Quoi qu’il arrivât, votre situation dans le monde m’interdisait à jamais la pensée d’une honnête union... (Ch. XIII, “La Lyre d’Apollon”)
Coals shifted in the grate with a little tumbling sigh, and Christine settled closer into Raoul’s arms with a contented murmur of her own. This was where she belonged: at this hour, in this room, warm and indecorous in her lover’s lap in the big chair that was an intimate home for two...
The house on the rue de Valmy had been a plaything for a rich young boy and a rising star — a toy in Raoul’s name where they could play at love, play at marriage, and learn to live together, with poor bewildered Maman Valerius to help the proprieties... and, on occasion, to keep the peace. Perhaps it had been cruel to deceive the old lady so; but she had always liked Raoul, and it would have been more cruel for her to know the truth about the young man whose visits seemed so assiduous, and sometimes so early in the morning... It was a pity poor Maman had never lived to see Georges. But Christine really did not know how she would have explained that.
A rueful little smile. She slipped her own hand up to cover Raoul’s touch in what was becoming an unhurried pleasant exploration. The evening would end as it usually did; but they were both old enough now to appreciate the preliminaries.
Beyond the bright pool of the lamp shadows danced in the rhythm of the firelight, a steady ebb and glow across the villa’s battered, bourgeois comfort. Life on the rue de Valmy had been a game: an exquisite game of young hearts and elegant aristocracy, but in the end it had been a game on Count Philippe’s terms, where she was a kept woman in a house that was not her own. It had not been a place to bring up a child, let alone to carry a second. The new villa at Louveciennes had been a godsend when it came up for sale.
She’d been ungainly with Bastien when the purchase had gone through, tired and fretful and in no mind to consider Raoul’s preference or taste. For herself, she’d barely cared.
In the years since, there had never, somehow, seemed to be time to make changes... and for all his grumbles, she doubted even Raoul wanted to redecorate now. These stolid rooms had seen their children grow up and weathered quarrels and storms and despair, in the years when Raoul had been months at sea and life on stage had seemed the most impossible. Louveciennes was home... and it was hers, legally, with her name on the deeds and her earnings passing under the notary’s seal. No nobleman’s whim could turn them out onto the street — and if it amused her to house a Viscount as her kept man, then she could.
It was an old joke between them; she buried a smile in a soft sound of enjoyment against the Viscount’s waistcoat, and felt his mouth stir against her hair.
“Christine—” His arms tightened round her with a sigh, and she turned her face up to his to claim an answering embrace of her own.
But his eyes were sober and quite direct. “I wish you’d marry me.”
“Marry — now?” For a moment she didn’t even understand the words; she sprang up and pulled away abruptly. With the mood shattered, that familiar touch was suddenly far too intimate in places she didn’t even want to think about: cold convention told her they were the caresses of a loose woman, not a wife.
And it was foolish, foolish after so many years— She didn’t understand, any more than he, and her heart ached for the hurt in his eyes: but how could he just ask the impossible, just like that?
“To protect you from Eustacie?” She’d meant it to come out on a laugh, to bring them together in a softening of the blow, but to her dismay the words held all the unforgiven hurt of that gala night. “Your brother’s wife with the morals of a spoilt child and an eye for everything that isn’t hers?”
And to think that in the security of her love for Raoul she had been sorry for the girl...
Raoul had said no. He’d said no with a persistent gentle stubbornness that the Count knew all too well... but the girl had been family, she’d threatened scandal, and when Philippe had proposed a cold-blooded counter-bargain, Eustacie had said yes.
“She set her heart on being a Viscount’s wife. When she found she couldn’t have that, she thought being the Count’s wife would be more than second best.” Raoul did manage a laugh, but it was short and rather bitter. “She’s done her duty by Philippe, I’ll grant her that: the de Chagny line is safe, and wedlock suits him better than either of us ever dreamed. But if ever I was careless or cruel enough to raise her hopes without knowing it—”
“Dearest, I’ll swear you weren’t.” All constraint forgotten, Christine reached out to him, laying her cheek against his, and felt him gather her close.
“Then marry me,” Raoul said softly against her a long moment later, drawing her down into the chair, and she looked up at him again with a helpless shake of the head.
“Raoul, I’m an aging actress with no reputation and three illegitimate children — you know perfectly well we can’t do anything of the sort.”
“Well, if they were another man’s children I can see that might be something of an obstacle,” Raoul said with a straight face, and she elbowed him mercilessly in the ribs.
“Stop laughing at me... If this is your idea of a joke, then it’s not kind. A man doesn’t”—she bit her lip, but pressed on—“he doesn’t marry his mistress.”
They’d been happy with what they had. Why give the world a chance to spoil it all?
“It’s been twenty years.” Raoul’s heartbeat, close against her own, was not as steady as his voice, but he kept going regardless. “No-one’s going to be surprised, you know; no-one’s going to cut the connection now. The century’s on the turn, a pork merchant can hire an opera-box and a ballerina can become a Baroness, and the two of us are past the stage of shocking anyone any more. What’s scandal in youth is mere folly over forty...”
And maybe he was right.
Christine let the idea creep in very slowly, afraid to look at it. Hadn’t she thought the same thing of Meg Giry the other night? She could bow out now, at the height of her profession, before the claques began to whisper for younger singers; she could leave rehearsals and fittings and temperamental tenors behind, and tell the critics en grande dame just what she thought. Lucie could be presented, and dance until dawn with a Duke’s son in a whirl of foaming white—
Yes, and they could all leave this home they’d made and live in a fairy-tale. A slow tear escaped from between closed lids, and she felt Raoul turn her face upwards; felt the brush of his mouth against her cheek where the teardrop lay. And she dared not, could not lose this warm licence between lovers for the formality of the conjugal visit and a table full of silver...
“I can’t,” she said almost desperately, as if that could make him understand, and heard him draw in a hiss of breath on an angry idea.
“Is it him? Are you trying to tell me— is this all some kind of guilt? In all these years... did your Erik, your precious Voice, exact some kind of promise from you? Did you— when Philippe—”
He broke off between set teeth as her eyes flew wide; and for an instant, through all that had gone between, she could glimpse once more the flushed, clumsy boy beneath the white domino. “Tell me, Christine, was that the whole reason — from the start?”
“Dearest...” She could have laughed, could have cried; and was it old jealousy awoken, or did he truly believe her pledged to music by the will of a long-dead rival — sworn never to marry? Poor ghost, it was her young girl’s heart that he had sought to keep untouched... and he had known that lost to Raoul before she had even suspected it.
She caught Raoul by the shoulder, gripping hard. “Listen to me — listen! I gave myself to music, of my own free choice. And I gave myself freely to you... and he died of it.”
And jealousy now from Raoul was folly against all expectation... She held his eyes almost fiercely, willing him to believe, and saw the tension ebb at last into a rueful look at his own expense.
“Then”—it was said softly, but with the old determination—“then marry me, Christine. It won’t change anything for us, I swear it. You can sing, or not sing — live here, or live in Paris — receive or live secluded, just as you wish. Only—”
His voice was a little unsteady; he tried to laugh it off, and caught her hand between his own. “We’re of an age to do what we please, you and I. But... it would be a very great pleasure for me to call you my wife.”
The truth of that in his face, open and unprotected, threatened to steal her breath. She had to look away, and felt her fingers tremble in his.
“I won’t press you for an answer. I can wait a year or two; we’ve waited long enough.” He touched her hand to his cheek in reassurance, letting the words fall lightly on a smile. “Maybe for the next time I’ll find some spot that’s a little more romantic... a little less comfortable.”
For a moment they were at rest. Coals shifted in the grate and fell with a little leaping flame, and the light flickered across the room, showing worn rugs, scarred varnish, shabby paint. In all the crazy quilt of their life together, she had never been happier anywhere but here...
“Comfortable will do.” She laid her head back against his breast with a sigh of homecoming. “And I don’t know what will come of it... but the answer’s yes.”
The steady beat beneath her cheek had lurched into sudden disbelief. She reached up to silence a torrent of words with the leaping incongruous joy of her own mouth on his, familiar yet achingly new... and the look in his face was recompense enough. Whatever might come after, she knew now her heart’s answer was yes — a hundred times yes.
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