He wrote down my answer with a smile. Then he looked at me and held my glance for a long moment. He turned to Mathieu. “If you’d like to wait, it will be about fifteen minutes to a half hour. It’s pleasant in the garden. We’d be happy to bring you some chocolat chaud or coffee?”
“The garden, bien s?r,” Mathieu answered. “It’s one of my favorite ways to spend the time it takes to make up a scent. Delphine, choose the chocolate; it’s as velvety here as at Angelina’s,” he said, mentioning my great-grandmother’s favorite tearoom.
Outside, we sat in wicker chairs with thick cushions in an ornate rose garden. In a few minutes, a young woman came out carrying a silver tray with a plate of madeleines, a pot of chocolate, and fine Limoges cups. She poured the ambrosia and left with a nod.
“Charles planted these rosebushes, importing heirlooms from all over France and England. He cultivates hybrids here before he has them grown in Grasse. His goal is to create scents other houses can’t imitate.”
I sipped the fine chocolate and munched on a freshly baked cookie, marveling at the exceptional garden, drunk on the tastes and the scents swirling around me.
Mathieu reached out and ran his fingers around my wrist and then up my arm.
“What is this?” he asked, touching the mark near my shoulder.
I was wearing a new rust-colored watered-silk dress and hadn’t realized the cap sleeves had little slits in them until that moment.
We never spoke of my birthmark outside the family, but I wanted Mathieu to know about it. I told him about the crescent-moon-shaped mark every daughter of La Lune carried somewhere on her body.
“It’s a secret,” I warned. Even after a dozen years, the memory of how my schoolmates had taunted me and hurt me for being different still lingered.
“I promise never to tell,” he said, and then leaned over and kissed the sliver of my pale moon.
Monsieur’s assistant came to get us and escorted us back into the shop. We sat down with the perfumer, and he presented me with a crystal flacon. There was no label. On the silver cap was the engraving of a crescent moon with a star inside it.
I started.
“What is wrong?” Monsieur asked.
“This sign—is it your insignia?”
“Yes, the House of L’Etoile has used it since we opened our first shop in 1780.”
“It’s a symbol that’s part of my family history, too,” I said.
“I’m aware of that, Mademoiselle Duplessi. Our families have been acquainted for a long time. My father was a good friend of your great-grandmother. As was my grandfather.”
I felt myself blush. A good friend was how Grand-mère always referred to the gentlemen who’d availed themselves of her salon when she was one of Paris’s great courtesans.
“Now, for your scent.”
He opened the bottle, tipped and pressed it to a pale green swatch of fabric, and then, with ceremony, handed it to me.
I inhaled. The fragrance was creamy and well rounded. I couldn’t identify any particular flower or spice, but rather I was treated to an impression. The perfume smelled like colors: deep burgundy, pale pink, and midnight blue streaked with silver. Mysterious like the night, it was secretive.
“If you like it, you can try it on,” Monsieur said. “It will smell different once it warms on your skin.”
I reached for the bottle, but Mathieu took it first. He pressed his forefinger to the opening and then, with a lover’s gentle touch, stroked the perfume onto the insides of my wrists, the space behind my right ear and then my left, and after that ran his finger down my neck.
I had forgotten that Monsieur L’Etoile was watching. Was it shameful of me not to care? I stretched out my neck as the scent released its full bouquet, which was both an invitation and a promise.
“What is it called?” I asked Monsieur L’Etoile.
“Custom scents don’t have names as such. We mark them with a number that corresponds to the customer. This is Duplessi number sixteen. Are you pleased with it?”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “I’ll never wear anything else.” I was delighted at the idea that I now had my own scent. I turned to Mathieu. “Thank you for my gift.”
Mathieu paid for the purchase, and once we were out in the street, he stopped to bury his face in my neck.
“It smells like you, only with roses and lilacs and wind and salt from the sea added. But that’s just on your neck. I will have to test it and see how it smells on other parts of you before I can make an absolute determination. Will you allow that?”
He was asking me if I was ready for us to become lovers. Did I dare say yes? I wanted to. To say yes, yes, please, now, today, before it’s too late. There it was again. That terrible feeling that our time was limited. A verse I had learned in school came back to me, Andrew Marvell’s cautionary poem:
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime. . . .
But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vaults, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Chapter 15
My mother wanted to coddle me, and for the next few weeks I let her. I ate what she cooked, drank what she poured, read the light and frivolous novels she purchased for me, walked on my beloved beach, and inspected all the new shops that had sprung up in Cannes in the years I’d been gone. Most of all, I stayed away from pencils, charcoal, paintbrushes, and canvases. And although I tried to keep my Book of Hours hidden away, I found myself reading a passage every night, wistfully indulging in glorious memories, punishing myself for even thinking I could have lived the rest of my days with someone like Tommy.
The bright sunshine and sweeping sea view were such a contrast to New York City, and I couldn’t quite acclimate myself to having left one place and being in another.
April ended. May began, and my mother’s gardens came into bloom. I discovered I could waste a whole afternoon sitting under the wisteria arbor, smelling its sweet perfume, reading and dozing.