A Scent of Magic Read online

  Simone slipped into cool, comfortable shorts and a loose T-shirt. The apartment was equipped with an ancient air conditioner, but it smelled funky when it spewed semi-cool air into the room, and she preferred to open the windows. Suddenly ravenous, she poured herself a tall glass of orange juice and dug into a bag of cookies she’d stashed in the fridge, then settled into the serious investigation of Mary Rose’s diary.

  Taking the book out of her purse, she smoothed the cover lovingly with her fingers and blew the dust and mold of well over a century into the air. She turned back the gray, brittle cover and read again Mary’s Rose’s curious inscription:

  The Charms and Spells of Mary Rose Hatcher.

  Simone’s heart beat hard, both in anticipation, and in reverence for this artifact.

  The pages were carefully laid out and printed in calligraphy-style penmanship. Many were graced with ornamental embellishments or illustrations. There were recipes for herbal tonics, soaps, rose and lilac waters, potpourri, candles, poultices, tinctures, and other more mysterious and complex concoctions for the cure of ailments such as “women’s flow” and “fainting.” Accompanying many of the entries were little rhymes, poems that invoked blessings upon the substances. Charms, Simone thought wistfully, enchanted by the sweetness of the sayings. She recalled the couplets Esther had chanted over the ashes she’d buried with one of Shamir’s seeds. Too bad the charms were only that, sweet little sayings, and had no real power.

  Still, the entries filled her with hope. Obviously, Mary Rose, the “witch,” had been a healer. Simone recalled Esther’s claim that their “craft” was of the whitest kind, and she could see clearly from the notations in this diary, it was true. She smiled. A perfume created by a healer could only be of the whitest kind as well.

  She turned the pages until she reached the inscription toward the end she had glanced at in the taxi. A lump formed in her throat as she read:

  There is no greater malady in this world than a broken heart. Until now, I have lived without hope of discovering a cure for my own heart’s misery caused by the cruel and extended separation from my beloved John, who is the very essence of my soul. As I begin this procedure, I pray to obtain not only a sweet perfume oil, but a sublime one as well, which will allow us to transcend all that keeps us apart here on Earth. Herewith are the instructions for extracting the essence of the mahja plants grown from seeds sent by my beloved from the distant land where he now lives. The very essence of my desire is that the union of his seeds and my soil will produce for us a “natural child,” a potion that will have the power to unite us in love for all time.

  Simone felt the sting of tears and batted at them with her lashes. That poor, poor woman. Separated from her beloved John, the “very essence of her heart and soul,” not only temporarily by distance, but forever by societal restraints. Simone tried to imagine her pain and found that she could relate. No wonder Mary Rose had nurtured the illusion that a perfume oil could transcend their hopeless predicament.

  She drew in a long breath and thought of Nick. Now there was a hopeless predicament. Simone questioned that she’d ever loved Nick with the same fierce passion that Mary Rose had loved John, but in her heart, she knew that she had.

  Suspected that she still might.

  A tear fell as she recalled how she, too, had been suddenly and brutally separated from the man whom she’d thought to be the essence of her heart and soul. But, she reminded herself harshly, unlike the way it was for John and Mary Rose, Simone’s pain was wrought by her own lover.

  And she doubted that any perfume oil could ever transcend the events of that terrible day.

  The recipe in the Book of Shadows was an outline of the process Mary Rose had used to capture the essence of the so-called mahja flowers, whatever they were. Simone immediately recognized the procedure as enfleurage. Even though a person like Mary Rose might have had access to crude distillation equipment, it made sense that she would have used the earlier, time-honored perfuming method. Simone had herself played around with enfleurage, just to experience how the early perfumers had captured scent from the flowers of the fields.

  Prepare a glass plate with a thin covering of suet. Cut fresh flowers and lay them in the fat. Remove wilted flowers daily and replace with fresh blooms until harvest is complete and pomade is redolent with the fragrance. Extract with alcohol to render pure perfume oil.

  A simple, traditional, Victorian recipe. Easy to duplicate, except for one thing. The mahja.

  What the hell was a mahja plant?

  She dug in her purse for the scrap of paper upon which she’d written Esther’s telephone number. “Esther?” she said into the phone moments later. “This is Simone.”

  “Simone, my dear. Are you well? Is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Listen. Have you ever heard of a plant called the mahja? Or something that sounds like that?”

  “I don’t think so,” Esther replied. “Why?”

  “Because that’s the name of the flower that Mary Rose used in her perfume oil. I’m certain it must have another name that’s familiar in our vernacular. Mahja must have been what John Rutledge called it when he sent her the seeds.”

  “What on earth are you talking about, child?”

  Oops. Simone forgot that Esther didn’t know the full story, the tale that she herself had only just read in the witch’s diary. How was Simone going to explain to her friend that she’d obtained Mary Rose’s Book of Shadows? Or rather, how she’d obtained it. “Never mind,” she said, going on hurriedly. “Speaking of seeds, have any of those we planted sprouted yet?”

  “I was thinking I should call you about them,” Esther said, her words revealing an evident curiosity. “They’re th’ fastest growers I have ever seen, especially th’ one that received th’ charm.”

  “Really? Are there blossoms yet?”

  “No, no. Nothing that spectacular. But I do think we’ll be seeing buds shortly, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t bloom by early August.”

  “Great. Well, I had better ring off now,” Simone said, anxious to avoid giving Esther any opening to question her further. She would explain it all when she’d had time to sort it out herself. But she couldn’t resist one last reminder. “If you remember any flower by that name, mahja, or something similar, give me a call. Bye.”

  Her next call was to the horticultural experts at Kew Gardens, seeking an answer to the same question.

  “It’s very strange that you should call,” said the polite and very British voice on the line. “We had another inquiry about that same plant just last week. A man brought in a pressed flower he said was called a mahja.”

  Simone’s eyes widened, and she felt her pulse pick up a beat. “You wouldn’t happen to recall his name, would you?”

  “Let’s see. I have it here in my appointment book. Yes. Rutledge. Nicholas Rutledge. Do you know him?”

  “Yes, I do, but we’re mere acquaintances. How interesting, and coincidental,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm even though she was about to explode. Where had Nick obtained a specimen of the mahja? “Did you discern the plant’s contemporary identity? Does it have a modern name I might recognize?”

  “Actually, no,” the botanist replied. “He left the specimen with me to examine the pollen, and my tests indicated that it is likely in the same family as the datura, and its cousin, brugmansia, although it is a species not known at this time.”

  Simone had to struggle for her breath. Surely his identification was mistaken. Those plants were like poison. “When you say the species is ‘not known at this time,’ what exactly do you mean?”

  “That it is either now extinct or grows so sparsely that it is virtually non-existent.”

  “But how can that be? If he had a specimen, surely he must know where the plant grows.”

  “It was a dried specimen, a flower that had been pressed between the pages of a book a long time ago.”

  “Oh.” Simone considered th
at for a moment, then asked, “Are you certain that it is in the same family as the datura?”

  This was not good news. Although she had not studied hallucinogenic plants extensively at the university, she was well aware that both the datura and the brugmansia were highly hallucinogenic. That they could be toxic even.

  “Yes, fairly certain. I, uh, took the liberty of photocopying the specimen before returning it to him. It is here in my files, if you’d like to see what it looks like.”

  “Yes, I’d appreciate that.” Simone thanked the man very much and asked for directions to his office. Then she rang off and picked up the Book of Shadows. At the very back of the bound volume she came across several pages where pressed flowers lay in their papery graves. One page was bereft of its bloom, but Simone knew it was where Nick had come up with his specimen, because at the bottom of the page was written the word, “Mahja.”

  An hour later, Simone sat in the office of Dr. Thomas Wheatley, staring at the photocopied image of the blossom. It was a small, graceful, trumpet-shaped flower attached to a stem and adjacent to a small leaf. The botanist brought out a large volume in which he located color photos of both the datura and brugmansia.

  “As you can see, even though it is smaller, the flower and leaves of this so-called ‘mahja’ plant are very similar in structure and design to these other two,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, I see,” Simone replied, stunned at this turn of events. It had never occurred to her that the perfume oil might have come from an hallucinogenic plant. “Do you think the mahja might have had the same, uh, mind-altering qualities as these?”

  “I think it very likely.”

  Simone sighed. “Could I…would it be possible for me to have a copy of this?” she requested, indicating the photocopy of the flower.

  “I see no reason why not.” Dr. Wheatley left the office for a moment to comply with Simone’s request, and she stood staring at the red and yellow trumpet-shaped blossom of a brugmansia in the botanical encyclopedia.

  So Nick had an actual specimen of the mahja. Would he somehow be able to use it to synthesize the perfume? Knowing it was possibly hallucinogenic in nature, would he dare?

  Simone gave a cynical laugh. Of course he would dare. As she well knew, when he was determined to get ahead in life, Nicholas Rutledge was most capable of bypassing ethics and scruples. He would push the envelope, make the perfume, and take his chances that it would not end up on someone’s list of illegal substances.

  Simone had wanted to develop the perfume as a way to wreak her revenge on Nick, but now, she was no longer sure she was willing to take the risk she believed was involved. If he was successful in making the perfume, it was likely he would be caught in his own greed when the drug enforcement agencies found out its source and recalled the product from retail shelves. It would mean his financial ruin, and that, she supposed, was revenge enough.

  Despite her disappointment at this unexpected turn of events, she thanked the botanist sincerely and returned to the heart of London on the underground, stepping to street side just in time to inhale a whiff of gray-purple exhaust that belched from a passing bus. God, how she hated living in the city. The smells were dreadful. Simone sighed. After the discovery of the nature of the mahja plant, she wondered if there was any reason for her to remain in London.

  She was now at a dead end on the grand parfum she’d hoped to create from Mary Rose’s perfume. She hated working for Antoine Dupuis. And she found the Nick-look-alike Rutledge family portraits that peered at her from every wall of her workplace depressing.

  Stepping absentmindedly off a curb, Simone was almost sideswiped by a speeding taxi that missed her but enveloped her in a swirl of hot, dirty air. She coughed and returned to the safety of the sidewalk, down which she wandered aimlessly until she came to a large park, with a fountain and a statue of a man on horseback. Around her, pigeons clucked and cooed. Homeless people slept on the concrete benches. Tourists snapped shots of the bronze rider.

  Suddenly exhausted, she sank onto an empty park bench, clenching her jaw and fighting the raw sadness that strained at the back of her throat. It didn’t make sense for her to be so downcast. Other than the setback over Mary Rose’s perfume, she had everything to look forward to. A great job. An opportunity to create the kind of perfumes she’d dreamed of. Big money to back her work. She was surrounded by good fortune.

  But amidst that good fortune, Simone felt more dispirited than she could ever remember. She was lonely, miserable, and unsuccessful so far in her profession. She had no home here, no friends or family, nothing at all in this city except a one-time lover with a penchant for betrayal. Her only happiness seemed to be in the perfume-drenched dreams where she could be with that lover when in reality she could not. Maybe, she thought with a heavy sigh, she ought to turn in her resignation at the House of Rutledge and take the first flight back to New Orleans.

  But she hadn’t been particularly happy in New Orleans either. Where would she be happy? she wondered morosely.

  Her stomach growled, bringing her back to the moment. Maybe if she ate something, she would feel better. Spotting a pub across the street, she made her way safely through the rush of traffic, but just before she got to the doorway, a poster in a nearby storefront window caught her eye.

  “Come Home to Provence,” read the attractive, four-color poster in the window of a travel agency. It depicted a couple dining in cozy luxury in a quaint inn, their plates filled with the bounty of the area’s renowned produce, their glasses glowing with the rich red of the wine they held.

  Come home to Provence. The image on the travel poster transported her instantly away from city streets and smelly fumes and into the lavender fields surrounding her home in Provence. In Grasse. The last place she could remember being truly happy. What if she went back to that home? Would it be the same? Or would all the ghosts of that horrible time come screaming back at her?

  She turned away from the window, then walked past the entrance to the pub, her appetite gone.

  Home. Where was her home? Did she have one?

  Only in her dreams.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Two weeks had passed since his regrettable encounter with Simone, and they had been among the most futile and frustrating of Nick’s life. Determined to create and market the perfume ahead of Simone, he had spent every waking hour at the computer equipment that was now efficiently installed in the lab of Bombay Fragrances, Ltd., using every skill he had to try to chemically recreate the scent of the mahja.

  Using the last of the perfume available to him, since Simone had stolen the rest, he’d obtained a molecular “picture” of it using the gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer he’d finally purchased, although the expense was enormous and took a large bite out of his funding. Then, using a solvent, he had made a faintly fragrant solution from the pollen remaining inside the pressed flower. With his heart in his throat, he’d asked the sophisticated equipment to compare the chemistry of the two.

  It was close, but not close enough. The scent created by the pollen mix was like a mere shadow of the real thing.

  Then he’d tried another tack, reconstructing the perfume’s chemistry using synthetic products, although he knew that reconstitution of a natural oil is never as good as the true oil. Even so, he’d been pleased with the delightful variations on the theme of the fragrance that resulted from his efforts. Any one of them would make for a very respectable entrée into the world market.

  But none of them was quite the same as that made by Mary Rose Hatcher.

  And none of them turned him on.

  None held the magic of Mary Rose’s original perfume.

  Nick groaned and rolled his stool away from the desk. His back ached, and his throat felt like sandpaper. What time was it? What day was it? Why did he give a damn anyway?

  Life had taken a bleak turn for Nick the morning he’d discovered Simone’s treachery. After his initial shock and anger had subsided, a black depression had settl
ed over him, worse than any he’d ever experienced, even in his darkest moments. Her seduction and subsequent theft had indeed been poetic justice, a deadly accurate retribution that had brought back to him his sins from the past, and his bitter regret. His night with Simone had given him a taste of what life could have been like with her, what they could have shared. If he hadn’t thrown it all away. And for what? His pride? Fear? Money?

  He could think of nothing important enough for him to have carried through with Dupuis’s plot to steal Jean René’s formulas. Nothing dire enough that he should ever have betrayed Simone’s love.

  Of all the losses of his life, and they were legion, Nick realized now that losing Simone had been the most monstrous. And the most unnecessary. Having held her in his arms and made love to her once again, he wanted with all his soul to find a way back to her. Knowing she was now forever beyond his reach filled him with despair, and for once, he had come close to understanding how his father could have taken his own life.

  For two weeks, Nick had had to force himself to go on. He’d moved, zombie-like, from one task to another, his heart no longer truly passionate about such things as restoring his family’s good name, or becoming the leading perfumer in Britain.

  They simply no longer seemed to matter.

  He would give up everything for one chance to reclaim Simone’s heart.

  His nights had been tormented as well, for like a fool, he had indulged in applying a drop of perfume to his skin, hoping to induce the dreams in which he could have what was denied him in his waking hours. Simone. But in his dreams, even though she continued to call to him like a siren, inviting him into the temple of pleasure, he found he could not go there. He wanted her with a passion that seared his soul, but some deep inner restraint forbade him to join her. In some of the dreams, the conflict was so severe, he’d felt as if he were being torn in half, and he’d awakened in a cold sweat.

  He was fairly certain that any psychologist would tell him it was his guilt that held him back, that his subconscious was telling him he did not deserve Simone, even in his dreams.