High City on a Hill (Ch7)

[igenlode]

Just over six thousand words, in the end -- almost exactly the same as Chapter 4. I haven't made any attempt to unwind the *two* flashback/framing device set-ups in this chapter, although I did try to make it a bit more clear when we finally caught up to the present again. I think the only 'present-day' passage in the entire chapter is the brief one between the return to "she had felt afraid to show her face in the street" and the section following "as I observed to Raoul in the early hours of that evening" -- the course of the actual conversation with Madame Firmin, and only that :-(

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Chapter 7 — “It Will Be At Midsummer”

It was months before I set foot again in the Opera Populaire. Indeed, there was gossip abroad that the opera would never reopen; that the cost of repairs would be too great, and audiences would never return to the scene of a disaster so widely reported in such lurid terms. Raoul had tried to keep the illustrations in the papers from me, but I had seen them: images of screaming women holding aloft their infants, and dying men at one another’s throats. It was all fanciful, so far as I could tell — certainly there had been no babes in arms, nor any other women that I had seen amid the crowd in the pit, where the crush in ordinary times was unsuitable for skirts, and where the panic had been at its worst — but to my knowledge at least three people had died, and the reality of it had been nightmarish enough. The outcry against the management was immense, and poor Madame Firmin confided to me that she had felt compelled to retire to the country to avoid the opprobrium.

That encounter was during one of my rare visits back to Paris, for we too had spent much of the intervening period out of town. Raoul and I had taken Christine out to Beauvais ‘to recuperate’ within a few days of the disaster, not as the secret midnight flit I’d once envisaged, but driving decorously and by easy stages, with Lisotte and the other domestics accompanying our baggage.

The Vicomtes de Chagny had long maintained a small, pleasant estate at Beauvais, not too far from Paris. Indeed, as I’d told Christine, Raoul’s parents had chosen to take up residence there when they were first married, rather than live on one of the family’s larger properties in the warm wine-growing country down by Lyons. I’d spent last Christmas there with them in Raoul’s company, in the first months of our marriage, and there was no denying that the old Vicomtesse had seemed less fretful and sickly amid the happy memories of a place that had scarcely changed since her own girlhood. There were wide grounds in which one could wander, and ancient trees, their bare limbs black against the sky, and little low-roofed farms that had outlasted centuries of war and revolution to remain unchanged. It was quiet and secluded, and it had seemed the obvious refuge for Christine.

Too obvious, perhaps. But I said nothing of that to her. Away from the frenetic atmosphere of Paris she had begun to lose her hunted look, and to blossom, almost unconsciously, into the confidence and beauty of any healthy young creature. It would be easy enough for the Ghost to find her here, if he chose to leave his favoured haunts, but as the weeks passed and there was no sign of anything amiss I too ceased to look so often over my shoulder.

I’d lived all my life in the clamour of cities, and Raoul would always tease me a little at my discomfort with early hours and drab country ways. Christine, who’d spent her earliest days trailing around Europe in her aging father’s wake, and grown to girlhood in the confines of a Paris apartment, nursing him through his final days, took to the slower pace of life with no sign of the boredom I’d expected. Everything was new to her, and she made no complaint at the chill of the heavy stone walls as the autumn drew to its close, nor at the somewhat rustic nature of the cooking — Raoul had not brought his mother’s chef from Paris, and the local staff were willing but unsophisticated when it came to providing dishes to grace the dinner-table. I’d begun to fret at the prospect of an indefinite exile, and I could not share Christine’s wide-eyed delight at everything around her. It was one thing to spend the New Year at Beauvais, with the excitements of guests and entertainments, but quite another, as I found to my dismay, to live there quietly like a country seigneur upon his demesne, seeing no-one but ourselves for weeks on end.

I had no talent for talking to rustics. I shrank from my own reflection in their eyes as a gaudily-coloured town bird hankering after the return of her gilded cage. Paris was cosmopolitan. At Beauvais, I might be the wife of the Vicomte Raoul and entitled to all outward respect, but I was made more conscious than ever that my face and my accent did not belong.

Christine seemed at ease with everybody, from the ploughman in the fields to the wrinkled grandmother peering up at us from amid a mass of shawls. I knew, with a dull pain, that she would have made a better chatelaine than I.

~o~

Raoul would have offered reassurance and companionship, if nothing else; but affairs at the Opera House had become desperate in our absence, and the reconstruction work, he told me, was at risk of coming to a complete halt. It would have been easier —and much less costly— simply to accede to the inevitable and allow the entire enterprise to go bankrupt. He would not hear of it, and I believe it was largely my husband’s determination to oversee the repairs himself that kept the work going that winter, and saved the doors of the Opera from closing for good.

It took him away from me a great deal, however. I did not begrudge him the time he spent in Paris, or the hours of wrangling with recalcitrant contractors or trying to keep Messieurs André and Firmin up to the mark. I did not even begrudge the Opera the use of my father’s money, though for Raoul’s sake I would rather have seen it poured out in the form of music than spent on plasterwork, scaffolding and the vastly expensive investment of a new chandelier. The Ghost, at least, had not received a sou, and the workmen had doubtless earned the cost of their daily hire. But I could not avoid the rueful reflection, as time wore on, that there must be an increasing number of wives and families in the city with reason to be grateful to the stubborn-headedness of the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny.

There was no reason to doubt that he was genuinely needed in Paris, and in his absence I could scarcely abandon Christine. It was not so much for her sake —she would have been happy enough, I knew, to amuse herself quietly alone at Beauvais— but for the sake of appearances.

It would look very strange for us to invite a house-guest down to share a few quiet months in the country, then leave her unattended in sole possession of the property. If I had been invited to spend a week or two with friends down on the Riveira and my hosts had been called unavoidably away, then we would all have taken it for granted that I, too, would pack and leave. For Christine to stay here, I myself in all decency had to remain in residence. I chafed at the fact, but accepted it.

Things would be easier, I told myself, when Raoul’s parents and my own joined us before Christmas, as had been arranged... and in the mean time, I was becoming increasingly certain that I would have news of my own to announce, and the best of reasons to attend a specialist in Paris. I had scarcely dared to believe it at first, but Lisotte, when I spoke to her, had confirmed my own suspicions. One could not be sure, of course, until the first quickening was to be felt... but it seemed very likely, as the evenings stretched ever longer and the bare furrows were tinged with frost, that our hopes had been fulfilled and that I was carrying a child at last.

By midwinter, the changes in my body left me in no further doubt. The midwife from the village, summoned at Lisotte’s insistence, examined me and confirmed what I already knew; I was indeed enceinte, and if all went well, the baby would be born at the height of the summer to come.

Christine, I think, had suspected, although Lisotte was the soul of discretion; and like all our affairs it had doubtless been common gossip among the servants for some time. But I had been bursting with anticipation for the moment when I could share my secret with Raoul, whose return was eagerly awaited for the birthday fete this evening, after almost a week’s absence. He had undertaken to bring his parents down with him, since every journey involving the old Vicomtesse was apt to become an exhausting odyssey, and when I heard the big travelling carriage draw up I made all haste to welcome our guests back to the home of their former days, and to fall upon my husband’s neck with the long-awaited revelation.

But it was not Raoul’s parents. It was Father and my own dear Mama, looking so tired and worn that I knew she had been through one of her bad times. I remembered Rudi and the old pain, with a pang of guilt for how distant it had all begun to seem, and held out both hands to her, my heart too full to speak.

There was no need. She knew, I think, in that first moment, with the instinct of one who has herself been a mother.

“Oh, Hertha, darling, are you—”

I could only nod, laughing and crying at once, and a moment later I was in her arms and pouring out all my hopes and fears and excitement between sobs of pure joy. With the promise of a new life beginning to stir within me, in that moment the Ghost and even Christine could hardly have been further from my mind.

Poor Raoul, arriving a few minutes later with the old Vicomtesse escorted attentively on his arm, must have been disconcerted, not to say alarmed, to discover his wife and mother-in-law dissolved in a flood of mutual tears and quicksilver Viennese endearments. I broke from my mother’s embrace and ran to him, heedless alike of the impassive footmen at the door and the old lady’s reproving stare.

“Raoul, Raoul, I didn’t want to tell you until I was certain, but it’s true. I’m to have a child, our child, born at midsummer—”

It was his twenty-second birthday, and I’d meant it to be celebrated in some more decorous manner. But the look on his face —mingled wonder, delight and trepidation— was that of a small boy entrusted with a gift more costly and delicate than he had ever imagined.

~o~

There was no ballroom at Beauvais, but then I am not sure I should have known what to do with one if I had it. I’d had the grand salon on the ground floor opened up, as I’d seen done last winter, and everything polished and cleaned, from the lustres and the side-tables all the way down to the mirror-frames. Refreshments were laid out at one end of the room, and I’d had a piano brought in and arranged at the other end of the room between a couple of standard lamps as if to form a stage.

It was not the birthday fête I’d been planning for Raoul before we left Paris, a glittering function with the best musicians and the finest delicacies that money could obtain. The only guests were a few elderly neighbours who’d known his parents forty years ago. But every vase I could find spilled over with dried flowers and such greenery as there was, the shining silver discs of winter honesty echoing the gleam of the bright plates and serving-dishes that weighed down the long buffet laden with food. Both fireplaces had been filled earlier in the day with pleasant-scented apple logs, and the room was warm, welcoming, and the most joyous surprise I could devise.

Mama had brought the music I’d asked for, all the latest songs from Vienna —as faithfully forwarded by my old school-friend Anna, now Frau Doktor Meixner, the wife of an aspiring middle-aged physician— along with the Gounod and Halèvy airs that had struck me as so suitable for Christine’s voice on the night I’d first seen her as Elissa in “Hannibal”. It was a night which felt now as if it had belonged to another lifetime, and the realisation of that gulf shook me a little. So much had changed.

Raoul — Raoul, I told myself, had grown into a man of whom I could be proud, and no longer an impetuous boy. He was determined and resolute, and if I saw less of him than I would have wanted, it was new-found responsibilities that kept him away. As for Christine, it took an effort to remind myself that three months ago she had been a stranger. She had become... not a friend, despite my best efforts, not if I were to be quite honest, but a familiar part of my life, a little envied, a little pitied, a little taken for granted, as if a cousin my own age had come to stay. And my life — my life had seen a greater and of course a happier change than any.

But it was still Raoul’s birthday, and though she protested she was sadly out of practice Christine had consented to sing for the occasion, with Mama, more hesitant yet, to act as accompanist. Our soloist for the evening did not walk on, perform her party pieces, and then retire with polite professional discretion, as I’d once envisaged, to receive her fee; she came out from among the other guests in an evening-gown I myself had sent for from Paris, and sang from the heart, looking very young and charmingly diffident, like a child called on to display her accomplishments.

I’d wanted to arrange a fee — she was, after all, a professional, and I didn’t wish to seem to take advantage of her. But Christine had demurred, with a vehemence that amounted almost to recoil, and I could not very well force it upon her.

I’d forgotten just how good she was. There were false notes in the piano playing, just as Mama had warned, but I’d assured Mama no-one would mind the lack of rehearsal in a family gathering such as this, and they did not. Most of those present would have applauded just as heartily if I had got up and sung myself; happy to show goodwill for the intention, they possessed a cheerful lack of discrimination as to the result. Christine, though... Christine surpassed anything that I would ever be able to do by far more than the gulf between professional and amateur — even an amateur more gifted than I. She stood there simple and lovely in her rose-pink gown, and poured out music with a clarity and a joy that made it less a thing of beauty than an act of worship.

It was the gift I’d wanted for Raoul, all those weeks ago in the opera box. I slipped my hand into his, and got a warm look in return. Freshly shaved and bathed, he’d shed the weariness of Paris with the dust of the journey, and his eyes as they met mine held all the joy of the joint announcement on which we’d been congratulated all evening... and it did not matter, not so very much, that the delight in song I’d so wanted to give him had somehow become Christine’s own contribution to the celebrations, and not mine.

Raoul and I were accustomed to exchange birthday presents, as was proper between husband and wife, and upstairs there was an ingenious folding inkstand in a box he had yet to unwrap, that I hoped would amuse and intrigue him. Christine had nothing it would be either possible or proper to bestow upon her host save the peerless beauty of her voice, and it would be most unkind and foolish in me to wish to deny her that.

I did not wish it. I had seen the flush of pleasure in his face, and taken an equal amused pride in showing off the accomplishments of my new protegée to my parents, and to the old Vicomte, who had been accounted a noted connoisseur of music in his day, and whose fine, bloodless features had taken on a look of first surprised and then enraptured appreciation. A word or two from Raoul’s father in Paris, among the right circles, could do more for Christine’s career, if he so chose, than any recommendation from myself or Raoul... but it was not that that warmed my heart, as I watched him, but the fugitive likeness between father and son when the old man smiled.

And when the impromptu concert was over, and Christine —and, upon her insistence, Mama too— had taken her applause, the chairs for the audience were cleared away, fiddles and flutes were brought in, and there was dancing for those who wished it. Not of the most elegant style, perhaps, for the salon orchestra I had engaged for the New Year’s celebrations had yet to arrive, and the Beauvais musicians made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in refinement, but presently I was able to exchange a laughing glance with Christine as she was whirled around the room in the gallant arms of Monsieur le Géneral Baron de Nassouilles. He was a grey-haired gentleman old enough to be her grandfather, endowed with a cheerful paunch and a line of amusing conversation that set her instantly at her ease, and I was glad to see her enjoying herself.

For my part, I went to pay my court at the chair set aside for Raoul’s mother, and to accept with a good grace her felicitations, and her somewhat over-penetrating enquiries upon my vigour and general good health in such matters as might affect the grandchild to come. She’d borne Raoul late in life and with difficulty, and although she made a great play of her infirmities they were real enough, and kept her from much that I knew she had once enjoyed. I could not begrudge her eager interest, or —despite our different circumstances— altogether brush off her concerns.

Raoul, though, I could reassure. I had never been in better health, and there was not the slightest reason why we should not dance together... and yes, I should very much like to do so.

He was a little careful of me still, but there was something very precious for once in finding myself guided and guarded from collision as if I might shatter at a touch. The room swung about us as the movements of the dance took us together, and then apart. The players had struck up a rollicking tune. And Raoul’s father, standing talking to Mama by the fireplace, bent over my mother’s hand and led her out onto the dance floor as he had done at our wedding, just as if he had been forty years younger and she a graceful girl of eighteen.

~o~

Christmas came and went, and the New Year. Father could not be spared any longer from the bank, and I said farewell to Mama at the end of the festivities with the faithful promise to pay a call the moment any occasion brought me back to town.

The old Vicomte left also, to take up again his quiet existence with his library, the cabinets of curiosities over which he would spend hours, and all the other familiar furnishings of his own apartments in the great house in Paris. He would be alone amid the bustle of servants, for my mother-in-law had every intention of remaining in residence at Beauvais; but I did not suppose that would trouble him much. Though he’d always been kind to me, and Raoul held him in genuine affection, his regard for the world was one of benign detachment.

I was not quite sure if Raoul’s mother had installed herself to watch over me or as a reproof to Christine, whom she clearly considered to be conducting an open liaison with her son in a manner that was far from discreet. He might at least, she intimated, have installed her in a neighbouring property where he could pay his attentions to her in the proper form... and it was of no use for me to insist that the girl was my guest, that I had invited her here myself to calm her nerves after the terrible accident at the Opera, and that Raoul had saved her life and she was naturally grateful and nothing more. Whatever I said, I could only appear in the light of a complaisant wife; the Vicomtesse regarded me with approval, and favoured her son with the tart remark that young men in her day had known how to conduct themselves with more consideration.

In consequence we saw less of him at Beauvais than ever, Christine grew silent and pale, and I was subject to the full battery of benevolent attentions due to the mother of a Chagny child. I could not help but chafe against the cosseting, though I knew it was well-meant, and it was a relief to plead the need for appointments with my accoucheur, and to be able to escape up to town from time to time.

Dr Leverdier was a rotund and affable gentleman whose services were much in fashion, and whose stock-in-trade was reassurance of the nervous female. I endured his examinations and his over-cheerful remarks, and took an insensible comfort despite myself in his compliments upon my health and progress as the weeks slipped past into Spring.

My condition suited me, and I knew it. A little extra fullness, a little flush of colour, with even my hair seeming to hold a little more vigour than before: I would never be a beauty to turn heads, but my mirror showed a bloom that was new, and I had no need to be ashamed of my looks. I was to be a mother. I would have a child of my own, to be a consolation and a joy and a tender charge upon my life, and the thought of it was both a fear and delight of responsibility. When I was gone, there would be a part of me in the world still... a part of me, and of Raoul.

That thought too was new. Whatever might come to pass —whatever might become of him, or of me— this child had come from both of us, inextricably woven in a way that could not be undone. It would be Raoul’s child that I held; if it were a boy, another little Vicomte, then Raoul’s heir would be a son of mine. I had been so much cocooned, of late, in a women’s world, so much taken up with the presence of the child that was beginning to thicken my waist and make itself felt, that it was hard to remember sometimes that a man had ever had anything to do with it.

His visits to my bed had entirely ceased, of course; there was no need for that now. I did not miss them as such. I missed the warmth and weight of him, his sleepy breath at my side, the unthinking embrace of an arm outflung across me if I woke in the night — all the little intimacies I had come to know since our marriage, in those hours when he had a husband’s rights to share my room.

We’d been close companions. We’d been friends. And now... our lives just seemed to be drifting further and further apart.

~o~

It was on a grey day early in February that I had my encounter with Madame Firmin in the rue Saint-Honoré, on my way back to lunch at the Hôtel Chagny. I had risen early and had myself driven in to the railway station at Beauvais, as Raoul did on his journeys up to town; my appointment with Dr Leverdier was at noon, and I should have a few hours’ liberty afterwards to spend in Paris before I need catch the evening train. My father-in-law would be lunching at home and was sure to make me welcome, and I had hopes of catching Raoul there. I could scarcely bring along a casual uninvited acquaintance, however, and armed with this excuse I was able to face the good lady’s chatter with equanimity.

She was full of congratulations to myself and my husband on the prospect of the baby to be, and equally preoccupied in lamenting the storm of bad publicity that had surrounded the Opera since the chandelier disaster. The public had chosen to blame the whole thing on poor management, and there had been a time when she had felt afraid — yes, positively afraid — to show her face in the street, and her husband had been obliged to take her for a course of the waters at Aix-les-Bains to calm her nerves.

But the repair works were well advanced now, and there was to be a grand re-opening ball to celebrate the completion and assembly of the new chandelier. The guests would be masked and in costume, and her husband had assured her it was to be a great social event. She had thought of attending as a veiled odalisque, but was not sure it would be quite the thing. What would I advise?

I had been making polite noises of commiseration and encouragement, but the mental image of Madame Firmin attired in filmy draperies was almost too much for my composure. I choked and had to seek hasty refuge in my handkerchief. If it had been a year ago, I should have suspected Raoul in one of his more schoolboy moods of having prompted the suggestion; I longed with a sudden ache to have him there by my side and share the moment in a look of suppressed laughter. But those days seemed very distant now, and all I could do was to hint, as tactfully as I could, that another costume might be more suited to her figure, and try to draw her out on the question of what I really wanted to know.

In amongst all the scandal, had her husband and Monsieur André received any further contact from the Ghost? Even vague suspicions, perhaps... things they might have hesitated to mention to the Vicomte? Oh, of course the whole business was a ridiculous farce, and an episode all right-thinking people were eager only to forget, but all the same — there had been no further trouble, had there?

There had not; I had to calm down her indignation at the very suggestion, and spend some time soothing ruffled feathers before I could decently make my goodbyes and escape the conversation. We’d heard nothing at all of the Opera Ghost out at Beauvais, and it had occurred to me to wonder if that meant he had abandoned his malign interest in Christine to turn his attentions elsewhere. Apparently not.

In all probability, whoever he was he’d simply discarded the whole ridiculous imposture of a haunted opera house —and it was ridiculous, even if the word was of Madame Firmin’s choosing— and resumed his own identity in whatever circles of crime he had originally come from. He’d shot his bolt, after all, when he’d shut down the performances that were to provide his income. A blackmailer cannot afford to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Which meant, as I observed to Raoul in the early hours of that evening, my head pillowed against his shoulder against the jolting of the rail-joints in the first wearisome stages of our journey back to the country estate, that Christine could quite safely go home, and we could all relax.

Raoul, who had been absent from Beauvais for some days, being preoccupied yet again with the repair works, had come in to share luncheon with his father as I’d hoped, and had gladdened my heart by seeming genuinely, self-evidently delighted to find me there. I’d spoken a little shyly at first about my appointment and Dr Leverdier’s predictions, and warmed to my husband’s enthusiasm, and the old Vicomte’s raised eyebrow and wry compliments on my talents at incubation. It was he who suggested that Raoul might like to take me around the works at the Opera House and show all the progress that had been made, and who put in a quiet word on my behalf when Raoul, over-protective, demurred at the idea that I might go anywhere near a building site in my condition.

“I won’t break, you know.” I was unsure whether to be amused or exasperated. “I haven’t suddenly become so fragile as all that.”

We’d been lingering over cheese and dessert. I reached out to take his hand, and laid it firmly over the roundness at my waist that was starting to become unmistakably apparent. “Baby, meet Raoul; Raoul, meet baby. See? Tucked up all safe and secure. You don’t have to worry. Truly. Dr Leverdier says—”

It dawned upon me too late —as Raoul’s earlier apprehensive look was overtaken by a sudden grin and his father raised a hand to hide amusement — that I had perhaps been quoting my accoucheur’s opinion a trifle too frequently in the course of the past hour. Furthermore, those three fatal words were doubtless going to reduce the male portion of the Chagny family to fits of unseemly hilarity for the foreseeable future. Exasperation struggled for the upper hand, and was lost in the depths of Raoul’s smile.

“Dr Leverdier says,” I informed him with emphasis, trying to keep back my own laughter, “that it is your positive duty to escort me around the Opera, Monsieur de Chagny, and that the health of your future child depends upon it. So you will understand you have very little option but to comply. Isn’t that the case, monsieur?”

For a moment it was just the two of us together again, stalwart companions teasing as of old.

“Well, if the good doctor commands it...” Raoul parried, straight-faced. He patted my stomach awkwardly, as if caressing the neck of a horse, and reclaimed his hand, pushing back his chair and rising to draw back mine. “Let’s take the infant for an outing, then. Shall we?”

The absurdly grandiose gesture with which he offered his arm for escort was matched only by the reassurance of his cheerful affection. I let him guide me down the staircase, and, later, up the carriage-step, and even leaned a little upon his strength. I was not yet in my sixth month, let alone my ninth; I came of sturdy blood, and I’d never been one who sought to be treated like a porcelain princess. But it was less irksome than I’d thought, and I did feel oddly protected after all.

~o~

It was the happiest afternoon I’d spent or would spend in a long time. The Opera Populaire full of dustsheets and the tramp of workmen’s boots was a different place, as if a brisk wind from the streets outside had come to blow away all the old cobwebs of conspiracy and tarnished stage-magic. The hallways echoed with whistling and raucous shouts, and it was hard to believe I’d ever heard a voice from behind a locked door.

In the shrouded auditorium I marvelled at the painters and plasterers on the scaffold high above, working to restore the delicate tracery of a ceiling once again seamless to the naked eye. Raoul showed me the chain for the new chandelier, as thick as a man’s arm, and the framework for the chandelier itself, freshly arrived from the forgeworks where it had been commissioned and almost unrecognisable without its cascade of crystal drops. I’d helped Mama’s housekeeper unhook the crystals from our dining-room chandelier for spring-cleaning, each laid out carefully in position so that it could be replaced; I couldn’t even imagine the labour that would be involved in assembling one such as this, perhaps twenty times the size.

There would be cleaning, upholstering, and a great deal of redecoration to be done before the building could possibly host a public ball, of course, let alone stage a new production, but already it was possible to picture the grand foyer full of costumed revellers, and champagne glasses clinking in salute up and down the sweep of the stairs before midnight’s unmasking. On our shared journey back to Beauvais afterwards, Raoul and I amused ourselves for a cheerful hour or so in proposing a whole series of increasingly implausible costumes that would accommodate both the baby and myself in six weeks’ time. I had every intention of attending the event, and Raoul to my relief was evidently expecting my company, and it was not until I’d drifted into a half-doze against his shoulder that I even remembered Madame Firmin and the conversation we’d had earlier.

“So there’s no reason Christine can’t come back to Paris.” I shot upright in sudden excitement, telling him of my inspiration about the Opera Ghost. “Is there? Lisotte can start opening up the flat for her next week — sooner, if she can be spared. Madame your mother can sit down at Beauvais amidst the draughts as much as she likes, if that’s what keeps her content, but there’s nothing to stop the rest of us returning to civilization.”

I hesitated a moment; but we’d always been honest with each other. “And— Raoul, I promised to help Christine, and I like her well enough, but I don’t want her on my hands as a perpetual guest. I want our lives back, yours and mine, and at least a semblance of normality. I’ve made no demands as your wife, but this... this I have a right to ask.”

Silence, in the jolting semi-dark, with excitement already ebbing into consciousness of my own folly. However chilly and oldfashioned it might be, Beauvais belonged to Raoul’s family, and where Christine was concerned... I had not meant to voice that unspoken accusation, but it hung there between us all the same.

“Yes, you have the right,” Raoul said quietly. His hand found mine, and closed around it. “You have the right to ask of me much more than that, now of all times, and you know it. We’ve heard nothing from the Opera Ghost in all these months. I’ll tell Christine myself that she has nothing left to fear — and bring my wife home to the comfort of her own chambers, to carry our child in peace.”

“Heaven preserve us from any more peace.” Relief soaking through me like water, I managed a laugh, letting him draw me again against his shoulder. “Give me the bustle of the city any day. I mean to hatch out this baby in a velvet-lined nest, with a fine new fur tippet, and the latest style in hats to top my plumage, and entertainments every day, if you please, to keep the infant on its toes—”

The child within me chose that instant to make its presence unmistakably felt, and took me by surprise. I hadn’t intended the words as literally as all that.

Raoul’s hold on me had tightened. “Hertha, are you all right?”

“Your offspring,” I informed him with dignity, “has decided to start kicking me.”

“Are you sure? Do babies even do that?” He sounded distinctly dubious.

“Of course they do. Here, see for yourself...”

With the movement of the train, it was hard to convince him. But the little eager fluttering continued, stronger than I had known it before, as if the child, too, was eager to return to Paris.

Nestling into Raoul’s arms, I felt him tuck the travelling-rug around both of us against the evening chill, and laid my head back against him with a sigh. I’d spoken my mind on Beauvais and on the imposition of Christine into our marriage, and he’d backed me up with the old unquestioning assent. The sky had not fallen in after all, and I could not say why I had ever supposed that it might.

We were friends, good friends, just as we had always been. And if I felt a sudden urge to cry, it was only the natural consequence of my condition.