Seduction

Twenty-four

When Jac had returned to the hotel the night before, there was a phone message for her from Ash Gaspard asking if she was free for breakfast. She’d telephoned, gotten his voice mail and accepted. She wasn’t quite sure why he wanted to see her, but after the events at the Gaspard house she thought maybe he’d be able to help make sense of the visitation.

The two brothers were the light and dark halves of the same coin, and getting to know Ash might help her understand Theo, whose mysterious brooding had captured Jac’s imagination. In fact the whole family had. The dowager sisters, the rambling ancient house filled with antiquities, the strange ancestors who engaged in séances and studied magic, the tragic death of Theo’s wife, the hidden Hugo treasure… she was as caught up in it as in any myth she’d ever studied.

Three tables in the dining room were occupied. Ash Gaspard sat at one by the window. The hostess sat Jac so that she had the view of the rough waves and overcast sky.

“Good morning,” he said. “I heard from my aunt Eva there was quite a scene last night at Wells in Wood.”

“There certainly was.”

“They can be quite a pair, those two. I hope it was at least amusing.”

“It was far more disturbing than amusing.”

“You don’t believe in all that stuff, do you?” He was looking at her earnestly with almost the same eyes as his brother’s. But Ash’s had laughter in them.

“Your aunt Minerva and I had this conversation last night. No, I’m a rationalist. But I will admit there are occurrences that test my ability to reason them out. And last night was up there with the best of them.”

“What are some others?” he asked.

Ash was leaning toward her and she could smell his cologne. As she had the first time they’d met, she ran through the notes, mentally listing them. Lemon, verbena, bergamot, tonka bean, patchouli and something else… but what was it?

“I hope you won’t think I’m rude, but can you tell me the name of your cologne? My family is in the perfume business and I’m usually good at identifying scents, but I’ve never smelled whatever it is you’re wearing.”

Ash smiled. “That’s because-”

The waitress arrived and he broke off.

Ash ordered the full English breakfast with tea. Jac asked for coffee and yogurt with fruit.

“Where were we?” he said once the order was taken. “Oh yes, I was going to tell you about my mysterious cologne.” He smiled as if the idea of sharing his secret gave him a great deal of pleasure. “After breakfast, if you have some time, there’s someplace I’d like to show you. I can explain about the cologne then, all right?”

For the rest of the meal they talked about his aunts and the séance.

“I have a favor to ask you,” he said as they were finishing up.

“Yes?”

“My brother hasn’t been himself since his wife died, and we’re all worried about him. He’s letting his work slip. The gallery is closed half the time and he hasn’t hired anyone to replace Naomi. Instead of taking care of his actual responsibilities, he’s become obsessed with this search he’s brought you here to help him with.”

She didn’t feel right talking about Theo behind his back. “What is it you want me to do?”

“Can you just be aware? He won’t let any of us get close to him but he seems to trust you. If he starts acting erratically, or talking about things that don’t make sense-if you feel at all that he’s losing touch, I want you to call me or Minerva. She’s tried to get him to see a therapist but he refuses. She does her best to talk to him, watch him, help him, but he doesn’t believe he needs any help.”

“I haven’t seen him for almost twenty years. I’m not sure I’d know if he wasn’t behaving like himself.”

She was sure there was a subtext beneath Ash’s request, maybe even a warning… but she couldn’t be sure.

“You’d know. His wife knew.”

“Of course she did. She was married to him.”

“Yes, but they hadn’t actually been married that long. Theo had become uncomfortably jealous of any time she spent out of his sight. He was accusing her of having affairs in London whenever her work took her back there. He was reading her email and checking her phone records. It all came to a head when he found out she was confiding in me about his behavior.” Ash shook his head, pained by the memory.

“What did he do?”

“He tried to lock her up.”

“Theo did?” Jac remembered how he had taken his aunt’s hands the night before. How gentle he’d been.

“I know. It was hard for me to believe too. But something in him snapped. She climbed out the window and drove off. I think she was on her way to see me.”

“The night she died?”

Ash nodded. “Theo blamed me. He thought I was the one she was having an affair with and said it was my fault. That she was distracted and upset because of me and that’s why she wasn’t paying proper attention on the road. The police have made it clear that she swerved to avoid another car and the accident was the other driver’s fault, but Theo wants to believe what Theo wants to believe. We haven’t had a civil conversation since. He won’t listen to reason. We’ve always had a difficult relationship but it’s never been like this before. And now he’s obsessed with finding the Hugo papers. As if they hold some secret that is going to make things better.”

Jac now understood a little better why Theo had been so angry to find her talking to Ash the other night.

“I’m not sure I feel comfortable with all this, though. It’s as if you’re asking me to be a psychic spy.”

“I am sorry. But Minerva and I did think you should know and at least be aware. She wanted to talk to you herself. I think she would have done a better job of it too, but it was difficult for her to figure out a way to get to you without Theo around.” He put down his napkin and signed the check. “Shall we go? I promise, I won’t make any more uncomfortable requests for the rest of the morning, just show you something I think will fascinate you.”

He drove down the same country roads she’d traveled twice with Theo. Ash didn’t talk much on the ride. Some silences can be uncomfortable, especially between people who don’t know each other well, but this wasn’t. Their quiet was oddly companionable. Once he turned and smiled at her and she returned the gesture. It was a lovely, sunny morning and she found herself excited about the prospect of seeing something intriguing.

They’d reached the end of the long twisting road that signaled the beginning of the Gaspard land. Ash took a right, drove past the silver birch forest and then through the woods. It was darker under the canopy of trees and turned darker still as they wound their way through it. Suddenly the wind picked up, whipping the tree branches so the silvery undersides of the leaves showed and warned of rain. Right before they reached the hooded sculptures leading up to the main house, Ash made a sharp left onto an even narrower road that twisted and turned and then came to a stop.

“My home,” Ash said.

For a moment all Jac saw was more woods. Then she saw a Victorian building made of red brick, peeking out through a curtain of ancient ilex, oak and hazel trees. Some were so close to the building, it seemed as if the architect had designed the structure to accommodate the trees.

Ivy climbed the brick, covering several windows. A wisteria vine, its trunk as thick as a man’s arm, wound its way around and around the porch railing, up onto the roof and down the other side. It seemed as if, long ago, nature had claimed the house for its own and no one had ever fought back. Jac thought it was enchanting.

“When was this built? Was it part of the main house?”

As he opened the door and ushered her inside, Ash explained, “One of my ancestors was a jeweler. Pierre Gaspard.”

She nodded. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Well, this was his studio. Like many artisans of the time, in addition to jewelry he became fascinated with stained glass, added it to his repertoire and became quite well known for it. I imagine you saw some of his work at the main house?”

“Yes, but this is like living inside the colors. It’s amazing.”

Starting at the stained glass set into the front door and moving around the room, looking from one window to the next, Jac saw that the entire spectrum of the four seasons was on display. Each depicted the same idyllic forest scene of a Japanese bridge spanning a pond surrounded by trees, but rendered in a different palette. From beds of early-spring crocus, to summer water lilies, to amber and rust leaves floating on the water’s surface, and then snowcapped pines, each elaborate landscape was beautifully painted not in pigment but in jewel-toned glass.

“After he married he used the main house as a home and this became his showroom. He had a shop in town too, but that was mostly for the jewelry, lamps and other small objects. For his bigger projects, he had clients come here. It looked very much the way it does now. His idea was to make the showroom resemble the rooms in a house so customers wouldn’t have to imagine what a stained-glass door would look like in their entryway, or windows in the library. Come, let me show you the rest.”

Ash walked Jac deeper into the house, through the dining room with its colored glass fireplace, done in Moroccan blues that shimmered like a lake in the moonlight, and the library with its elegant daffodil-designed stained-glass standing lamps that showered soft light over each chair.

“You wanted to know about my cologne,” Ash said as he led Jac down a long hallway illuminated with lovely green iridescent glass wall sconces. “First you have to know about this place. No one ever lived here until I moved in ten years ago. Pierre and then his son kept the glass business here until well after the First World War. But in the thirties styles changed and stained glass fell out of fashion. Then came the war. Our estate is very large and this structure is far from the main house. No one needed it and no one seemed to know what to do with it, so it became a sort of large storage bin. When I decided to take it on, it took months to sift though everything. Like peeling decades of wallpaper. Finally underneath all the crap, I found the original rooms with all their contents completely intact. It wasn’t so much that the house needed rebuilding or restoration, it just needed to be emptied out.”

He stopped in front of a dark mahogany door, quite elaborately carved with garlands of flowers bordering two panels. As Ash opened it, Jac smelled what was inside before she could see it. He flicked on the light and she stepped in.

“This was where his wife, Fantine, worked.”

She knew the name from Hugo’s letter. So this was her laboratory. Jac looked at the perfumer’s work area, pristine and perfect. Very similar to the one at the Maison L’Etoile in Paris where she grew up. In the center of the room was a perfumer’s organ. This complex, tiered workspace, surrounded by ascending rows of shelves laid out like an amphitheater, was more elaborate than the L’Etoile’s. Jac imagined that Fantine’s husband, a jeweler, with a heightened sense of design, had had a hand in the piece’s articulated ornamentation.

Jac sniffed the air. Each organ had a unique scent, since each perfumer favored certain notes. Faded vanilla and rose, lemon and verbena hung on the air, faint but discernible.

Jac pulled out Fantine’s chair and then turned to Ash.

“May I?”

“Of course.”

Jac sat down and scanned the rows and rows of small brown bottles of oils and absolutes. Each had a rectangular paper label, old and yellowed, with the name of the essence written in ink in a feminine hand.

Reaching for the verbena, one of the strongest scents in the room, Jac imagined Fantine sitting here, composing the fragrance Ash was wearing.

The bottle top was stuck and she couldn’t twist it off. She put it back, then tried the lemon essence. The stopper yielded and she bowed her head.

“It still smells so fresh. It’s always amazing how long a scent can last. So much longer than anyone realizes. So much longer than people last.” Tombs in Egypt had yielded oil residues that still offered up a bouquet of aroma. “Exactly how old is this laboratory?”

“Pierre built it for his wife in 1856 and Fantine made perfume here for almost seventy years. When she died in 1924 she was ninety-four and still mixing up concoctions. According to her ledgers my cologne was first created in 1912 and contained bergamot, verbena-”

“You have her formulas?” Jac interrupted.

“Books of them. Would you like to see them?”

She nodded, excited. “Yes. Very much.”

He brought her over to a small desk tucked into the corner away from the more elaborate workstation. It was an old-fashioned piece of furniture with glass-enclosed shelves above it and drawers below. In the cabinet she could see more than a dozen black leather notebooks. Ash opened the glass door. Jac could smell the slightly sweet scent of decaying glue, of leather bindings and the woodsy odor of aging paper… all suggesting long-forgotten treasures waiting to be discovered.

Jac lifted one of the books off the shelf and opened it. The handwriting was the same as on the bottle labels. Each page was for a different perfume formula. The names of the perfumes were evocative and suggested that Fantine and her husband had collaborated.

Emerald Evening Shivers.

Sapphire Starbursts Lasting.

Morning Pearls Alone.

Jac read down the list of the ingredients of each scent, constructing it in her mind as she went.

“These are really lovely. Sophisticated and unusual at the same time, like their names.”

“How can you tell?”

“I have scent memory, so when I read what’s in a fragrance, I can create it in my mind.”

“Is that unusual?”

“In my family, not so unusual. My grandfather and father had it, but my brother doesn’t.”

“Does that mean you can compose fragrances without sniffing as you go?”

She nodded. “But I don’t.”

“You don’t make fragrances?”

“Not since I was a child, no.”

“Can you make up the fragrances in the journal from the ingredients here?”

“Some might have lost their power, but if the room has been sealed up and kept dark for all this time, a lot of them might be as fresh as the lemon essence is.”

“Would you like to mix one?”

Jac surprised herself by saying yes. She hadn’t done this since before her mother died… since she was fourteen years old. As she pulled bottle after bottle off the shelf, following the formula written out in the journal, she thought about how for Fantine and for her too, fragrance and family were intertwined. Jac’s grandfather’s and father’s workshop was part of their home. It was where she and her brother had played at being perfumers when they were small and where they were each taught the basics of the “eighth art,” as it was called among the L’Etoiles. And now Jac was seated again at a perfumer’s worktable.

Jac read the list of ingredients for Morning Pearls Alone. Jasmine. Orange blossom. Pepper. Gardenia. Ambergris. And something called amber.

“This is so strange. There’s an ingredient listed here that doesn’t exist as far as I know. I wonder if it’s a mistake.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fantine lists amber, but that’s not an essence. I thought she might have meant ambergris, which is a very popular ingredient, but that’s listed also.”

“What is ambergris? The resin that insects get trapped in?”

“No, that’s amber, but it’s not a perfume ingredient. Amber and ambergris are totally different, and to make it all the more confusing, in perfume we use the word amber to denote a class of perfumes. Ambers are Orientals: warm, woody and spicy scents usually made with vanilla, tonka bean, labdanum and ambergris.”

“After living with this workshop, it’s fascinating to have a perfumer here,” Ash said.

Jac had never referred to herself as a perfumer. She wasn’t one. Not really. But she didn’t correct him.

“What is ambergris then, some other kind of resin?” he asked.

“No, it’s a solid gray and dull waxy substance that’s secreted by sperm whales and washes up on the beach. It smells awful when it’s first harvested, but eventually it gives off a pleasant, very fresh smell that reminds me of rubbing alcohol. Like oakmoss, ambergris is far more important for how it works with the other ingredients than how it smells on its own.”

“Whatever made someone take something like that and even try to use it in a perfume?”

Jac laughed. “I used to ask my grandfather that same question all the time. Not just about ambergris but other ingredients, like the secretions taken from poor civets’ glands.”

She scanned the shelves, then found and pulled out two bottles: one marked ambergris and one marked civet, and handed them to Ash.

And then she noticed something else. “This is very odd.”

“What?”

Jac reached up and picked up another bottle. She showed it to Ash. The label, very clearly, read amber. There was almost no liquid left, only a residue of oil on the bottom. Jac opened it and sniffed. It was familiar and for a moment she couldn’t place it. Then she realized it was similar to the smell of the fire she and Theo had lit at the witches’ site the day before.

She offered it to Ash. “Here, smell. It has a mineral odor but it’s sweet too, almost a floral.”

He bent over and sniffed.

“Now smell the ambergris.”

He did.

“They’re nothing alike, right?”

“Yes, right.”

“Let me finish mixing the formula. I want to see how this all adds up.”

Jac dipped a pipette in the bottle, sucked up the two drops called for and added them to the concoction.

She swirled the bottle so the different essences could merge and meld. Watching the mixture eddy, smelling as it began to combine, she realized she was excited. She didn’t remember feeling this way since she and Robbie had created their impossible scents when they were young.

For the first time in more than seventeen years, she was making perfume.

“You have a wonderful time capsule here,” Jac said to Ash. “There are perfumers who would kill to come and study these journals and get their hands on these old oils.”

“Would you like to do it? Perhaps if any of the scents had merit, your company might want to bring them to market?”

Jac was caught off guard. Not so much because he’d made the offer, but because of how appealing it sounded. To spend a few months holed up here, away from Paris and New York, far from Griffin North-and how much she missed him-immersing herself in the yellowed pages of formulas with intriguing poetic names…

“Would you consider it? It seems a shame if there’s value here not to explore it. I’d be quite interested in getting involved in a new business.”

“Ever the banker,” she joked. “And here I thought you might be a romantic after all.”

“We are always searching out new investment opportunities. But it’s more than that. This is my family’s heritage as much as the jewelry and stained glass is, and it’s been hidden away here. I’m serious, Jac.”

“Yes, I know you are.”

“If these scents wind up having merit, don’t you think the story of lost fragrances being reintroduced to the world would be a great hook? The line would totally capture the imagination. I can picture the ads.”

She laughed. “You make it sound as if you have it all worked out.”

“Some ideas are so right that they work themselves out. You have a nose for scent and I have one for ways to make money. This has legs. Would you think about it?”

Surprising herself completely, she said yes before she reasoned it out logically. But she was feeling something in this workshop she didn’t remember ever feeling around perfume. Or perhaps it was the lack of what she felt. There was no misery soaked into this wooden desk, no tears captured in these brown glass bottles, no whiff of melancholy in the air. The L’Etoile family tragedies were not part of these scents. Here she was free of her family’s past, and the experience was heady.

“Would you like to smell the first of Fantine’s scents to be remixed in nearly a hundred years?” she asked.

“I’d consider it a toast. We can both sniff to it.”

Jac laughed.

“That first time I saw you, at the bar in the hotel, you looked so sad,” Ash said. “I didn’t know you, obviously, I’d never met you, but I wanted somehow to take away some of that sadness.” He was looking into her face. “You don’t look sad at all here, mixing up these perfumes. There’s something else very much alive in your eyes.”

And then, leaning down, Ash kissed her softly on the lips. After a first instant of shock, she was amazed at how easily she relaxed into the embrace and even felt herself open to him a little. Electricity surged through her, skimmed her skin, and then lodged deep inside her where she felt a sudden throb.

What was happening? This was Theo’s brother!

And then the kiss ended. Ash smiled in a relaxed, easygoing way as if something delightful but not difficult had just happened. Then he opened his hand for the bottle. “I’d like to smell that now.”

“We should do this the right way, the way my grandfather always did it…” Jac said.

She needed a tester strip. Fantine must have used something like the narrow pieces of paper perfumers used today. Searching the organ’s drawers, she was delighted to find a pile of pale cream ribbons, each the length of a rose stem. Fantine would have cut them herself, since Jac knew there were no factory-made tester strips till the late 1920s.

She showed Ash. “My grandfather insisted we use ribbons at L’Etoile’s also. No manufactured testers were allowed.”

As she dipped the ribbon into the bottle and watched it wick up the perfume, she thought of her grandfather and his old-fashioned ways. He had loved this custom of lowering the ribbon into the bottle of scent, slowly soaking up the elixir and then presenting the ribbon to his customer like a gift. Sometimes he would surprise Jac with a ribbon soaked in a new perfume. He’d tie it around her wrist with a lovely small bow and ask her to wear it for the day and then give him her opinion. She’d saved every one of those satins. Where were they now? Somewhere in the house on Rue des Saints-Pères, probably.

Suddenly Jac felt the air wavering around her. Familiar shivers ran up and down her arms, pinpricks of cold that alerted her to what was coming. The smells around her intensified. The light dimmed. Shadows descended. Her thoughts threatened to ebb away. She was suffering the first warning signs of an encroaching hallucination.

Something she’d just used in mixing this perfume was an olfactory trigger.

Jac pushed the chair away from the open bottles of essences and absolutes. The ribbon fell to the floor, forgotten. She stepped back. Away from the organ, the sensations she was having were less pronounced than they had been in the past. And not as frightening. She almost wanted to enter into the vision that teased her. It seemed as if part of her had stepped outside her body and was hovering over this room, watching another woman making perfume here many years ago.

Jac wanted to stay, to observe the woman more closely, but she knew she couldn’t allow this to happen. Not again. Not now.

She ran through her sanity commandments.

Open a window. Get fresh air. Take long, concentrated breaths. Stop your mind from spiraling by giving it a task.

Without explaining anything to Ash, she rose up, walked over to the window, pulled it open and stuck her head out. Breathing in the forest air, she focused. Hazel. Grass. Roses. Pine. The sea. Sanity.

“Are you all right?” Ash asked.

“I will be. I’m sorry. Something I inhaled had a strange effect on me.”

“An ingredient?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I think it was having an effect on me too,” he said.

“Yes?”

She turned to him.

Ash was looking at her strangely. As if he wasn’t quite seeing her, but looking at someone else. And then before she realized what was happening, he leaned forward and kissed her again. And the sensations she had been fighting turned into something quite different, and she shuddered with a jolt of almost nothing but pleasure.