Page 9 of Angel's Kiss
“It’s nothing, just superstition. The Opera isn’t terribly welcoming to intruders who dare to walk the halls alone,” Adèle explained with lightness in her expression but darkness in her voice. “Just be careful where you look.”
“I will be,” Raoul replied. With a quick bow and a tip of his hat he was off again, back into the soggy January chill, a cold fear in his heart to match it.
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Christine looked sobeautiful today. Erik’s mind kept returning to that one incredibly distracting thought over and over as they sat and talked by the fire through the morning. He had tried, many times, to let the observation be made and to move along, but she was there –right there! – in his home with no mirror or shadows between them. The candlelight made her skin look golden and warm, and her forest eyes dark and alluring. Even as he spoke to her of his travels from the Punjab to Hong Kong, he could not keep his eyes from the long line of her neck, the delicate lift of her collar bones, the perfect cupid’s bow of her lips, and most remarkable of all: her smile.
It was a treasure, that smile, as was her laughter. They were gifts he had not even considered possible to receive when he had asked her to stay, and yet, she gave them. Speaking of India had led him to a passionate diatribe against the British Empire. That had become a discussion of Shakespeare and how his mastery of words to an extent that was nearly musical was the reason the English had so few great composers. Christine had mused on whether it was bold or arrogant for any composer to adapt Shakespeare into opera and whether the same applied to other poets.
“Do the words or story even matter in grand opera if the music is right?” Christine asked, and Erik shot her a scandalized look.
“The music is there for the story,” Erik argued. “It can’t be gibberish.”
“The Magic Fluteis gibberish,” Christine said with a shrug and another precious smile, which unfortunately could not ease Erik’s indignation.
“It’s allegorical,” he replied slowly.
“It’s incomprehensible.”
Erik could do nothing but sigh and look to the ceiling. “I fear I have taught you nothing.”
“It’s still wonderful, it just makes no sense,” Christine replied. “And that’s fine. I don’t think something has to be perfect or even sensible to be beautiful.” He looked back at her, curious and awed by her once again. “Anyway, you won’t let me sing the Queen of the Night yet, so it doesn’t matter,” she muttered, her head falling back against the back of the old blue couch.
He drank in her beauty like water from an oasis as he watched her look around his home. He reluctantly tore his eyes from her to follow her gaze to the great organ against the back wall. “You can take a closer look, if you wish.”
Christine sent him a hesitant look before rising. She looked so small compared to the enormous pipes that went all the way to his high ceilings as she approached the huge instrument. Erik rose as well, attentive to the wonder on Christine’s face as she drew close.
“Do you like her?” Erik asked.
“Her?” Christine echoed, turning to him. “Does she have a name?”
“Cecilia. I didn’t name her though; she came with it.” He watched as Christine oh-so-carefully touched the keys he had played so often and it gave him a strange thrill. “She’s over a hundred years old. Her previous home was a church that was damaged in the siege of Paris. She sat in the elements for years before the land was sold to be turned into something new and fresh. I bought her for fifty francs.”
“You saved her,” Christine corrected, running the back of her knuckles over one burnished brass pipe.
“It took me a week to disassemble her, working at night. Then I had to move her piece by piece down here. Then it was a month to put her back together. But I’m glad I did. An organ is the closest thing I can get to my own orchestra in terms of voices and sound.”
Christine smiled wistfully and looked around at the other instruments on the shelves and hung carefully on the walls. “How many instruments do you have?”
Erik laughed softly, amused by Christine’s uncanny ability to ask him questions with answers he had to think so hard about. “I don’t think I’ve actually ever counted.”
“And you play them all?”
“Some better than others. Most of the instruments I own came to me like Cecilia. I rescued and repaired them, then learned to play as I did.” Erik paused, trying to discern Christine’s face and the sadness there. “Would you like to see my workshop?”
Christine’s eyes lit up and she nodded. He picked up a candelabrum and showed her to the door to the right of the organ, on the same side of the parlor as his bedchamber.
“You call this aworkshop?” Christine asked in unabashed wonder as she stepped in. Books lined every inch of the walls, mixed with discarded materials, abandoned projects, and loose papers. A long, cluttered table filled the center of the room, littered with pieces of instruments and other mechanical distractions. Christine’s brow knit in fascination as she trailed her fingers over papers covered with notes and designs, then reached towards a large contraption of wood and metal coils.
“Be careful of that. It’s a device for generating electrical current, and I can assure you that receiving a shock from it is terribly unpleasant.” Christine obediently withdrew her hand and instead examined an area covered in gears and wire, where a half-completed clockwork bird sat in pieces.
“You’re quite the tinkerer,” she said, almost to herself, as sad as she was impressed. “The music box that you left for me...” Erik understood her melancholy. He had intentionally left the music box out of her room. It had been built to play their most secret melody, the one that had always enticed his student to bare herself and explore her pleasure at the behest of her lying teacher.
“I’ve made many. Clocks too,” Erik said, banishing the memory. It did not seem to cheer her. Christine followed Erik back into the parlor where her eyes returned first to the organ and then to the crowded shelf of scores to the right of the instrument. She reached for the score ofRigolettoand touched it forlornly.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, fresh anxiety roiling in his gut.
“I know you want me to sing today,” she confessed softly. “And I don’t know if I even can. I want to, I do, but I haven’t sung a note since—”
