Paranormal Romance: Phantom Of The Opera-like but involving a wereswan who's a descendant of Helen Of Troy & a musically gifted 19/20 year woman who wants to compose operas.

[Jami]

This is another one I read in high school, I graduated in 1995 so it would've been published sometime in the 1990s.

I basically gave the whole plot in the subject line. It's set in like 18th/19th century France. A young woman - really, practically a girl in maturity levels - gains the attention of a mysterious man who always wears a mask made of black feathers. She can sing but isn't really interesting in singing opera, she wants to compose operas. He gives her singing and other music lessons in secret.

There's a big black swan that seems to constantly show up wherever she is and a priest that keeps trying to capture and kill it. She meets a young man about her age named Michael John and develops a crush on him. She goes to a masquerade ball where she nearly loses her virginity to a stranger but her music teacher shows up. (She was consenting at first, BTW.)

In the end she realizes she's not only in love with her teacher but that it isn't a mask he's wearing. That's his actual skin of his face covered in black feathers. He's a wereswan and descended from Helen Of Troy. He and other members of his family are actually immortal. Most can look like normal humans when transformed but some, like him, still have swan like features - maybe one arm is a wing, or they'll have a beak instead of a mouth, etc. Helen Of Troy herself presides over their wedding. The other wereswans tell her it isn't fair that he'll one day lose his wife to old age and death and she hints that there is a way to make her immortal too, but we never find out how.

Oh, and this was the first and only historical paranormal romance I ever read that mentioned body hair. While dressing for a costume ball he first tries to put her in a "harem" costume and she gets embarrassed by her armpit hair. He thinks she's just objecting to it because of the weather. And yes, she does compose an opera and the critics hate it based solely on the fact she's a woman but the public enjoys it.