by Jill Jones
“Whose voice do you think it was?”
Nick leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead and his suddenly tired eyes. Then he told her his family’s legend about John Rutledge, and about finding that ancestor’s diary, letters and the perfume in the old trunk. “In those articles, John Rutledge often referred to Mary Rose as his ‘lady love.’ He took a deep breath. “When I started going into the dreams looking for you, I believe it was he who warned me, for he also told me that my own ‘lady love,’ meaning you, went there too often as well.”
Simone sat her coffee mug down with a thump. “You believe that John and Mary Rose are still alive and living in the dreamworld?”
He shrugged. “Sort of. I think our own experiences have proven that…the physical body can and does at times enter into another plane. Their bodies were never found. And from the information I read in his diary and her letters, I know it was their intention to run away together into the dreams, never to return.”
He saw Simone shiver and reached across the table and laid his hand upon hers. “I know it’s lunacy, but it’s the only explanation I have to offer you.”
“I was hoping you’d come to the flat and carried me unconscious back here to Brierley,” she said softly. “It would be a lot easier to accept than thinking I was physically transported here through the dreams.”
A protracted silence fell between them. Then Simone spoke again. “Esther thinks that John and Mary Rose overused the perfume, and that it killed them and dematerialized their bodies,” she said. “I’d rather believe they were still together in the dreamworld.”
Nick let out a heavy sigh. “Yes,” he agreed, “I would rather believe that, too. But that brings us to the perfume.”
“It’s dangerous, Nick,” Simone said abruptly. “At first I didn’t believe Esther’s warnings, but now I know better. Dupuis…”
“What about Dupuis? What happened between you and him? He came barging into my lab like a madman, threatening to kill us both.”
“He has tried the perfume, Nick. He’s used it, and now he’s obsessed with having it.”
Nick’s stomach balled into a hard knot. Of course, he’d suspected Simone was working on the substance at the House of Rutledge, but he hadn’t considered how Dupuis would react to it. But then, considering its effects, what man wouldn’t become obsessed with having it? That idea aroused an earlier and terrible suspicion. “He didn’t…uh…come on to you, did he?”
Simone frowned, then related the whole sordid incident to him, and when she finished, Nick felt as if he could kill Antoine Dupuis with his bare hands. “If I’d known what he did to you, I swear I would have used his own gun to blow him apart.”
Simone touched his arm. “I’m glad you didn’t. You would have ended up in jail, and I would have been stuck forever in the dreamworld, waiting for you.”
Nick stared at her, distinctly glad he hadn’t murdered Dupuis, no matter how he hated him. For it could have happened just as she said.
Coming to his senses, he told Simone about the Frenchman’s arrest. “Dupuis is likely the one in jail, although with his connections, he’s probably managed to free himself on bond.” Then another thought occurred to him, and he scowled. “Do you think there is any chance he might be able to recreate the perfume?”
Simone shook her head. “As I’m sure you know from our mutual acquaintance at the Botanical Society, the flower Mary Rose used to make her perfume is extinct. At least it was thought to be so, until I was given those seeds.”
What seeds? What was she talking about? Nick made a mental note to question her about them, but didn’t interrupt what she was saying. “I doubt if Dupuis could ever come up with the flowers, and I had no success trying to synthesize the perfume oil,” she continued.
“So you had no better luck than I.” Nick smiled ruefully. “I’ve never been so frustrated with a perfume in my life. In fact, even once I had the actual blossoms to work with, I still was unable to distill a fragrance that had the, shall we say, the ‘powers,’ of Mary Rose’s perfume.”
Simone looked up at him sharply. “Blossoms? Where did you get mahja blossoms?”
“Come. I have something to show you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The afternoon sun was warm on her face as Nick led her across the meadow. The lush yet serene surroundings and her own deep sense of joy filled Simone with the impression that they were still in some kind of magical world, where time did not exist and the past had dissolved into a vague darkness that need not be entered again. Except this world appeared to be the real thing. The sky was pale blue, the meadow English summer green. There was not a wisp of indigo mist in sight, and the only pleasure palace around was the dilapidated but lovely old manor house, Brierley Hall.
And moments ago, Nick had asked her to become the lady of that manor. Lady Rutledge. Madame Rutledge. Mrs. Nicholas Rutledge. Any way she said it, she found it incredible that it would soon be her name. Her oldest and most impossible dream was at last to come true!
They trod down the path through the woods until at last they reached the garden behind the cottage. Nick opened the gate, which gave a rusty squeak under his touch. “Remind me to replace that,” he remarked.
“No, don’t replace it,” Simone answered, touching the sun-warmed iron bars and almost feeling the vibrations of the woman who once lived in this place. “It belongs here. Likely Mary Rose went through this very gate to enter her garden every day.”
“Romantic.”
She tossed him a light laugh. “Yes, very. Now what mysterious thing have we come here to see?”
He led her across the enclosed garden to where five shrubby bushes grew along the opposite wall, and Simone’s eyes nearly popped from her head. “Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, touching the ripening buds on one stalk. “The mahja! Were they here all along?”
Nick plucked a bud and held it to his nose, then tucked the unopened blossom behind Simone’s ear. “I guess they’ve been here ever since Mary Rose planted them.” He told her about the entry in John Rutledge’s diary that revealed where he’d obtained the original seeds. “And you read in Mary Rose’s own diary what she did with them.”
“Book of Shadows.”
“What?”
Simone laughed at Nick’s perplexed expression. “That’s what a witch calls her record of charms and spells. A Book of Shadows.”
“Oh.” He laughed uncertainly. “Esther told you that, I suppose? Is she a witch?”
“Most definitely.”
“I saw these flowers in her garden as well. Did you first learn about the perfume from her?”
Simone shook her head. It was her turn to fill him in on the incredible chain of events that had brought her to England, and ultimately, into his life once again. She told him about discovering the perfume in the crystal antique vial, about tracing the shipment to its source, and about coming to the cottage to see if she could find out more about it. “So, I must confess, my rental of the cottage was not quite coincidental,” she said with a lift of her brow. “But I did not know it belonged to you.”
Nick laughed. “I’m becoming a believer in the notion that there are no coincidences. But tell me, where did Esther get the mahja bushes?”
After telling him that her hostess had given her a sample of the same perfume, claiming it had been made by her “craft ancestor” and hoping Simone could make more of it for her “medicinal” purposes, Simone shared with him the strange story of Shamir and the seven seeds. “Those are new plants in Esther’s garden. We only put the seeds in the ground a few weeks ago.”
They began to stroll around the circular bed in the center of the garden. Nick took her hand.
“Well, where do we go from here? We have the plants. We have the expertise. We have the equipment. Shall we continue to try to replicate old Mary Rose’s potion?”
“Nick, you know that Dr. Wheatley believes the mahja is a hallucinogenic plant. A cousin to the datura. We can’t make a perfume
that could be harmful.”
“Nobody has proven it harmful yet.”
“Think of how it affected Antoine Dupuis,” she argued. “What if we were successful in reproducing what Mary Rose created and it affected everyone like that? The world would be overrun with horny old men.”
Nick laughed and led her to the bench, where they sat basking in the warm sunlight. “You’re right. That could be dangerous. But, like I said, I’ve never been so frustrated with a perfume in my life. Even when I distilled the essence directly from the fresh flowers, it still didn’t work like…Mary Rose’s.”
He leaned back against the wall and drew her securely into his arms, then exhaled heavily, as if in resignation. “I guess we’ll never know what her secret was, but because of the potential danger inherent in using the mahja, I suppose you’re right. We ought to give up on it. But I’ve been thinking. You’ve told me you wish to create fine perfumes in the tradition of your father. Since you no longer have the facilities of the House of Rutledge at your disposal, it occurred to me you will need another perfumery.”
Simone looked up at him, perplexed. What was he getting at? He kissed her, and she felt him press something cold and metallic into her palm. She looked down and saw it was a key. “What is this?”
“It isn’t much, but if you’ll have it, Bombay Fragrances, Ltd. is yours.”
Simone straightened in his arms. “What? You must be out of your mind. I know what it has cost you…”
He cut off her protests with another kiss. “I am only a nose, with perhaps a nose for business as well. You are an artist. Let me help you. I know the people you will need to create the bottles, the packaging. I know how to organize the promotion. It’s what I did for Dupuis. Let me do it for you.”
She once would have been suspicious that he was just trying to use her talents as a perfumer for his own gain, as he had her father’s. But the remarkable events of the past few days had taken away any such notion. Now, she saw his offer for what it was…he was ready to give up everything, just as he’d said, for her love and forgiveness. Tears welled in her eyes.
“What makes you think I want to remain in the perfume business? Maybe I would simply like to retire and become a country witch, like Esther.”
“If that is what you’d rather,” Nick replied, nuzzling her ear, “then become a witch. Brierley Hall may not be the grandest estate, but I’ve been thinking lately that I’d like to move to the country anyway. I’m rather worn out with the whole fragrance business myself. I’ll find some other way to support us…”
“Who said I couldn’t be a witch and a perfumer?” Simone teased, wondering what it took to become a witch. But she knew that was not her calling. “Why couldn’t we move the perfumery from London and set it up in Mary Rose’s house?” The thought appealed to her for many reasons. “I don’t want to stay in the city. The air is so foul. Here, it would be…a little like in Grasse.”
She could see that her enthusiasm had spilled over into Nick, and he beamed at her. “Do you mean it? You’d move to the country?”
“I love the country. I guess I’m just a peasant at heart, although I’m about to marry an aristocrat.” She smiled at him wistfully. “I’m glad times have changed since the days of poor John and Mary Rose.”
Later, Simone telephoned her friend Esther to let her know she was alive and well and living firmly on Planet Earth. “Thanks for encouraging Nick to…come for me,” she said in a low voice, as if someone might overhear what could seem to be a rather mad conversation. “We’re to be married soon, and we are going to move here, to Brierley Hall.”
She could tell that the old “white witch” was thrilled at the news, and wondered if she’d cast any sort of charm or spell to bind the two dream lovers together. She didn’t dare ask.
“What about our perfume? Will you be able to finish it for me?” Esther wanted to know.
“You won’t need me for much. When the enfleurage is completed, I’ll come over and use the ethyl alcohol to extract the pure absolute, the perfume oil. But,” she hesitated, not wanting to disappoint her friend. “I have to warn you, I can’t guarantee it will have the same…effect as Mary Rose’s.” She told Esther about the mahja bushes growing in the cottage garden and how Nick had distilled the essential oil only to find that although it smelled sweet, it had no special powers.
She expected Esther to express concern or disappointment and was surprised to hear instead a low laugh from the other end of the line. “Oh, I’m sure it will do, my dear. Now what about the other perfume? The one you promised to make for…what was his name?”
“Shamir? Oh, I intend to make it, too. Right away in fact. Nick has quite a few things to wrap up in London. He plans to put his town house on the market and get things organized to move the perfumery into the cottage. While he’s busy with that, I’ll use the present facilities to assemble the blend listed in the formula created by my father. Nick has said I can use the oil of the mahja he distilled, and I took the rest of what I needed when I went back to the House of Rutledge.” She paused, then asked, “You don’t believe it would be dangerous, do you?”
Esther did not answer right away, and when she did, her words were measured. “As you know, I believe the oil of the mahja, wrongly used, can be dangerous. But I suspect that Shamir and his ‘master’ know the dangers and are willing to accept the consequences. I would advise you to fulfill your obligation to him, then return the formula and give him back seven seeds if you can find them, and ask him not to bother you further.”
Simone liked having her own personal wise woman, if only to confirm the decision she’d already made. “Good idea. ”
A few hours later they entered the suburbs of London, and Nick made straightaway for the high rise tower and the corporate flat. They pulled up in front, and Simone used her most charming smile to convince the doorman to let her into the flat. “I went out of town for a few days, and I locked my key inside,” she told him.
He escorted them up the elevator, and she snickered when she saw him keeping a suspicious eye on Nick. While she waited for him to unlock the door, she tapped her foot on the hallway carpet and felt a bump beneath the sole of the soft sandal. She looked down and saw what looked like a little red worm. She moved it with the toe of her shoe and realized that instead that it was a wilted flower. A wilted mahja flower. She glanced around furtively, halfway expecting to see the tall figure of Shamir materialize from the ether. Although curious about her discovery, she bent without remark and picked up the blossom, then followed the others into the flat.
“The place has been under guard since the, uh, trouble,” said Alfred. “Everything should be just as it was.”
Simone went swiftly into the bedroom. Everything was just as she’d left it, except that the red shoe she’d dropped making her escape from Nick’s was on top of her suitcase. She slipped it inside the luggage without comment. “I’m ready,” she said to Nick. “Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, Simone heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God that is all behind me,” she told Nick as he placed the suitcase in the back of the car. “Thanks for returning my shoe, by the way.”
He kissed her and helped her into the small roadster. “I hated to part with it.”
When he was in and settled, she showed him the wilted mahja blossom. “I found this on the carpet in the hall.”
“I put it on your shoe when I left it by the door.”
Simone was puzzled. “A peace offering?”
Nick steered into the heavy traffic. “I wanted you to know then what I told you later in the dreamworld, that I would give up everything for you.”
“And you had no way of knowing I already had mahja blooms to work with…” she thought out loud. “You were handing over the perfume, weren’t you?”
Nick only nodded. They drove in silence, then Simone asked, “But why didn’t I see the shoe when I came home?”
“Because Dupuis got there first. He found and took your shoe, and somethi
ng else I’d left for you. I guess he didn’t see the flower, or he would have taken that, too.”
“What something else?”
Nick took one hand off the steering wheel and reached into the pocket of his coat, the same one he’d been wearing the day he discovered Simone was missing. He handed her a ball of wadded paper.
Before she finished reading the note of apology Nick had written her, the words swam before her tear-filled eyes. If there had been any remaining doubt in her mind of Nick’s intention toward her, it vanished into the blue. For here in her hands was proof that everything he’d told her, promised her in that other realm, he’d first tried to tell her here on earth.
The next morning, Nick laid the Times on the kitchen counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. Upstairs, he could hear the shower running, and he smiled and shook his head, still not believing that Simone was here, with him at last. It couldn’t get any better than this.
But it did. He laid open the paper, and a headline jumped out at him: “Executive Missing. House of Rutledge CEO Charged with Battery, Suspected of Embezzlement.”
Nick stared at the story, stunned. According to the article, Antoine Dupuis had not been seen since being released from jail on bond after an incident involving a suspected assault on an employee. In addition, several members of the firm’s Board of Directors, who had been auditing its operations, were charging him with embezzling money from the company. Nick let out a low whistle, but he couldn’t resist a grin. It looked like Dupuis was about to get his after all.
When Simone joined him for coffee, he read the story aloud to her.
“Oh, Nick, I’m so sorry,” she said softly, settling into a chair across from him. “Not for Dupuis, of course, but that your family name is being drug through another puddle of mud.”
Nick shook his head and grinned broadly across the table at her. “You don’t understand. All that doesn’t matter anymore. Everyone I care about knows it’s not my family’s business any longer. Like you said, companies change hands all the time. But where do you suppose Dupuis has gone?”
