A/N: My sincere apologies for the extremely late update. It's been a very busy busy and eventful time, lately, and I haven't been able to sit down to write very often at all. I'll do better now, I promise! Thanks for sticking with me.

Chapter Five

Where he found the strength, he did not know. The two figures had sat huddled on the floor of Erik's room, for minutes or hours, with only their combined weights leaned together keeping them from total collapse.

Somehow Raoul extricated himself and, ensuring that the hat and mask were still well in place (knowing now the price if they were not), he took Christine's exhausted form in his arms and carried her from the room.

She cradled her head into the crook of his arm, sighing sweetly. (A very different type of sigh from the ones that had grated on him for months.) After the malodour which had permeated the house when he had entered, and the general dankness of it now, there was no ignoring it. Christine smelled amazing. Lavender and rosewater that perfumed her hair, and the scent that was just her, wafted up to overwhelm Raoul's senses.

As he carried her out of Erik's room, and towards the Louis Philippe bedroom, he recalled another occasion when he, Raoul, had carried her through a different doorway and into a different bedchamber (as the climax to an event she now bafflingly viewed as some kind of bigamy). As the current scent and past pleasures mingled in his mind, he wanted nothing more than to toss her down on the bed and cover her with fervent kisses, to bury his nose in those stubborn blonde curls - now coming fetchingly unpinned - and have his fill of her.

Well, there was one problem - just the first of many, he was only just beginning to realize. He wasn't supposed to have a nose now...

Oh God, stop! It was all too much. Far more than he could hope to think through after his mind and heart had been, all evening, cut out of him, bludgeoned, stomped upon, chopped, and put thrice through a meat grinder... metaphorically (though if someone had told him at that moment that such things had literally occurred, he would not have contested the statement). Breathe, man! He could only manage this by putting one foot in front of the other.

Which, he realized, he had better start doing again instead of what he was actually doing at that moment, which was standing in the hallway, outside his wife's new bedroom, trying to smell her hair through the false nose that covered his real nose. She looked up at him with exhausted, endeared bemusement, and he was certain he must have turned a shocking shade of red beneath the mask.

He walked on.

The room was dark, save for a single candle he had lit there during his earlier rounds. It cast a faint, warm flicker over the papered walls and patterned bedding. The candle did nothing to cut the chill, however, and as he gently deposited Christine on the mattress - where she gave a sleepy little coo of contentment - he knew he would have to light the fires in the rooms` hearths if they were not to catch a chill in their sleep. The last thing he needed was to add illness to this abominable conundrum.

He pulled the bedding and a heavy quilt up over Christine, who sleepily mumbled some non-words at him as she nuzzled her face down into the pillow. Good. The efforts of the evening had spent the poor, silly, mad, lovely girl. Perhaps there would be no awkward questions, no sidestepping, this night. One last night of peace... if this could ever be called peace... before Raoul would have to face the consequences of his actions of the evening.

He walked past the foot of the bed to the hearth, looking over instinctively, on his way, to ensure that the panel to the torture chamber remained locked, though knew that he had locked and sealed it himself. Closed, it blended so perfectly that he could not, at least by candlelight, detect even a seam in the damask wallpaper.

He turned back to the hearth, a broad, stately thing in dark wood, matching the sharply angled silhouette and plain, bold moulding of the Louis Philippe set. On the mantel, pale with dust, sat the two locked boxes, with their spring-loaded contents: one once ready to jump, and the other to sting.

He knelt down before the fireplace (It felt a strangely reverent act, head bowed and his cloak pooling around him, a candle in hand) and gazed into the bared teeth of the brazier, and realized he had no idea what he was doing.

He brought the candle closer and squinted at the fixture.

An unfortunate side effect of a fortune, Raoul was only just beginning to realize, was the expectation, both familial and social, that accompanied it. Despite the upheaval and grief which had marked his family life from its very beginning - his own mother having died in his birth, the later loss of his father, the still raw wound of Philippe's death - Raoul had been groomed for great things from the time of the joy and tragedy of his birth. A distinguished career in law, perhaps, or in politics or, as it had nearly gone, distinction in a military career. Men of great means had potential to do Great Things. And even moreso because they had a serving staff to keep them free from menial distractions.

Menial distractions such as lighting the hearth.

Raoul sighed, the air blowing a lock of his blond hair that had come loose over his forehead, and which he quickly tucked back out of sight, and prepared to get down to this business.

He held the candle closer and squinted into the woefully insufficient light it cast. He was struck immediately by the cleanliness of the fireplace, free of accumulated ash and soot, and saw brass tubing winding inside, pierced with fan-shaped spouts to vent... gas. Good. Yes. Gas. This would be easy if he could find the... valve?

He heard rustling behind him. Christine was stirring in her bedsheets. Was she watching him? Of course she was. She hadn't paid him a moment's inattention since arriving. He was surprised the girl risked blinking, for fear he might leave her sight for so long.

Hurry, you fool! Staring gape-mouthed at his own fireplace like someone who had never looked into it before (which he hadn't) would do nothing to further this charade. If he did not play this part to perfection... Maybe she was only stirring in her sleep.

He touched a few of the fixtures with the tips of his fingers, then snatched them back as quickly as one attempting to pet a vicious dog. For all he knew, whatever wasn't the valve might be the spring trigger for some particularly vicious... maiming trap. Or some such monstrosity.

He sighed again, and odd mixture of panic and annoyance.

"Just above, Erik dear, on your left," came a languid voice from behind him, muffled and slurred from exhaustion.

He froze, paled, then turned the valve and lit the fire.

When he rose, shakily, and turned to her, wide-eyed and bereft of excuses, Christine had fallen dead asleep.

He snuffed the candle and stepped slowly to the bedside. With a soft, nearly silent sigh (he really had lost track of their number this night of nights), he leaned down over her sleeping form, so close that her breaths ruffled the silk over his lips. With a touch as light as that silk that concealed them, he brushed his lips to her forehead.

"Good night, Christine."

He walked from the room and closed the door behind him.

.

Back in Erik's room, Raoul's pretense at calm abandoned him.

Having closed the door firmly, he had been relieved to find upon it, among other mystifying fastenings he dared not so much as breathe upon, a simple deadbolt to lock it against any night time beseechings of his wife. He leaned back against it, and held the door-frame for support.

Safely concealed, he tore the hat and mask from himself and threw them as hard and far as he could across the room. As they were made of cloth, this was not particularly far at all. He jammed his besuited and becloaked forearm into his mouth and let loose a long, well-muffled scream into the fabric. Every curse word he had ever heard - and having gone around the world as one of many sailors, he had heard a variety - roared through his tempestuous brain, like the shouts of a crowd all vying for attention.

And yet once more, that unending night, he sank to his knees in misery.

This time he did not weep, but merely stared at the floor a small distance away from him (about as far as his unsuccessful throw). Pale, barely blinking and barely breathing, he suddenly... disappeared from himself. Like a broken clock, the gears stopped turning, the hands stopped ticking their way around. Relentlessly overwound, as by a child or an enthusiastic pet monkey, Raoul had... jammed.