Louise Allen - Those Scandalous Ravenhursts Volume Two

‘Count upon it, my lord,’ she promised, releasing his fingers and turning on her heel to walk to the door. As she opened it she turned to see him still standing there watching her, a smile of reluctant admiration on his lips.

How I dared , Jessica thought, distracted, as Maude’s carriage drew up in front of a small bow-fronted shop entrance. Todmorton’s it read in spindly gilt lettering above the door. Craftsmen Perfumers . At a gesture from Maude she pulled down her veil and stood to follow her out of the carriage.

It had been keeping her awake all night, tossing and turning. How she had dared turn the tables on Gareth like that, behave like a woman of the demi-monde , how it had felt to hold him in her thrall for those long, shimmering moments while his blood raced in his veins and his skin heated in her clasp.

It was power and it was dangerous power and he was not the man to practise it on. There were no men it was safe to practise such wiles upon and certainly not the one with whom she had to act out this masquerade. She did not need to seduce, only to give the impression of seduction. But it was all becoming too real.

‘What did you say, Jessica?’ Maude turned from her contemplation of a display of giant bath sponges in the shop window. ‘Did you say frightening ?’

‘Er, yes. Frightening being out like this, in disguise,’ she extemporised as the footman opened the shop door for her and they entered into fragrant gloom.

‘Not to worry, no one will know you veiled, and afterwards, no one could make any connection with you wearing that frightful stuff gown,’ Maude reassured her, blissfully unconscious of the fact that such dreadful gowns were Jessica’s everyday uniform. ‘Mr Todmorton, good morning. Yes, I am in the best of health, thank you. Now, this is the friend of mine for whom we require a scent. Something unique, something tantalising , yet discreet. Can you help us?’

‘Lady Maude, an honour to assist a friend of yours. Clarence, a chair for her ladyship and show her our new range of triple-milled soaps while she waits.’ The man who bustled forwards, stirring the air into a swirling rainbow of scents as his long apron swished across the floor, was of an indeterminate age. His bald pate gleamed, his white hands were clasped across his rotund belly and his smile was wide and ingenuous.

‘Madam, please, come into my workshop.’

* * *

Jessica felt awkward, sitting disguised by her heavy veil in front of the neat, professional figure of the perfumer in his workroom. She looked round, curious at its ordered rows of labelled drawers from floor to ceiling, its racks of bottles and phials and its clean, bare surfaces. She had expected to smell a riot of perfumes like the fragrant shop outside, then realised he must need to work with nothing to distract his sensitive nostrils.

‘Would you mind removing your glove, madam?’ With the coolly impersonal tone it was like going to the doctor. Jessica stripped off her right glove. ‘And holding out your hand, palm upwards?’

It was like the encounter with Gareth last night, and yet utterly unlike. This man made no attempt to touch her, merely leaning forward until his nose was above her bared wrist and inhaling. He might, she thought with an inward chuckle, be a cook smelling the soup to adjust the chervil.

‘Hmm.’ Mr Todmorton sat back, nodded sharply and reached for a notebook. ‘You wish for a scent for evening and for day, madam?’

‘Yes.’ She supposed she did, although a daring dab of lavender water, or essence of violets on her handkerchief was the sum total of Jessica’s experience with perfume.

‘And the impression you wish to create?’

She stared at him, failing to understand, then realised he could not see her expression for her veil. ‘I am sorry, I do not quite comprehend.’

Again, she might have been with a medical man, she embarrassed to discuss some feminine problem, he entirely at his professional ease.

‘Do you wish to be seductive and subtle or flamboyant? Do you wish to be unique and memorable, or merely sweetly feminine?’

‘Subtle,’ Jessica said hastily. ‘But seductive, memorable. Definitively unique.’

He nodded, apparently unsurprised by her requests, which seemed to her contradictory. ‘Now, which family? That is our first question. Florals as a main group are insufficiently memorable, and besides, will not last well on your type of skin. The woody, leather and fougère groups are too heavy and perhaps too masculine.’ He jotted another note and frowned. ‘Chypre or amber?’ It was apparently a rhetorical question, as he shook his head in thought. ‘Chypre. Mystery, warmth, natural depth. Floral undertones rather than moss, perhaps? Yes, I see it clearly now. I will prepare something in a parfum , an eau de toilette and a very light dilution for scenting linen.’

Jessica, who had been expecting to be offered samples to sniff and choose between, found herself being escorted to the workroom door, a decision made without the slightest involvement on her part. It was a relief, she decided, buttoning her glove again; how she would have recognised a suitable scent she had no idea, although it would have been amusing to have sniffed her way along the array of intriguing bottles.

Maude was perched on a stool in front of the counter, a predictably large stack of packages in front of her. The assistant was folding white paper crisply around what appeared to be the final box, although Maude’s gaze was roving the shadowed interior with all the concentration of a huntress in search of prey.

The assistant knotted string and reached for the sealing wax as she saw Jessica. ‘Well? Mr Todmorton, have you found just the thing?’

‘I will create just the thing,’ he corrected in gentle reproof. ‘If you and madam return in three days, Lady Maude, I will have the first bottles ready.’

‘Oh, look at these lovely little things!’ Maude jumped down and went to rummage in a basin of miniature, fine-grained sponges.

‘From Corfu, my lady.’ The assistant knew his trade, Jessica thought, amused. ‘Young girls dive for them; each is selected with great care to be perfect for cleansing the face…’

‘We must have some, see how fine they are. Catch!’ Maude tossed one to Jessica across the width of the little shop. A featherlight ball, it wavered in the air and she reached for it just as the door opened.

The sponge bounced off the broad chest of the gentleman who entered and he reached up and caught it one handed.

‘Gar—’ No, it was not Gareth, it was quite another man altogether, Jessica realised, puzzled why she had made the mistake. This man was as tall and as broad, but he was far darker, both in hair and eyes, but also in skin tone as though some Mediterranean blood flowed in his veins. She was spending too much time with Gareth, that was the trouble. Thinking about him too much led to seeing him everywhere.

Frowning over why that should be such a very bad thing, it took Jessica a moment to recall the people around her, then she saw Maude’s face. There was a faint rose flush on her cheekbones, her lovely lips were parted as though she had just gasped and her eyes were wide. The gentleman, apparently impervious to this vision of loveliness, turned the sponge over in his fingers for a moment, then handed it to Jessica, his eyes sliding over her veiled face with polite indifference.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Not at all.’ He inclined his head, unsmiling, giving her an opportunity to observe a nose that would have done credit to a Grecian statue, dark brown eyes and severe, well-formed lips.

There was nothing further to be said. Jessica stepped forward and placed the sponge on the counter. Maude was still standing to one side clutching an over-spilling double handful of tiny globes. ‘Here, let me.’ She removed them and dropped them back into the basin, her back firmly to the gentleman. ‘How many do you want?’