The Perfumer's Secret (19 page)

I don’t think that, even as a girl, when all my friends were swooning over this fellow or that, I had ever felt the giddiness of attraction that I witnessed in them. I was always too sensible, perhaps, or, more to the point, I was usually distracted and lost in my own thoughts, playing with fragrances in my mind, combining them into harmonious whole ‘scents’ that were as individual in totality as each of its component smells were.

With my new sense of adventure, and me finally stepping on the pathway I had dreamed about through childhood to this day, the darkness of Aimery was pushed to the recesses of my mind. I would confront it, but not yet.

I couldn’t be bothered waiting on the household staff; where did they all disappear to in the same moment around three in the afternoon? I had to stop myself flapping my arms with vexation. I now believed my father’s claim that perhaps my middle name should have been Impatience instead of Severine, for within ten minutes I had assembled a tray of items and was standing outside Sébastien’s room.

I hesitated to knock. Why was that? Somewhere deep in my throat I felt it catch with tension. I dismissed this all as purely connected with this being an unusual situation, of finding myself in a wing of the house I didn’t normally walk into.

And then the decision to knock was removed because Sébastien opened the door and blinked in consternation at the threshold. ‘Oh, it’s you!’

The tray dipped alarmingly in my arms in my surprise at being caught like someone peeping through a keyhole. ‘Er . . .’

As usual he rescued me. ‘You’ve brought fresh dressings; you’re the kindest of souls, thank you,’ he said, and I heard the falsely bright note. He was surely as taken aback to find me on the other side of the door as I was to be found by him lurking rather than taking the lead. ‘I really was quite happy to wait for one of the staff to help me.’

‘I couldn’t balance the tray to knock,’ I said, digging up an inspired excuse.

‘I heard something,’ he said unnecessarily but at least it clued me that he was as ruffled as I was. ‘Um . . . shall we put that down here?’ he offered, pushing back the linen and crochet table runner.

It was high time for me to keep that personal promise to gather my wits and display easy conversation skills. ‘Oh, I do like your room,’ I said once the tray was secure. My voice was even and familiar, but not overly intimate. Just the right note, I thought. I wandered to the window. ‘So this overlooks . . .?’

‘The herb garden and that side of the valley,’ he answered, again rather unnecessarily because I could see that for myself having arrived at the window. ‘Strikes me as a lonely spot,’ he continued.

‘In winter, yes, it is,’ I said, hating how polite we sounded.

I realised then that we hadn’t sounded this awkwardly courteous earlier when we were discussing perfume. Then, we were both filled with passion and longing. I stumbled in my thoughts over that recollection. I think if I were honest, in this moment, I was feeling as though I was filling with passion again but this time I recognised it as being for him, rather than for perfume. The notion was freshly arresting and sent spangles of new alarm through me. I hadn’t ever felt such an emotional surge towards anyone outside of my family but this tingling, cumbersome, throat-closing sensation that meant I wasn’t able to speak fluently was novel. In my chamber, with that sense of perspective that Felix’s letter promoted, I thought I’d imagined how Sébastien affected me. But now I knew it was real and I genuinely had no control over this. I couldn’t exert willpower over something that was as reactive and yet wholly natural as breathing, it seemed.

I swung around, trying not to look at Sébastien, who still managed to impress me as darkly beautiful in his despondency, despite his lame, injured vulnerability. I insisted my gaze rove past that snatched glimpse to take in the rest of the room, deftly avoiding the bed, which was draped in a heavy brocade of the palest blue.

‘I wonder what they call this room,’ I wondered aloud.

‘I have no idea, although I was told it was decorated by my mother,’ he said and lifted an eyebrow in a softly ironic way.

I laughed.

‘Apparently one of her favourites,’ he added.

‘Well, she certainly possessed excellent taste,’ I said, taking in the deliciously delicate grey and pale blue, with all of the additional fussy gold decor boldly left ungilded. The uninterrupted pale colour scheme achieved a calm, serene ambience that well suited Sébastien, standing in rolled-up shirtsleeves and unbuttoned collar. Oh, dear, my villainous gaze would not leave him be. Downy, dark hair traced around his forearm and led my attention away from the delightful paintwork of his mother’s inspired palette to his wrist and the triquetrum that looked oddly fragile, sticking out as it did, alone and knobbled. The only reason I even knew such a term was because Felix had once damaged his hand in a fall from a horse and I recall repeatedly trying to pronounce that part of his wrist when the doctor was explaining his injury to my father. I liked the odd way the word sounded rolling off my tongue and had irritated everyone in the household as I practised it for days later.

I tore my attention from his wrist and with a nod to our cook’s favourite saying, I fell out of the pan and into the flames, as I connected with the candle-smoke grey-green of his eyes.

‘The colours, I’m assured by Madame Mouflard, are dove,’ he said and I noticed again his excellent accent, with his pronunciation of
tourterelle
without trace of his English breeding. ‘And it is set off with a colour Mother mixed herself and called china porcelain blue.’ He looked chuffed for explaining this and I couldn’t help but laugh at his slight bow at his fine performance. It certainly eased the awkward moment.

‘
Bravo!
’ I gave a single clap. ‘Er, shall we?’ I gestured to his injured arm.

‘Yes, of course. Fleurette, are you sure about this? I mean, the doctor —’

‘Nonsense. The doctor will come tomorrow. I possess a most unenviable dose of impatience to my character. I simply can’t waste my life waiting for others, if I can do something faster and better myself.’

‘Oh, dear,’ he frowned theatrically. ‘Headed for disaster with that attitude.’

His efforts to amuse were charming, well timed and, like Felix, he rarely missed his mark. I’d met enough men in my life who aimed for wit but fell short and their remarks became tedious when forced chuckling or smiles had to be dug from my boots. But with Sébastien it felt natural – effortless, even.

We seated ourselves conservatively across the small table in his room. Our knees were barely a handspan apart beneath it but I was glad of that gap.

‘I’m just going to cut this all off, all right?’ I said, picking up a huge pair of shears from the tray and waiting expectantly for his permission.

‘I would never argue with a woman brandishing such a weapon.’ His expression had shifted in that heartbeat, though, to serious. ‘Fleurette, it’s not very pretty beneath these bandages. Have you the stomach for it?’

‘If you have, I have,’ I remarked, wondering whether I did. I didn’t give myself a chance to reconsider and the sharp scissors cut easily through his bandages. As they fell away, the malodorous smell that I hadn’t mentioned pervaded his room, intensified, and we both reeled back.

‘Bloody hell!’ Sébastien gushed. His curse in English broke the spell and we both laughed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he continued in French. ‘This is awful.’

I shook my head, leaning in, already used to the sweetly foul odour. I was fascinated and horrified at once to see a weeping sutured wound that potentially needed resewing. I couldn’t sew to impress anyone. My father had despaired of me, particularly as Felix could sew rather well and Henri could knit, for goodness sake, while their sister could do neither. I realised I’d been saying this all aloud, including my observations of the wound to Sébastien. Our heads were bent close now to mutually inspect his hand and I could feel his thick hair just touching my crown.

It felt exquisitely intimate and I didn’t want the contact to end. I knew I was blushing but it didn’t matter for we weren’t looking at each other. We were both silently mesmerised by the sight of his mangled hand, pathetic and limp.

‘Oh, you don’t need to sew to impress anyone,’ he murmured. ‘Least of all me.’

His last few words hung tentatively between us.

He deliberately wiggled his fingers and instinctively I knew it was purely to amuse and predictably in a helpless release of tension I laughed. A tear took me by surprise and landed on his palm, glistening in a tiny puddle of regret and yearning.

‘Fleurette.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know I would feel so moved by your injury. You could be Felix or Henri. You are thousands of men, presumably . . .’

He nodded, understanding what I meant by the unfinished sentence. ‘How is Felix? I’m glad a letter has arrived.’

I let out a breath. ‘Just in the way you do your damnedest to amuse me, he does the same in an effort to keep me from the horror.’

‘Because he loves you.’ Our heads lifted and we both eyed one another but I quickly dipped my gaze again. Sébastien cleared his throat. ‘I think we should regard me as one of the lucky ones rather than feel sad for me.’

‘That’s a wonderful attitude,’ I murmured. ‘I’m no doctor, but this isn’t a smell of infection, I don’t think.’

‘Well, I did begin training as a doctor but found I preferred chemistry, and I can assure you that my hand isn’t infected. That nasty aroma is just the decay of dead skin. It’s a good smell despite its unpleasantness because it’s trying to heal.’ He pointed at the gap between his fore and little fingers. ‘You’ll see when you clean the dried blood away that the surgeon has closed that all up nicely and it’s dry, forming scar tissue. Soon the dreadful itch of real healing will begin and I’ll drive everyone mad as I reach for knitting needles to plunge down my bandages.’

I smiled at the image he’d prompted. A thought struck me. ‘Are you left-handed?’

He shook his head and I sighed with relief.

‘Hopefully you can handle a pipette and the like with normal dexterity.’

‘I can assure you my pipette is always dexterous,’ he said in the driest of tones, definitely designed to win my laughter. I rewarded him and he shook his head as he searched my face. ‘Why did you wait so long?’ he suddenly asked.

‘For what?’ I wondered as I poured brown antiseptic into the shallow bowl of water on the tray. The water turned a dark gold and instantly the pungent smell of iodine enveloped us. I immediately pictured the seaweed from where it was derived and I wondered if Sébastien saw the same image.

‘To get married,’ he replied.

I paused in my ministrations, all thoughts of the beach forgotten. ‘What an odd question.’

‘Not really. Surely there were suitors banging on the door, kicking it down?’

I grinned. ‘Well, if there were, I didn’t hear them.’

‘Oh, come on. No earnestly lovelorn gents?’

‘Not many. I had two big brothers.’

He grinned. ‘It’s a pity Aimery got to you first.’

I couldn’t help it. My gaze flicked up to stare at him. ‘Before whom?’

‘Before the right brother.’

He’d said it. I took a silent slow breath. ‘You mustn’t speak like that, Sébastien.’

He withdrew his hand slightly to stop me working on it. It was cleaned anyway; I think I had just been going through the motions, enjoying touching him. What I said and what I did were clearly at odds and I was surely lying to myself.

‘You mean I mustn’t be honest?’

There was nothing coy about the glance we now shared.

‘I think it’s dangerous.’

‘But you feel it?’

The words of truth were trapped in my throat. They thrashed to get out but I swallowed them back.

‘Do you feel what I’m feeling?’ he pressed. There was nothing amused in his expression now.

‘What are you feeling?’ I asked, trying to defend my position, poised with dripping linen and the smell of iodine in my nostrils. Perhaps a marine base note was required for
Héröique
. I blinked in irritation at myself.

Sébastien moved faster than I could react. Staggeringly fast, in fact, and in spite of his limp, he was suddenly out of his chair, around the table and lifting me to my feet. I let go of the linen dampened with bromine and with it my rationality, I’m sure, because I allowed him with his one arm to hold me. I should have expressed shock, pushed him away; at the very least I should have said something to exert my status in the house. Instead I stood in his embrace more surprised by how outrageously I was enjoying it than mortified by it.

‘Let me show you instead,’ he said, and before I could make even the weakest of attempts to deny him, his lips were on mine, soft but urgently demonstrating his answer.

He didn’t force the kiss any further; it was more like tender sips rather than any sense of force. And yet I admit in my newly emboldened state a heat was simmering low in my belly again and my heart felt like a piston, pumping so hard its thump reverberated in my throat. He was not tentative in any way but he was gentle, and I couldn’t work out whether I did indeed feel any shame because I did nothing to dissuade him. Internally it felt like I was on a horse at full gallop and I was yelling to the heavens with joy at the feeling of my true spirit being released.

This was romance. This was what it felt like to want someone in such a distracted way that you would risk being caught in a situation that would be deeply damaging to one’s reputation. I knew Jeanne or Madame Mouflard could knock or step in at any time. And still I encouraged him, my arms no longer hesitant but reaching to drape around his neck like a scarf. And then my hands! I hadn’t realised how desperate they were to touch his hair. It was obviously something that had been niggling in the back of my mind all day; this new intimacy clearly gave me permission and my fingers tousled the thick waves.

Sébastien suddenly pulled away and I had to catch my breath.

‘Am I taking advantage?’ he questioned.

I gasped a rueful laugh. ‘It’s a bit late to ask that now,’ I murmured but I followed with a hopeless shake of my head. ‘It’s not as though I pushed you away, Sébastien.’ I touched my lips, already lonely for his withdrawal. ‘What are we doing?’ I whispered, feeling awed and fearful at once.

‘Falling for one another?’

‘I barely know you.’

‘Do you need to know much more? My favourite colour is green, my favourite food is —’

‘Oh, stop, please.’ I began to pace. ‘What in heaven’s name are we doing?’ I repeated, distracted, suddenly coming back to the present and re-engaging my sensibilities. Now I did feel mortified. ‘I’m married!’

‘Yes, but to your own —’

‘Don’t say it!’ I cried, swinging around to warn him.