The Perfumer's Secret (25 page)

He closed the double doors so quietly I heard only the vaguest click. And then I was alone with my grief and Felix’s letter.

I looked at the crumpled second page still twisted in my hand and I laid it on the window seat to smooth the wreck of paper. If Felix could bear to write this to me in his trauma of loss, then I needed to be brave enough and strong enough to read about our brother.

It was only just past five but night had stolen across Grasse, closing around the villa like a blanket. I shouldn’t have cancelled the priest’s visit but his inevitable attempt to comfort with words of consolation would make me feel worse than I did now and I couldn’t imagine feeling worse. I was a coward, obviously. I dabbed away tears, my eyes already sore, and moved to a lamp to read the rest of the letter.

Both our Chasseur battalion and Aimery’s were reunited. We were fighting a bitter battle for a town near Notre-Dame de Lorette. Aimery’s boys were at the Front, while we were held in reserve, and then we were sent forward to take over trenches a couple of days after Christmas Day and I lost a dozen of our fellow soldiers within moments to injury or death. The fallen remain unburied, lying out in the brown sea of mud stretching ahead of the trench, freezing rain adding to everyone’s misery.

There was a young lad, still wet behind the ears but eager, Fleurette – so heartbreakingly eager to please us officers. Henri kept him close. He had a soft spot for the youngster – I think we all did, but Henri hated that so many bright young men were being slaughtered from our region. He kept saying to me: ‘These are our growers, our pickers, our factory workers, our glass blowers, our artists.’ He took it far too personally that he couldn’t save the men of Grasse and surrounds from the German war machine. And this boy had a stammer – remember Henri’s stammer? I’d forgotten it until we met Marcel . . . he’s from a tiny town that grows the violets we use. And while we all teased, Henri reassured poor Marcel that he would teach him how to overcome his ailment in the same way that he had overcome his own stammer all those years ago when Father brought in so many experts. Marcel had taken a bullet but we couldn’t see where he was injured. He was moaning, begging for us to help him, calling to his mother . . . it was traumatising because only hours earlier we’d been teasing him about her. I think it was when Marcel began to cry and called to Henri that he would work very hard at his stammer if someone would deliver him from no-man’s-land.

I don’t think our dear brother could take it much more. I tried to stop him but he was over the parapet faster than any of us could imagine. He nearly made it too.

I noticed another tear splotch at the end of that sentence. It had touched the ink, which had bled, and I knew those five words had been so very hard for darling Felix to write and I cried for them both now.

In an Atlas-like effort, Henri somehow lifted Marcel onto his shoulders and staggered gamely back towards the trench. I could see the whites of his eyes through the spattered mud on his face, Fleurette. Henri was close enough to touch and he threw the boy off his shoulders into the trench but bullets were flying everywhere and caught our brother through his chest.

He waved us away, calling, ‘
Faire face
.’ But I couldn’t square up to it as he was insisting. I had to get to him. I managed to reach him and drag him down.

He was on his way to the shadow of the valley of death before I lowered him into the trench but I had time to tell him that he was loved, and to place in his fingers your letter that he had been reading earlier that day, and to feel me kiss his forehead in farewell and to hear his final words about you.

I will write to Catherine today to inform her . . .

I had to stop. I couldn’t read the words any longer. They had blurred to illegible with my tears and the sobs rose high into my chest and I wept aloud, biting against my knuckles to prevent a scream of anguish. Henri was gone. Brave Henri, trying to save someone else, being heroic, always wanting to be the leader, the figure that everyone admired and looked up to. We used to laugh at those traits but now he had died in glory, leading his men with courage and vigour, saving his men with his own life.

Did he save Marcel? I scrabbled for Felix’s letter again that had fallen to the carpet. Sniffing and heedless of my weepy sounds, I scanned for the words that would tell me my brother had not died in vain. I skimmed through the part about Catherine, desperate to learn about whether Henri’s death gave life to someone.

Marcel survived. He is in a hospital and I hope he will make a full recovery and defy this war by staying alive for its duration and making Henri’s life count for something more than his wealth . . . or even perfume, because suddenly, darling Fleurette, it all feels like a hollow dream. All that matters is family and our love for one another. The money and status couldn’t save Henri . . . he gave his life for a poor man’s son, and whose family’s life will be richer for our loss but not because of money. Does that make sense? Is my grief making me ramble into madness? My brother is gone. Your brother is gone. Our parents are dead. It’s only us now. I will stay alive, I promise.

I am coming home. I have been given some leave. We all have, so prepare yourself because Aimery will be heading home too briefly.

I shall see you soon.

Your ever-loving Felix

I flung the pages down. Suddenly this cosily warm and fragranced room felt claustrophobic. The smell of pine was nauseating me now and I regretted it would forever remind me of Henri’s death. I yanked open the door and fled from the chamber, taking the waiting staff and a worried Sébastien by surprise. I’d had the full intention of going to my rooms but seeing them lined up anxiously, I turned right and moved swiftly across the hall to pull open the front door and I was running outside, welcoming the blast of chill air.

It burned me on the outside as the cognac had burned my insides. I could feel the effect of that liquor now and I welcomed the cold that woke me, dragged me out of today’s daydream, and with this new pain of loss into the reality of my new life of grief. My wet cheeks numbed first and I ignored my chattering teeth. I trudged heedless of direction, ignoring the snowfall that had charmed me earlier, moving without purpose. I couldn’t outrun my sorrow but I needed to make sense of it, come to better terms with it.

I found myself back in the herb garden, using the soft glow of the indoor light spilling from the villa to guide me. I stood behind its walls, believing that if I could shroud myself, then I could escape those who wanted to fluster around me. I understood but I didn’t want them. I watched the flakes of snow falling noiselessly but disintegrating within seconds of touching anything solid, whether it was my hands or the bricks of the wall. I tilted my head to blink up at the dome of darkness and I began to pray as silently as the snow that fell around me. I prayed for Henri’s memory and Felix’s ongoing safety. I prayed for my father’s soul, for the secret that had permitted a sin to be committed, with the two innocents in that sin paying for our parents’ greed for each other. I prayed to be forgiven for loving Sébastien, for breaking my vow taken in church and for not caring enough about Aimery.

Sébastien was right. I could understand our parents now because I had touched the same dizzy abandon and carelessness that surely my father and his mother had felt nearly three decades ago when they couldn’t contain their yearning for each other. I realised as I stood, my shoulders glistening with crystals of snow, that I had behaved identically and yet I dared to judge them.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones
was one of Felix’s favourite sayings but I never thought it could be levelled against me. I was as guilty as my father before me, and I was as much of an adulteress as Aimery’s mother was before him.

And now Henri was dead. Taken from us.

The bile rose, met the grief of death and riding cognac and little else, and it spilled onto the frozen ground as I vented my rage, my despair, my guilt. I retched with closed but watering eyes until my throat burned.

A strong arm encircled me and the voice I loved offered soothing words but still I shook Sébastien off. I hadn’t heard him arrive but now I straightened and glared at him.

‘This is our fault.’

I saw him sigh.

I shook my head angrily. ‘I’m riddled with guilt.’

‘Fleurette,’ he began in appeal.

‘It’s punishment for my unfaithfulness!’

‘This is doing you no good.’

I ignored his rational soothing. ‘I’m being taught the ultimate lesson and Henri bore the full weight of my shame.’

‘Stop it. Stop your ridiculous talk!’ he snapped. I didn’t think him capable of speaking to me in such a harsh manner. ‘Do you really think you’re that important that the course of the war is affected by your actions?’ he demanded in a low growl. He pointed north into the darkness. ‘Men are dying by the thousands every day, Fleurette, with or without your involvement. You are just one of the millions of women around Europe who clutch photos and letters to their breast and hope and pray that the men they love will return. And too many of those men – no matter which side they fight for – won’t return, including Henri. I’m sorry. I’m desperately sorry for you,’ he raged into the falling snow, as though finally finding an outlet for his own despair, ‘but this is
not
about you and it’s
not
about us . . . and it is certainly
not
about people from a previous generation with the most human of failings to fall in love. I’m guilty of it. Here I am, admitting it freely beneath the heavens that I am guilty of falling in love but I am not ashamed of it and we don’t get punished for loving each other . . . we get punished for making war on each other by losing people we love.’ He still wasn’t finished with me. Now he shook me, not hard but firmly enough to force me to not ignore him. ‘In the scheme of Germany’s war with France and her Allies, it’s frankly obscene that you think our involvement could influence the death of your brother by a sniper’s bullet hundreds of miles away. Wait, I’ll get you a horsewhip, you might as well flagellate yourself while you’re about it!’ Oh my word, he was angry. ‘We didn’t plan this,’ he choked out in his efforts to not raise his voice. ‘Our parents didn’t either. They didn’t know they were going to fall for one another. Yes, I wish they’d taken more precautions or even considered the potential repercussions; I could wish they’d come clean and that our families hadn’t kept their dirty little secret, but nothing we say or do can change the past. And Henri is now the past. I know that’s harsh but it’s the reality of war. When all the pomp and ra-ra-ra is done, there are men dying because more powerful men are greedy and want more than they have. Don’t you dare sully Henri’s name or what we share by linking them. I love you, Fleurette, but I don’t like histrionics. You’re behaving like a little girl instead of a woman whom this household and, in fact, the region will look to for strength. Everyone in the town, I imagine, will mourn Henri. So lead that grief with your composure. Be sad, don’t be hysterical and don’t read signs that simply aren’t there.’

I stared at him wordlessly during his tirade. Sébastien was furious; mostly he was disappointed in me. I could see it in the way he swiped his hand through the frozen air and the low hiss and growl of his voice that made sure no one else could hear. He was right, of course, and I was struck silent by his forthright manner. Somewhere past the grief, much deeper, more private, I admired him for standing up to me. He wasn’t a bully like Aimery, or wielding his status as Henri might; he was an equal treating me with equal disdain that he might show towards anyone who was stupid enough to measure their unimportant – almost pathetic – actions against the machine of war sweeping across Europe. As he swung around to groan at the expanse of night, I thought I could imagine myself looking at me with a similar sneer of disappointment.

‘Henri died,’ he said, in such a final tone that a fresh eruption of tears fell but they were silent now. ‘I grieve with you because I love you with all my heart, Fleurette, and I know how much you love your brothers. But Henri died gloriously. He will be remembered for his courage. So many I’ve seen have died while they slept, while they ate, while on the latrines, or in pain crying for their mothers, the women they love. His name will be on the lips of his company as one of the heroes of France’s war . . . for not only going back for someone but carrying that injured man to safety on his back and then dying for him.’ He must have quickly skimmed the letter to know this. ‘It’s a triumphant epitaph to the head of one of France’s leading families. He will not be forgotten. His courage and name will live long. Instead of blaming yourself, which is insulting, applaud his valour, know your brother acquitted himself heroically for all of France, for your family.’

I was crying harder now but this time for the stirring words that did make me feel proud. I stepped towards him in the night and heedless of who might be watching I held Sébastien to me. It was not the embrace of lovers this time but of family, of friendship, of shared grief and comfort. Of someone who brought perspective at precisely the time I lacked it. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

He held me closer with one arm and I shivered into his warmth as he did mine. ‘Now, show your fine breeding and your own brand of courage,’ he murmured. ‘You are head of this household, head of the Delacroix household too in the absence of its men. Take control. Dry your tears. Rise above sorrow and indulge your personal grief in private.’ He held me back so he could look at me. We had only the dull moonlight, partially hidden by clouds. His eyes looked black – I’m sure mine did too although no doubt down to slits because they were swollen. ‘No one’s saying you shouldn’t be sad or shed tears. But this is a moment to show your maturity. It’s time for Fleurette De Lasset to be the force she can be.’

I took a deep breath.