Unmasqued: An Erotic Novel of The Phantom of The Opera (33 page)

“It is I,
oui.
…Now listen closely. I have seen Erik—this night, in the village.” The hand tightened when Christine would have spoken to demand how he was, and where he was, and every little detail she craved. “Hush! He is well, and nearby. We have planned for you to escape tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Her voice was crushed by the hand, but Christine’s lips formed the word in delight, nevertheless.

“While the
comte
is visiting with his guests, there will be a fire in the stable. As all rush to battle it, you will go through the door through which I have come, there in the closet, and make your way to safety.”

Christine pulled the woman’s hand from her mouth to whisper, “You will not come with me?”

“I cannot.…I dare not be complicit, in the event that I am still needed within these walls after. Erik will be waiting for you on the far side of the château, away from the fire. You shall flee to safety. Do you understand?”

Christine nodded, the hand holding her mouth easing away.

“Now, I shall tell you the path you must take for your escape.” Madame’s voice remained low and smooth as she described the route Christine would take through the secret passageways and out near the servants’ entrance, which was on the opposite side of the château from the stables.

“If there is a secret way out, why can I not go now?” Christine whispered, pulling herself half-upright.

“The château is guarded on all sides because the
comte
expects Erik to come for you. That is why tomorrow, when the stable is burning and the
comte
is busy with his guests, will be the best time for you to escape unnoticed. The guards will be busy with the fire, and you will slip from the small entrance near the side.”

Christine nodded, but she had another concern. “But if the château is guarded, how did you come to meet with Erik? Did the guards not stop you?”

Madame’s low laugh was rough. “They have no interest in the comings and goings of a servant. It is you, or Erik, that they watch for. And, indeed, there are enough servants who venture into town in the evening to have a drink at the inn that it is no cause for speculation.”

“And so tomorrow, I shall leave this room through the secret passageway.” Christine smiled in the dark. Tonight will have been the last night she must hope that Philippe would be denied his obvious desire. Tomorrow, she would have no more worries of it. She would be with Erik.

“Indeed, and none will know you are missing until much later. And then you and Erik will leave, and start a new life somewhere where his face will not give cause for horror or hatred or accusation.”

“Thank you, madame,” Christine said, squeezing the woman’s hands. “Thank you.”

The ballet mistress slipped from the room soon after, and Christine rolled to her side in the large bed.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would be with Erik again, and away from this house of eroticism and salaciousness and danger.

Sunlight streamed through the window, and Raoul was standing, tall and gilt-haired, next to her bed when Christine opened her eyes again.

“Raoul,” she gasped, awakened from a lush dream with a ravenhaired man, a very different man from the composed, elegant one who looked down at her.

“Good morning, Christine,” he murmured, his eyes glinting with an expression she’d become much too familiar with. “How lovely you look, all tumble-haired and rumpled in your bedclothes. But there is dark under your eyes,
mon ange.
Have you not slept well in your soft, large bed?”

“The bed is very comfortable, Raoul,” she replied, looking up at him and trying to recall, trying to
find
, the kind young man she’d befriended those years ago…the one who’d dashed into the surf
for her scarf. Not the one who looked at her as though he wished to devour her completely without taking a breath. Not the one who’d brought her to this place against her wishes.

Not the one who’d forced her to choose captivity to save her lover.

He sat, and his slender weight rocked her ever so slightly toward him; then his fingers moved, sliding up along the bare arm that she’d curved, fist toward her throat, on top of the bedding. The dream of Erik had left her aroused, and wanting, and her heart was still slamming from being pulled so abruptly from that sensual world to this…this room that crackled with apprehension and uncertainty.

He positioned a hand on either side of her shoulders and his fingers pressed into the pillow next to her, causing him to tilt closer. “A bed is much more comfortable when it is shared,” he murmured, his face moving toward her.

Christine’s breath caught as she resisted the urge to push him away. Last evening, he had attempted to seduce her after dinner—which had been served at a regular dinner table, unlike the night before—but she had managed to hold him off by claiming an aching head.

Raoul hadn’t argued, but Christine had not missed the knowing expression on Philippe’s face as he watched from his chair in the parlor. He clearly knew what she was about, and his countenance told her that such prevarication would not work on him. The determination in his face had made her even more apprehensive, particularly after Raoul announced that he would be leaving the château the next morning.

Today. Leaving her alone with Philippe.

Suddenly, Raoul’s proximity was the lesser of two evils.

“When will you leave?” Christine asked Raoul, closing her eyes against the hungry expression on his face. Would there be time between Raoul’s departure and the arrival of Philippe’s guests for the
comte
to visit her bedchamber?

“Do you miss me already?” he asked, lifting his foot to straddle her body trapped beneath the bedclothes. Before she could reply, he lowered himself toward her, kissing the exposed flesh of her shoulder.

His lips were surprisingly hard, mauling her sensitive skin, causing Christine to twitch and jerk away even as his touch pulled desire from her. He followed her, his hands moving to cup her shoulders and keep her in place, and his breath coming faster against her shoulder, moist from his mouth. “No,” he murmured, his voice shaky. “Christine, I need you.”

He nibbled her shoulder with his lips, the edges of his teeth grooving into her skin, and she felt his weight settle closer to her. Trapped beneath the heavy bedclothes, she was in a cocoon between his legs, unable to kick or shift away.

“Raoul…”

“My ship sails in two days. I’ll be gone for a year, and I’m not going to leave without you as my wife,” he said, raising his face so that she could see his eyes. “I love you.” He dipped toward her, covering her lips with his, sliding one hand down to move the blankets from her breast. “My brother wanted me to marry the Le Rochet girl, but I cannot. I will make a short trip to her father today to break the betrothal, and then I will come back for you.”

When his fingers touched her nipple, still sensitive from the arousal of her dream, Christine felt the jolt of pleasure; and as he kissed her, his tongue slick and strong, tangling with hers,
her eyes closed. She felt the memory of desire rise again, and then his hands sliding over her breasts, pulling the lace of her night rail away, releasing them to the cool room. Her lower body was still trapped, and Raoul had moved, lowering his hips so that his cock pressed down into her sex through all the layers of blankets.

He was breathing heavily, and when she opened her eyes she saw that his were glazed and odd, determined in a way that caused her a pang of nervousness. Still, he kissed her, holding her shoulders in place again, arching his back so that he could move his lips along her jaw and down over the delicate skin of her throat. His mouth was light and wet and harsh and sensual all at the same time, and Christine couldn’t move away from the sensations, the unending trickles of his lips. She felt jumpy and achy all at once, and her eyes fluttered as she fought to keep them open, to focus on the ceiling above instead of the feel of his mouth on her skin.

He sucked hard and long at her neck, and she gasped as the sensation poured through her body, tingling in her belly and down into her throbbing sex. With one smooth move, Raoul had a nipple in his mouth, and she could hear his labored, rasping breathing as he sucked and sucked, drawing it into a point at the back of his mouth. The incessant tug of pleasure-pain was so unbearable that she cried out, and Raoul lifted his head.

“You’ll marry me, Christine,” he said, his lips full and red, his eyes blazing with determination, his words choppy with emotion. “You’ll marry me…and you’ll forget about that monster. I don’t care…what my brother says. You’ll…marry me.”

He was rocking against her, his breaths coming faster and faster until his eyes rolled back up into their lids and with a soft sob of
release, he shuddered against her, bowing his head against her chest, dampening her skin.

When he looked up, his face was wet with tears, and when she tried to roll away, he grasped her wrist, pulling himself up. “Christine,” he said, “tonight, when I return, you leave with me. You are
mine.
Do you understand?”

Tonight she would be gone, with Erik.

“Raoul,” she began, scrambling for something to say. The gentle boy was gone, completely gone. His fingers around her wrist hurt, enough that she wanted to gasp with it, but she saw that oddness in his eyes and dared not. She dared nothing but agree with him.

“I’ll protect you from him, from all of them,” he said, sitting up next to her, still grasping her wrist. “I’ll make you forget what that monster did to you, and you’ll be with me, Christine.”

Holding her wrist, he pushed his other hand under the bed-clothes, far down beneath them to the juncture of her legs. Before she could move, he covered her with his palm, slid his fingers up and into the folds of her sex and began to stroke with long, easy movements.

She was more than ready for it, and the surprise of his sudden movement caught her off guard so that the pleasure consumed. Her world centered there, between her legs, and rose and fell. Christine gave herself up to it, let it go, and focused everything on the sleek rhythm of his hand.

She felt Raoul next to her, heard his raspy breathing and the strange low sobbing in the back of his throat. She knew he was the one touching her, bringing her to the body-wrenching shudder she knew would come.

But it was Erik she thought of. Erik she yearned for.

And Erik she wept for when at last she came, and her body convulsed in relieved tremors beneath the fingers of another man.

Tears leaked from the edges of her eyes as she prayed, prayed that her escape today would go as planned.

When she opened her eyes, after a long moment, it was to see Raoul standing there, his eyes focused on her. “You’ll marry me, Christine. You are one thing my brother will not keep from me.”

He left the room with a silent swish of the door.

T
wo hours after Raoul left her, just after the midday dinner was being served below, Christine heard the shouts of alarm that portended the burning stable. She was ready, and without hesitation, she left her chamber through the passageway in the closet.

Only moments later, after meeting no one, Christine emerged from the small servant door at the back of the château. The sunlight over the patches of snow was blinding, but the crisp winter air was refreshing and biting, tinged with smoke from the burning stable—but it was the air of freedom.

Though she wasn’t free from the Chagny brothers yet, she was closer to Erik than she’d been for days. She knew he was out there, just beyond the trees past the low stone wall. And over that stone wall and beyond was true freedom with him.

Wrapped in a dark cloak, Christine moved away from the château.
A shout in the distance caused her to freeze, her heart filling her throat. But after a moment of gaping around from behind a large oak, she realized it had come from the direction of the stable, on the other side of the château.

A glance up over the top of the house’s square tower told her that whoever’d set the fire had done the job well. A tall spiral of dark gray smoke billowed up, and with a small gust of wind came a shower of ash over the peaked château roof and the stronger smell of burning wood.

Hoping none of the horses would be injured in the fire, Christine gave one last look at the cloud of smoke and hurried toward another tree. Madame Giry had warned her to move quickly from tree to tree, ending at the clump of scrubby pines next to the wall. There would be a pile of stones there for her to use to climb over the wall, and Erik would be waiting for her just on the other side.

Erik.

Christine hurried her steps, the cloak flapping about her legs as she dodged toward another tree. Even though it was winter, the branches were thick enough, and the pines close enough, that anyone looking down from the upper windows of the château would be hard-pressed to see her.

There—she saw the trio of pines and, as she darted forward, the pile of rocks. The wall was no higher than her chest; the flat-topped stones that looked as though they might have been left over from the building of the wall or the château would give her enough of a boost to make climbing the wall simple, even in her heavy skirts.

Christine stepped up onto the pile of stones, holding the top of the wall, and swung her foot up and onto the ledge, looking for a sign of Erik. Beyond the wall, trees were scattered over low, rolling fields patched with snow, and in the distance, a line of trees curved around the edge of the estate. Far to the left, along the wall onto
which she hoisted herself, were the massive iron gates to the lawn she’d just crossed, and beyond them was the dark curl of smoke from the burning stable.

At first, there was no sign of any life. All was silent and still. But then she saw him, near a cluster of trees.

“Erik,” she said softly, hardly daring to believe he was there, coming toward her on Cesar. His heavy dark coat flapped over the horse’s dirty white haunches, his face shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat. He sat tall and strong in the saddle as he and the stallion followed the line of trees, out of sight of the château and its burning stable.