The Perfumer's Secret (29 page)

‘You’ve been busy in my absence, Fleurette,’ he said, his voice not much above a murmur.

I finally turned to face him and nodded. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, trying my utmost to sound amiable. ‘I’ve supervised harvest, enfleurage and distillation; I’ve made sure all the De Lasset equipment is —’

‘I’m not referring to
my
perfume business. I’m referring to a much shadier business of you and my brother.’

Take Sébastien’s lead, I reassured myself. Be firm, be candid. ‘I wouldn’t say busy,’ I deflected, lacking courage at the last moment to hurt him. ‘I only met him a day or two ago.’

‘Even worse – you wasted no time at all falling into the arms of a man you barely know. How would you term adultery of a newlywed while her husband is away defending his country?’ He blinked slowly to show his disgust although his tone was congenial.

I looked down and sighed softly through my nose. I couldn’t avoid this. So face it! I could hear both my brother and lover urging me through the timber of the door to be direct. ‘Aimery. . .’

‘Yes, Fleurette?’ he asked, his tone heavy with sarcasm. ‘Spin your tale for me of how none of this was deliberate and how you had no intention of humiliating me and all the other callow placations while you ruthlessly demeaned me. I would love to hear them.’

‘I cannot help who your father is, Aimery,’ I said, finding my spine.

He flinched.

‘I cannot help that you and I are related through blood.’

His lips thinned to a line so taut I was sure he could barely breathe. He wasn’t going to let me have another chance to distance myself from the main issue. ‘You did, however, have free will in choosing Sébastien. Did he take your virginity?’

‘Is that what really matters in all of this?’ I hissed.

‘Did he?’ he demanded. In one stride he was growling in my face and I will never know what prompted me to turn on him. No doubt just these last few minutes in his company again had reminded me what a selfish and arrogant brat Aimery would always be. I wanted him to understand that I didn’t have to cower beneath his gaze as his wife any longer. I owed him nothing. All earlier feelings of regret turned in on themselves and became feelings of hot rage. Years of his bullying, from the day he made me watch him tear wings off butterflies to the night of our wedding, and hateful moments of childhood and teenage despair in between as our paths had so frequently crossed over the years, now welled up like over-boiled milk.

Months of pent-up emotion from the day of my unhappy marriage turned from the cauldron of fiery molten into a withering, cool rage.

I shook my head. ‘No, Aimery. No, he didn’t take my virginity. I wouldn’t let him.’

Aimery stretched his neck against his collar as if it was suddenly so tight he was choking on his own righteous rage.

But I wasn’t going to let him enjoy his moment. ‘I wouldn’t let him take it, Aimery, because I truly wanted the pleasure of giving it to him with my own free will. It was my special gift to him. Would you like me to describe where and when I gave it? I can count it back in hours, even you can guess that; and if I close my eyes, I can still conjure the feeling of him inside me. Would you like to hear how he made me feel so alive, my senses so heightened, that I spoke his name like a prayer? Or do you think that’s a private moment I should keep to myself? Do you want to hear about his lovemaking, so tender and delicious, that I want that sweetness in my life forever, and your tobacco- and liquor-laden breath, your vile arrogance and —’

If I was honest, I didn’t really know what happened next. One moment I was snarling, slightly out of control, at Aimery, and the next I was dazed, unable to focus properly and impossibly crumpled, most unladylike, on the parquet floor. I was suddenly and puzzlingly next to the mantelpiece, I thought. The only reason I could gauge this was the smooth marble feeling so silken beneath my fingertips as I struggled to lever myself back into a sitting position. I failed and ended slumped like a ragdoll at an awkward angle, as though flung from a child’s hand towards the bed or toy box and missing the mark.

Dazed and confused, I was beginning to understand Aimery must have landed me with a boxer’s punch to the side of my head. Were the church bells chiming again or was I imagining that? I shook my head. He was talking but I couldn’t hear him properly. My left ear was clogged, as though stuffed with wadding. I think I must have been blinking rapidly too because I watched Aimery through the clouded haze of my mind reaching to his thick leather belt, jerking at something. In a moment of new panic, I wondered if he was going to undo his trousers and rape me to teach me a lesson. But no, Aimery was well beyond simple punishment, I realised now as my vision began to clear and my hearing tiptoed back through the mist that Aimery intended to punish me in a far more permanent manner.

‘ . . . dare to humiliate me in this way,’ I thought I caught distantly but then my focus snapped to attention to the revolver he was waving drunkenly at me. So that’s what he’d done: removed his army gun from the holster at his hip. He was going to kill me, if he could hold it steady. I wanted to laugh at him, dare him to, but instead the sound that came out was a scream. I didn’t know such a noise could come from me but it wasn’t just fear, it was formed almost entirely from bitterness and anger.

The double doors slammed open for the second time and my brother, my lover and a third person, someone I thought of as my new friend, Graciela, burst through. I didn’t have the leisure to wonder at her arrival.

‘You bastard!’ Felix growled, looking for me instantly.

But Aimery had swung around to point the revolver their way, while I still helplessly languished on the parquet. He was no longer interested in me. They halted immediately at his threat, hands instinctively raised, palms facing him.

Only Graciela didn’t comply with the universal gesture of surrender. I had to read her scarlet-painted lips because my hearing was still not up to it. ‘Aimery!’ I read, imagining her vermillion silks rustling as though they too were incensed. ‘What are you doing? Don’t be absurd.’ Although sound was muffled, her perfume reached me in a glorious waft of angry spice, warmed by her wrath and the room.

‘I told you to wait for me until I came, woman! I do not want you in this company!’ he snapped, instantly dismissing the beautiful Spaniard as he turned to face Sébastien. My hearing was improving, I could hear him snarl now. ‘You . . .’ he accused. ‘You said you wanted one thing alone from me but it seems you’ve already helped yourself to that,
brother
. So I think I should give a demonstration of what I do to scoundrels who steal my possessions.’

My head was clearing rapidly as his threat bounced off the walls and tensions increased. I sat up properly, didn’t think I should risk standing and startling Aimery, waving a gun around. Sébastien wore a sardonic expression and gave no impression that he was perturbed to have a gun barrel pointed at his heart, but I was horrified and blurrily looked around for what I might use as a weapon. Sadly, the fire implements were on the other side of the mantelpiece or I would have at least made an attempt on Aimery with a poker.

Felix, however, looked as worried as I felt. He still had his palms raised to waist level in a soothing manner. I heard him call to Aimery gently. ‘Put the revolver down, Aimery. I promised you we will sort this out, and we shall.’

‘I heard you’d talked two men down from committing suicide, Felix; apart from those you physically saved, you’re quite the hero. Certainly silver-tongued, but you see I have no intention of killing myself . . . others maybe, but not myself,’ Aimery scoffed. ‘So don’t waste your breath.’

‘Just —’ Felix tried again but Sébastien spoke over him.

‘I didn’t steal anything that didn’t ask to be removed from your gloating. Let’s be clear here, Aimery. Fleurette is no one’s possession and you’ve all made a mistake in thinking she ever was one to be bartered with. She will carve her own path on her own terms. With the annulment of this marriage she is free to choose whom she wants and to choose life on her terms. The world is changing. The war alone tells us that. Apart from your unsuitability and indeed unpalatability as Fleurette’s husband, you’re a dinosaur and I’m glad your age is done. Now there’s a woman right here, it seems, who loves you for who you are,’ he said, turning and bowing his head at Graciela. ‘We have only just introduced ourselves outside but she has been candid. She is surely the right woman to be married to, because if I understand this situation correctly, you have always admired her.’

Aimery gave a mocking laugh. ‘I will never marry a daughter who is the product of Moorish inbreeding with Spanish thieves and Portuguese pirates. She is comfortable with our arrangement,’ he threw at Sébastien, and even in my blur I sucked in a breath at the vile remark, and how arrogantly confident he was in Graciela’s adoration.

‘You won’t marry a beautiful, wealthy woman who loves you but you’d rather bed your half-sister? What sort of reverse logic is that, and how much more inbred could you want a child to be?’ Sébastien said, incredulous.

‘Put the revolver down, Aimery,’ Felix warned again, forceful this time, and I knew that note in his voice and that obsidian-like glare in my brother’s eye. If I could caution Aimery, I would tell him to pay Felix’s warning heed.

But it seemed Aimery was beyond all reason. He lifted his weapon, took unsteady aim at Sébastien, and I staggered to my knees to be on all fours. ‘Please, Aimery,’ I tried, reaching for him, my hand slipping off his trousers as I did so.

‘You have no right to ask anything of me, you whore. Now, watch me make another whore’s son pay for his sin.’

It happened fast. I leapt at him, knocking him sideways. I don’t know which of us screamed – I thought it was me, but Graciela’s mouth was open, so it could have been her. There was blurred movement, accompanied by a yell, but I couldn’t see properly because Aimery was in my way, a second yell of ‘No!’ and then the loud retort of a gunshot. I saw Felix slump slowly to the ground, a bemused look of disbelief ghosting in his expression. And I was instinctively crawling on all fours, hoisting my skirts to my chest so I could move freely enough to drag myself over to where my brother lay. There was a moment’s horrible silence draping itself around us all as Aimery gave a sound of disgust.

‘Damn you, Felix. Now look what’s happened. You shouldn’t have got in the way,’ he said conversationally. ‘You can blame your sister for impairing my aim.’

A vase was hurled at his head as I pushed myself to my feet. In my mind I had the ridiculous thought that no one should be throwing Limoges around but Graciela’s fine attempt bounced uselessly off Aimery’s shoulder. She hurled a stream of Spanish at him. He ignored her but it had distracted him for a few precious seconds although I no longer cared at whom he fired; I had reached Felix to cradle his head in my lap and I think I was willing my husband to shoot me dead too so he would be executed for double murder.

But whether Sébastien thought Aimery might attempt to hurt me, he was not leaving it to chance. He stepped in front of us as surely as my darling Felix had stepped in front of him to take the first bullet, its effect now obvious as Felix’s blood spilled across his shirt. He was breathing shallowly, eyes closed. I kept trying to say his name but no sound would come past my shock. My screams were silent, my pain too immense to focus on sound. Sébastien opened his arms. ‘Go on, Aimery, you cowardly, half-bred pig dog! Do it.’

And Aimery did, rot his soul. He pulled the trigger. Angels descended on us that morning, it seemed, because there was another explosive shot to deafen everyone but the bullet landed uselessly in the door, spitting wood splinters down upon me. He was not a great shot; the kickback from the revolver combined with the liquor roaming his body had saved Sébastien’s life. I watched Aimery look at the gun with an expression of fresh disgust, tutting irritably as though he were simply involved in shooting practice.

I’m not sure what it cost Sébastien to move as fast as he did but I watched him whip his walking cane into the air before swinging almost in the same motion with all of his might at Aimery’s gun hand. He connected with a sickening cracking sound against my husband’s wrist. I welcomed that sound and I especially enjoyed watching Aimery’s eyes roll dizzily and his body crumple slightly. More importantly I carefully watched the revolver bashed from his hand to skid along the parquetry and bump harmlessly into Graciela’s laced boots.

Aimery recovered swiftly, certainly fast enough to have his large hands around the neck of Sébastien, who had flung himself awkwardly down on Aimery to shield us twins once again. Apparently a fractured wrist was no obstacle to a raging brute.

‘I told you I’d kill you with my bare hands,’ Aimery promised, the side of his head bleeding.

‘And I told you to try,’ Sébastien urged through clenched teeth, as he tried to peel Aimery’s fingers back. It was slow; there were guttural sounds emanating from Sébastien and I knew I had to leave my groaning, dying brother and help my lover, if he were to survive.

There was a bright snapping sound as Sébastien surely found near superhuman strength in his one good hand to break one of Aimery’s fingers. The shocking pain registered in his brother’s face and he let go with his broken hand but this time had the inspiration to reach for his trench dagger, a crudely fashioned stiletto that was the French version of the trench knife that Sébastien had told me about at some stage in passing over the last day or two. He dragged the vicious triangular-shaped stiletto awkwardly from his belt, ignoring his cracked wrist and broken finger.

Sébastien seemed to react instinctively before the knife could wield full damage, raising his injured hand to take the first swipe, and the blade cut through his bandages easily.

‘Ready to be gutted, British scum?’ Aimery ground out.

I didn’t think Sébastien, now sitting on top of Aimery, could fend off another determined blow and I was reaching for a matching Limoges vase that, though cumbersome, might just distract Aimery enough if hurled at his head. His sight was blinded by free-flowing blood from the wound anyway. I could see him shaking it away to see clearly as Sébastien used his last option, which was to lean all of his weight down on his brother in an attempt to crush his neck . . . if only he could reach it. His able hand was fending off the stiletto but not winning the struggle for the blade that was inching perilously close to my lover’s neck.