Page 70 of The Scent of Intuition
Her beauty initially, then her warm smile, sweet voice, and sharp mind.
Yes, that had been enough for something to dislodge deep within him. Now, he was no more than a clock with the most important gear missing—the one that made everything else turn, the one called Bea.
Then he heard a yelp and whining.
Chromius, Nick’s dog, came into Alfie’s room and hopped onto his lap.
His furry, warm body nestled into Alfie’s arms, confiding that he needed love.
“I know how you feel, old boy,” Alfie cooed to his fuzzy friend. Chromius wouldn’t have known but Alfie was to bring him well-groomed and ready to be the ring bearer for Pippa’s and Nick’s wedding. “I’ll bring you to Nick soon.”
Of course, Chromius didn’t respond but shifted, eager to jump back down. Alfie let him go, and Chromius led him downstairs.
He followed, and Chromius stopped in the kitchen, next to the back door where Nick usually hung the leash on a nail on the wall.
“You want to go out?”
Chromius wagged his tail and went in two circles around Alfie’s legs.
“Alright, let’s go,” Alfie said, picking a hat from the shelf.
And so he walked behind Chromius, who was pulling the lead. Alfie had known him since Nick first brought Chromius to their shared student quarters.
It was a long time ago, but Alfie thought about the small room he’d shared with Nick at university in Vienna so fondly that his chest hurt. Everything would change soon.
Chromius tugged at the leash, and Alfie only paid attention to the carriages and traffic but not where they were going. He could barely follow his thoughts, much less decide where Chromius was taking him.
It was the same in life, Alfie thought. He’d been adrift.
Perfecting his craft hadn’t been a direction for his life. Perhaps it had brought him to 87 Harley Street, but it had also become why Bea had found him and ordered a love potion from him.
Alfie tasted acid. He’d been so consumed with impressing her with his skill that he hadn’t considered that he’d handed her the instrument to achieve her goal with a man that wasn’t him.
While he’d be here, heart bleeding for her, rinsing beakers, corking flasks, and at a complete loss of what to do with the rest of his life; if Bea left with the prince, she’d take his heart and leave him a shell of what he had been before he met her… before he kissed her.
She was the girl sitting by the window, veiled and lonely. She’d never been allowed to speak to him, a mere servant at the Residence in Delhi, but she’d communicated with him. All these years, Alfie thought he’d made more of it in his mind than it had been, that he’d wished for his feelings to create memories of events that had never happened. But they had.
And Bea remembered.
They’d found the missing explanation of the puzzling attraction between them, a shared connection from the past. She was the forbidden fruit he’d kissed in the Orangery—the irony wasn’t lost on him. And yet, the closer he wanted to be with her, the more absurd his idea was. A noblewoman didn’t marry a commoner… except that Pippa and Nick were about to do just that.
Chromius had led Alfie to Green Park, across the cobblestones to the linden-lined path, where the bushes provided squirrels with ample hiding spots.
Of all the women he’d kissed and tupped, the only face he could conjure up was Bea’s now.
He saw her everywhere.
Her lovely copper-colored tresses under the bonnets of the women walking with a parasol.
He heard her voice—or imagined it.
He smelled her perfume and sensed her closeness.
Even though he stood under the fragrant linden trees, he smelled Bea.
Alfie sucked his lips in, for he could even remember the lush softness and the eager pressure from her lips.
A kiss wasn’t enough anymore, and he longed for more now. He longed for her.
