Page 74 of Promises to Keep

He laughed. “The money helped.”

“Should we wait?” We looked around the space. “There’s a lot of priceless art, we ought to wait.”

“Aye.”

The glazier came that evening to measure the glass and promised to return the next day. Magnus and I slept in the guest room and ‘haunted’ the house, leaving for the market at meals, then looking through books and opening a few drawers. I said, “It gives me a little trepidation that you’re going through your mom’s stuff.”

“Lizbeth got in yer head about it, my mother has secrets everywhere. She is secretive, I am her son, but I am also her lord. She ought nae keep secrets from me, it might kill me.”

“I know but this is her sanctum, the place where she comes to keep all the things she really doesn’t want you to know.” I stood up and did some jumping jacks in the middle of the living room.

“What ye doin’?”

“Trying to get the blood flowing, we’ve been idle for a while.”

He grinned and joined me in the middle of the living room, and we jumping-jacked together for a bit.

We wandered around the downstairs gallery, reminding myself why we had to wait for the glass to be installed. There was so much art in there: Two Picassos, a Cezanne, a Matisse and a Monet. Magnus looked around. “I am nae sure I understand. Theyarebeautiful, but how come m’mother would lay down her life for them?”

I sipped from a glass of wine. “I don’t really know, I mean, I know they will be worth a lot of money someday, but it’s not just that, it’s that they’re important. I think she believes if she collects them she is important too.”

Magnus nodded. “Aye, ye might be right.”

Finally at midday the glazier showed up with the glass. We were relieved, but then he said he would return the next day to install it, we were disappointed. “This has been really boring, man, I miss the kids. I regret breaking in.”

“Tis m’mother’s fault though, if she dinna hae so much art we wouldna hae tae wait for the glass.”

“I feel like we are too nice.”

I was teasing, because as I said it I was lounging on her fancy sofa, wearing her pearls, one of her robes, and had one of her books open and flat on my chest. Magnus and I had also figured out how to play the phonograph, so there was a weird rubber disc lazily turning, emitting something like music with terrible sound quality.

He grimaced. “This is supposed tae be music?”

“It was a marvel of its time, remember, if you had only ever lived in the eighteenth century and had heard this, remember how amazing it would have been.”

“Tis hard tae imagine after havin’ Chris Stapleton blarin’ from the speaker while we grilled hamburgers by the loch in Maine.”

I plumped the fancy, velvet pillow under my head. “Yes, a totally different experience.”

That afternoon, I asked, “What if we’re captive? What if we’re in a tower, guarding the art, like the dragon? I might be confusing a few different stories, but you get me — what if we’re trapped? I know! Let’s go out and watch the sunset.”

“I daena ken if it can be seen from the square.”

“We’ll be able to see the light change, come on, let’s do it.”

Magnus sat on the stoop, a glass of wine in his hand, at ease in a pair of slacks and a white shirt, and his boots. I was also wearing a pair of boots with a silk party dress that I had taken from Lady Mairead’s closet. I had covered the dress in a silk robe and had a feather boa around my shoulders. I was eating a chocolate pastry, careful not to get any crumbs on the clothes. It was lovely out on the front stoop as the light changed.

Magnus said, “Times like this Paris seems almost pleasant, instead of a putrid cesspool of degenerate artists.”

I laughed.

There weren’t people in our square, but a main thoroughfare was just beyond and so I began to joke as they moved along, “He’s saying, ‘Oh ho! I’m fast-walking to the chimney-sweep convention.’ And she said, ‘Out of my way, peasants!’ And then check him out, he’s saying, ‘I’m walking and I’m handsome, I’m handsome and I’m walking, I’m handsome and I’m walking.’”

Magnus took a sip of his wine. “Ye think he is handsome? I ought tae run him through.”

“It’s not me, it’shim, he’s the one saying it, look, you can see from the way he holds his head.”

“Aye, he is verra fancy, he is definitely saying, ‘I am handsome,’ as he walks, ye are right on it. And that woman is saying, ‘I am pretty and I am—”

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