High City on a Hill (Ch4)

I finally (delayed by typing two longish chapters of Arctic Raoul, and by the fact that it takes a depressingly long time to sit and listen to six thousand words being read out to you in computer tones -- it turns out that during my manual count I managed to pass the 4000 mark *twice*...) finished editing the next chapter of Hertha. Meanwhile someone unsubscribed from the story on AO3...

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Chapter 4 — “She Won’t Thank You For It”

Befriending Christine Daaé was like trying to tame a wild creature, all wide eyes and nervous limbs. I remembered, ruefully, how she had laughed with Raoul; set myself to pay a call or two upon her and draw her out.

Her father had been an accomplished concert violinist who’d performed his own virtuoso compositions before the crowned heads of Europe, and played by request for no fewer than three Emperors: Franz Josef in Vienna, the distant Russian Czar, and Napoleon III who had called himself Emperor of France. But that was a long time ago now, while Christine, of an age with Raoul and myself, had clearly been the daughter of his declining years. The favour of kings was proverbially fickle, and I did not suppose old Daaé’s savings had amounted to much by the time he died.

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