The Perfumer's Secret (20 page)

He watched me silently as I paced and muttered to myself. Thoughts of Henri’s horror and rage arrived, as much as all the Delacroix ancestors would be turning in their graves. Felix wouldn’t say much but I could almost taste his inevitable disappointment in the sour fear gathering at the back of my throat – for if Felix was anything, he was a dutiful Delacroix.

‘What is your instinct telling you?’

‘To run!’ I snapped, turning to face him.

He took a step forward but I backed away. If only he knew it was because I didn’t trust myself. All I wanted to do was hold him again, have that feeling of discovery . . . of finding something that had eluded me, as though I’d just opened a hidden box to the secret of life. I don’t even know what I meant as I thought this because I was beginning to sense a deranged quality to my mind.

But even though I was essentially a stranger to him, Sébastien caught my attention deftly, pushed it back on course in a way that only someone who understood me to the core might. ‘Fleurette,’ he urged in the softest voice, ‘if you could describe it as a smell, what did kissing me feel like?’

I looked back at him, astonished, but it was as though all my scattering thoughts stopped in their tracks, turned around and headed home again. ‘P – pardon . . .?’ I stammered, collecting myself.

‘You heard. Be absolutely honest.’

Instinctively I closed my eyes.

‘Good,’ he soothed. ‘Now describe it.’

‘When I was a child . . .’ I began.

‘Yes?’ he encouraged and I could hear a smile in his voice.

‘My favourite time of the year was May. It still is.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s spring. It’s rose harvest in Grasse.’

‘Go on.’ He sounded closer, as if he tiptoed nearer, but I didn’t open my eyes; I was under his spell now and I liked this game. It was one I knew, one I felt so good at, that just playing it made me feel I was on safe ground, no longer with thoughts deranged.

‘Rose petals from the fields of
Rosa centifolia
are coming in so fast we can barely tip the burlap sacks out fast enough,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s ready for them – the whole town is ready for the harvest in May.’

‘And?’ He was closer still; I heard the floorboard creak softly from his weight.

‘They arrive at the factory. It’s a gloriously beautiful scene of small mountains of roses to be weighed. The days are warm but the roses, picked in the early hours, add the cool sweetness. Father allows me to lie down on a quilt of pink. He laughs. Felix flings them at me and I’m showered in confetti of roses. The colours are astonishing. From afar it’s just pink,’ I said, reaching to my happy memory of childhood. ‘But up close the still-moist petals are everything from the vaguest blush to a dazzling cerise of twilight.’

Again I sensed him smiling, enjoying my vivid recall, but especially he was enjoying watching me. He’d stolen so close it was no longer the wheeze of his recovering lungs that clued me to his whereabouts. I could now feel the warmth of his nearness.

‘And now describe the smell of that May day.’

He spoke this leaning close to my ear but without physically touching me. Yet the delight in his voice, the caress of his breath, the memory of his kiss combined to make as effective a cocktail akin to an embrace. A tremor shivered through me and sweet longing erupted; the secret I’d discovered was my own desire awakening prompted simply by the voice of someone, simply by his presence. I had never experienced this quickening in my body where just the mere thought of a man could make my pulse race. Felix used to laugh at me when I complained that I was the only girl I knew who had never had a crush on someone – I didn’t even know what the other girls were talking about when they swooned about this fellow or that.

‘It’s because you’re too distracted; you find your own mind too interesting,’ he’d said, laughing at me.

‘Well, no one has ever approached me formally.’

‘Why would they? You’re untouchable, Fleurette. Two brothers, one a handsome twin, the only daughter of one of the wealthiest, best-known families in southern France . . . Who would even risk making a pass at you?’

I remember feeling hurt. ‘Well, just a whistle might be nice.’

He’d shaken his head at me. ‘You have no sense of self.’

‘You’ve just told me I’m lost in myself!’

‘You are self-possessed, for sure. But your awareness of how others view you is limited. Not everyone sees you as fun and approachable, Fleurette. Your mind alone is daunting . . . your looks? Well, I’m going to say this only once so you don’t get swollen-headed – there is no doubt you are Grasse’s town beauty. You are probably the most eligible woman in all of the south and coincidentally your looks match your eligibility and your wealth . . . both at the highest end of the marriage spectrum. Now,’ he said, his tone dry enough to make most cough, ‘do you think that makes you easy to have a slap and tickle with, or do you think all of those qualities might just make you a daunting prospect and inhibit most poor fellows?’

I’d never thought of myself as plain but I’d also never considered myself radiantly attractive. I thought all the other girls were the beauties because they inherently seemed to know how to flirt, how to catch a boy’s attention, how to behave demurely and yet sensually. I’d missed out somewhere, or so I had always thought. I didn’t colour my cheeks or wear ribbons in my hair. I preferred boots to dainty heels; I was happiest in the lab rather than walking through the town square and being seen in my finery. I liked long conversations about perfume rather than the flirtatious talk of nothing of consequence.

But now here it was. The moment of awakening, a stirring of the previously dormant sexual need that I’d wondered if I would ever feel. I realised I wanted Sébastien in the same way that our flower pickers needed chilled water to quench a raging thirst. I could picture them tipping back their heads to drain a whole flask, not even worrying if the sweet water poured too fast and ran down their chins. They were parched, desperate for deliverance. That was me in this moment. I was desperate for Sébastien – and only Sébastien – to relieve my need.

‘Tell me, Fleurette. I want to hear your vivid memory about your favourite day of the year,’ Sébastien coaxed.

And I opened up my mind to the May harvest.

‘It’s hypnotic,’ I began again, this time focused, as the desire for Sébastien’s touch became one with the memory of my favourite perfume. ‘I can’t wait for when we distil and I can inhale the
absolute
 . . . the very essence of my joy.’ Before he could urge me to describe it, I was already there in my mind, keen to share. ‘The cool sweetness of the petals has now been transformed into a dusky, sensual oil of deep complexity. It speaks to me of a sun-baked earth that sits between the salt of the ocean and the tumble from the alps of our Riviera. As I inhale I am reminded of the promise of raspberries in summer and blackcurrants of autumn but it’s honey that I essentially taste, with a zesty citrus riding high above that.’

‘And do you believe our kissing reminded you of that fragrance?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted.

‘So now, just for me, describe our kiss and your rose memory in one word.’

‘Intoxicating,’ I said, without pausing to consider.

‘Open your eyes, Fleurette.’ I did. His gaze was soft and liquid from what I realised was the grey of his anxiety and that gaze held me as effectively as if I was pinioned. ‘Good word,’ he praised. ‘And I am drunk on the essence of you.’ I began to say something but he hushed me. ‘No, you must hear this. From the moment you entered the drawing room I felt drowsy, as though I’d recently woken but was still caught in the remnants of a lovely dream. And even as I gave you the worst possible news that I think someone might receive, I was feeling guilty because in comforting you I derived a smug sense of satisfaction that Aimery could not have you. Seeing you for the first time gave me a dizzy feeling, like staring over the lip of a precipice and being disoriented momentarily. And this afternoon walking back from town with you I felt drunk; I’m surprised I wasn’t bumping into the town walls. You see, I’d already jumped from that precipice – it’s why you found me in the herb garden trying to sort out my warring feelings. I knew it wasn’t right to take advantage of you in this way. I brought the most heinous news and I was in danger of preying on your vulnerability and yet I couldn’t help myself. I have hated myself for hours, as though I were some sort of scoundrel and yet I am drunk on you, entirely addicted to your kiss, your laugh, your voice, even your ability to see everything and everyone as a smell. I’ve fallen, Fleurette, from the cliff top of sensibility into the perplexing, achey cauldron of desire. There’s no way out. You are the one I’ve searched for.’

‘How can you know?’ I said, airing my thoughts aloud. I was embarrassed that I’d revealed my ignorance.

‘Because I have been around enough women through my adult life.’ His candour was unnerving. ‘I won’t lie to you: I have kissed and courted, bedded and moved on from enough women to comprehend when I have come into the presence of one I know I can’t walk away from without it costing me.’

‘Costing you?’ I frowned as I repeated his phrase.

‘A mortally injured heart, Fleurette.’ He held up his wrecked hand. ‘This is nothing in comparison to the blow you can wound me with.’

I shook my head, suddenly well out of my depth. ‘I feel like I’ve swum too far out to sea.’

‘I’ll save you,’ he offered, grinning sadly.

He leaned in again but paused as though requiring my permission. Again I didn’t deny him and this time I learned about kissing in a way to make me feel that everyone who had gone before was simply a rehearsal. And perhaps it had been just that. The two boys who’d stolen kisses – when my father finally let me out to social galas with Felix on my arm as an escort – felt like fumbling adolescents by comparison, even though both considered themselves quite the young men about town.

But Sébastien brought a sexual assuredness that meant he was the one choosing to hold back; he understood my lack of experience, even my reluctance to commit a sin that would make all our parents shift in their graves, and yet he also knew I could be led . . . that I really wanted this to happen. In the back of my mind a thought bubbled that I must be transparent but it burst, disappearing, because by then I was pulling him close, and then closer again still, that he responded with fervour.

I was lost once more, mentally lying down in a quilt of roses, reminded of a truly happy time in my life that was now helplessly linked to a kiss that I never wanted to end. Skimming along a shared wave of passion, Sébastien gave me a glimpse into a future that wasn’t about the despair of a loveless marriage.

The knock at the door and the familiar voice made us leap apart, startled as though we’d both been discovered naked and rolling around his bed. Wide-eyed and frantic, I watched Sébastien calmly take a seat, covering his lap with his jacket to make me giggle helplessly, soundlessly. He glared at me with a wry expression and offered me a seat as he called back.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Jeanne, Monsieur de Lasset.’

He looked at me and I blew out a silent breath, seated myself again and restrained from fiddling nervously with my hair or clothes. Instead I picked up the linen again and nodded. It felt as though I took ten minutes or more to achieve that when in fact the ticking clock on the mantelpiece suggested it was only seconds.

‘Come in, Jeanne. I’m here with Madame de Lasset.’

We both bent our heads again over his injured hand and as the door opened I was wringing out the antiseptic. The sound of trickling water accompanied us as we looked up at Jeanne in enquiry.

‘Hello, Jeanne,’ I said, amazed and disgusted with myself for sounding so innocent. ‘Everything all right?’

She looked not only horrified by the sight of Sébastien’s hand – odd that I had not experienced the same – but equally offended that her ladyship was messing about with bloodied water.

‘Oh, Madame, please. One of us could have —’

I gave a gust of breath and a wave of my hand to suggest it was of no consequence. ‘I’m happy to be useful for once,’ I offered in a deliberate attempt to be self-effacing. I noted Sébastien didn’t appear flushed and hoped I was giving off the same careless confidence.

‘Did you want me?’ Sébastien asked easily, his breath sounding wheezy but his illness couldn’t touch his humour; he glanced at me in a wicked silent message as he spoke these words to my servant.

I blinked with disdain at him and returned my attention to Jeanne.

‘Er, yes, sir. It was to tell you that the doctor will be calling in this evening instead of tomorrow and dinner will be served at seven.’ She glanced at me. ‘Madame has ordered a broth for you.’

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘That’s very kind of you, Fleurette. Thank you, Jeanne. I may need some help putting my jacket back on,’ he suggested.

‘Of course. I shall have one of our men sent up.’

‘Etienne will help,’ I said, joining in. ‘Tell him to see me, though. I’m sure we can find some more clothes for my husband’s brother.’

Jeanne curtsied, then waited.

‘That’s all, Jeanne,’ I said gently and with a smile. ‘I can finish up here.’

‘If you’re sure, Madame?’

My answer was another grin and a nod. She closed the door and we both shared a look of amusement; like two children who’d got away with mischief. We waited but I lifted a hand to my lips and pretended to turn a key in it. He nodded, understanding that walls had ears in a house like this and who knew what Jeanne might report back beneath stairs. We would now have to be more than careful; we would have to be blameless.

‘How does that feel?’ I asked, genuinely interested in his hand.

Sébastien pointed to his lap. ‘Well, there’s an itch now that I don’t think can be easily scratched.’

I had to cover my mouth and laugh silently. I’d never engaged in such flirtatious behaviour and I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit I loved how girlish and reckless it made me feel. Perhaps the danger of us teetering on the edge of discovery contributed to it. When the truth came out – however it came out – I might be exonerated, but I knew it wouldn’t pay to smear Aimery’s reputation with his household staff. To publicly cuckold him would be an unnecessary cruelty, so I gathered myself while I assembled all my medical paraphernalia back onto the tray.