I turned my head, and there I saw the queen’s advisor and secretary Nicolas de Clerac, costumed as Urania, the muse of astronomy, his white silk tunic and gathered mantle embroidered with scattered silver globes and compasses. There were blue and silver streaks of paint around his eyes. All the same, he did not look foolish or mischievous as the other gentlemen did; woman’s costume or no, if I had met him alone in a dark place I would have been afraid of him.

I love Mary Stuart, eighteen years old, already once a widow, French to her elegant and privileged and mercurial fingertips, glimmering so briefly against the dark background of Scotland’s grim and inflexible Reformation.

Ahem. Well, enough about The Flower Reader for now. Mark your calendars for April 2012!

Many wonderful reviews and interviews for The Second Duchess. Writer Unboxed, Coffee and a Book Chick, Tartitude (this is part II, which I’m highlighting because of the granddaughterly wonderfulness, but check out part I as well, via the link in the first paragraph), Realm Lovejoy’s Blog Realm (and check out her wonderful sketch of Duchess Barbara), Reading the Past, Sia McKye’s Over Coffee, and Theresa de Valence’s Reviews by TdV, just to list a few. I am following the excellent advice to avoid commenting on reviews of one’s own work, but I would like to say here that I am so grateful to everyone who read and reviewed and commented in any way on The Second Duchess.

In April and May, look for endcaps at Barnes and Noble featuring Showtime’s The Borgias—among the books in the displays you’ll find The Second Duchess. Alfonso, of course, was Lucrezia Borgia’s grandson and the last Borgia duke. If you subscribe to Showtime, watch for the Barnes and Noble spot featuring their fabulous trip-to-Rome sweepstakes—you might just catch a glimpse (a tiny glimpse, but still) of The Second Duchess’s cover.

If you’re a Goodreads member, consider joining the Goodreads group “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Book.” The Second Duchess is one of their two featured books of the month for April, and there should be an excellent, no-holds-barred discussion.

Link of the Week: Thorn from Jesus’ Crucifixion Crown goes on Display at the British Museum. This particularly fascinates me because the thorn (wherever it might have actually come from) is wrapped in a strand of Mary Queen of Scots’ pearls. How did it come to be connected with the pearls? Did she do it herself? Did someone else do it after her execution? One could write a whole story around this intriguing relic.

And finally, the good news of the week: Rosie, one of the two “Booksigning Beagles” from my Second Duchess signing at Murder by the Book, has found her forever home! In fact, she and her litter-sister Portia were adopted together, so they will not be separated. I will update you all on Dulcie, the other darling Booksigning Beagle, when I have more news.

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.

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.

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.