Page 25 of The Scent of Intuition
Still, Alfie surveyed his counter and was rather pleased that he’d worked with such precision and skill, following the teachings of his mentors from years ago with great diligence. He’d captured the essence of seduction combined with Bea’s unique spirit.
He’d created a key to unlock the heart’s deepest desires. After years of dreaming of the veiled girl in India, he hadn’t even known that he found her until he sketched her scent with nothing but his intuition.
She was so precious that his chest constricted at the thought that another would hold her.
“Let me smell it,” Bea said as she reached for the beaker.
“It needs to come together for a few hours, and then it’s ready.”
The shop seemed to hold its breath, the air charged with anticipation, as if it, too, recognized the power of the potion Alfie had crafted when she inhaled it. In that moment, he was more than just an apothecary; he was a weaver of dreams, a conjurer of love’s most elusive magic.
And now it was time to give it away.
Chapter Ten
The next morning,Bea sat alone in her bedchamber at Cloverdale House. The soft glow of a single candle cast flickering shadows across the room. In her solitude, she noticed how profound the silence around her was now that Pippa was busy with Nick and preparing to move to another house with him. Only the occasional rustle of leaves outside her window and the distant creak of the house settling interrupted her thoughts.
She rested her hands on the small escritoire, its mahogany surface polished to hide the scratches that betrayed its age. Before her lay the journal Alfie had given her, its pages filled with her neat, precise entries of everything she’d consumed and what she’d applied to her skin, exactly as he’d instructed.
Breakfast: Toast with butter and a cup of tea, with a bit of sugar.
Luncheon: Cold chicken, bread, and a glass of milk.
Afternoon tea: Raisin scone, halved, with clotted cream. Tea.
Dinner: Roast lamb, peas, and potatoes, a slice of apple tart. Tea. Sherry.
She rifled through the pages, evaluating how much she’d eaten and wondering what Alfie might think. For some inexplicable reason, it mattered more to her what he thought than all of her mother’s friends of the Ton combined.
Next to those entries, she had recorded her skincare routine in meticulous detail. Morning: Rosewater tonic, followed by a light application of almond oil and the medicinal ointment.
Evening: Lavender-scented soap and a touch of chamomile balm. Then more ointment.
Soon the journal was no longer just a ledger of meals and lotions. She’d thought of Alfie so much that the journal had transformed into something more personal, an intimate conversation with Alfie. Bea dipped her quill into the inkwell and began to write, the words flowing freely from her heart.
There was a boy, once, in India. A young man. He was very kind and my only friend during those days. We never spoke a word, not one, but he reacted to everything that happened around us as if he understood every nuance of my situation. I often thought he could comprehend English, though I never dared to ask.
For an entire year, he brought me tea and honey every morning, along with salves and other remedies. Sometimes, he would leave a flower—bright and vivid like the land beyond the walls I wasn’t permitted to visit.
She remembered the first time he laid a blossom on the table next to a small copper container with dry tea leaves, his eyes meeting hers for a brief moment. It was a simple flower, yet it felt like the most precious gift she had ever received.
Bea paused, her heart aching with the chance she’d lost to speak to the young man in the headscarf. Out of fear of disappointing her mother before her first season, she’d obeyed her mother, never uttered a word to him. She’d never even thanked him for the honey or the flower.
Bea put the quill down and brought a hand to her chest. She’d vowed herself never to allow an opportunity like that to go by again.
She reached for her old atlas, the one with the Indian Ocean map. Opening its worn cover, she turned to the back where she had hidden the pressed flower—aNagapushpa,rareand delicate. The petals were still remarkably intact, their pale beauty a testament to the passage of time.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she touched the fragile blossom, memories of her travels with her parents flooding back: the scent of spices hanging in the air, the vibrant colors of the market stalls, and the warmth of the young man’s presence beside her. Pippa didn’t even know of this secret keepsake or its significance.
She wrote again, her quill scratching softly against the paper.
Even now, I can see his silhouette so clearly, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled—shyly—whenever our eyes met. He never needed words; his actions spoke for him. That year offered me a respite from the loneliness, a quiet companionship that I cherished deeply even though I was locked away at the mansion all that time. Would he remember me if we met again?
Bea closed her eyes, letting the memories wash over her. The young man’s half-visible face seemed to meld with Alfie’s in her mind, two figures from different times and places, yet both holding a piece of her heart. The young man’s eye color had been the same.
The weight of unspoken words and unrealized possibilities settled around her like a heavy cloak.
She carefully placed the pressed flower back into the atlas, closing it with a reverent finality. The journal, now imbued with her innermost thoughts, found its place in her reticule. The act felt symbolic, a merging of past and present, a step toward a future where she could embrace her experiences and the emotions they stirred.
