The Choices of Raoul de Chagny (Phantom/Love never Dies fanfic)

One Thing More

...in which Raoul proposes a sacrifice, but creates a stir...

Chapter 4. One Thing More

The sun was perceptibly higher now. Within the cabins behind them on the promenade deck valets and maids would be stirring, toilettes would be being made and morning tea sipped, and out here she and Raoul could not be certain much longer of being alone. Any minute now, that red-faced Englishman might even appear for his 'morning constitutional'...

Raoul had tensed, his arms tightening around her. "Christine—"

"Mmm?" Catching, belatedly, the strain in his tone, she turned to look up at him. "Dear, what is it?"

"Christine, I have no right to ask this — but if you love me—"

"—You know I do."

"Then..." But he hesitated.

"Anything, darling." Christine laughed, guessing at what it might be; blushing a little.

"I have no right to ask, but... Christine, break this contract."

"Do what?" She twisted out of his hold altogether, staring. She wasn't even sure she understood.

"For my sake... break this American contract. Don't go to New York. Don't sing this concert. Don't — sell yourself to save me."

"But—" Far astern, the screws churned white water. And every revolution, every stroke of the pistons carried them closer to New York. "I can't. You know I can't. A contract—"

She'd signed. Set her reputation on the line; signed away her voice and her art for that stupendous, crippling sum of money.

"We both know you've had to break contracts on my behalf before." He could not quite keep the bitterness from his voice. "Last year, in Vienna — that 'accident'—"

He'd been in no state to ride home that night, let alone take on that wager in the Prater. She'd wondered, when they'd brought him back to the hotel — then and afterwards — if he'd had it at the back of his mind to break his neck and be done with it.

As it was, he'd been unconscious for the night and half the day, and too sick and giddy to be moved for the best part of a week: and there had been no question of her performing on that day or any other. It was only two days later that she'd learned how it had happened, from a deputation of young Uhlans who had paid a visit to tender their most profound sympathies to the wife of the Herr Vicomte and their regrets at not having fully appreciated his situation that night, having themselves been some trifle intoxicated on proposing the race... all most upright and correct, with their flat-crested helmets held stiffly across the breast and their heels at the salute. She had received them in the cramped little hotel parlour — half-distracted the whole while with Raoul in the next room, lying ashen-grey beneath the great bandage across his brow — and had looked up at their anxious, pink young faces, remembering that reckless sweet-tempered boy to whom she'd given her hand, and for his sake tried hard to smile at them and to be kind...

She didn't even want to think about that time in Vienna. There was still that little scar, under his hair — she'd run her fingers over it this morning — but by the grace of God, nothing more. Unless the headaches... No. Christine banished that thought firmly, trying for a lighter tone.

"Raoul, America's different: I've never sung there before, the management don't know me. If I pull out now, at the last minute, I'll go down as just another capricious foreign act — unreliable, flighty..."

"Who cares what America thinks? Let them gossip — let them find some new gimcrack sensation—" His mouth had tightened in distaste: and there went twenty generations of unconscious hauteur in one sublime dismissal, Christine thought ruefully. Twenty generations who'd had the privilege of putting a point of honour above the price of the next meal...