Chapter Twenty-Two
“Like this?”
I peered over Felicity’s shoulder to check her work. “Yes, exactly. All in a single layer.”
The gentle morning light spilling through the diamond-paned windows of the still room warmed my back as I returned my attention
to the chassis in front of me. I pulled the cluster of delicate jasmine blossoms from their stem, then demonstrated again
how firmly to press their face into the thick layer of tallow covering the glass plate.
With its stone walls, garlands of drying herbs, and colorful shelves of pickled vegetables, marmalades, and chutneys, the
still room had the feeling of an ancient apothecary.
While Mrs. Silver largely appeared to use the room for preparing tea service and the making of preserves, the fact that we’d
found the wood-framed chassis seemed to indicate she also prepared her remedies here, some of which must have involved the
same process of cold enfleurage we were using.
I rolled my shoulders back, stretching out a kink in my neck.
It felt good to work; or, at least, it had given me something else to focus on besides where Foxcourt had vanished to this
morning. As the hours had passed, unease had begun to set in, along with a prickle of suspicion he was off trying to find
the nectar without me. I didn’t have so much pride that I couldn’t admit I was hurt to have been left behind, even as I grudgingly
understood why.
I was needed here, blending what I could of Immortal Rose. It might be days yet before we procured the nectar, and having
this blended now would only be to our benefit as the King’s diminishing life was reduced to hours, minutes.
I pushed aside the image of the open sores that would be emerging on the King’s sunken chest by now, the memory of another
dying man’s stench filling my nose.
“Does the fat truly absorb the scent?” came Tommy’s quiet voice.
He had come in an hour before, helping us arrange the supplies Oliver had procured, but had settled onto a stool with a sketchbook.
Now and then I glanced over, catching glimpses of our working hands and the flowers in bold strokes of charcoal.
“Yes,” I said, practicing the gestures Felicity was helpfully signing to him. “We’ll have to remove and replace the flowers
as they begin to wilt, as many times as we can, but the fat will be saturated with their scent. Then we’ll wash the fat with
alcohol and eventually create what’s called an absolute from it.”
Whether there would be time to gather a truly potent scent from the jasmine grandiflorum was a different question entirely.
“Didn’t your friend bring you a bottle of jasmine oil?” Felicity asked. “I thought I remembered seeing it when we were unpacking
the case.”
Hmm, how to explain this without sounding absurd? “He did, yes, but whoever distilled it seems to have not properly cleaned
their instruments or the bottle. That, or the oil has simply been sitting for a touch too long and has gone off.”
As good as Oliver’s nose was, especially after he and I had trained it, it still wasn’t quite a match to mine. It was so subtle,
I could hardly blame him. The faintest sour note had sprouted up like a weed through the rich animalic and sweet facets of
the jasmine’s floral depths.
“It’s a bit of a risk,” I told them. “We won’t have as much time as I’d like for the fat to absorb the oil, but jasmine is
difficult and elusive in giving up its scent. I’d rather do it myself.”
The Immortal Rose perfume was, unsurprisingly, one of unusual complexity and depth. The Treasury laid out a precise blend
of bergamot and orange blossom in the top notes, a heart of jasmine grandiflorum, as well as levant and centifolia roses,
and a touch of musk, sacred myrrh, and benzoin at the base to ground the sweeter, airier notes.
And, of course, the divine nectar of the flowering Afallach tree to weave the heady scent through with a golden breath of
magic.
“Can you use this same process with all flowers?” Felicity asked, her green eyes bright with curiosity. “My mother had a book
from my gran with recipes for different perfumes and pomades, but she never specified how to distill the oils.”
“Cold enfleurage is mostly used for flowers that are too delicate for steam extraction or hot enfleurage, which is similar,
save for the use of heated fat,” I said. “Flowers like roses are sturdier and can withstand more.”
I smiled, remembering Oliver’s words. Queen of all flowers, indeed. Ravishing in form, glorious in scent, and strong enough to survive nearly any climate. It was a regal flower in
every sense. Venia might have been the Immortal Rose of fairy stories, but the white rose of Albion had been carried on the
banners of kings for generations.
“Will the blend need to macerate?” Tommy asked. “It strikes me that there won’t be much time for it.”
No, indeed, there would not be.
“Some perfumes do need time to mature—four to six weeks, if possible,” I explained, setting my chassis aside and wiping my
hands on my apron. “But the infusion of magic into the scent is . . .” I paused, trying to remember how Mama had explained
this to me. “It’s a kind of alchemy. The magic and the fragrance transform and instruct each other. That’s why the Treasury
is so precise in its instructions and why the Rosebournes have been so beholden to it to create these scents.”
“So if you truly cannot find the nectar . . .” Felicity trailed off.
“You’re in for a carry witchet,” Tommy finished.
I looked up in surprise at the bit of cant. Tommy’s hand stilled against the page of his open sketchbook.
“Or rather,” he said, not looking up, “a conundrum.”
It had caught me off guard to discover the Longmount brothers hailed from the Brickbats, in part because I hadn’t picked up
on the hint of an east city drawl in either his or Willie’s voice until now, when I was searching for one. Clearly it had
been some time since they’d lived there, or they’d worked hard at their elocution to be hired in a toff’s house.
“Should we fill the third?” Felicity asked, gesturing to the empty chassis.
“We might as well,” I said, reaching for the basket I’d set on the floor. “Can you line it with tallow? I’ll go gather more
jasmine.”
Tommy and Felicity exchanged a sharp look I didn’t understand before Tommy set his sketchbook aside and pushed off the stool.
I held out a hand, unease creeping through me. “I’m just going to the garden. It won’t be but a moment.”
Another look.
My brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Felicity said. “I’ll just get started with the tallow, shall I?”
There was something in the way they carefully held their silence that made me want to look back to see if they were speaking with their hands. Brigadier, who’d stretched herself out in the doorway, leapt to her feet at my approach and trotted after me into the kitchen.
I stopped at the door to the garden. She sat, staring up at me expectantly.
“Not you, too,” I mumbled. “All right, you can see to any business you might have.”
The garden’s lovely perfume was as soothing as a gentle breeze. Brigadier ran out ahead of me, darting through the flower
beds and along the gravel paths as if conducting a well-honed patrol.
Shaking my head, I wove a quick path through the lilacs and hyacinths to the sheltered spot on the south-facing wall, where
the last Lord Foxcourt had planted the jasmine.
It had been an unexpected bit of good luck to find the correct variety at our disposal in the garden. The plant thrived in
far warmer and drier climates than Albion offered, but I wasn’t surprised that Lord Foxcourt had made a success of it.
I knelt, setting the basket beside me as I went to work selecting which blossoms I wanted. It was best to cut them at dawn,
when the scent was strongest, but a few hours later wouldn’t make much of a difference, I supposed.
That coil of tension in my gut had only just begun to relax when a chill stroked down the back of my exposed neck. A shadow
fell over me, darkening even the bright blooms. The lack of essence told me at once Felicity had changed her mind about staying
in the still room.
“Really, this isn’t necessary—” I began.
“I rather think it is.”
I twisted around, my heart dropping like lead.
The man towered over me, carefully positioned so that he was backlit by the sun, his face as shadowed as a demon’s. His tawny
jacket and breeches were immaculately cut, revealing a floral silk waistcoat. I’d never seen a cravat so intricately knotted.
His hair was burnished gold by the sun, carefully coiffed beneath his topper.
I had caught only a glimpse of him that night, but I would have known who it was even if I hadn’t.
A void in the soul, Reddy had said, as if some cold darkness opened inside of him, and now nothing can fill it.
I sensed that emptiness then, grasping and terrible, as the Duke of Glenmoor made a dispassionate study of me. I rose slowly, proud of how very solid my legs were. His top lip curled.
“As a child, I had imagined the fairyborn might have some special quality, if only a rare beauty,” he said. “Something to
justify the perception of their superiority to man. But you are not remarkable at all, are you? Not even memorable. And yet,
I’m meant to fear you when your dim magic was so easily thwarted.”
Glenmoor tapped at the silver pendant pinning his cravat in place, unable to hide his pleasure at my flinch. The symbols revealed
what it was: a fairy charm. Something to block my magic or dull that extraordinary sense.
I fought to keep my breathing even. I hadn’t been able to scent him coming, and now I wouldn’t know what he was feeling—what
his true intention was.
“What do you want?” I asked coldly.
The duke’s gaze fell to the shears I clutched in my hand, and for the first time, I saw something in his expression other
than disgust: mocking.
He tsked. “I believe you mean ‘What do you want, Your Grace?’” he corrected. “I suppose it was too much to hope a gutter-born hoyden would know rudimentary manners.”
“And I would have hoped a highborn duke would know trespassing to be not only rude but illegal,” I said. “But, then, I suppose