The Perfumer's Secret (14 page)

‘Understandable.’

‘Completely. And still they managed to keep it all secret.’

‘I’m astonished by that.’

He nodded. ‘You must believe it. My mother said not a single servant to this day knows that Aimery does not have De Lasset blood running through his veins. And the only reason she was forced to spill the near three-decade-old secret was because of your marriage.’

‘What about the argument that erupted? Did no one else overhear, share in any way?’

‘Handled with my father’s usual aplomb, I’m assured. Conducted in a summer property we have in the high country. All servants sent on a picnic so that my father could inform my mother that he knew her secret and it was then he also explained to her, heavily pregnant and lying bruised from his blows, that no one would ever hear the truth.’

My expression twisted; my father had never raised a hand to anyone, least his wife.

He nodded, clearly ashamed of this admission. ‘He had made all the arrangements before he told her of his discovery; she was taken that evening away to Nice, then to Paris, and back to London.’

‘And no one guessed?’

‘He was strategic about where he hurt her. I suppose we should be grateful that he didn’t stretch to injuring me, the child she carried. She certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone and incriminate herself or your father. Who knows what she and Arnaud agreed to, but she was sent away without a centime of his fortune, without a backwards glance, and only the clothes she stood in. She was forbidden to even say goodbye to Aimery.’

‘He wouldn’t hurt a child, though. You were his.’

‘I was supposed to be a girl. I think my mother somehow convinced him of this in order to make it easier for him to let her leave with her unborn baby safe. I think she feared he might imprison her until I was born and then he’d keep me too.’ He shrugged.

‘Nevertheless, you were true De Lasset. I wonder how he might have behaved had he learned of the affair earlier and it had been Aimery in your mother’s belly.’

‘It really doesn’t bear thinking on. It’s appalling enough that he raised a hand to her.’

I would never condone violence of any kind towards a woman but I couldn’t admit to Sébastien that I might understand how an unstable person, filled with rage, his manhood called into question, his family name potentially tainted, might be provoked into striking out. ‘The story we have all lived with is that she left to go travelling, became estranged and never came back. It was always very odd but not talked about by my father.’

‘My father sold the story very well that she was travelling to take the healing waters at Bath through a difficult pregnancy. Then that I was a sickly boy – a lie, I might add,’ he said with a pinched smile. ‘And because of that she had to remain in Britain and was taking me to clearer air up north to continue her love of painting watercolours in Scotland. There was a host of reasons peddled and presumably accepted simply because my father said so. No one would defy him here in Grasse, I gather, least of all your father, the villain of the piece. It broke your mother’s heart, of course, to learn the truth. That’s why she ended up taking her life.’

‘What?’
It came out as a shrieking whisper, my eyes wide with the horror of his words. I caught sight of myself in a mirror that hung above the buffet; enormous and gilded. I looked like a spectre in its reflection. My complexion had turned ashen, my lips drained of their colour to appear near bloodless; I felt as though there was nothing solid left.

‘Oh, dear. Fleurette . . .’ His fallen expression reflected only embarrassment at his revelation.

‘My mother died of pleurisy,’ I muttered, biting off each word to ensure its clarity, as though I could make it truth by sounding so definitive. He was shaking his head slowly. I needed to protest; I couldn’t give in this easily even though somewhere deep and dark I knew he was speaking the truth. He had no reason at all to walk into my life with this lie. ‘No, that’s what my father told us,’ I insisted plainly, my voice finding its normal, if wavering, timbre. ‘He —’

‘He lied, beautiful Fleurette. What else could he do? The truth was too painful and he agreed with my parents to keep the secret that was Aimery. Your mother wouldn’t – couldn’t . . . I think she loved her husband so much she simply wasn’t able to accept the truth of his past, or more to the point, the reality of her closest friend’s betrayal, I suppose. Mother wept, still feeling it more than a quarter of a century later, that your mother viewed the whole affair as treacherous even though she was not in your father’s orbit at that time. Mother believed it was the keeping of the secret that killed her, rather than the secret itself.’

‘I doubt your mother could ever see it from my mother’s point of view. But she kept their terrible secret all the same,’ I said, shaking my head with disbelief.

‘That’s not correct, actually; she refused to do so. Instead, while she chose not to let their quartet down, your mother stepped aside from her knowledge of the affair and Aimery’s parentage in the most final way she could. She was newly pregnant with you and Felix when the truth came out. You were born earlier than you should have been, as you know; my mother said it was probably the shock of the news. I gather from her you were born at eight months and it was all very tense and traumatic as to whether one or both of you might live. You pulled through and your mother gave it time to be sure that both of her new infants would survive, hopefully grow to be healthy.’ He stopped, looked down.

‘And then?’ I knew I was visibly trembling.

He drew a breath. ‘Then she invited your father to a picnic. In a way she was mimicking my father in how he treated his wife except your mother was less robust, far more emotional about discovering the betrayal.’

‘Don’t say that as though it wasn’t one,’ I warned in a shaking voice.

‘A betrayal by your father of mine, perhaps, but not of your mother. I remind you, he did not know her when the affair occurred.’

I shook my head as if denying his rationale. ‘They lied, Sébastien – for years. Aimery is their lie.’ I knew he was only trying to make it easier on me. ‘Finish the sordid tale, please!’ The news of my mother’s suicide made my breath feel as though it was passing over jagged glass to reach my lungs. It was hurting to breathe – we made a fine pair in the glamorous De Lasset drawing room: Sébastien with his croupy wheeze and my pain-laden inhalations.

‘They went into Provence, into the alps, and in front of him she threw herself from a cliff. Your father fashioned the story she was in terrible pain and confusion from complications from her twin pregnancy and the subsequent childbirth . . . and that she slipped and fell from that cliff top. The family doctor was presumably coerced into agreeing that your mother had issues following the birth of her twins; there was no doubt she showed signs of melancholy and people attributed this to her mood post-pregnancy rather than her being unable to cope with the discovery of her husband fathering a child with her best friend. Servants corroborated the apparent fall and the town accepted the account of the tragic incident. It became truth but it was always a lie. She killed herself to show your father the depth of her despair.’

I stared wordlessly at him. I didn’t want to believe it but so much of what he was saying was beginning to make sense and resonating in a way that it seemed pointless to keep hoping he might discover his mistake.

‘Before you ask,’ he said, ‘my mother knew all of this because your mother wrote to her and explained what she was going to do, and blamed her . . . they were the best of friends and now the worst of enemies. She made sure my mother felt responsible for her death, the fracture of our families, all the bitterness and acrimony.’

‘Do you blame her?’

Sébastien’s tone remained even. ‘I lay no blame anywhere. I think, Fleurette, only our two sets of parents know what it was like – only one of them has the right to lay blame, feel blame.’

‘That’s generous of you, Sébastien.’

He took the blow without flinching. ‘I’ve had longer to consider what a precarious position each of them was in. We can’t truly imagine it.’

‘I think I can! If all that you say is true, then I can never consider my father in the same way again.’

‘You mustn’t —’

I stood abruptly, swinging round to face him. ‘Don’t presume to tell me how to react or to think! I’m so tired of men believing they know best where I’m concerned.’

He hung his head. ‘Forgive me. I just believe it’s easy to cast stones.’

I walked to the window to stare out at the terraces, stripped of their colour but nonetheless starkly beautiful in their naked winter appearance. ‘I disagree in this instance,’ I snapped, my breath now clouding the pane I looked out from. I turned back to face him and saw that he watched me intently from beneath his bruised expression. ‘They knew what they were doing was wrong and now we see the results of their selfish lust – your life ruined; Aimery with a lifetime of hate for his mother, never knowing she loved him; my mother’s life squandered through heartbreak; my marriage now needing to be annulled . . . but I’d like you to consider how I go about telling Aimery why! Their keeping of this secret is now reverberating through this generation and can potentially threaten the next.’

‘I know you’re angry but what would you have me do? Let you go ahead and have a child with Aimery?’

I felt dizzied by the revulsion those words prompted and couldn’t reply.

He pressed his point. ‘I have seen the letters. I have seen the letter from your father to my mother telling of his grief at losing your mother and the way in which she was lost, his terror at being left with three young children – two babies – to raise.’ I was still pointlessly moving my head from side to side, denying him. ‘I have read his letters because, believe me, I needed convincing too.’

‘It could be a lie.’ I sounded so ridiculously desperate, but who could blame me?

‘Who do you imagine was lying and for what purpose, Fleurette? Financial gain? Hardly. No, these were deeply emotional letters of despair. His relationship with my mother was one of helpless passion, chemical attraction, if I might reduce it to that. He adored her and she him. But when your mother came into his life he found the stability of true love, I could almost believe . . .’ He shook his head as he hesitated.

‘What?’

He gave a sound of regret. ‘I was going to say I could almost believe my mother let my father find out the truth.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake?’ I had to dig my nails into my own palm beneath a balled fist to prevent myself from screaming this at him.

Sébastien’s lips flattened into a line of pain. ‘It’s obvious your father was a charming, highly desirable man to women. Perhaps she’d hoped she could live without him but ultimately it turned out that if she couldn’t have him . . .’

‘My mother couldn’t either?’

I watched his shoulders slump. ‘It was a tragedy. If it was because of her machinations, then I think she lived to regret her impossible love for Victor Delacroix, her part in your mother’s suicide.’

I felt my bile threaten to rise once again at that word. I had to run away from it, force him to move on with his evil story. ‘Then what happened after your father discovered the truth?’

‘Well, as I explained, he banished my mother the day he confronted her and she admitted making a cuckold of him. But he exacted a harsh punishment. He kept Aimery. He was not going to let my mother walk away from Grasse with a cherished memory of your father and their lust; plus he was not going to permit anyone to deny him of his heir, even if the heir did not share his blood. He wanted the infant boy, gave him everything, raised him as his own. Let’s not forget he’d loved Aimery for several years as his son before he knew the truth. He didn’t care that she was heavily pregnant with me; she convinced him I was a daughter and a daughter was useless to him. My father wanted an heir.’

‘Wait . . . wait!’ I stood and began to pace as the only way to keep the rising nausea down. I had to open the window to suck in cold air to shock me out of wanting to expel my breakfast.

‘Fleurette,’ he called softly. Suddenly he was behind me, limping carefully across the rug to hold me. It didn’t feel wrong. I turned in his arms and let him hold me briefly in a shared communion of despair. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered.

Sébastien guided me back to the sofa as though I were an invalid; I certainly moved like an old woman suddenly, and the war, my marriage, my life, all felt very distant as he began to tell me everything else he could that he had learned from his mother as she lay dying.

__________

We sat in silence, bonded through the horror of his words: not one but two dreaded secrets revealed. I was suddenly, glad all our parents were dead, but the burden was now upon our own shoulders.

‘Sébastien, I did receive the letter from you on the night war was declared but I wonder if I would have trusted it.’

‘I gather it arrived too late anyway.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Did you . . .?’

‘No,’ I said briskly, understanding his tense question before he asked it. ‘Mercifully, no! Orders came through for mobilisation and Aimery being Aimery couldn’t miss out on his opportunity to lead the charge to war. Not even a new bride could keep him from his uniform and saddle, I’m relieved to say.’

‘His self-aggrandising inclination is our blessing, then.’

‘It was a close call.’

‘Do you love Aimery?’

It was not a question I expected from him.

‘I . . . what an odd query you pose.’

‘I’ll take that as a no, shall I?’ He irritated me by the hint of amusement in his gaze over the rim of his cup. The tea was long cold.

‘You’ll do no such thing. That’s a terrible presumption.’

‘Is it? I thought we were going to be truthful.’

‘Perhaps there’s been too much honesty for one day between strangers.’

‘Yes. You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought plenty to upset you,’ he observed rightly and leaned awkwardly to set his cup down. With slightly pursed lips I gave in and helped.

‘Here, let me,’ I offered.