A Scent of Magic Read online

  A Scent of Magic

  Jill Jones

  Formerly released as Essence of My Desire

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1998 by Jill Jones

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition October 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-491-2

  More from Jill Jones

  Emily’s Secret

  My Lady Caroline

  The Scottish Rose

  A Scent of Magic

  Circle of the Lily

  The Island

  Bloodline

  Remember Your Lies

  Every Move You Make

  Beneath the Raven’s Moon

  Shadow Haven

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to extend my gratitude to the following people who helped me in so many ways learn about the fascinating worlds of fragrance and magic:

  For the loan of your books, photographs, tapes, music, scented products, and for sharing your personal knowledge of and providing input on the various aspects of this story, I thank you, Cheryl DeWitt, Carmela Firstenberger, Light and Brian Miller, Robin Tolleson, April and Jeff Moore, Elaine Hamil, Brooke Kurek, Caroline Wood, Joanna Schulman, Lezley Suleiman, Susan Alvis, Jeffrey Brown, Glenn Palmer, Alan Coppens, and Macgregor Gray.

  For the fragrant tour of International Fragrance and Technology, Inc., Canton, Georgia, and the invaluable insight into the business of perfuming, I thank Master Perfumers Deepak K. Shah and Philippe Lorson.

  For responding so kindly, completely, and promptly to a fax from a stranger inquiring into the business of fragrance in the United States, I thank Annette Green, President, The Fragrance Foundation, New York, NY. For a similar prompt and complete response to my inquiry about the fragrance business in the U.K., I thank Andrea Jones, Editor of Esprit Magazine, who also generously gave of her time to read the manuscript for correctness of content and detail.

  My special thanks go to my agent, Denise Marcil, my husband Jerry, and daughter Brooke for their encouragement and support of varying natures that has allowed me to pursue my own incredible dream.

  She comes not when Noon is on the roses—

  Too bright is Day.

  She comes not to the Soul till it reposes

  From work and play.

  But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices

  Roll in from Sea,

  By starlight and by candlelight and dreamlight

  She comes to me.

  Herbert Trench

  Prologue

  Bombay, India

  “Must we go in there? This place is making my skin crawl,” one of the native workers complained in heavily accented English. The powerful beam of his hand-held light pierced the gloom of the long-forgotten basement, revealing a pair of ancient wooden doors set into the dank orange dirt of the wall. The wood was old, rotten, and permeated by the smell of decay.

  “Mr. Rutledge said to search the entire building,” Pritchett insisted with undaunted British determination, although he, too, had no enthusiasm for the job. The basement was tomblike, dark and silent and somehow unholy. The only thing to recommend it was that it was cool, and this subterranean exploration provided a break from the sweltering heat above. “Go on, now. Chop away. Likely there’s nothing in there anyway.”

  The two hired workers exchanged glances, then raised pickaxes and felled them simultaneously against the wood, which splintered into crumbling, moldy shards. In only a few strokes the barrier was downed. Pritchett kicked at the debris with his polished leather boot before stepping up to the gaping black hole. At least, he thought gratefully, nothing had slithered out of it or brushed by his face with leathery wings. He flashed his own light into the blackness.

  The cubicle behind the doors was small, for which Pritchett was also thankful, as he had no desire to delve into some underground labyrinth as he’d feared this might be. The earthen walls were bare on two sides, but along the far wall, three thick wooden shelves had been anchored into grooves carved from the clay-like soil. Pritchett frowned, speculating on what purpose such a closet might have served.

  Shining his light high, he ran the beam across the top shelf. It was empty. The second revealed the same, nothing but a thick layer of dust, collected over the course of a hundred and fifty years, perhaps longer. Pritchett sighed, relieved that their search had turned up nothing and he could return to handle the problems that awaited him in the main part of the building.

  The sooner he finished this duty, the better, he thought. If he’d known beforehand the difficulties it entailed, perhaps he wouldn’t have hired on as Nick Rutledge’s hatchet man. He half expected the employees of the firm, whom he had recently and abruptly fired, to blow up the building or set it afire in their outrage at so suddenly losing their jobs. He’d had to hire a veritable private army to stand guard around the premises while he finished up. He was anxious to get the job over with, shut down the old perfume factory for good, and return to the civility of London. He regretted that he hadn’t charged Rutledge more for doing his dirty work.

  Squatting in the gloom of the small underground chamber, Pritchett beamed his light across the bottom of the three shelves, expecting to find it empty as well. But to his surprise, the light disclosed an object huddled in the shadows, guarded by the webs of long-dead spiders, their gossamer filaments weighted with the pervasive red-orange dust.

  “What’s this?” The tall Englishman stood again and signaled to one of the other men. “Say, there, fetch that into the light,” he directed.

  The dark-skinned man shot his co-worker another uneasy look, but then gave his gloves a tug and stooped to pull the whatever-it-was from its hiding place. It proved to be a box, not too heavy, and he carried it into the main part of the basement, placing it beneath one of the high, grated windows. The afternoon sun slanted across it, highlighting the dust and casting an orange patina over the rusting metal surface.

  It was a small trunk, about the size of a ladies makeup case. A very old trunk, Pritchett surmised. And it was locked.

  “Shall I, sir?” the man asked, lifting his heavy crowbar.

  But Pritchett shook his head. In spite of his curiosity, he would follow the directions of his employer, who had told him to preserve intact any relics he might come across. He walked around the chest, his head cocked to one side, speculating. What was in there? Gold? Jewels? Had the underground closet served as a safe once upon a time? The idea of buried treasure teased at his imagination, but then another thought struck him.

  Instead of a safe, what if the cache had been a tomb?

  Pritchett shivered involuntarily and told himself it was a ridiculous notion. But the very oddity of finding the ancient, dust-encrusted trunk alone in the obscure hiding place warned him it obviously was meant not to be disturbed. If he opened it, would he find the bones of a long-dead infant? Or someone who had been murdered and chopped into small pieces? He laughed nervously at his runaway imagination, but the possibility set his teeth on edge. He suddenly wanted the trunk out of his hands, as quickly as possible.

  “Take it upstairs to the main office,” he said, finding his voice at last. “Clean it up and prepare it for express
shipment to the London office.”

  It was perhaps an unnecessary expense, but Pritchett’s nerves were already shot, and he didn’t much care if Rutledge complained about the cost. Whatever the trunk contained, riches or bones or the curses of Pandora, was none of his business. Let Rutledge deal with it. Pritchett’s only job was to secure and pack up every last usable object in the building that had housed for a century and a half the Bombay Spice and Fragrance Company, and ship everything to the new owner, Mr. Nicholas Rutledge, in London. What on earth the man could want with the shabby, antiquated furnishings and equipment was beyond him.

  But that, too, was none of his business.

  Chapter One

  New Orleans

  Though it was only the middle of May, spring had forgotten New Orleans, and summer already had its tentacles entwined tenaciously around the city, suffocating it in a simmering wet heat. Simone had lived here nearly ten years now, but she was still unaccustomed to the sultry weather that maintained an almost year-round stranglehold on the sullied streets and decadently decaying buildings of the old French Quarter.

  “The South,” as they called it here in the United States, was not at all like the South of France, her homeland, and when the atmosphere grew oppressive like today, she longed for the Mediterranean breezes that swept the gentle countryside and cooled the fragrant fields surrounding the city of Grasse.

  With a heavy sigh, Simone Lefevre twisted her rich, dark hair into a knot and pinned it high upon the crown of her head. She rolled up the sleeves of the brightly flowered oversized shirt she wore, then fluttered the garment to create a breeze against her sweat dampened skin. This morning, as she prepared to unpack some boxes for her aunt, Grasse and her childhood seemed as if they belonged in another lifetime altogether. The only tie that bound her to that past was her beloved Tantie Camille, her father’s sister, into whose arms and home Simone and her mother had taken refuge when Jean René Lefevre had died so suddenly.

  With grim determination, Simone thrust aside the memories of all that. She tried never to think about those terrible times. The recollection was too brutal. Pense seulement au futur, she ordered herself, squaring her shoulders and heading toward the back room of her aunt’s tiny parfumerie.

  Think only of the future.

  The future.

  Simone knew she must face it soon. She could no longer hide behind the excuse of getting an education. She had completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry, then spent several months training to become a perfumer at a fashion institute in New York.

  It had not surprised her greatly to learn that her knowledge of perfuming and her skill as a perfumer were far more advanced than the expertise of her teachers there.

  She was, after all, her father’s daughter.

  Jean René Lefevre had been of one of the most talented and respected perfumers of all time. She had grown up under his critical tutelage and been trained since childhood in the art of perfuming. Her “nose” had been disciplined from an early age to sort out and arrange scents into beautiful harmonies, works of aromatic art, exquisite perfumes that few others could create so easily.

  At the institute, when her identity, heritage, and evident talent as a nose became known, she was courted aggressively by independent fragrance firms as well as major American manufacturers who sought her out, hoping to hire her to create new fragrances with which to enhance their consumer products—soaps, fabrics, deodorants, diapers, automobile interiors, floor cleaners, medicines, even rubber tires. Americans, she thought with a fond snicker…they are warm and wonderful people, but they do not like the way they smell.

  Like her father, Simone preferred to use her talents in a more traditional manner. She wanted to create great scents, les grands parfums. But unlike Jean René, Simone did not want to cater to an exclusive private clientele, although she had deep respect for his work. Her father’s talent at the console of perfumery had drawn Europe’s royals, Arabia’s sheiks, America’s movie stars and magnates of commerce, South America’s drug lords—the rich, the famous, the elite of the world—to his little but legendary perfumery, La Maison Lefevre, in Grasse. There, for a substantial price, he had created a personal scent for each, a private perfume unavailable to anyone else in the world.

  Unavailable, Simone thought bitterly, until “Nathaniel Raleigh” had knocked on their door. Ten years had passed, and still a knot formed in her stomach when she thought about the handsome young man who had become her father’s apprentice…and her first lover.

  And who had exploited them both.

  Simone opened the door to the storage room, again repressing memories she thought best remained buried. That old pain was one reason she wasn’t interested in trying to reestablish her father’s type of business. It all belonged to a past she had no desire to resurrect in any way.

  Unless she found a way one day to destroy the man who had hurt them so terribly. But that seemed unlikely, and she did not dwell upon the impossible.

  Instead, she focused her attention upon another, far more distant past, hoping it would provide her with an inspiration and a plan for a future that would return the name of Lefevre to prominence in the business of perfuming.

  La Belle Epoque.

  The golden age of fashion and perfume at the turn of the nineteenth century, when the venerable houses of Houbigant, Guerlain, Caron, Coty, and others had created les grands parfums, classical scents that remained legendary in the industry more than a century later. True perfumers these were, not just couturiers who developed fragrances as accessories for the fashions they designed.

  During her last semester at the university, while experimenting with various synthetic and natural combinations in the laboratory, an idea had occurred to her, one that she had since secretly nourished and embellished over the past few months. Could she develop grands parfums of her own? Truly great scents reminiscent of the elegance and beauty of yesteryear, yet available to a wider market, perhaps in Europe as well as the United States? It was a dream worth investigating. She owed that much to her father.

  Standing in the dimly lit storage room behind La Parfumerie Camille, Simone ran her fingers over the old-fashioned “organ” of her father’s perfume console that stood in one corner, draped in sheets. Perhaps no one in the United States knew better than she how to “play” this instrument, which physically resembled a pipe organ, but which in the place of music-bearing pipes held hundreds of small bottles containing essential oils, resinoids, and absolutes—naturally produced or “nature identical.” Her father had not used the pure chemicals common to modern perfuming.

  Simone had the ability to identify literally thousands of different odors, and using the contents of these vials, she could “listen through her nose” to the harmonies of their scents and blend them into perfectly balanced aromatic chords.

  But it took more than just talent as a perfumer to achieve what had become in her heart her dearest wish.

  It took money. Lots of money. Because fine fragrances were no longer the products of a cottage industry.

  Perfuming today was big business. Today it was more than creating a winning fragrance. It was also creating the hype. The packaging. The marketing. Simone’s shoulders slumped. She could be the most talented perfumer in all the world, but without that mega-structure of business behind her, her grand parfum would likely remain a petit parfum instead.

  Thanks to her Tantie Camille, Simone did not have to decide immediately what to do with her future. She had her small room in the apartment above the shop for as long as she wanted. “My dear little pet,” clucked the elderly woman fondly, “stay here with me. Together, we’ll run the parfumerie. It is a good business. I am getting old. I need the help of a younger woman such as you.”

  Simone could not bear to tell her aunt that she’d had about all of New Orleans she could stand. Her time in New York had given her a taste for the wider world beyond either Grasse or the French Quarter, and she liked the flavor. She had decided to make up her min
d firmly about which direction she would take with her career, then tell Tantie Camille when it was a fait accompli. She knew the older woman meant well, but Simone did not want to end up as Camille had, a mediocre perfumer in a derelict shop catering to tourists on Esplanade Street.

  Until she made a decision, however, she would do all she could to aid the woman who had been like a mother to her since her own maman had died shortly after arriving in America. Today, that meant unpacking a cardboard carton of vintage perfume bottles Camille had purchased from a friend who imported antiques by the case lot from around the world. Camille was away having her hair done, so Simone carried the box from the storeroom into the small, cramped showroom where she could wait on customers as she inventoried the contents.

  These proved to be English in origin. Some of the bottles packed inside were standard amber vials of the type used in apothecary shops in Victorian times, old but not particularly valuable. Still, visitors to her aunt’s shop would perceive them as romantic when filled with Camille’s own concoctions.

  But at the bottom of the box, Simone felt a larger item, wrapped in heavy brown paper. She brought it out and set it on the counter. It was about six inches wide, four inches deep, maybe eight tall, and it was heavy.

  Carefully removing the paper, she let out a delighted exclamation at what she had uncovered. It was an exquisite nineteenth-century toiletries box made of smoky agate, ornately gilded. Raising the lid, she counted five crystal perfume bottles, the stopper of each adorned with a tiny silver bird, nestled in the blue velvet lining like a family of shiny robins. Alongside were some manicure files, a tortoise shell comb and a small mirror.

  “How beautiful!” she murmured. Taking the largest bottle from its holder, Simone pressed the tail feathers of the silver bird, opening the vial to the air. A scent spilled out, saturating her senses with a fragrance unlike any she had ever smelled. Or felt. An odor so heady it almost made her dizzy.