Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (20 page)

I’d gotten that and now I needed food.

In the kitchen I inspected the larder and found bread, cheese, sausage and wine. I’d just made myself a plate and poured out a generous glass of burgundy when I heard footsteps.

I remembered Juliette saying she would tell her maidservant to be on alert in case I needed anything.

“
Bonsoir,
Monsieur Hugo.”

I nodded. “
Bonsoir,
Fantine.”

“Madame said you might be hungry. Can I make you something more substantial?”

“No, I’m fine with this.” I gestured at the plate.

“Everyone in town is talking about you finding that girl. It’s quite wonderful.”

“We all found her.”

“But they are saying it was you. Yes?”

“Well, yes, but only because I went down the stairs first.”

“Finding a lost child is a very worthy day’s work.”

The melancholy expression in your eyes spoke more than your words. I knew what you were thinking. And as I looked, I admit I noticed more than the expression in your eyes. The sweep of your hair, your sweet scent, the swell of your breast under your chemise, I took them all in.

“Would you like some wine?” I asked.

You hesitated for a moment, then something flared in your eyes and replaced the sadness. Bravery? Rebellion?

Taking a glass from the cupboard, you sat down beside me. Poured some wine and then drank.

“The child was unharmed?”

I finished chewing the bread and swallowed. “She had a nasty cut on her arm, but that will heal.”

“How did she get to the basement of the castle in the first place?”

“She said that she followed a dog who’d been playing outside her window.”

“But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? I hear it in your voice.”

I shrugged, not ready to talk about the stranger events that I’d witnessed. Or thought I had. At that juncture, I hadn’t even accepted what I’d seen. I was troubled by the possibility that my mind was touched and I’d manufactured a vision.

“What have you been doing this evening?” I asked, anxious to change the conversation.

“Sitting by the window, watching the sea. You would have thought that by now I would have stopped waiting. I know he is not coming. That he will never come.”

“Why won’t he?”

“His family. They didn’t approve of me. I was working-class, he was aristocracy. They threatened him with his inheritance. After I’d been here for a few months I realized his having me come ahead and saying that he’d meet me was all an elaborate lie. It was just a ruse to get rid of me and the child he had no intention of legitimizing. And yet I watch the sea. I know there’s no reason to hope, but sometimes when I hear a ship’s horn coming into port, I still think . . .”

“Hope is the most difficult emotion to give up.”

“What do you hope for, Monsieur Hugo?”

“That you will let me seduce you.” I ran my thumb back and forth across your palm. The soft skin not hardened yet by housework. Juliette employed a laundress. I was glad of that. It would have been a shame to ruin that silkiness.

I waited for your reaction. When you neither resisted nor responded to my touch, I lifted your hand to my mouth and pressed my lips against your palm. I smelled a sophisticated and delicious scent. Lust surged inside me, which was a welcome distraction from the disturbing events of the last twenty-four hours.

“Is the perfume I smell one your father created?”

“No, it’s one that I made. I have a small laboratory in an unused bedroom.”

“Could I see it?”

“Of course.”

“Your blush makes me desire you that much more. Your innocence is a delight,” I said.

Following you upstairs, I watched your skirts move and caught sight of your ankles. I imagined putting my hand up that dress and searching out the warm wet spot between your legs. I wondered if you perfumed yourself there the way some Frenchwomen did.

At the landing, instead of turning left toward Juliette’s room, we turned right. I’d never explored this end of the house as there’d been no reason to before. I smelled which way to go. Led like a dog by the nose to the far end of the hall.

As you opened the door a cacophony of scents reached out and
embraced me. I’d never smelled such a rich, complicated aroma. For a second I closed my eyes and just inhaled. I was transported to a lush flower field, a spice market, a citrus grove, the forest and the sea all at once.

When I opened my eyes again I was surprised at how unadorned the room actually was. The smells were so decorative and elaborate. The furniture consisted of a long table, a single chair and a tall glass-fronted cabinet. There were two frosted glass wall sconces and a fairly simple two-tiered crystal chandelier already lit. Noticing that, I surmised you’d been working.

There was a bay window. And it faced the sea.

And there were all of your utensils and supplies. Everywhere were gleaming glass jars, canisters, small bottles and large beakers. Around me, the smell evolved. I found myself thinking I was inside a library, then a church, then a bedroom smelling a lover’s body, hot with want.

The whole world of scents resided in this one single room. How was it possible?

“This is amazing. You are a true alchemist,” I said.

“No, just a perfumer.”

“Certainly that. Certainly that. Tell me, Fantine, why are you working as a lady’s maid if you have all this talent?”

“I’m a woman, monsieur. You of all men know that. No establishment in Paris would have me except to wait on customers and fill bottles. Women are not noses. We do not create.”

“Would you like to open a store in Jersey?”

Your shrug saddened me. There was so little energy in the movement of your shoulders.

“No. It’s enough for me to mix up scents for Madame Juliette and her friends. I do it to please her and because I miss my father and my home. While I work, I can pretend I’m back there for a little while.”

“But I might be able to help you set up a thriving concern and sell your perfumes in the village. Perhaps you’d find some joy in it that you can’t anticipate. Madame Juliette is an independent woman. Can’t you use her as a model?”

I knew when you didn’t answer it was because you were too well-bred to argue with me. What I’d said wasn’t true any longer. Juliette had been independent when I’d met her. But she’d since given up acting to accompany me, and now she was as dependent as my wife was.

“Do you have all the materials you need? All the utensils?”

“That’s very kind, but I have everything. Madame Juliette orders what I need from Paris.”

“Will you at least show me how you mix a scent? Make one for me?”

Finally you gifted me with a smile.

I settled in the chair and watched your performance, fascinated with the change in you as you worked. You were animated in a way you hadn’t been before. The haunted look in your eyes was replaced by a determined concentration as you picked up one vial and then another, sniffing and searching and then settling on which one to use. Every movement was assured and knowledgeable, and I found myself as entertained as if I were at one of Juliette’s plays. Drop by drop the formula in the tube filled up. Every so often you would dip a small length of ribbon in the liquid, wave it in the air, then close your eyes and inhale its essence.

I imagined you were dreaming your own dream, oblivious that I was even there. And that increased my desire for you. Often the wanting is more satisfying than the fulfillment. I have come to prefer anticipation to satiation. Longing can make one feel alive in a more profound way. You see everything through champagne bubbles. Your senses are alert. You imagine how your lover’s lips will feel, how her skin will taste. What it will be like to unbutton her chemise, slip it off her shoulders, press your mouth to her skin, cup her breasts in your palms and feel her excitement harden her nipples. You picture her leaning into you, showing you just enough of her want that it ignites yours.

That knowing is all. You forget your enemies, your fears and your nightmares.

To live in the moment of desire is to be yourself in the most pure and painful way possible, because beneath every touch is the knowledge of how fleeting the pleasure is. How elusive the passion. How impossible it is to contain it for long.

“I think you might like this.” You held out a small container filled with topaz liquid.

I held it up to my nose.

“No.”

I was pleased to hear your laugh as you shook your head.

“Never smell directly from the bottle. Scent needs to breathe and interact with your skin. You have to put some on.”

I held the vial out. “Would you please put it on me?”

A moment’s hesitation. Your uncertainty was charming and seductive. The moment was a river to cross. On one side was the past, on the other side the future. I wondered what you were thinking. Then you tipped the bottle, wet your forefinger and gently ran your fingertip down the inside of my right wrist and then my left. I shuddered at your touch.

The scent wafted up and filled the air. You’d captured the aroma of a primitive forest. Mysterious and woody. I visualized deep grottoes and mossy glens. I traveled a whole journey in just one inhalation.

“So is this how you see me?” I asked.

“My father taught me to paint portraits in perfume.”

“Perfume portraits,” I repeated, never having heard the expression before and enchanted by it. “Can you put on more?” I was teasing, testing, and was delighted when you obliged and touched your wet finger to small space behind my left ear.

“There are other places too,” I said.

“I know.” A whisper of a laugh. Was it excitement or just nervousness?

I took the perfume and put my finger over the top of the bottle. “Would you let me do the same to you?”

“If it would please you.”

“What about pleasing you, Fantine?”

That shrug, again without enthusiasm. I wanted to make you feel, push you to enjoy. I unbuttoned your top button. When you didn’t resist, I worked on another button. I might as well have been buttering toast.

“What are you thinking? Why do you look so sad?” I asked.

“You are making me remember that I used to care about a man touching me.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No, it’s all right. If you want to . . . please . . .”

I finished unbuttoning your chemise and pulled it down off your shoulders. Your skin glowed in the candlelight. It was the color of the inside of a nautilus shell. Your breasts were small but perfect. I wet my finger with perfume and painted circles around each nipple. Then I leaned forward and got drunk on the scent on your skin.

My ministrations were not unpleasant to you. I knew that. I’d been with enough women. You didn’t pull back in repulsion. But neither did you arch or purr. You simply didn’t care what I did. My efforts to reach you were failing.

And yet you were willing to let me pleasure myself with you. That was something of a conundrum.

Then you shrugged off your chemise and stood facing me, naked to the waist. God forgive me but I thought of nothing but burying myself inside you and forgetting everything else. I smelled skin, woods, flowers and thought this must be what Eden smelled like, and then I slipped into an embracing wholeness that gave me shelter and soothed my soul while at the same time exciting me.

I’d never made love to someone so dispassionate who was not a professional. I didn’t understand. Why were you allowing this? Why were you willing to give yourself to me this way? What was wrong with you that I couldn’t move you—not with my fingers or my words? As I put my lips to your lips, I determined to discover your mystery, never dreaming that learning about it might mean our very destruction.

The library at Wells in Wood was a large octagonal room without windows. Two stories high, it had a hand-carved spiral staircase leading up to a second level. There was not an inch of wall without bookshelves. Rows and rows of books. Hundreds of gold titles incised on red, brown, green, maroon spines gleamed in the soft lamplight.

Jac didn’t think she’d ever seen as large a private library in someone’s home. And the smell! Without having to be told, she knew there were ancient books here and she asked Theo how old the oldest volumes were. He walked to the far wall and pulled out a black leather-bound book. It was redolent with age.

She held it gingerly, just smelling.

“It’s okay to open it.” He smiled.

The medieval manuscript had been written with a quill dipped in ink. The illustrations were painted with brushes made of sable dipped in egg tempura. The colors were just as brilliant now as they had been five or six hundred years ago.

She handed it back to him.

When she was a child, the library at home had been her refuge. She had gravitated to it. When she was anxious, just taking a book off
a shelf had calmed her. Opening the cover, feeling the paper’s smoothness, smelling the sheets, the leather, even sometimes the ink, had centered her. Jac was enchanted with books as objects as well as for what they contained.

Her grandfather had been too. His library smelled like this. Jac felt a sudden wave of nostalgia for Paris and Robbie and even the perfume studio on the Rue des Saints-Pères.

For the next few minutes, Theo showed her a few of the more obscure and interesting volumes.

“These should be in museums,” she said.

“I know. We really should donate these rare volumes to the British Library. But my aunts aren’t ready to divest the house of any of its treasures. It’s been this way since they were girls.”

“I don’t blame them,” she said, understanding why they would want to keep this amazing repository intact.

“So is this where you found the letter? Was it in a book?”

“Let me show you. Come upstairs.”

They climbed the wrought-iron circular spiral. Its steps were narrow and turned on themselves sharply, making them hard to navigate and easy to fall down, Jac thought. The upper balcony hung over the first floor.

Theo walked her to a second bay of shelves. “This section is devoted to Victor Hugo. Books written by him and about him. Quite a few first editions. Some inscribed only to Fantine. Others to her and Pierre.”