Free Unmasqued: An Erotic Novel of The Phantom of The Opera by Colette Gale Page A

dressing room. The masses of flowers from the night before had been organized onto one small table and the floor next to it. The mingled scents of rose, lily, gardenia, and gillyflower were cloying and sweet.
    Three heavy gowns—rose, lavender shot with silver, and sapphire blue—lay carefully arranged over a chair. They were gowns that she never would have been close enough to touch if La Carlotta had not stomped petulantly out of the Opera House.
    If the backdrop hadn’t fallen and startled the diva, Christine would still be sharing a dressing room with the other chorus girls. There would be no floor-to-ceiling mirror of her own, but instead, a long narrow one, around which the twenty girls would push and shove and gather as they dressed.
    If
the backdrop hadn’t fallen.
    She gasped.
    He
had done it. He had made the heavy canvas drop to the ground, knowing that it would send La Carlotta into hysterics…certain that it would cause her to stalk away, to act the prima donna and refuse to sing.
    Carlotta had expected to be soothed and coaxed back. She had not known that the Angel of Music had made other plans.
    Christine had heard about the death of Joseph Buquet, and felt a tremor of fear. Her
ange
was a strict and demanding tutor, but he had never given her cause to be frightened of him. Even the first time the angel approached her, she had not been frightened.
    She had been praying in the small chapel, tucked beneath the grand stone staircase of the Opera House. It was the only place she felt close to her father, even though he was buried in a graveyard near the Bay of Perros. Even after nearly eight years, she grieved for him, missed his absentminded smile and faraway eyes, missed the way his fingers were always moving, always playing something on an invisible violin—even when he hugged her, or sat reading in his chair, or riding in a carriage.
    Papa had entertained her, and for a time Raoul too, with stories about the Angel of Music. “Every musician, every artist, who is worthy shall be visited by an angel,” he would tell them. “Perhaps only once, an infant might see his angel…and then grow to be a child prodigy. Or perhaps the angel would come more than once, and tutor one who has the promise of talent. But to be sure, if the angel blesses one with his presence, the musician is sure to be a success.” And then he would pick up his violin and play soft, haunting melodies like
The Resurrection of Lazarus
with such beauty that Christine was certain her father
had
been visited by an angel.
    When he died, she’d lost her music.
    It was only because of Professor Valerius’s influence that Christine had been allowed to join the chorus at the National Academy of Music, there at the Opera House, when she was twelve. He insisted that she’d shown great talent in singing, but that grief from the death of her father had suffocated it, and that it would return in time if nurtured.
    But the five years she’d been in the chorus, Christine remained a shadow of the quiet, melancholy girl who’d had the angelic voice her sponsor remembered.
    Until that day in the chapel.
    That day, as she often did, she spoke to her father, talking with him about her memories of their life and travels. She reminded himagain of his promise to send her an Angel of Music when he died, so that she might find a way to express her grief in losing him. So that she might find her music again.
    And then, she’d heard him call her. “Christine…” Soft, haunting, barely audible. She looked around the small damp room, but saw no one. Her knees pressed into a thin rug, feeling the stones beneath, as she turned back and forth, looking up and down.
    And then she heard it again. “Christine…I am your angel.…”
    And she knew her father had kept his promise.
    Now, three months and many hard-won lessons later, and the morning after her
grande
performance at the gala, she smoothed her fingers over the velvet petals of one red rose, thinking of