Free The Eleventh Year by Monique Raphel High Page B

“I’ll write about you. We can make each other famous. You live the romance, and I’ll be your biographer.”
    â€œOh, Jamie,” Lesley said gently. “You were the first to be kissed, and I’m still waiting, so to speak.”
    She rose and went to shut the curtains on the dismal twilight of autumn. Jamie sighed and turned on a lamp. Its pale-yellow glow spread over the room, making odd patterns on the spread on Lesley’s cot. Soon, again, it would be Christmas, and she knew she didn’t want to go home. “Let’s go to dinner,” she said, “and pretend we’re painting Paris from the rooftops.”

    C harlotte von Ridenour , Marquise de Varenne, was, in 1914, fifty years old. Only the wrinkles on her neck betrayed her age. She was very thin, more so than ever before, but her thinness added to her distinction. She had allowed her hair to turn perfectly gray, knowing that to tint it would have made the years all the more apparent; and still, for her, nothing was more important than men. She dressed in black, white, and gray, to set off her extraordinary face, with its brilliant blue eyes and fine bone structure.
    The death of her husband in 1902 provided one unexpected shock: He had left behind a most confused estate. Adrien de Varenne had bequeathed lands and châteaux to his only son, but Robert-Achille’s affairs were riddled with debts. His gambling and general heedlessness had depleted the family fortune. Charlotte felt the hysteria mounting within her. She had married him for his position but also for the funds behind that position. To be left with nothing . . .
    â€œBut it’s hardly nothing, my dear,” the attorney informed her sympathetically. “If you sell the house on the Barrière and find yourself a more modest residence, you’ll be able to keep the castle in Beauce, with a smaller staff.”
    Charlotte was appalled. She had known the relative poverty of coming to Paris without benefit of dowry. To give up what she had so struggled to attain…and all because of that repulsive, cowardly fool! She looked at her sons, twelve-year-old Alex and eleven-year-old Paul, and thought: Some day the older will save me. He must. It is his duty. But Paul, now…. He was different. He was, after all, not Robert-Achille’s son. If Alex had to suffer because of present debts, that was only right. Justice demanded that he correct the mistakes of his own father. She said to him coldly: “I am not accustomed to being poor. You must decide on a career and make a brilliant marriage. Your grandfather would not want the great name of Varenne to go hand in hand with restrictions and parsimony. He was a grand seigneur.”
    â€œYes, Mama.” What did one do when one was still so young? But Alex had lost his childhood when he had faced the truth about Charlotte. He was afraid now to express his desperate need for his mother’s affection. Paul was caressed. Alex, never. And so he closed off his emotions even more, guarding the tenderness of his heart from the coldness of the Marquise.
    She purchased a spacious ground-floor apartment on the Boulevard Saint Germain, which she decorated sumptuously in the finest Oriental styles: rare carpets, turquoise vases of the Chinese Ming dynasty, silk screens bordered in black lacquer. Every month she had to change maîtres d’hôtel; for if anything went wrong, she blamed the majordomo. Alex was growing accustomed to his mother’s bitter scenes with her servants. And he swore never to marry a headstrong woman. He dreamed of finding a gentle soul, who would soothe him and make him forget that he had never been loved. Paul, on the other hand, found his mother a source of amusement. But Alex was ashamed, and hurt.
    Her exhortations did not go unheeded. At the Lycée Condorcet, he was an excellent student. In 1908, Alexandre obtained his baccalaureate degree with the qualification of