Chapter 18
Raoul cut into a piece of lamb, releasing a spread of red juices across his plate. “I want to know everything.”
I didn’t know what to believe about him. Was he a guardian angel, sent by my father to bless me with the gift of music? Was he a ghost, haunting the opera and skewing fortunes for both the good and the ill? Or was he…
I pushed the complicated tangle of thoughts from me. The last thing I wanted occupying my mind while I was with Raoul was Erik.
Raoul was so much more straightforward, carefree and careless.
Though we could have easily walked from my apartment or hopped on a trolley, he ordered us a hansom cab, allowing us to take the boulevards at a merry clip.
Once at the café, we were immediately seated outside under a sweet-smelling bower of lilacs.
Oysters and champagne were brought over, a gift from the chef.
Raoul had scanned the menu, ordering the lamb noisettes for himself and recommending the Madagascar spotted prawns for me.
Easy. Everything with Raoul was so, so easy.
“Everything?” I repeated now, looking up from my plate.
“I want to know it all,” he said, and motioned to a hovering garcon for a refill of wine. “Christine, I want to know every single thing about you.”
“An awfully tall order.”
He made a sound, conceding my victory. “The opera, then. When did you begin working there?”
“I’ve been with the ballet since the beginning of the season. I was a dancer at the Conservatoire before that.”
He looked surprised. “Not a singer?”
“Last night was my debut,” I admitted.
He raised his eyebrows in astonishment. “That can’t be!”
I only shrugged.
“That makes your performance even more staggering. You handled the role brilliantly.”
“I’m so pleased you think so,” I murmured as I pushed one of the prawns around my plate, mulling over the most delicate way to eat it.
“And I heard you’ve been cast as Serafimo in the next production?”
I nodded.
He tsked. “Pity there’s no aria. I wonder…what will your voice instructor think of that?”
“My—who?”
He took a bite of the lamb. “You mentioned an instructor last night. The…What did you call him?”
“The Angel of Music,” I supplied, an uneasy feeling beginning to squirm inside me.
He jabbed his now-empty fork in the air. “That’s it! I wonder what he’ll think.”
“Of the production?”
“Of your part within it. I can’t imagine he’ll be pleased with you playing a silent role.”
The memory of Erik’s scribbled-upon cast list danced across my vision, and I stabbed at a prawn, trying to direct my focus to the present. “I…I don’t think he concerns himself with such trivial matters.”
“I was in the managers’ office, and you should have heard the uproar over how the casting played out.”
I set my fork and knife down, suddenly suspicious that Raoul’s questions might not have been as innocent as they’d first appeared. “Who was upset?”
“Oh, everyone. Firmin and André. Signora Giudicelli and that tenor of hers. Even the Opera Ghost seems to be displeased.” He took another bite, watching me carefully as he chewed. “You don’t believe in all that nonsense, do you?”
“Do I…?”
“The Opera Ghost,” he elaborated. “Seems like a load of superstitious drivel to an outsider—if you don’t mind me saying so. I was simply aghast to hear that Richard and Gilles go along with so many of his whims.”
I took a larger than necessary sip of wine and felt my thoughts reel under its power. “He’s quite knowledgeable, you know. He oversees so much of the opera, and—”
“Christine Daaé!” Raoul exclaimed. “You do! You believe in a ghost!”
“Well…” I fumbled as I wondered why this was any different from believing in the Angel. Last night, Raoul had taken that confession at face value, but now, in the bright light of day, he seemed bemused by it all.
“I just wonder who’s behind it.”
I tilted my head, not understanding.
“Someone is. Someone real, I mean. Real and decidedly corporeal. Do you think he’s a silent partner? An enigmatic patron? I’m told he’s constantly sending out letters and notes to make his demands known. I even got one myself this morning.”
I felt sick, envisioning Erik as the Opera Ghost. Erik writing to Raoul. “You did?”
He nodded. “That’s how I know someone is masquerading behind the moniker. Ghosts could never have such fastidious penmanship.” He drained his glass.
“What…what did he say?” I tried to school my voice into an unaffected airiness, but my heart pounded, and a line of sweat broke out along the nape of my neck.
Had Erik been behind all the Opera Ghost’s notes? I tried to think of every story I’d heard, tried to remember each instruction that had been made.
Only…if my Angel had been writing them, I wouldn’t have been cast as Serafimo. I’d seen the original list, with Meg playing the page boy and Carlotta’s name crossed out in order to give me the role of the Countess.
“It doesn’t matter,” Raoul answered. “I don’t believe in ghosts, and I certainly won’t be bullied into doing anything one tells me to do.
I don’t believe the new managers will either.
Certainly not in the way Monsieur Lefèvre was.
” He let out a mirthless laugh. “I think the Opera Ghost may find himself quite out of luck these days.” He studied me with acutely sharp interest. “Are the prawns not prepared to your liking?”
I glanced down at my untouched plate. “Oh. No, they’re fine. I only…” I picked up my utensils and made a decisive slice down the middle of one of them. I popped half of the buttered crustacean in my mouth and chewed until my eyes watered.
“One thing the Ghost did get right, though,” Raoul went on. “It really ought to have been you singing the Countess. I haven’t heard much of her yet, but Signora Giudicelli sounds impossibly tired and past her prime compared to you.”
I swallowed. “What do you mean? The Opera Ghost wanted me to sing the Countess?”
Raoul nodded and signaled once again for the garcon. “I think we’d both enjoy a little sweetness next…Perhaps the iced mousse? With verbena cream?”
“Very good, sir.”
“He fully demanded it,” Raoul carried on, as though our conversation had never been interrupted.
“He cited ‘a disaster beyond imagination’ if the managers didn’t comply.
” Another short laugh. “I don’t want to do anything to upset the status quo yet, but try to get through this Il Muto, and then I’ll have a word with Gilles and Richard.
I think they are both men who incline toward reason, and if reason fails, there are always other means of persuasion. ”
I was touched Raoul believed in me so earnestly.
But also…
I was enraged.
At Raoul. At Erik.
I didn’t need anyone, Angel or Ghost—bossing management around, demanding I be elevated into bigger roles.
Only last night, I’d sung the soprano lead in Hannibal, and my voice had soared.
The audience had stood on their feet, cheering for an eternity.
I’d shown that I could achieve greatness by my own hand.
I didn’t need Raoul easing my passage with bribes of money or powerful promises.
How could he sit there, cheerfully sipping wine and suggesting dessert and acting as though he’d not just stabbed me, wounding me to my core?
“I’ll get there on my own, thank you,” I said, and my iciness jolted him from his self-satisfied reverie.
He frowned, his eyebrows knitting together to form a worried line.
“Oh, Christine, you misunderstand me! I…I know that you could. That you will. I only wanted to offer you my assistance. My…support. There’s not a single member of last night’s audience who was not blown away by your charms and the power of your voice.
It was an inspired performance, to be sure, and I…
I only meant that I’d do anything I could to help you achieve your dreams quickly.
Christine, I…I would move heaven and earth if it would make you smile.
I only wish to see you fulfilled, happy.
Happily fulfilled.” He offered an apologetic smile.
“I have every faith in you and never meant to imply otherwise.”
“Why?” I dared to ask, reveling in my impertinence, basking in the flaring flames of righteous indignation which licked up my spine. “Why would you do any of that? We haven’t seen each other in so many years, Raoul, and our situations…they’re so different than they were.”
“They are,” he agreed heartily.
I paused, feeling like a sailboat without wind. I’d expected a fight. My blood rushed with anticipation of the verbal sparring I’d been certain was to come. But there was no sign of friction or discord. He looked completely at ease.
“Well, yes,” I fumbled, unsure of how I’d so quickly won an argument that had never happened.
“Yes. Right. Everything is different now. I am no longer at my parents’ beck and call.
I am not a slave to their whims. I don’t have to leave the pretty girl just because they say the holiday has ended.
” He reached across the table and took my hand.
From the periphery of my vision, I could sense other patrons glancing our way, curious at the man making such a public spectacle before them.
“Christine, our holiday doesn’t have to end. Not now. Not ever.”
I tugged my fingers free, feeling like a skittish doe. “What are you saying?”
Raoul studied the awning above us as if he might find the proper words hidden along the lilac-covered beams. “I’m saying that…
all those years ago, I wished our summer hadn’t come to an end.
I’m saying that I’m overjoyed our paths have now crossed once more.
I’m saying that…” His eyes fell on me, flashing with sudden inspiration. “It’s the twenty-eighth of June.”
I scrunched my face, trying to sort out what day it was and what that had anything to do with the conversation at hand. “It is…”
Raoul squeezed my hand. “Don’t you see? It’s summer! We can pick up exactly where we left everything back then. No more years of wayward letters and wondering. Just us and…”
“Summer,” I supplied.
He nodded excitedly, looking incandescent. “What do you say?”
I knew what I was supposed to say. I knew exactly what the Angel of Music would want and expect of me.
But the Angel of Music wasn’t here. He wasn’t sitting in front of a handsome man, listening as he pledged to me the sweetest, most earnest words.
He didn’t feel the way my heart swelled, whole and complete for the first time since Father had passed away.
He wasn’t basking in the sunlit, halcyon hues of Raoul de Chagny’s smile.
It was becoming increasingly clear to me that the Angel of Music—or the Opera Ghost, or the Phantom of the Opera, or whatever moniker Erik chose to give himself—was more mortal than I’d ever believed.
He was a man of flesh and blood, not a divine presence of holy powers and heaven-blessed magnitude.
He was a man, bound to the opera, a man who stayed in the shadows.
And though he’d taught me to sing like an angel, I now had grave doubts that my father had ever sent him my way.
There were too many stories. Too many coincidences. It was all too much, and I didn’t know what to believe or who to trust.
Except…
Except for the wonderfully warm man sitting in front of me.
He had a way of making my heart and spirits rise whenever I was in his presence. With him, I experienced an ease I’d not felt in years. Was it so wrong to want that? Would it be so terrible to seek such peace again and again?
I didn’t believe so.
And so, I did something terrible, reasoning my treachery away by telling myself that I could have both my sunshine and my shadows and that never the two would know. Erik was not the omnipotent power he’d led me to believe, and Raoul didn’t traffic in ghosts.
I smiled up at Raoul now, beaming at him like the lovestruck schoolgirl he’d once made me, and set the wheels in motion, casting my die, and forging us all down an irrevocable path.
“All right,” I agreed, awash in the sweetest affection. “Let’s summer.”