Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (54 page)

Yes.

They were the same.

She sighed and moved slowly to seat herself in a wicker chair on the gallery. Letting the book and photograph drop into her lap, she stared out over the courtyard. Somewhere inside her, tension she had not known she was carrying seemed to ease.

How long she sat there, she had no idea. When next she noticed the time, the light of evening was fading away and there was no sound from the shop below. The evening wind off Lake Pontchartrain was stirring the leaves of the sweet olive below, sending its fragrance in drifting clouds to where she sat.

Her gaze was resting on a gate in the wall of the courtyard, a gate that had always been there. It led into the courtyard of the building next door, the building that was today a part of some bachelor lawyer’s pied-à-terre, but which in other years had belonged to the owner of the pharmacy.

How many people, she wondered, had known about that gate in the past? How many had gossiped about the woman with the invalid husband who had tried to kill himself, the woman on such close terms with the good-looking Italian pharmacist whose shop was next door?

A pharmacist in those days was required only to have some knowledge of the concoction of pills and elixirs and mouthwashes, the money to buy ingredients, and the integrity not to adulterate the products he mixed together. The man in the photograph had appeared prosperous. Joletta did not doubt that he had been respected in the city, or that conjecture about him had been rampant among the female members of the community. That no whisper of ancient scandal had echoed down through the years to Violet’s descendants was a tribute to his discretion and, perhaps, his devotion.

What must it be like, Joletta wondered, to be loved in that way, by a man who would risk everything, sacrifice everything, to be with you?

She would rather not think about it.

Joletta got to her feet and moved back into the salon. Leaving the photograph lying on a side table but carrying the journal, she went back downstairs and into the rear workroom, where the perfume was mixed and bottled.

Beyond the doorway that led into the shop, everything was quiet. The shop was closed and locked for the day. That was good, the way she wanted it.

She placed the journal on the long counter that ran down the center of the room. Taking a glass beaker and a series of pipettes from a shelf, she set them beside it. She used a couple of the smaller account books from under the counter to hold the pages of the small brassbound book open to the first entry that had one of Violet’s small sketches at the top of the page.

It was really very simple, the code Violet had used to mark the formula for her perfume. It was in the drawings and the dates. Violet had made a lot of sketches, but most of them were on blank pages or in the margins. The ones that meant something were those placed at the dated headings of pages. The flowers and small animal figures she had drawn indicated the oil essence to be used. The numbers for that particular month and day gave the proportion of the oil shown to the whole.

Joletta studied the page a moment, then moved to the shelves holding the brown bottles filled with precious oils. Walking along it, following the labels with the tips of her fingers, she began to pick and choose.

With the bottles lined up in front of her, each corresponding to a journal page, Joletta picked up a pipette and began.

Within moments, the scents began to rise around her. She hardly noticed them individually, so great was her concentration. The combined effluences had a rightness that satisfied her, rather like a baker smelling the yeast of his rising dough and knowing the bread is proceeding according to the recipe.

She worked with care and exactness, adding just so many drops of each oil and not a lingering droplet more to the beaker, reaching for the next one, and the next, in their proper order. She took pains, just as she had been taught by Mimi, was careful not to plop the oils in any old way, not to shake or joggle the mixture so the scents were bruised. She treated the oils with respect, and even with love.

She was in her element, she realized, as she watched the pale green, light yellow, and golden orange-red drops meld and blend together and smelled their mingling essences. Always before, she had been watched over by Mimi as she mixed perfume; this was the first time she had undertaken to create something on her own. It made a difference in the way she felt, the way she thought of it.

She loved the way the glass jars and vials and other equipment felt in her hands, the weight and smoothness of them. She enjoyed the sense of experimentation and creative power that working with them gave her. The uniqueness of her task pleased her, the fact that she was making a formulation that had not scented the air, perhaps, in over a hundred years. She felt like a sorceress concocting some mystical imitation of life, one that required only a warm body to work its power, to become real for a few fleeting hours.

She knew what she wanted. She was going to make perfume.

She was going to create new and different fragrances, just as Mimi had done, and Violet, and all the other Fossier women who had gone before. It was in her blood, but most of all it was in her heart.

At last she had completed the measuring. Gently, she stirred in the pure alcohol that would make the oils volatile so they could become airborne and more available to the olfactory sense. She waited a moment, then applied the perfume to a piece of clean white paper. She let the molecules set, then inhaled the fragrance.

She had done it. She had re-created Violet’s perfume exactly, the perfume that had been in the necklace.

Regardless, it still wasn’t Le Jardin de Cour. It was similar, very similar, but not quite right.

She had known it could not be.

To be sure beyond a doubt, she put a drop of the perfume on her wrist and let it settle, then brought her wrist to her nose.

No, definitely not.

She heard the scrape of a footfall on the stone floor. She began to turn, jerking around so quickly that the glass pipette she was still holding struck the beaker of perfume. The beaker tipped over. Perfume splashed in a wide sweep over the counter, spreading like water, its exotic oils gleaming with a rich sheen in the light from overhead.

The fragrance exploded on the air, overpowering, almost sickening in its strength, even before the voice sounded in the still room.

“I thought the perfume was supposed to be lost,” Natalie said. “I should have known you were lying.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Joletta snapped. She reached to snatch up the journal. Its thick pages had become saturated with perfume for a fourth of their width. The odor would be permanent, ineradicable.

“What do you call this then?”

The question came from Timothy, who had crowded into the room behind his sister. Aunt Estelle, her face grim with her enmity, was standing just beyond the door.

“I call this a false hope,” Joletta said, cradling the journal protectively against her chest. “As you would surely understand if any of you had a perfumer’s nose.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, my girl,” her aunt said, her face set with anger. “I want an explanation for what you’re doing and I want it now.”

The temptation to tell them all where they could go with their demands and accusations was so strong for a moment that Joletta felt the blood rush to her head. There had been enough secrecy and misunderstanding, however; there was no point in carrying it any further.

“I’m telling you that the perfume you smell isn’t Le Jardin de Cour, and therefore isn’t the famous old perfume we’ve been hearing about for years. I suspect this blend I got out of the journal may be based on it, but I think Violet changed it to suit herself, for reasons that — well, for her own reasons.”

“How can that possibly be?” her aunt inquired in icy tones. “My mother and her mother before her are supposed to have used Violet’s recipe; I’ve heard the story so often I could recite it in my sleep.”

“They may have, but I think they changed it, a little here, a little there, according to what they liked, or maybe the oils they had available. For instance, there’s no vetiver in Violet’s formula, but you know yourself it’s one of the main oils that Mimi used because people in New Orleans like the fresh wood scent.”

Estelle exchanged a quick look with her children. As she saw the acute disappointment close over the faces of all three, Joletta went on.

“But I don’t think it ends there, not by a long shot. I doubt that the perfume Violet discovered in Europe, the perfume used by the Empress Eugénie, is exactly the same as the one used by Joséphine. It’s unlikely that either woman could have resisted adding her own favorite oil essences to it over a period of time. A heavy violet scent, for instance, was a passion with Joséphine, and was included in the formula I just used, but it’s doubtful violet oil would have been available to Cleopatra several hundred years before in the heat of ancient Egypt. As for Cleopatra’s version, I feel sure she included her two cents’ worth, too. The incense of the priestesses of the Moon Goddess that she was supposed to have copied should have been a very simple compound, one strong on wood notes. More than that, the Egyptians loved perfume—”

Aunt Estelle held up a hand heavy with rings. “That’s enough. I was raised with perfume, too; I do get the picture.”

“Don’t you think it’s reasonable?” Joletta asked quietly.

“Very likely.” The older woman’s agreement was vicious.

“Are you saying we can never make Le Jardin de Cour?” Natalie asked in sharp tones.

“I’m saying it won’t do any good to make it, not for the purpose Lara Camors wants. Le Jardin de Cour bears very little resemblance to the fabulous perfume of history’s fabled women that she has been promised.”

“That can’t be true!” Natalie said as she clenched a hand into a fist and brought it down on the counter. “There’s too much at stake for it to be true.”

“Well, it is,” Joletta said, “and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”

“Except for you,” her aunt said in astringent contempt. “You can use Violet’s recipe to go on making something close to Le Jardin de Cour.”

Joletta gave a thoughtful nod. “That’s true, not the same blend exactly, but something close.”

“So you win.”

Joletta made no reply. As quiet fell she turned from the others and reached for a paper towel from the roll at one end of the counter. Leaning as far as she could reach, she began to mop up the spilled perfume.

“Actually,” Timothy said in his light voice, “it doesn’t make any difference.”

“Don’t be stupid,” his mother snapped, “of course it does.”

“Why?” he inquired with clear-eyed simplicity from where he had slouched against the door frame. “We’re the only ones who know that the perfume isn’t the same.”

Natalie looked from Timothy to her mother. The older woman was staring at her son with a heavy frown between her thin eyebrows. Natalie switched her attention to Joletta. Her gaze grew bleak before she shrugged.

“It won’t work,” she said. “Joletta knows, and she’d tell the first person to ask her point-blank, even if she didn’t want the formula for herself. Since she does want it, all she’d have to do is place a call to Lara Camors.”

Aunt Estelle pursed her lips before she spoke. “Dear Lara loves money, but she’s a stickler for truth in advertising; she guards the good name of Camors like a hen with one chick. That would be the end of it.”

“Unless there was a way to keep Joletta from talking.” Natalie turned a speculative look upon Joletta as she spoke.

“What did you have in mind?” Timothy asked in lazy humor. “A ride to the Mississippi and cement shoes? Good planning, sis; we wouldn’t have to split the two million with her, either, or worry about her signing the consent agreement.”

“Very funny,” his mother said. “You might bend your mind to something helpful, if you can manage that.”

“What about a nice bribe?” her son asked. “What do we have that Joletta wants?”

“Nothing,” Joletta said, her voice tight. “I don’t want a bribe or anything else. I don’t want anything to do with Camors Cosmetics.”

Natalie’s face lighted with eagerness. “You mean you’ll give us the use of the formula and back off, not blow the whistle on it?”

“I — didn’t say that.” Joletta tossed the paper towel she had used into the trash can under the counter before turning to look from one to the other of her relatives. “Have you thought what would happen if somebody found out the perfume was a hoax after it went into production? Fossier’s Royal Parfums would be completely discredited; it would be the end of the shop, not to mention the reflection on our good name in the city.”

“You sound positively Victorian, Joletta,” Natalie said on a laugh. “We would have the money, wouldn’t we?”

“Joletta doesn’t care as much about money as you do, sis,” Timothy said softly. “But she might prefer not to make her family look like a bunch of fools.”

“Now that is the most sensible thing you’ve said in a long time, Timothy,” his mother said. She looked at Joletta. “Can we count on it, I wonder?”

“Personally, I wouldn’t risk it,” Natalie said. “But I’ve got another idea.”

“Here, here.” Timothy’s gaze on his sister held as much resentment as irony.

Natalie sent him a scathing glance before she went on: “Look, Joletta, you say the old perfume recipe is no good. Fine. But would you want to make Le Jardin de Cour again using the formula from the chemical analysis?”