Trial by Fire

Chapter 1

Dahlia Johnson de Beaumont sat in her elegantly designed office in the building she owned on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, on a warm day in late June, and consulted her list of appointments and the calls she had to make that morning. She was the CEO of the venerable, highly successful perfume firm she had inherited as an only child. It had been founded by her maternal grandfather, Louis Lambert. Dahlia’s mother, Constance Lambert Johnson, also an only child, had inherited it from her father, the founder. Constance had passed away when Dahlia was in college in New York. She had bequeathed the company in its entirety to Dahlia. Dahlia had always known she would inherit the business one day. It was expected. She just didn’t know it would happen so soon. She had a normal, happy childhood, except that her career path had been chosen for her, almost like royalty in a way.

They were one of the most important perfume manufacturers in the world. Louis Lambert Perfumes were as well-known as Guerlain, and followed as many of the original traditions of perfume-making as was possible at a time when some natural ingredients were no longer available or legal and had been replaced by synthetics. It was a technical challenge, but as much as was possible, and with great care, their perfumes appeared to be unchanged.

Dahlia’s mother, Constance, was a gentle, genteel woman. She had never worked in the firm, once she’d inherited it, but she had a deep love for the company her father had founded. It was run by the competent directors, executives, and managers her father had put in place before his death at eighty-seven. Their perfumes were in some way old-fashioned, or traditional, and yet they had been subtly adapted to the modern world and to what women wanted today. Many new scents had been added to the originals, which were popular around the globe. The managing board of directors had run Lambert during Constance’s entire ownership. Her husband, Hunter Johnson, had been on the board, was one of the overseers of the company, and had protected Constance’s interests and invested the company’s assets wisely. He had suggested several times to Constance that they go public, but she had preferred to maintain private ownership. She knew her father would have wanted that, just as the Dumas family kept Hermès private, and the Wertheimer family owned Chanel. Lambert was easily as profitable as Hermès, and had stores where their perfumes were sold around the world.

Hunter, Constance’s husband, was American. They had met at a party at the American embassy in Paris, and he had been dazzled by her. He was twenty-five years older than Constance when they met. She was twenty-one, one of the most beautiful young women in Paris, and he was a childless widower of forty-six. He was one of the early founders of venture capital. They married within the year they met, and Dahlia was born in New York a year later. Hunter advised Constance brilliantly on the company’s investments during her ownership of Lambert. Her death while Dahlia was in college in the States was a heartbreaking blow to Dahlia and her father. He adored his wife, and Dahlia and her mother were very close.

Constance and Hunter had lived in New York in the early days of their marriage, and Dahlia attended private school there. They remained in New York until Dahlia went to college, Hunter retired, and he and Constance moved to Paris. They had gone back and forth to Paris frequently before that, and Dahlia was equally comfortable in Paris or New York, in English or in French while she was growing up. She had strong family ties to France, and had spent her early years in New York, with summers spent in their summer home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France, and once she was in college, she worked at the Lambert offices in Paris for a month every summer and loved it.

Two years after they moved to Paris, Constance had died of breast cancer at forty-two. It had gone undetected until too late. Her mother had died of it at an early age too. Dahlia had inherited the Lambert empire at twenty, finished college at Columbia, attended the Wharton business school, moved to her parents’ house in Paris, and entered the company she owned at twenty-four. The people who had run it until then taught her what she needed to know. They had been grooming her to run the company for years. Her grandfather had begun talking to her about the business since she was a child. She was fascinated by it. She benefited from his managers’ experience and her father’s wise financial advice for a year, as she was assigned to lower-level jobs where she could learn the business from the bottom up, just as she had expected to.

Hunter Johnson died suddenly at seventy-two, less than a year after Dahlia came home to France, five years after his wife had died. He had never recovered from the loss of Constance. Even his deep love for his daughter didn’t raise his spirits once his beloved Constance died. He had developed a heart condition which killed him in the end.

Dahlia was an orphan, and the sole owner of one of the most profitable businesses in the world, just before her twenty-fifth birthday. Slim, graceful, blond, green-eyed, she had been taught everything she needed to know about the business by experts, and she had strong support from the managers and the Board, but nothing had prepared her for losing her parents’ world. They had been the source of joy and emotional support, wisdom and love, for her entire life, and without them she felt lost. Her father had died of a heart attack with no warning. She stood alone at his funeral with the church of Sainte-Clothilde full to the rafters. She continued to live in her parents’ house in Paris, and felt like a lost soul.

Her father had died a year after she had graduated from business school at Wharton and gone to live in Paris. At the same time, she ran into Jean-Luc de Beaumont a month after her return from graduate school. He was a childhood friend. His family had spent their summers in Saint-Paul-de-Vence too. They saw each other every summer in the south of France and had known each other all their lives. He was comfortable and familiar.

Dahlia was a perfect hybrid, a combination of two cultures, two countries, and two worlds. Her look and style and attitudes were more French than American because of her mother’s influence, but she had grown up in New York, been educated in the U.S., and had an American perspective about business, based on what her American father had taught her. It was an ideal combination. She had the romance and femininity of a Frenchwoman, and the education of an American businesswoman, which she brought back to France with her. She was a dual national, and felt at home in both countries, although she privately admitted that her heart was more French, and she felt stronger ties to France once she lived and worked in her business there. France was home to her now, and with her father’s death, her ties to the United States evaporated. Since he’d been much older than her mother, he had no living relatives during her lifetime. And once he was gone, she had no adult family members to protect and guide her, but she was a sensible young woman with a fine mind, and her parents had taught her values that served her well. She was a woman of integrity, substance, and power at a young age.

When they reconnected, Jean-Luc de Beaumont added an element of joy and levity to her life. He had a lighthearted attitude about most things. He had studied in France, but never seriously. He preferred the outdoors and extreme athletic challenges to intellectual or academic pursuits. His passions were ski racing, driving fast cars, mountain climbing, and anything dangerous and exciting that gave him an adrenaline rush. He was as handsome and dashing as Dahlia was beautiful, and an only child like her. They were the same age, and his family’s fortune allowed him the luxury of not having to work, and Dahlia was financially independent. Being with him counterbalanced her awesome responsibilities and the strong sense of duty that had been part of what she’d inherited along with Louis Lambert Perfumes. She was serious about her obligations to the family name, which was a heavy burden at times.

Being with Jean-Luc made everything seem brighter and more exciting, and his parents always welcomed her warmly. He became her first serious love. They married six months after her father’s death. He moved into her large family house in Paris with her, which she had inherited too and wanted to keep. They were children playing at marriage with youthful innocence. They had fun together and were in constant evidence on the Parisian social scene, with doors open to them everywhere. They were the golden couple of the hour. By day, Dahlia went to work to learn more about the business her mother had left her, and her father had felt confident she would run with great competence one day. She had a good head for business and a flawless instinct for perfume, like her grandfather. She hired some of the great perfume makers in the business.