Elizabeth Loupas

Because Rinette, the central character in my new book, is a floromancer deeply connected to flowers and their properties, I find I’m becoming fascinated with everything I can find out about flowers as well.

Take the plumbago bush in our back yard. What a strange name for such a lovely flowering shrub, with its masses of bluish and lilac-colored blossoms, so sweet and irresistible to butterflies. The name comes from the Latin “plumbum,” the metal lead, as dull as dull can be. How on earth did it get connected with such a beautiful flower? (It’s also called skyflower, because of its color, but that’s a modern invention.)

The stories differ. Some say the plant—called for centuries plain “leadwort,” and only given its Latinized name in the eighteenth century—was used to treat lead poisoning, which was recognized as an affliction as early as the second century BC. Others say it was associated with lead because it was used to treat conditions that turned the skin a leaden color. Still others say the plant itself is toxin-loving, and where it grows there is lead to be found. Traditionally it’s also been used to treat warts, wounds and broken bones; made into a powder to be sniffed for headaches; and brewed as a tea to ward off nightmares. Sticks of leadwort were woven into thatched roofs to ward off lightning. In French it was called dentelaire, and the chewed root was said to relieve toothache.

So in the sixteenth century Rinette would have known it as leadwort. How to work it into her unique personal scheme of floromancy? With its association with nightmares, perhaps it could bring on a vision of bad things that might happen if one makes a particular decision. That would certainly fit into the plot. Heh.

I wrote The Second Duchess in first person—actually, in dual first-person viewpoints. I deliberately chose to write Barbara in the first person because the book started out as a historical mystery, and in mysteries the first-person sleuth is more common than not. The book, of course, went on to become as much romance and “opulent intrigue” (a phrase used to describe Duchess by one of my crit group members, which I love) and character study as it was mystery, but Barbara’s first-person voice remained. Lucrezia, the second viewpoint character, sprang to the page in first person and never looked back.

That said—I am writing The Silver Casket in third person. It’s a bigger, longer, slightly grittier, more complex story and it needs a wider view. Even so, it’s hard to feel my way out of the close, heart-and-mind intimacy of first person and into the slightly more detached third person. Even a very tight, very subjective third person still means I’m looking over my character’s shoulder and not inside her skin. It’s disconcerting. I’ve found her—my lovely farouche floromancer Rinette—and I want to be one with her.

I suspect I will write the first few chapters both ways, and perhaps some strange combination of the two, until I find the right path.

The introduction of this Nina Ricci perfume was my introduction to the word farouche. It is from the French, and means in general wild and shy and somewhat awkward, with an element of the outdoors. Its etymology dates to Old French forasche, from Late Latin forasticus, living outside, from Latin foras outdoors.

It is the one perfect word to describe my new heroine, Marina Leslie, called Rinette by her French mother. She has grown up mostly abandoned by her courtier parents, running wild in a crumbling Scottish castle with gardens by the sea, and she is farouche down to her bones—shy, willful, deeply connected to her beloved flowers, to wild animals, to the sea, and desperately ill-at-ease in formal or social situations. How does she end up at the deathbed of Mary of Guise, regent of Scotland, the single person that gallant and beleaguered queen trusts with an enigmatic and priceless secret? And what happens next?

Farouche the perfume incorporates top notes of mandarin orange, galbanum, peach and bergamot; middle notes are honeysuckle, carnation, iris, lily, clary sage, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, rose, geranium and cardamom; base notes are sandalwood, amber, musk, oakmoss and vetiver. I think I will have Rinette concoct her own perfume with some of these elements. Just the list sets me dreaming. It’s unfortunate Farouche has gone out of fashion and is no longer readily available. It is definitely the official perfume of my new book.

The photograph of the gorgeous Farouche bottle by Lalique is from print ads around the time of the perfume’s debut, and was taken by Leora Long.