Page 41 of Angel’s Flight (The Phantom Saga #4)

“Cécile can entertain your friend,” Meg added with a smile and took d’Amboise’s offered arm. He smelled of cologne over sweat, Meg noted as they made their way out of the Salon du Danse . She caught sight of Rochelle, looking furious, and turned her attention back to d’Amboise. “Tell me, Monsieur—”

“You must call me étienne,” the patron interrupted. “And I will call you Meg and we will be the best of friends.”

Meg swallowed and forced a new smile. “étienne, of course. I must confess my ignorance. How long have you been a patron of our great National Academy of Music?”

“And dance,” d’Amboise added. “I believe it is dance that makes the Paris Opéra great. You and your sisters are the heart of all beauty and art in this city, the perfect flowers in our garden.”

“You flatter me, étienne,” Meg said, though she felt more queasy than flattered. “But you—”

“My patronage! Yes!” he crowed as they made their way through the stage door and into the lobby proper.

It was uncrowded now that the performance was over, though not empty.

The mosaic floor was cold through Meg’s slippers, and she suddenly felt extremely exposed walking about in the public spaces in her tutu, though she had just danced for two thousand people in the same outfit.

“I have had the privilege of supporting the Opéra for over two years now,” d’Amboise said proudly. “I have seen many great talents rise and fall. I have an eye for potential.”

“Oh, really?” Meg asked, trying to bat her eyes the way someone like Blanche would and not look like she was going blind. “So you must have known all the managers?”

“Well, there have only been the four,” d’Amboise corrected her. Meg got the impression he liked doing so.

“Did they listen to your ideas as a patron?” Meg asked. “I heard Monsieur Richard especially was very close with the patrons.”

D’Amboise frowned at that and Meg worried she had said something wrong. “Richard showed a definite preference for certain opinions. Men who made themselves hard to ignore and were great beasts about it.”

So he was jealous of more important men like Antoine and Raoul. “Were you a supporter of Carlotta or Daaé?” Meg asked, turning to the main controversy of Richard’s tenure. “Such nasty business that was.”

“Oh, I was for Carlotta at first, but only as a favor to more invested friends,” d’Amboise laughed, guiding Meg into the jewel box of a lobby and down the grand escalier . “But as I said, I favor dance, and I wasn’t in Richard’s preferred circle.”

“Did anyone speak up when he was ousted?” Meg asked, hoping to sound innocent. “You haven’t even said who this circle was.”

“Oh, no one spoke up,” d’Amboise said. They had come to the foot of the stairs where twin muses of bronze held up flickering candelabrum. “Soon, they will replace these with electric lights, you know,” d’Amboise said of the quavering flames.

“Like the chandelier.”

“Richard took all the blame for that disaster, however unfairly,” d’Amboise sighed. “What a ghastly thing to happen. I was lucky to make it out alive.”

“Surely a man such as you wasn’t sitting in the stalls?”

For the first time, her escort looked nervous, but he laughed it off, leading Meg down now, below the stairs to the rotunda reserved for patrons and subscribers. “It was a close thing but let us not talk of such dark times.”

Meg froze as d’Amboise slid his arms around her waist and twirled her so her back was pressed to his chest. They were beneath the stair with the little fountain of Pythia, another nubile young woman in gauzy clothes displayed for the amusement of the audience.

Of men. Meg suddenly, horribly, felt exactly like her.

“Who – who was in Richard’s corner that betrayed him?” Meg asked, voice shaking as the heat from d’Amboise’s hands seeped through the fabric of her bodice. She tried to ignore the similar heat from his body behind her. All she needed were names.

“Oh, Tremblay was a great supporter, the fool. He’d do anything to keep free reign to pluck sweet flowers like you from the garden,” d’Amboise whispered against Meg’s neck and that was enough for her. All of this was enough.

“I think I must get back,” Meg nearly yelped when his lips brushed her skin, all her idiotic confidence and curiosity replaced by terror. “My mother—”

“Don’t worry, my dear,” d’Amboise said, and again he was laughing as his arm tightened around Meg’s waist. Why was this man always laughing? Did it amuse him to have trapped a girl like her? Was this sport? “We will be back soon.”

“What does that mean?” Meg asked, suddenly unable to breathe. She thought of Rochelle and Hermine and so many other girls who had gone off with patrons and how they had been changed and used. Why had she believed herself above such a fate? “I want to leave,” Meg almost whispered. Like a prayer.

“But my dear, you asked—” A huge clang cut off d’Amboise’s words – metal clanking and crashing from somewhere by the ticket offices. The man jumped in shock, releasing Meg as he did.

Meg didn’t look for the source of the noise to find who to thank.

She did that in a silent prayer, instead, as she rushed away from d’Amboise quick as her legs would carry her.

She knew it was a shadow that had saved her, causing chaos as a diversion for her escape.

The same chaos he always had caused that sometimes hurt and sometimes helped. Tonight, the ghost had helped her.

She was breathless when she made it backstage, the shock finally hitting her, mixed with relief that she had evaded a fate she should not have tempted. Her nerves were shot, even so, and she found herself shaking as she panted in the dim hall.

The hand on her wrist made her scream, and she couldn’t be blamed for it. Rochelle looked as terrified as Meg when she turned to see her in the hall.

“It’s just me, Giry, you ninny!” Rochelle snapped. “I was coming to make sure you didn’t do anything too stupid.”

“You’re too late for that,” Meg shot back. She felt so ashamed at how Rochelle was right. She was stupid and she had almost ruined herself because of it.

“What happened?” Rochelle’s voice cut through her thoughts, and to Meg’s shock, there was real worry in her friend’s face. “Did he take you so quickly?”

“No,” Meg answered and Rochelle sighed in clear relief. “But he was going to try.”

“Why would you go with him? You know what those men are like,” Rochelle asked, now sad. “You’ve never been foolish enough to trifle with them, and I always admired that about you.”

Meg felt another bubble of shame from deep in her stomach, rising like bile. “I thought he might know something useful,” Meg confessed. “About the men who have been targeted by the ghost.”

“You’re still on that?” Rochelle squawked.

“It’s important!” Meg cried in return. “People are being hurt and—”

“Jesus Christ in heaven, Giry, don’t you understand it yet?” Rochelle exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “The men who have been hurt and the ones on that bloody list all have something in common if you ask the right people!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do!” Meg balked. “But you—”

“They hurt girls the same way d’Amboise tried to hurt you.” Rochelle cut her off.

Meg gaped at Rochelle, blinking in horror at the revelation and her own continued idiocy. “I... I didn’t realize.”

“That’s how they get away with it!” Rochelle went on.

“Tremblay wasn’t kind to me, nor was Sabran to Hermine.

I’ve heard rumors about De Lancey and the others, as well.

They all do very ungentlemanly things to the dancers they ensnare, and no one cares or sees because girls like us don’t matter. We’re just playthings to them.”

“But the ghost...”

“Whatever the ghost is doing, you shouldn’t try to stop it. He warned you and you’re being a fool,” Rochelle said, sounding sad and so many years past her age. “You should let it happen because these men deserve it.”

Meg stared at her friend, feeling like the greatest fool in the world. If this was true, was the list only the beginning?

“I still don’t understand why it’s happening now,” Meg said aloud, and Rochelle looked confused. “The ghost never cared about these things before. He annoyed singers and made accidents happen. Why go after loathsome patrons now?”

“I don’t know, maybe getting rid of that monster de Martiniac gave him a taste for it,” Rochelle replied. “Or maybe he found God or something.”

“Or maybe he was hurt too,” Meg whispered, though that didn’t seem right either. Everything and nothing made sense. Meg knew more now than she had an hour before and that was something she could bring to Shaya, but she wasn’t sure this knowledge was worth the cost.

London

P erhaps it was the music, perhaps it was the ale, but Christine felt like she was among her people for the first time in months.

Adèle had taken them to the pubs, and Letitia and Howard had joined; Howard even brought a letter from Jack with news that nothing concerning had happened in Lucca or Florence.

What she felt was more than friendship. It was more than having Erik beside her, tucked in their corner of the pub, even though it filled her heart with joy to have him out and about beside her.

It went even beyond her recent dreams of green gardens and overgrown walls, without a single fire or disaster marring the peace.

No, the joy brimming inside Christine came from how familiar people were, though she had never met them before tonight.

They were musicians and travelers, the sort of folk her father and she would meet on the road, in a village tavern, or at a fair.

People who lived closer to the wild and the earth than the rich men in their fancy houses, people who knew the old songs and were ready with a welcome and an invitation to play.

They were like theater people too, the kind that became your comrade as soon as you sang with them.