The Mistress Purchase Read Free Page B

changed to a frown, and she paused in the act of pulling on a comfortable pair of jeans. Formal business clothes were not really her thing, and after all this was not a formal business meeting, simply a discussion with her cousin and co-shareholder.
    Francine had once produced some of the most coveted scents of its time, but Sadie knew that her grandmother’s brother—Raoul’s grandfather—had sold off the rights to virtually all of those scents, using the money to financea series of disastrous business ventures and settle his gambling debts.
    Today the only scents of any note Francine still produced were an old-fashioned lavender water and a ‘gentleman’s’ pomade—neither of which, in her opinion, did the name of Francine any favours. For Sadie, the fascination and inspiration of working with old scent was in sourcing the necessary raw materials—some of which were no longer available to modern-day perfume makers, for reasons of ecology and for reasons of economy, in that many of those who grew the flowers needed for their work had switched from traditional to modern methods of doing so.
    Sadie considered herself very fortunate in having found a family close to Grasse who not only still grew roses and jasmine for the perfume industry in the old-fashioned labour-intensive way, but who also operated their own traditional distillery. The Lafount family produced rose absolute and jasmine absolute of the highest quality, and Sadie knew she was very privileged to be able to buy her raw materials from them.
    Both in their seventies now, Pierre Lafount and his brother Henri actually remembered her own grandmother, and delighted Sadie with their stories of how they could remember seeing her when she had visited the growing fields and the distillery with her own father. The Lafount family’s rose and jasmine absolutes were highly sought after, and Sadie knew that it was primarily because of their affection for her grandmother that they allowed her to buy from them in such small quantities.
    â€˜Virtually all that we produce is pre-sold under contract to certain long-standing customers,’ they had told Sadie—from which she had understood that those customers would be the most famous and respected of theestablished perfume houses. ‘But there is a little to spare and we shall make that available to you,’ they had added magnanimously
    Raoul, typically, had laughed at Sadie for what he called her sentimentality.
    â€˜You’re crazy,’ he had said to her, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Paying heaven alone knows what for their stuff, when it can be manufactured in a lab at a fraction of the cost.’
    â€˜But that is the whole point, Raoul,’ Sadie had told him dryly. ‘The essence of the scents I want to create cannot be manufactured.’
    Raoul had shrugged dismissively. ‘Who can tell the difference?’
    â€˜I can!’ Sadie had answered calmly.
    And now apparently Raoul wanted to sell Francine to someone who was as ignorant and uncaring of what real scent was all about as he was. Well, not if she had anything to do with it, he wasn’t, Sadie decided stubbornly.
    As she went to the parking area to collect her hire car Sadie noticed a frenzy of anxious activity surrounding the presence of a huge Mercedes limousine, with its windows blacked out. But she had too much on her mind to do any more than give both the vehicle and its entourage of anxious attendants a wryly amused glance as she skirted past them.
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    Spring was quite definitely on the way, Sadie acknowledged as she sniffed the air appreciatively. The scent of mimosa was heavenly!
    She knew the way to Grasse almost as well as she knew the history of Francine and although modern motorways and roads had altered things since her grandmother’s time, Sadie suspected that just from listeningover and over again to her description of the place she could almost have found her