PROLOGUE

Five years. Five long years, and so much to show for it. A blanket, a pillow, and a key were all that kept her alive sometimes. She would lock herself in the closet, huddled under the quilt taken from a linen closet and sleep, praying the shouting would stop. This never should have happened. It wouldn't have happened if she hadn't thought that Raoul was the better choice. But that hadn't happened. Erik was dangerous. He was insane. She had to leave with Raoul.

She regretted it now with all of her heart. She wished that she had given herself more time to decide whether or not she truly wished to marry Raoul. If she had, she would have known that she would have come second after the alcohol and the whores. She would have known that with the alcohol came an anger unlike anything she had ever seen from Erik. Bad as his temper had been, it had been nothing compared to Raoul after a night at the pub.

Never, no matter how long she lived, would she forget the first night Raoul had truly drunk himself senseless. Before passing out on the floor of the foyer , he had yelled and screamed at her, hitting her across the face more than once until she had tumbled down, crawling into the corner. He said she had muttered Erik's name in her sleep. When she had fallen to the floor, he grabbed her by the hair, pulling her up and throwing her against the wall, screaming into her face, "Where is your Angel of Music now?"

She had asked herself the same question for years, now. Where was her Angel? Where was her Erik?

She was asking it now as she huddled, hidden from Raoul and his drunken rant, crying and clutching at the crusifix that hung around her neck. She held her breath as she heard him stumbling down the hall, shouting for her, telling her he would kill her when he found her. After a minute, she heard a soft thump and a groan. Pressing her ear to the door, she heard nothing. Still, she didn't move. After what seemed like forever, she heard a door at the end of the hall open and a voice call, "Raoul?"

Footsteps came downt the hall and there was the sound of something being moved and a gasp before the footsteps hurriedly scuttled from where they were. There was a pause before a woman's voice called her name.

"I know you're around here somewhere," the voice called. "Come out. I only want to help you."

Knowing the woman would not relent, she opened the door to see Raoul's mistress slowly walking down the hall away from her. Hearing the door open, the other woman turned. She was holding a suitcase.

"If you want to run," she said quietly, "now is the time. I won't tell him where you have gone. He won't be up for several more hours, at least. I'm going to pack my own things and leave. I never knew he was like this."

"You've seen me, Emeline. What did you expect?" The Madame de Chagny smiled bitterly and held out her arms. "I weigh ninty pounds. I'm covered in bruises. I sleep in a closet. Did you think he was a dear? A kind, sweet man?" She laughed darkly. "No. This is not the Raoul I married. You're right to leave. You have a home to go to. But if there was somewhere I could go, don't you think I would have walked out years ago?"

Emeline did not speak for a moment. The two women stared each other down for another minutes before Emeline set down the suitcase. Straightening, she stared at the tiny woman. "I promise you," she said softly, "that if necessary, I will attest to his fault in your death if it comes to it."

She could expect nothing more, but she had always expected so much less of these women Raoul relied on for pleasure. No one had offered this. As morbid as it was, it was nevertheless a promise of justice. "Thank you."

Emeline nodded and walked back down the hall. She reached the bedroom door and paused. Turning, she said, "You could come with me."

The Madame shook her head. "Thank you," she said again. "I appreciate the offer, but you are, nevertheless, part of my husband's life. If I leave, I want to be free of him forever."

The mistress nodded. She entered Raoul's room, emerging several minutes later with a suitcase and wrapped in a coat. As she passed by, Emeline squeezed her hand. "Be careful."

She was gone, then, leaving the emaciated woman alone in the hallway with her passed out husband and a packed suitcase. Raoul stirred breifly on the floor before growing quiet again. His wife stared down at him for a long time before she made up her mind.

Walking down the hall, she entered Raoul's bedroom. Sitting at his desk, she carefully wrote a breif note before pulling out the gun that was hidden in the bottom drawer.

At daybreak, the house was awoken by the scream of a maid. Other servants rushed into the hall to see what the commotion was. For a moment, no one moved. Then someone moved to run out the door into the streets of Paris, screaming for the gendarmerie.

No questions were asked as to why what happened had occurred as it did. The maid of the Madame de Chagny told the officers that her mistress had been very thin and miserable with the beatings administered by her brute of a husband. It had only been a matter of time until this had happened.

The newspapers would say that Viscount Raoul de Chagny had been murdered in his home. There were no suspects. The whereabouts of his wife, Christine, were a unknown, but it was not believed that she was a suspect.

His family was told that Raoul had been driven mad when Christine had disappeared one night. Unable to find her, he had put the barrel of a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

When the news reached Scotland that the French noble had shot himself after the disappearance of his wife, Baron McLeod read the news with a small level of surprise but feeling no remorse for the man who had stolen Christine from him. Putting the letter from France aside, he slid down under the covers, feeling the arms of his newest blonde mistress wrap around his waist as she whispered into his ear pleas for pleasure.