Too Dark to Even Try (Beneath a Moonless Sky fanfic)

Alass, Disagreeable

The ring was quite extraordinary. It was a beautiful large diamond on an elegant silver band. It sparkled in the candle light  as Christine dipped her eyes down to look at it. It had not been her first ring. Raoul had given one to her several months before, but she had lost it the night of the dreadful opera fire.

Christine shivered and looked back up to find the Vilcomtess's gaze still fixed upon her. Christine swallowed, and her fingers laced together in her lap.

"Good evening, Christine," the Vilcomtess's silver up-do piled high above her head, it reminded Christine of the wig used in El Mutto worn by infamous soprano La Carlotta. This thought, too, brought up bad memories and a sour expression came to Christine's face. She hastily wiped it away.

"Good evening, Madame," Christine replied, trying in earnest to sound sincere. The Vilcomtess pursed her lips in a tight frown, (Christine was not sure it was a frown, for it could have been her disagreeable state making her think otherwise) and then once more slid her gaze to Raoul.

"Have you thought anymore on plans for the wedding?" She asked her son, her cold tone brisk and even. "I assume you would have informed me, but it does not hurt one to ask..."

Before Raoul could answer, the butler and footmen brought into the well furnished dinning hall, several plates of rich and delicious food. The butler, Potre, held a silver plate of rolls which he held first for the Vilcomtess, then for Raoul, and at last bent down next to Christine.

Christine reached a pale ringed hand and plucked a roll from the plate as quickly as she could, without dropping the bread onto the floor, a placed it with satisfaction on her own silver plate.

Raoul spoke up.

"We had not, mother. Christine had wished that we be married in the gardens here, at de Changy Manor." He said, side glancing at his bride-to-be, allowing her to add on.

The gardens at de Changy Manor were quite extraordinary and lavish, such as everything was associated with the Vilcomtess. The grounds were extensive, and a gravel path wined along the rolling green fields. Well tended flower gardens, and the occasional flower patch, were placed mathematically and perfectly in rows. A few grand fountains and statues were styled after the Grecian gods from the Roman times. One statue in particular, always took Christie off guard no matter how many times she passed it on her walks with Raoul. It was of the goddess Aphrodite who, Raoul had to explain, was the goddess of love and beauty. Aphrodite wore nothing but a stone blanket which did not cover much of anything, and in fact, revealed a profuse amount of Aphrodite's otherwise bare limestone body.

Raoul also had to explain that this was a favored style, and was not meant to be inmoral.

Christine was determined that Aphrodite must have been very immoral.

"My Mother and Papa were married outside, Madame," Christine whispered, looking down at her once again intwined fingers.

"Outside? Good heavens, no! You shall be married in a church, by a priest,"  Exclaimed the Vilcomtess, as a footman placed a cooked fish on her plate. She grabbed a knife and fork and began to gracefully cut into the scaly skin.

Could one cut gracfully?  Christine wondered.

"And of course Christine will buy her wedding clothes at Merri Vera," the Vilcomtess continued a-matter-of-factly. The footman was bending over Raoul now, giving him an identical cooked fish. "For it is the best place for one to buy wedding clothes. Yes, it is all settled then. Christine and I shall go in the morning. How does eleven sound?"

The footman bent over Christine and placed a cooked fish on her silver plate, next to her roll. She turned her face to look at the footman. He wore the same black waist coat and white tie that the other footman wore. They always reminded Christine of penguins, not that she had ever seen one, of course, but her father had once brought home a book full of drawn pictures of animals of the world.