Bertie had never kept a diary, as far as Stuart knew. So the books and the laudanum would be as intimate a look at Bertie’s private life as Stuart was allowed. But all the same, he circumnavigated the bed and pulled open the drawers of the other night table.
Those drawers yielded only a folded handkerchief identical to the score of others in the wardrobe. Not exactly a revealing personal item. Stuart shook the handkerchief open.
It wasn’t clean, nor was it soiled, but there were irregular translucent spots where the fabric had absorbed some sort of grease. Butter, by the faint smell of it. Stuart lifted the handkerchief to his nose.
Butter and a trace of the pungency of lemon, mellowed by the sweetness of sugar. He examined the handkerchief again. Good, white linen, Bertie’s initials in one corner. Bertie had used it to wrap around a piece of cake or pastry. Afterward, he’d folded the handkerchief into a precise square and placed it in the farthest corner of the nightstand, its edges exactly flush with those of the drawer.
Had Bertie kept it for the smell? Stuart sniffed the handkerchief again. An ordinary enough smell. What had it been? A slice of lemon pound cake? He could think of nothing interesting, memorable, or important about the smell of lemon pound cake.
He inhaled deeply, trying to extract some hidden essence from the smell. It remained faint. Yet with every breath he took, the scent grew subtler and lovelier. And suddenly it was the sparkling odor of warm southern climes where lemon trees flourished under cobalt skies.
Stuart lowered the handkerchief, amazed almost as much by the intricacy of the scent as by his imaginative reaction. It was only pound cake, and he didn’t even care for pound cake. Yet as he put the fabric to his nose again and closed his eyes, he could very well believe himself in the gardens of a Mediterranean villa, surrounded by potted lemon trees laden with fruit the color of sunshine.
Had Bertie been still alive, he’d be able to tell Stuart why he’d kept the handkerchief, and what it had been that had left behind the alluring, evocative odor.
But Bertie was dead.
Stuart dropped the handkerchief back and closed the drawer.
The dining room at Fairleigh Park was cavernous and drafty. Stuart informed Prior that he’d have his meal in the bright, creamy library instead.
Prior’s reaction was a dismay nearly identical to that of Mrs. Boyce’s. For a second Stuart thought the butler would clutch his chest and fall over. But the head manservant’s training held. “Yes, sir,” he answered. “We will have a place set here for you.”
Prior and his minions arranged the place setting on the mahogany desk as Stuart annotated a stack of bills on a reading table. He’d already reviewed proposed legislations concerning fertilizers, barbed wires, and conveyance of mails when a footman marched past with a soup tureen.
“Dinner is served, sir,” said Prior.
Stuart settled himself at the desk and opened an ironed copy of the Times to an investigation of the recent anarchist bomb attack in Paris. Vaguely he was aware that Prior and the two footmen looked askance at one another, as if he were reading not the country’s newspaper of record, but a copy of Fanny Hill. Then Prior cleared his throat, and lifted the lid of the tureen.
Suddenly the library, which had smelled mainly of old books and old cigar smoke, was redolent of summer, of crisp cucumbers ripening overnight on the vine. Stuart lowered his paper a moment to see what had produced such a potently pleasant odor. Prior laid a bowl of pale, thick potage in front of him.
Stuart took a sip. The sip turned into an explosion of flavors on his tongue, rich, deep, pure, like eating the sunshine and verdure of a fine June afternoon. Startled, he did something he almost never did—putting down his newspaper when he dined alone—and stared into the soup.
Slowly, he lifted another spoonful to his mouth. No, the first sip had not been a deviation. The soup was indeed that good. He tried to taste each individual ingredient: cucumbers, onion, a hint of garlic, butter, broth, and cream. Nothing unusual, fancy, or particularly noble. Yet it was…it was sublime.
He cared nothing for food. Hadn’t in ages and ages. Food was sustenance, something to keep him alive and healthy, nothing more. A dinner at the Tour d’Argent was no different from a dinner at the lowliest fish-and-chip shop: just dinner.
This was not just dinner. This was as dangerous and unpredictable as the presence of a scantily clad woman in the cell of a monk who’d taken a vow of chastity.
He set down his spoon. Thirty years ago he’d have begged for one more sip. Twenty years ago he’d have been thrilled to discover that his sense of taste hadn’t permanently atrophied. Ten years ago he might have taken this sudden reawakening of his palate for an augury of wonderful things to come, things he’d wished for with the single-mindedness of a long-buried seed seeking the unbearable beauty of a world drenched in light.