hard. I admit I felt rather a fool when you never wrote me back.”
I frowned. “You wrote me?”
“So many times!”
“I…I never got anything. I always thought I’d been the passing fancy for you.”
Raoul reached out and touched the tops of my hands, looking gravely concerned. “Oh, Christine. No. No! I wrote you nearly every day for a month, two even, after we returned to Burgundy. I had them posted to the café where your father played. I thought for certain they’d reach you.”