Free The Keeper of the Walls by Monique Raphel High Page A

I’ve always needed: the cool poise of a tall lily, to calm my own combustible Russian nature. I’ve only met her once before, but already I know her: she’s honest, she’s modest, and she’s intelligent.
    And Lily thought: He found a way to come that didn’t place him, or me, in checkmate. But I know nothing else about him.
    â€œI saw your photograph a few nights ago,” he said easily, to test her.
    She looked surprised. “Mine? I don’t understand.”
    â€œA young man came to interview my father and me. A bright, agreeable young American.” He didn’t want to mention the evening with the two models, and was suddenly afraid that Mark might have mentioned it—and him.
    â€œMark MacDonald?” she asked. “We see him quite often.” But she suddenly looked away, and he knew then that she realized Mark’s infatuation. Did she return it? She knew Mark far better than she did him. Mark was attractive. Why shouldn’t she have liked him? He, Misha, hadn’t even made the effort to see her again—until today.
    She handed him his cup of tea, and he noticed that her fingers trembled. He wanted to speak with her, alone. This entire episode was beginning to seem off-key, in 1924. Women slept with men on the first encounter, and here he was, playing a comedy with a demure young virgin and her proper mother. But this was exactly how he had wanted it.
    On an impulse, he turned to Claire and asked: “Madame, would you and Mademoiselle do me the honor of accompanying me to the theater?”
    Claire’s smile touched him. Her eyes, which so rarely reflected her feelings, now shone with a limpid pleasure. “We’d be delighted.”
    â€œIt’s been so long,” Lily added, and he noticed the bright color in her cheeks. “Hasn’t it, Mama?”
    He imagined the two women locked up in the Villa Persane, growing old and dry among the bronze and gilt furniture. “Mademoiselle, is there a particular play you’ve set your heart on?”
    She didn’t hesitate. “Romance”
    â€œThen Romance it is.”
    He sat back, enjoying the Ceylon tea and the small, cream-filled pastries placed at his disposal . . . imagining himself in a soft decor with ashes of roses and dove gray upholstery, Monet and Dufy on the walls, and small wooden Louis XVI tables where she would lay out the tea set, to serve him. He imagined her this way, so young and naïve, but without the line between her brows. To possess this girl in her entirety, to have her be his ...

    M arguery seemed to have shrunk in his black suit, and his dark little eyes looked everywhere but at Claude. There was a soft beading of sweat over his brow.
    â€œWell?” Claude sat forward, his elbows on his desk, his head supported on the palms of his hands.
    â€œWith Mark MacDonald, everything checks out all right. He’s twenty-four, the older of two sons. His father is a doctor in Charlotte, North Carolina. There’s considerable money from both sides of the family. Mark was educated at the Hill School in Pennsylvania, and at Princeton University—both excellent institutions. He worked as cub reporter on the Clarion, and apparently impressed the city editor. He then was given a by-line with the local society column. Now he’s the Paris correspondent—quite a feat for someone working for a small city paper like the Clarion. ”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œPrince Mikhail Brasilov is a different story. His father is the legendary Ivan Vassilievitch Brasilov, founder of an empire of businesses in Kiev and Moscow. Everything he touched turned to gold. Mikhail was an only child. He grew into a prodigy, finishing the university with two degrees at the age of eighteen. He was always a carouser, however.” Marguery’s nostrils twitched.
    â€œMost of this is known territory. Please continue.”
    â€œThe Brasilovs came to France in’21.