Johnathan waited until his friend was out of sight, then cast a furtive glance up and down Jermyn Street. Miraculously, it was early enough that there were few people about to witness Miss Templeton’s impropriety, but her luck wouldn’t last.
He crossed the street and peered through the window of Floris, half-expecting to see Lady Fosberry and Juliet Templeton already inside, but there was only the shopkeeper, and one customer.
Emmeline Templeton.
A dozen different scents assailed Johnathan when he stepped inside, some heavy and cloying, others delicate and complex, but he didn’t detect the Lady in Lavender’s rose scent, which was proving mysteriously elusive.
“…a scent for my youngest sister, but so many of the scents are too heavy for a young girl.”
She’d exchanged her dreadful lace cap for a sensible straw bonnet, and her dusty pinafore for a shapeless, dark brown cloak. Neither garment flattered her—by design, Johnathan suspected. Her clothing was meant to disguise her, so she might slip by unnoticed. Miss Emmeline Templeton might be determined to avoid attention, but it was too late for that.
He’d seen her now.
She wasn’t a beauty, exactly, nor was she fashionable. Hers wasn’t a face that would command the notice of every gentleman in a ballroom, but there was a lovely, winsome expressiveness there he found appealing.
Now she’d caught Johnathan’s eye, she held it.
“I understand you perfectly, miss. Let’s see what we can find, shall we?” The shopkeeper rummaged through some cabinets and placed an array of plain, unmarked glass bottles on the polished wooden counter. “See what you make of these.” He dipped a bit of paper into one of the bottles, then held it out to her. “One like this, perhaps?”
She took it between gloved fingers, raised it to her nose and took a dainty sniff. “Parma violet, with jasmine, and just a touch of…” She brought the paper to her nose again. “Vanilla?”
“Just so!” The shopkeeper beamed, pleased. “Why, how singular. I don’t know one person in a dozen who could have caught that hint of vanilla. You’ve got an accomplished nose, miss.”
An accomplished nose? Was there such a thing?
“It is subtle, isn’t it? Vanilla is such an overwhelming scent, too. How are they able to keep it from overpowering the other scents?”
The shopkeeper leaned over the counter and lowered his voice, as if imparting the greatest of secrets. “Just the lightest touch of coriander tempers the sweetness.”
“Does it, indeed? Why, that’s ingenious, Mr. Beale,” she replied with a laugh. “I wonder how they ever came up with such an idea?”
“Trial and error, miss, trial and error. The creation of a perfume is an art, you know.”
“A science as well, I think. Now, this one, Mr. Beale. Bergamot. One can tell by the hint of citrus—and it’s paired with…” she paused to take another sniff. “Sandalwood. I think gentlemen must appreciate this scent, Mr. Beale?”
Johnathan drew closer, fascinated. She had a lovely voice, very soft, and as smooth as treacle dripping lazily from the end of a spoon.
“Indeed, it’s a favorite of the young aristocratic set, particularly viscounts, for some reason, but a great many of the finest gentlemen about town wear this scent.”
“Ah, I see. I had in mind something like this for my younger sister.” She dipped her gloved fingers into the reticule dangling from her wrist, and drew out…a bit of paper? Johnathan couldn’t quite see it, but it looked like—
The scent of roses wafted over him as she handed the paper to Mr. Beale, making his nose twitch. That scent, it was rather like…Johnathan’s eyes widened in shock.
It wasn’t a bit of paper at all, but a fold of linen with a scent that, to Johnathan’s untrained nose, was identical to the scent that clung to the violet ribbon folded carefully in his coat pocket.
The ribbon he’d found on the floor of Lady Fosberry’s library, right after the Lady in Lavender had fled.
He stared at Emmeline Templeton, dumbfounded.
She was the Lady in Lavender? Emmeline Templeton, the meek little mouse who’d hardly said a word to him in the drawing room this morning, who hadn’t betrayed with so much as a gasp or twitch that she was the lady who’d kissed him with such tantalizing enthusiasm in Lady Fosberry’s library?
It didn’t make sense. Of all the ladies in London, she was the last he would have suspected, the last he would have imagined capable of such consuming passion.
“…recognize the scent?” Emmeline Templeton was saying.
“Let’s see, shall we?” Mr. Beale brought the square of linen to his nose and gave it an experimental sniff. “Ah, that’s lovely!”
Miss Templeton beamed at him. “Do you really think so?”
