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A New Beginning	By : Lum Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Het Views: 5783 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Disclaimer: Please see the prologue

A New Beginning

Chapter 26

Compromise

Not Censored

Madison rubbed her weary eyes as she woke slowly, rolling over in the bed in an attempt to seek a new and more comfortable position that would alleviate the ache in her body.

As the covers twisted around her frame she moaned in frustration and kicked them off. It was no use, her entire body ached and she was exhausted but sleep eluded her. Her conscience forbade her from returning to sleep, so she opened her eyes in the still dark room and studied the ceiling.

Thoughts on the big fight trickled into her awareness. Covering her eyes she turned onto her side and berated herself. Why had she blown things so out of proportion, made such a big deal out of something that could have been solved with simple reasoning? Erik was a sensible man, and there really was no good reason for her to have gotten so upset.

She sighed, rubbing her tired eyes and sighing, trying to discern her fate in the patterns on the ceiling as the predawn light filtered in through the curtains.

And as she lay there, replaying the horrible conversation over and over again in her head, Madison ruminated over the causes for her actions. The stress of the day, the sudden frustration that he had planned an important part of the wedding without her, and her embarrassment at having put them in such a horrible situation had certainly been factors in her tantrum.

Guilt and regret built into a lump of dread in her stomach until she was certain that the only thing that could alleviate it would be a heartfelt apology. So she rose from the bed to search her belongings for her thick wool wrapper, tied it around her shoulders, and slipped from her room silently.

The hallway was empty this early in the morning, but still she quickly looked both ways before fully exiting her room and crossing the few short feet to stand in front of Erik’s door.

Standing in front of it she faltered, hand raised in a fist to rap on the door she paused, debating if this was in all actuality a good idea, but before she could back out of her commitment to apologize, she knocked two knuckles against the oak so softly that she wondered if he would hear it.

A moment passed and Madison leaned her face against the door to listen for signs of movement, and upon hearing none she rapped softly again.

Another moment passed, and just as she was turning to go back to her own room she heard rustling and the faint creak of a floorboard. She stepped back from the door just as it cracked open.

He stood in the crack of the doorway clad only in wrinkled black trousers and the white leather mask, and from the faint light trickling into the hallway through the windows she glimpsed the curve of smooth muscle and a fine
smattering of dark brown hair in a trail that ended at his waistband.

He said nothing, letting her fidget on his doorstep, until she spoke, “Erik, please let me in, we need to talk,” and with saddened eyes he opened the door to let her slip inside.

With a resolute click they were alone. Erik motioned her to sit with him on the small couch that rested against one wall.

She fingered the engagement ring as she decided how best to express her feelings, and just as she was about to speak he laid a hand on hers.

“Keep it,” he told her resolutely, telling her with those two words that he understood her plight and was going to make this easier for her.

Her brow crinkled in confusion, thoroughly breaking her concentration and the speech that she had prepared. “Erik,” she began, her voice strained with emotion.

He tightened his hold on her hands and shook his head, “you do not have to explain, I understand. Please keep the ring, to remember me by.”

Her eyes widened in shock, brow crinkling even more as she looked at him incredulously. “Oh Erik, you do not understand at all.”

His jaw clinched in restrained anger, “how could I when you never explain anything to me?” he asked bitterly. But his scowl turned to wariness as she laughed softly and threw her arms around his neck and pulled him into her.

“You have the right to be angry with me, I acted like a child and I am truly sorry. Oh, I can’t believe that you thought that I was ending our engagement, you silly man.”

He pushed her back gently so that he could look at her, lines of confusion etched into his face. “You are not? But I thought… then why…?”

She dropped her gaze, ashamed, “I came to apologize for the way I acted. You were right, I was making a big fuss over something that could have been solved quite easily. Frankly, I’m not even sure why it made me so upset.”

He watched her toy with her wool wrapper as she spoke, “I have been thinking, and I believe that part of it was due to the frustrations of this trip. I was not allowed to be angry with those horrible gossips, so I misplaced my anger on the first available target, you. And I think, also, that I am afraid of losing you one day, and in some twisted logic believed that it would be better to push you away now before I fall any harder for you.”

She looked up at him beseechingly, eyes moist and nose slightly red from her earlier bout of crying to judge his face for a sign of her fate.

“Forgive me, please,” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

He gripped her hands again in his and brought them to his lips for a gentle kiss and murmured, “of course,” against her soft skin.

She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “I also wanted to explain why we must wait a little longer to be married. If we rush and have the service in three weeks the gossip will never stop and it could affect business. I have already caused my father enough grief without fanning the flames.”

He studied her coolly, “alright, I believe I understand a little now. Although I still say to hell with them, let them talk…”

She cast him a pleading look.

“Alright, no need to make those eyes. I will push back the date.”

She smiled broadly, “four months will be perfect.”

His shock showed on his face as he reeled back in surprise, “four months? Certainly not. Two is plenty to stay their tongues and please your father.”

“Two months? Erik, that is hardly any better than three weeks. We need a longer engagement, to show that we are not merely marrying for decency’s sake.”

He let out a long breath and kept his voice steady, he did not want to fight about this anymore, “two months is more than generous for the townspeople. It will give you enough time to plan the perfect wedding, have your dress finished, and for everyone to see that you are not in the family way.” The last two words he spit out with obvious scorn.

Madison opened her mouth to protest, and remembering that she had come here to make peace, not argue, she shut her mouth resolutely and nodded. Two months was not that unreasonable after all.

He breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes, preparing himself for what was to come.
“But while forgiveness is the topic, I fear that I must also ask you to pardon my transgression.”

She pulled back from him to study him, elation settling once more into the beginnings of dread, “for what?” she asked.

He bowed his head slightly, “there are certain aspects of my past that I have not been completely honest about, some of the things that I have done…”

She brushed a lock of her hair behind an ear and gestured for him to continue.
“I have done things, hurt other men.”

She blinked slowly, trying to understand and absorb what he was trying to tell her, “what sort of things?”
He hung his head, no longer able to meet her gaze, “I have killed men.”

When she was silent, making no sudden outburst or backing away, he raised his head to look into her eyes and saw only sadness instead of hatred. “Why?” she asked almost inaudibly, her voice a brief whisper.

He squared his shoulders to hide his insecurity and began to explain. “The first man I killed was the gypsy who held me captive, he was a belligerent, cruel drunk and I have never felt sorrow for taking his life.”

Madison nodded, remembering him tell her of the cruelty of the traveling gypsy camp who paraded him like a beast. She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut to clear away the prickling of tears that always happened when she thought of his past. How could one person ever have survived such cruelty?

When she had opened her eyes she noticed that Erik was watching her for a reaction. He continued to explain, “I told you that I was commissioned by the sultan of Persia to construct things for him. They were not buildings, as I led you to believe. His mother, the Khanum, was an evil, insane woman who had me use my architectural skills to build torture devices for her.”

“Torture devices…” Madison said almost unbelievingly.

He told her about the more horrific parts of Persia, of the mirrored room with the metal tree and noose and Josef Buquet stumbling into it, most likely while trying to rob him, and his subsequent death; told her about Piangi, the only halfway-innocent man that he had killed and the resulting guilt. Throughout the whole ordeal she remained silent, letting him purge his guilt without interruption.

She was stunned, had known that his past was dark and unloving, but the thought of being forced to create such horrible weapons was so completely foreign to her that it left her speechless. She had never fully understood the atrocities that he must have faced.

Shock, slight horror, but above all she felt sadness that his life had come to this; at the acts that he had been driven to commit just because of a physical abnormality.

Slowly, so that he might pull away, she reached a hand up to his face, fingers deftly finding the small hook that held the mask in place, and with a flick of a nail the wire sprang free from the metal loop and the it dropped gently into her hand. She placed it between them on the couch cushion and gently trailed her fingers down the red, uneven side of him.

A tear trailed unbidden down the perfect side of his face as she explored the ridge under his right eye and the uneven skin. It was rougher and redder than the rest of him, most likely from where the mask pressed against the skin and rubbed.

“I don’t understand…” she said even as her fingers brushed up and down his face.

He shuddered a little before closing his eyes, marveling at the silky soft fingertips caressing him.

She finished her thought, “why people fear you, this, so much.”

He covered her hand with his own even as tears began to stream down his face in silent rivulets. “How can you possibly be so understanding?”

She smiled at that, lips quirking in amusement before fading into seriousness. “I cannot say that I am comfortable with the fact that you have killed people, Erik. But I will not condemn you for doing what you had to do to survive.” Madison raised her other hand so that she grabbed both sides of his face. “I will forgive you from keeping secrets, if you will forgive me for acting like a spoiled child.”

And when he nodded she pulled his face down to hers for a long, sweet kiss that made them forget the rest of the world.

She wrapped her arms around his neck to run her fingers through his hair, and he wrapped his around her slim waist and pressed delicately into her back.

His hand wandered, first to rub her back and shoulders, then to caress and knead her backside even as her own hands wandered, feeling the taut muscles of his neck and back and the smoothness of his skin. Her wrapper parted, falling off one shoulder to reveal her thick white wool nightgown.

As his lips left hers to lick across her jaw and continue down to the side of her neck and his hand grabbed her thigh to rub little circles in the soft flesh she moaned, ever so slightly.

Faint, shuffling footsteps outside in the hallway brought them back to reality. Madison pulled back in alarm, glancing wildly around the room for a clock, and when her probing eyes finally landed on it and read the time she jumped up off of the couch, startling Erik who asked, “what is wrong?” even as he tried to pull her back down to him.

“Oh no, no, no, no, that cannot be the time.”

Erik looked to the small mantel clock. It was twenty three minutes past eight. He wondered how almost two hours had gone by unnoticed and watched bemused as Madison wrung her hands furiously. He laughed, a small chuckle at the amusing site of her fretting over the time.

“This is not funny Erik!” she whispered as loud as she dared. This only served to widen the smile on his face, which Madison noted, make the unmasked portion less menacing. She liked his smile, it softened him. He seemed to realize her train of thought, picking up the mask and slipping it on as he hooked the thin wire in place and rose from the couch to calm her.

“What is so wrong that it has you in such a state?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at the tone of his voice, “what’s wrong? Only that I am in your room, un chaperoned, in my nightclothes no less, and the whole house is waking up. That is what is wrong.”

He brushed a stray curl from her face, “dear, have you ever stopped to wonder that underneath it all you put yourself into these positions on purpose?”

She paused, shocked and weary. “What do you mean? Why would I do this on purpose?”

“Perhaps you do not realize that you are even doing it when you are, but I believe that on some level you want to get caught in a compromising position?”

Narrowing her eyes in trepidation she looked up at him questioningly.

He continued, “the slow seduction in your father’s house, hiding behind bookshelves and in barns with maids and servants and your father turning the corner. Or running off to a gypsy camp when you knew that Ummi would not keep your secret, and that I would follow.” He leaned into her to whisper the last line into her ear, so softly that she had to strain to hear him, “or when you let me into your bed chamber, at night, with no chaperone, and I undressed you,” he ran a hand down her side eliciting a shudder as he continued, “and touched you,” his hand grazed a breast as his mouth came dangerously close to the shell of her ear, “and kissed you,” then bit the ear lobe gently and cupped one breast, “and licked you. Face the facts, sweetheart, you love to flirt with danger.”

And as his hand kneaded the soft flesh of her breast, rolling the nipple between two fingers and grazing it with the nail of his thumb through the fabric of her nightgown, she sighed deeply and shut her eyes to his ministrations.

“We can talk about this another day, but now you need to get back into your own room.”

She groaned in frustration but conceded when she heard more footsteps and the creak of a floorboard from the hallway. “How? The hallway will be crawling with maids.”

He smiled and raised her hand to his lips to kiss the knuckles, “you forgot one thing.”

She arched one brow, “and what is that?”

“I am the opera ghost,” he said as he led her outside the small door to his balcony and walked her to the railing beside hers.

She looked at him expectantly, and when she understood what he was telling her, she balked, “Erik! There is a good three feet of open air between the balconies. You cannot seriously expect me to climb over that.”

He simply smiled, and half stepping over the short balcony railing to straddle it he pulled her to him and helped her over the metal bars to the small ledge and guided her to the other side. And when she was safely at her own balcony door, slightly white faced but smiling hopefully, he grinned and watched her turn the latch and safely enter her bed chamber. It was a good thing that she had not bothered to secure the latch last night.

Erik retreated into his own bedroom and began to dress. It was to be a very busy day with another trip to the church and marriage license broker, and then the long ride home.

His lips curved up into a devilish grin as he thought of how they could occupy themselves for four hours. He sighed, but what to do with the maid?

Author’s Note: Hope you guys enjoyed this installment. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, each and every one means so much to me. Especially from those who review on a regular basis, I couldn’t be doing this without you. On a side note, reviews were mixed. About half loved the fight, and the other half complained about Madison being a brat. As I’ve said, she’s got some growing up to do and I think that this chapter will help her characterization a bit. Also, I warned you guys, stupid till the end. I wasn’t joking. Besides, a little angst makes the fluff seem sweeter.
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A New Beginning