Wildest Dreams

by Jennifer Blake

Overview

"Blake's a master at romantic fiction."
THE CHATTANOOGA TIMES
Joletta Caresse's beloved grandmother dies, taking with her the secret to the formula of a legendary perfume that is now the most sought-after perfume on the market. Joletta tries to track down the formula through journals written by her ancestress, Violet Fossier, who in 1854 made a grand tour of Europe.
As Joletta follows Violet's itinerary across the continent, the story goes back in time, to nineteenth- century Europe and a scandalous love affair that is intimately bound up in the mystery of the perfume. In the present Joletta finds herself attracted to—and suspicious of—Rone Adamson, a Southern playboy whose astounding knowledge of perfume makes Joletta wary. Yet his chivalrous charms prove too much for her scruples, and Jolettta succumbs to her dubious white knight, even as danger swirls around them....
A Main Selection of the Doubelday Book Club

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780449912645
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/05/1995
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Blake was born near Goldonna, Louisiana, in her grandparents' 120-year-old hand-built cottage. She grew up on an 80-acre farm in the rolling hills of northern Louisiana. While married and raising her children, she became a voracious reader. At last, she set out to write a book of her own. That first book was followed by more than 40 others, and today they have reached more than nine million copies in print, making Jennifer Blake one of the bestselling romance authors of our time.

Read an Excerpt

1

The perfume shop was dim and still, lighted only by the street lamps beyond the front windows and the Venetian-glass chandelier left burning in the back. The corners and the spaces behind the glinting glass counters were thick with night shadows. Soft darkness concealed the opening to the rear work area.

Joletta Caresse made no move to turn on more lights. She closed and locked the tall entrance door behind her with swift care. Drawing out the old-fashioned brass key, she stood still to listen.

Footsteps sounded from down the street outside, coming along the sidewalk under the arcaded front of the building. Their cadence slowed as they drew nearer. Abruptly, they stopped.

Joletta peered through the wavy, antique glass in the shop door. Looking past the black-bowed funeral wreath attached at eye level, she could just make out the tall form of a man standing back in the shadows of the arcade.

Her heartbeat increased, thudding against the wall of her chest. In spite of the dimness inside the shop, she felt unbearably exposed. The impulse to run, to hide, blossomed inside her while at the same time her feet felt glued to the floor. She gripped the key in her hand so tightly that its ornate edges pressed against the bones of her fingers.

The man outside stood unmoving. He made no attempt to conceal himself further, but seemed to be looking straight at her with an intent and purposeful stare. There was in the set of his shoulders an impression of controlled power and alert senses.

Joletta had no idea how long he had been following her. She had noticed him only in the last block before she reached the perfume shop. Even then, she had not been sure he wasnot simply walking in the same direction. He had made no effort to close the distance between them, yet there was something in the close matching of his pace to hers that had set off alarm bells in her head. The dangers of the French Quarter of New Orleans at night were something she had heard about all her life, but this was the first time she had ever run into a problem.

Joletta's eyes began to burn from trying to penetrate the dimness under the arcade. She closed them tightly for an instant to relieve the strain. When she looked again, there was nothing but empty space.

The man was gone.

She leaned her forehead against the glass door an instant as she breathed a soft imprecation. She was not sure what she had thought was about to happen, but the relief that nothing had, made her feel weak in the knees. At the same time her nerves jangled with irritation at the cat-and-mouse game the man had played with her those few seconds.

It was possible, of course, that she was imagining things. It would not be too surprising; she had been through so much in the last few days that her reactions were something less than normal.

Then again, perhaps she was not.

Joletta took a deep breath as she tried to relax. In the semidarkness, the smell of fragrance was pervasive, reaching out to envelop her like the embrace of a familiar and well-loved presence. Joletta turned slowly, swallowing hard against the sudden ache of grief and loss.

Mimi. The scent was hers, the indelible signature of Anna Perrin, Joletta's grandmother. That rich mingling of perfumes had always clung to the older woman's clothes, to the soft white crepe of her skin and the silver waves of her hair. It had been a part of her, like the radiating warmth of her smile and the name Mimi that Joletta had bestowed on her as a child. That fragrance also invaded Mimi's rooms above, the living quarters used in turn by the four generations of Fossier women who had owned the shop. Over the years the smell had penetrated the fibers of the draperies and rugs, sneaked into the hidden drawers and age cracks of the antique furnishings, even permeated the plaster on the walls and the wood of the floors. Mimi had loved that constant aura of perfume. She had been lucky, she said, to live always among the souls of flowers.

There had been thousands of flowers at Mimi's funeral, the out-pouring of friends and business associates and the many civic, social, and charitable organizations with which Mimi had been involved during her lifelong residency in the Vieux Carré, as the French Quarter was known among the descendants of the French Creoles. Their scent had mingled with the odor of sanctity during the service at St Louis Cathedral and floated on the warm, humid air that stirred the gray moss on the live oaks of the cemetery as Mimi was laid to rest in the Fossier family mausoleum. Everyone had known how Mimi loved flowers; like the ownership of the perfume shop, it was a tradition of the Fossier women.

Joletta gave a slight shake of her head to dislodge the images. She wouldn't think of such things. Lifting her chin, she stepped deeper into the shop.

Her movements were assured; the place was such a part of her life, had been from childhood, that she could find her way through it in the darkest of nights. She knew the exact periwinkle-blue color that covered the walls. She had overturned the Parisian flower cart holding beribboned baskets of soap and potpourri during a rowdy game of chase with her cousins Natalie and Timothy, one rainy Sunday as they were all growing up. From the time she was twelve, it had been her duty to dust the antique armoires with their lace-swathed shelves filled with perfume containers of every size, shape, and color. Her first lessons in making perfume had been given on her thirteenth birthday, using the essences in the stoppered vials of brown glass on the vendor's cart. She had tripped on the threadbare antique Aubusson on the floor and turned her ankle while wearing her first pair of high heels. And she had cried out her anguish and confusion over the ending of her four-year engagement while lying on the old rosewood settee covered in cream shadow-striped silk.

The shop was full of memories, good and bad; it had been the center of her life after she had come to live with Mimi following the deaths of her parents when their car skidded off the road in a rainstorm and overturned in a canal. She sometimes thought that was the reason she had been so determined to get away from it when she left college; the smell of perfume had seemed to dominate her every waking moment. She had been sick of it.

She had wanted independence and personal privacy, had needed to get away from the cloying, indulgent, loving examination of her every movement, thought, and mood. She had been determined, then, to prove that she didn't need anyone, not Mimi, not the older women who worked in the shop and who had become substitute mothers, and especially not her ex-fiancé. It was the reason she had moved into her own apartment close to her job as historian in a research library and well away from the Vieux Carré just over six months ago.

Joletta reached the doorway at the back of the shop which led into the shelf-lined mixing room. As she stepped through, the perfume scent was even stronger, coming from the hundreds of glass decanters that shone in rows along the walls. In the center was a worktable with deep shelves underneath that held old-fashioned leather-bound ledgers and also newer ones covered with plastic. These ledgers contained hundreds of formulas for perfumes, some recording the various mixtures made under special label for the public over the years, but most with careful notations of the custom blends of customers. A large portion of the entries were recently made, though there were also notations dating back over a period of nearly a hundred and forty years, a melancholy listing of the ingredients for the favorite scents of women long dead. Each blend was set down in a complicated system of numbers and symbols developed by Violet Fossier, Joletta's great-great-great-great-grandmother, who had founded Fossier's Royal Parfums so long ago, just after the Civil War.

A frown of irritation pleated the skin between Joletta's soft brown eyes as she surveyed the ledger shelves. They were a jumbled mess, with the ancient books mixed helter-skelter with the new and all of them piled this way and that with their sheets crumpled and folded.

Her aunt Estelle Clements, Mimi's older daughter and sister to Joletta's mother, was responsible for the disorder. She had been in the shop earlier with her daughter Natalie, searching for a special perfume formula. Known as Le Jardin de cour, Courtyard Garden, it was the oldest perfume made by the shop, one that accounted for well over half its yearly sales.

There was a family legend that said that Le Jardin de cour, under a different name, had been the favorite fragrance of the Empress Eugénie of France in the days of the Second Republic. Eugénie, so the story went, had gotten it from a former serving woman of the Empress Joséphine, an elderly woman who had taken it when her mistress died. Josephine had received it from Napoléon Bonaparte himself, who was known to be addicted to fine perfume. The scent was supposed to have been discovered by Napoléon during his Egyptian campaign, and prized by him because it was said to be the perfume with which Cleopatra had ensnared Mark Antony, one that had come to her from the Far Eastern deserts where it had been used in ancient times by the priestesses of the Moon Goddess.

This special formulation had always been closely guarded by the Fossier women, its exact ingredients known only to the owner of the shop in each generation and passed down from mother to daughter over the years. Mimi had been the last of the line to be entrusted with it. However, Mimi had failed to pass it on.

They had all watched Mimi make the perfume many times; they knew most of the different essences that went into it. Le Jardin de cour, however, was no simple blend. To put this one perfume together could take an hour or more of careful measuring and mixing. One tiny slip, a minute droplet too much of a single flower or plant essence, and the process would have to be begun again from scratch. The ruined batch might be perfume of a sort, might even be marketed at a reduced price, but it would not be Le Jardin de cour.

Mimi had tried desperately to give them the information they needed as she lay in ICU during the short hours between the time of her fall on the stairs and the moment when her heart stopped beating. It was impossible. She had sustained a stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body, including her facial muscles, so that her speech was croaking and slurred beyond recognition. The all-important formula was far too complicated, required too much detail and precision, to be communicated in the few sounds Mimi could manage.

One by one they had tried to understand--Estelle, Natalie, Timothy, and Joletta herself. One by one the others had turned away, exhausted by the useless effort. Then, near the end, Joletta had made out a single word, just three difficult and uncertain syllables.

Diary. That was what it sounded as if Mimi had said.

Joletta had told the others what she had heard, though she told them, too, that she could not remember ever seeing Mimi keep any sort of diary. Aunt Estelle and Natalie had practically run from the hospital. The doctors had warned them Mimi could not hold on much longer, but they would not wait.

Timothy had stayed behind to be with Joletta. He sat with his hands between his knees, interminably cracking his knuckles and sweeping his shock of overlong blond hair out of his eyes while he talked in a rambling fashion. He was loose-limbed and athletic, and might have been considered handsome if his personality had been more forceful. But he left the aggressiveness to his mother and his sister. Only a year younger than Joletta, he seemed less because he was so much under his mother's thumb. His manner was breezy, and his hazel eyes glinted with humor. He tried to distract Joletta, but saw it was useless after a time and slouched off down the hospital hallway in search of the cafeteria and an evening meal.

Joletta had been alone with her grandmother as the evening shadows closed in on the hospital and the hush of the dinner hour invaded ICU. She had been alone as Mimi's pulse grew weaker, as her breathing slowed, stopped, began again, then ceased in the unbroken silence of death. For long moments afterward, Joletta stood in the isolation of the curtain-enclosed cubicle, holding her grandmother's lax fingers with their bony knuckles and fine white skin marred by age spots, fingers that had baked and cleaned and soothed her childish hurts. She smoothed the soft silver strands of hair from Mimi's temples, hair that still seemed so alive. And warm tears pooled in her own eyes and slid slowly down her face.

Aunt Estelle had made a scene in the corridor outside ICU when she returned to find that Mimi was gone. She claimed Joletta had sent her on a fool's errand, that she had wanted her and her children out of the way at the last so she could be the only one to hear Mimi's final words.

Joletta had been so angry and heartsick at the commotion that she could not speak even to defend herself against such vicious accusations. Still, it would be a long time before she could forgive her aunt for making them.

Joletta didn't like to think of that moment, even now. Moving past the ledger cabinet, she continued on toward the heavy door in the far end of the mixing room. She reached for the iron bar that closed off entry to the courtyard beyond.

With the heavy bar in her hand, she hesitated, thinking of the man on the sidewalk. The courtyard was completely walled in, but there were two other entrances. One was a locked doorway in the great iron grate that closed off the porte cochere, or old carriage way, that led from the street, and the other was a small, wooden gate connecting to the courtyard of the building next door.

Joletta shook her head as she pushed up the bar and stepped outside. No one had used the other door or gate in years; Mimi had preferred that everyone come and go through the shop so she could keep an eye on them. They were probably rusted shut, but even if they were not, only someone thoroughly familiar with the place could find their way inside.

Joletta made her way along the arcaded loggia that protected the shop's back door toward the staircase that led up to the rear balcony of the rooms above. She smoothed her hand over the worn top of the newel post of the mahogany stair as she began to climb upward. Looking out over the courtyard beyond, she thought for a moment about Violet Fossier, the woman who had first established the perfumery.

Violet had taken as her shop the ground floor of the town house that had been built for her as a bridal gift from her husband. This town house, located on one of the most famous streets in the Quarter, had been designed by James Gallier at the height of his fame as an architect to Louisiana planters. The rooms were spacious and airy, with finely carved moldings. Their furnishings--the marble mantels, the paintings and sculptures, mirrors and costly silk-tasseled draperies, silver, crystal, and fine china ornaments--had been brought back from a grand tour of Europe taken as a bridal journey of sorts by Violet and Gilbert Fossier. It had been during this two-year ramble around Europe that Violet had conceived her passion for perfume. It was also there that she had come upon the formula for the special fragrance she had called Le Jardin de cour.

This perfume, as Mimi was fond of telling customers, had actually taken its name from the courtyard behind the shop. Unlike the house, which had been commissioned and furnished by her husband, the courtyard had been the creation of Violet Fossier. To Joletta it had always been the most serene and satisfying place in New Orleans. The high walls of cream plaster with Roman arches under the loggias along the lower floor of the house blended harmoniously with the geometric-shaped flower and herb beds lined with boxwood in the French style. These, with the paths radiating from a central fountain and a stone arbor covered with ancient grapevines, showed the influence of that long-ago tour of Europe. The plants chosen by Violet years ago were all scented, from the climbing roses and wisteria on the walls and huge old sweet olive and cape jasmine shrubs that filled the corners to the groupings of petunias, nicotiana, and early lilies in the beds. Their sweet fragrance, along with the gaslights that cast flickering shadows across the center fountain while leaving secret alcoves of pleasure here and there in darkness, gave the impression of a sensual, even seductive, retreat.

Joletta had always been curious about Violet, what she was like, what she had been thinking of when she built her courtyard garden, what had happened to her to cause her to open her shop with this fragrant haven behind it. As a historian, Joletta had a special interest in the Victorian period with its momentous events as well as its strict mores and conventions. Violet's conduct in that time had seemed so unusual, especially among the aristocratic Creoles of French and Spanish descent in the Vieux Carré, where trade was repugnant as an occupation for a man, much less a woman.

Joletta had asked Mimi about it several times, and her grandmother always promised to tell her the whole story when the time was right. Somehow, that time had never come, just as the moment had never been right to pass on the formula.

There were moving shadows in the far end of the courtyard. A whispering sound could be heard above the clatter and tinkle of the fountain, as if branches were scraping against the old bricks of the wall in the night wind. Or as if there were phantom lovers whispering in one of the shrubbery alcoves.

It was definitely eerie to be there alone in the dark; she should have waited until morning, Joletta thought. Even then, it would not have been the same with the shop closed for the funeral and the weekend afterward. There would be no cheerful ringing of the shop bell, no new perfume being mixed, no laughing greeting or loving scolding from Mimi, no smell of something rich with onions, celery, and garlic in a well-browned roux simmering in the upstairs kitchen. Strange to think that it would never be that way again.

Joletta really didn't want to enter the emptiness of the upper rooms. It was an intrusion, or so it seemed. And yet, what was one more? The others had already been there looking, thumbing through Mimi's books and papers, rummaging in her closets and drawers. Her own search could be no more of an invasion. Passing along the upper gallery to the narrow entrance doors, Joletta used her key to let herself into the town house.

She switched on the light in the parlor, but did not hesitate among the formal furnishings of rosewood and gilt, marble and ormolu. Skirting a square table centered under a Baccarat chandelier, she walked into the connecting bedroom.

It looked like something from a museum, with a Louis XIV scrolled bed, a dressing table of similar design, and faded draperies of old rose satin over curtains of yellowed lace. Here, as in the parlor, was a fireplace mantel of Carrara marble that surrounded an ornate cast-iron coal grate. Against one wall was a tall chest of carved and gilded wood. In the bottom section of it were drawers of different sizes, but the top was made up of a series of small compartments hidden behind double doors painted in the style of Boucher, with pastoral scenes of amorous shepherds and shepherdesses and hovering cherubs.

Mimi had called this piece of furniture her memory chest. In it were the items she particularly cherished: a seashell she had picked up at Biloxi on her first trip there as a child; the gifts of fans and silver-backed mirrors and other tokens received from members of the Mardi Gras krewes who had called her out to dance at balls during her coming-out season; the red glass buttons from the dress she had been wearing the night her husband had proposed; a dried and disintegrating carnation from his funeral wreath, and many other such treasures. Somewhere among them, Joletta knew, was what she sought.

She found it in the third compartment, stuffed behind a baby's christening robe. It was in a bundle tied up with a frayed black ribbon, along with a miniature in a frame so heavy and iridescent with tarnish that it had to be made of solid silver.

What Mimi had called a diary was a boxlike book covered with worn maroon velvet and finished with discolored brass-bound edges that made square corners. Actually a Victorian traveling journal, it was thick with pages of heavy acid-free paper, each page covered with closely spaced lines of looping Spencerian script interspersed with sketches of dainty flowers, and a few small-scale figures and landscapes. Joletta had seen it once before, years ago. She stood now with the bundle in her hands, fingering the brass corners of the journal while she gazed down at the miniature that was uppermost.

The small painting, done in oil colors that were soft and delicate yet as clear as the day they had come from the brush, showed the head and shoulders of a young woman. She appeared on the verge of a smile, the look in her wide, pansy-brown eyes diffident yet inquiring, guarded but vulnerable. Her brows were delicately arching, her lashes long and full. Her nose was slightly tip-tilted and her mouth formed with gentle curves tinted a natural coral. Her soft brown hair was drawn back in a low chignon from which short tendrils escaped to curl at her temples and cheekbones. There were garnet-and-seed-pearl eardrops in her ears and a matching brooch at the throat of her flat lace collar. She was not beautiful in a classic sense; still, there was something intriguing about her that made it difficult to look away from her. The artist had drawn his subject with care and precision, and also with a talent that made it seem she might complete her smile at any moment, might tilt her head and answer some question whose echo had long since ceased to sound.

Violet Fossier.

Joletta remembered the day she had first seen the miniature and the journal tied up with it. Mimi had been in bed with a chest cold. Joletta, thirteen or fourteen at the time, had been trying to take care of her. Mimi, who always scorned inactivity, had declined to nap or read. She had directed Joletta to the chest across the bedroom to get her tatting. As Joletta searched, taking out the treasures one by one in her quest for the tatting bobbin, Mimi had told her about each item.

'Bring that to me, chère,' her grandmother had commanded as Joletta pulled out the journal.

The brass-bound book had been heavy, and its ornate hasp and small dangling lock and key attached with a piece of black ribbon had rattled as Joletta walked. Mimi took the book from her, handling it with care, smoothing the worn places on the velvet. In answer to Joletta's plea to see inside, her grandmother had carefully opened the lock and lifted the frontpiece to expose the yellowed pages with their beautiful handwriting and delicate sketches marred with small ink blotches.

'This belonged to your great-great-great-great-grandmother,' Mimi said. 'She once held it in her own hands, wrote in it every day for the two years of her journey to Europe. She put her thoughts and feelings onto the pages, so that to read them is to know who and what she was. What a shame it is that we don't do these things anymore.'

Joletta, enthralled by the ornate script and faint mustiness that rose from the paper, had tilted her head to read the first line.

'No, no, ma chère,' her grandmother had said, snapping the journal closed. 'This isn't for you.'

'But why, Mimi?'

'You're young yet, maybe someday when you're older.'

'I'm old enough now! I'm nearly grown, not some little kid.' The frustration she felt was strong in her voice.

Mimi looked at her and smiled. 'So ancient, then, yes? But there are still things that you do not know, nor should you until you are of an age to understand.'

Joletta had looked at her with her lips pressed together. 'When will that be?'

Mimi sighed. 'Who can say? For some it never comes, this understanding. But put the book away for me now, then come back and let me tell you something.'

Joletta had obeyed, though without grace. At her grandmother's gesture, she had climbed up to perch on the side of the high bed. Mimi reached out to touch her face, cupping her pointed chin in a smooth, timeworn hand.

'You were named for your grandmother Violet, did you know? Joletta is a Latin form of Violet. You are also very like her. Your eyes are not so brown and have little flecks of rust; your hair is a shade or two lighter, I expect from the sun--Violet probably never went into the sun in her life without her hat and parasol. Still, you have the same bone structure, the same brows and nose--especially the nose. Le nez, the nose of the perfumer.'

'Do I? Do I, really?' Joletta was breathless with pleasure at the idea.

Mimi gave a slow nod. 'I have noticed it. One day you will look almost exactly like her.'

'But she's so pretty.'

'So are you, chère; haven't I always told you so?' Mimi's tone was faintly scolding.

'Yes, but you would say it anyway.' It was not Mimi's love Joletta doubted, but herself.

Mimi reached out then to smooth her hair. 'Don't worry, one day you will see it. And you will have Violet's spirit, too, I think. You are such a quiet little thing most of the time, but you have wild dreams inside that will someday burst free. You can be led, easily persuaded with reason, but not pushed. You will give and give until it's that last tiny bit too much, and then you will turn and fight, fight without counting the cost, perhaps even without mercy. I fear for you sometimes, little one. You need so much to have happiness and a heart at ease, and you can be hurt so badly if you are not careful.'

Looking at the miniature now, Joletta could not quite remember everything her grandmother had said, but she recalled enough to make her stare hard at the features of Violet Fossier.

Thinking back, she wondered, too, if there had not been more to Mimi's refusal to let her read the journal than she suspected at the time. She wondered if there wasn't something a bit shameful in the pages, some dark family secret that Mimi thought she was too innocent to see. Mimi had been like that. Because she had been convent school taught and gone chaste to her marriage bed, she assumed her daughters and granddaughters were just as pure. It was sweet of her, but an impossible image to live up to.

Was she really like Violet Fossier? Joletta tilted her head as she considered it. She was near the same age now as Violet had been when the miniature was done. There might be some resemblance, but the difference in the hairstyle, the clothes, and the expression made it difficult to be sure. If the resemblance was there, it was only superficial. Joletta knew with wry acceptance that she had never been so fascinating as the woman in the miniature. She was an independent female with a job she enjoyed, her own apartment, and no steady man anywhere in sight. The only thing definitely the same was the nose.

She stood still, breathing gently in and out, testing the accumulated scents of the room. Yes, she had the nose.

There was never a time when she had not been aware of the infinite variety of smells in the space around her. She had thought everyone must inhale them as easily as she did, must note them, catalog them, sometimes turn their heads to follow them. She knew differently now. Some people recognized the majority of the scents about them but not all, some caught no more than half, while still others seemed to notice only those smells that were actively bad or good.

Here in this room were the accumulated scents of dust and ancient coal smoke, furniture polish, and floor wax, plus the dry and acrid base notes of old silk and leather and wool and cotton from the contents of the memory chest. Overlying all these, however, were the myriad scents rising from the shop below, drifting in the damp stillness of the air.

The strongest of these was rose, that most ancient of perfumes and still the world's most popular. It was the one Mimi had let Joletta measure first, all those years ago, holding her hands steady around the decanter, wiping up the small spill with a tissue she had tucked into Joletta's pocket. 'For luck,' she had said with a wink and a kiss, 'and for love.'

Lavender, muguet, cinnamon: these came from the potpourri that was mixed fresh in the shop each morning. Joletta's mother had used it often in her own home, and Joletta associated the clean, faintly old-fashioned sweetness with memories of her.

A fruitiness mixed with orris root was an unwelcome reminder of Aunt Estelle. The older woman had a tendency to douse herself and her clothing in whatever perfume was newest and most highly advertised, so had moved these last few days in a miasma of some designer scent that smelled remarkably like imitation grape drink.

The blending of orange and other citrus scents conjured up Joletta's dorm room at college. She had used their freshness in that period of her life to cover the smells of old paint and gym socks. The smells had seemed brisk and modern yet with an undertone of wedding orange blossoms. She had lost her taste for them, abruptly, when her engagement ended.

The undertone of musk brought back the winter day when she and her cousin Natalie had knocked a full bottle of that essence from a shelf to the stone floor of the mixing room. Natalie claimed Joletta had done it. She had, but it had been Natalie who had pushed her into the shelf. Regardless, Joletta had had to clean up the broken glass, sop up the cloying liquid by herself. The smell, sickeningly strong in excess, had clung to her for days, lingering in the pores of her skin, hovering in the back of her nose. The worst of it, though, was that Mimi had been afraid to trust her in the mixing room again for months.

Joletta had tried to explain what happened that day, but Natalie had been louder, had burst into tears and screams when accused. Joletta had finally stopped trying to make herself heard. After all these years, Joletta was used to being overpowered by her older cousin. She still admired her cousin's forthright ways, her brash display of stylish clothes and expensive jewelry, her determination to have her own way and hang the consequences. Joletta knew that she had her own understated style, one based on a few pieces of quality clothing in neutral tones that could be put together in infinite combinations and made interesting by bright accessories and a few pieces of antique jewelry. Regardless, Natalie's display of the latest from Saks and Neiman Marcus made her feel dowdy, and somehow diminished by comparison.

The fragrance of cloves was a reminder of Timothy; the men's cologne he wore was heavy with it. He had a preference for strong scents, rather than the simple outdoorsy blends Joletta would have expected. Timothy's disposition was laid-back with an easy charm that came from extended summers around country-club pools or else taking part in some high-risk sport such as hang gliding or white-water rafting. Mimi's only grandson, the only male child to be born in the immediate family in the last two generations, he had been spoiled, but seemed to have grown out of it.

There were other scents, dozens of them. The most dominant of these, vying with the rose, was vetiver. The green, woodsy note, one not unlike eucalyptus, was used in many of the fragrances in the shop. Brought to New Orleans during the French colonial period, vetiver was native to India and had for many years taken the place of lavender in tropical climes where that English herb was difficult to cultivate. Lavender was a plentiful import these days, but New Orleanians were still partial to the distinctive fragrance blends that could be achieved with their old favorite.

Yes, she had the nose. For what good it might do her.

Taking the things she held to the bed, Joletta put them down and slipped the journal free of the ribbon tie. Unlocking it, she quickly flipped through the pages, scanning the faded paragraphs and sketches that went on and on, paying particular attention to the frontpiece and endpiece pages. There was no sign of a listing of numbers and measurements that might be a formula.

The corners of her mouth tightened with disappointment, then she took a deep breath. She should have known it wouldn't be that easy. She would have to go through the journal page by fragile page.

That would take time, and it was too late to start now. She would need to take the journal home with her, possibly make a photocopy so she wouldn't damage it, then do a thorough study. She could well have been wrong about what Mimi was trying to say, what she meant. The chance she was right was a slim one at best.

Joletta tucked the journal into her shoulder bag, then let herself out of the town house, turning the lights off as she went.

There was a spring wind stirring the trash in the street, one off Lake Pontchartrain with a smell of rain in its coolness. Joletta settled the strap of her shoulder bag higher on the shoulder pad of her jacket, pushed her hands into her pockets, and started walking in the direction of the parking lot where she had left her car.

The streets were nearly empty; the hour was late. Across the street were a pair of lovers with arms intertwined. The slow clip-clop of hooves signaled the passing of a tourist carriage in a cross street not far away. She met a group of college boys who whistled and yelled catcalls, drunk on beer and freedom and too young to be quiet about it. In the distance the wail of a jazz trumpet made a lament in the night.

New Orleans was winding down, finishing off the evening. She had been longer at the shop than she expected. The sounds trailed away behind her as she left the main streets of the quarter. All that was left was the clatter of her own heels on the uneven pavement.

She thought at first that it was an echo. Even after she realized the footsteps were heavier than her own, she hoped whoever was behind her would turn down a side street, enter a building, or else fall back as she increased her speed.

It didn't happen. The treads continued, steady, purposeful, so closely coordinated with her own it could mean only one thing.

She had almost forgotten the man who had followed her earlier. He had departed so easily. Besides, she had nearly convinced herself that she had been mistaken about him.

She had, apparently, been right after all.

Her throat was dry. There was an ache beginning in her side from the quick pace she was keeping. She could think of a dozen things she might have done to prevent this situation, from calling the police to staying at Mimi's place overnight. None of them was of any use now.

There were two possibilities: either the man wanted money or he was a weirdo who got his kicks from terrifying women. She could drop her shoulder bag and run, hoping that would satisfy him. On the other hand, if she hung on to the purse, the weight of the journal inside would make it a formidable weapon.

Without pausing in her stride, she swung to look back. The footsteps stopped. She could see the shape of a man in the shadow of one of the many balconies that overhung the sidewalk, but could not make out his face or enough of his clothing to tell anything about him. His general height seemed to match that of the man who had followed her earlier, though she could not be sure.

She faced forward, walking faster. The footsteps began again. The sound of them seemed to rattle among the buildings, fading and growing louder, coming and going in a curious, uneven rhythm. Or it could be the jolting pound of her pulse in her ears that made her think it.

All the things she had read about self-defense for the woman alone, all her good resolutions to take some kind of class on self-protection or buy a weapon to carry in her purse tumbled through her head. None of it was helpful. She had never followed up on her good intentions.

It was still two blocks to the parking lot. When she got there, it was going to be dark and the attendant would probably be asleep or gone for the night. If she got there.

She put her head down, stepping up her pace until she was nearly running. In a moment she would make a break for it. Behind her the footsteps increased in speed.

'Darling! There you are!'

The voice, warm and deeply masculine, rich with concern, came from just ahead of her. She glanced up, startled. She had a brief glimpse of dark hair and an intense gaze shadowed with appeal and daring, caught a whiff of night freshness, starched linen, and the clean sandalwood note of some excellent after-shave. Then the man was upon her in a rush, scooping her up, holding her against him with long, firm arms.

'There's a guy behind you, ma'am, and it looks like he has a knife in his hand,' he said, speaking quickly, his voice urgent under its quiet timbre. 'I'd like to be heroic and demolish him for you, but I'm not sure he doesn't have friends. Play along, and it may be all right.'

Her nerves were too tightly strung to make sense of what he was saying. She only knew it wasn't all right, and wasn't going to be, knew it with an instinct that sent prickling gooseflesh over every inch of her body. She drew in her breath to scream.

In that instant, the man's hold tightened around her and his firm mouth descended on her parted lips.