The Outlaw's Lady. Laurie Kingery

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      Involuntarily, Tess looked back over her shoulder, and saw just what had caught Maribelle Dupree’s attention.

      The man was tall, probably all of six feet, and whipcord lean. He wore no hat, and in the sunlight his hair gleamed raven-black and a bit overlong, brushing the collar of his white shirt in the back. His features were angular, his nose slightly aquiline. He held up his hand to shade his eyes, peering around as if looking for someone or something.

      What a fascinating face, Tess thought. What she wouldn’t give to photograph him, to try to capture those angular planes of his face, that magnetism and sense of determination that radiated from him.

      “Oh, he’s coming this way!” squealed Maribelle to her sister. “Melissa, is my hair all right? Is it coming loose in the back?”

      “Girls, please,” Taylor implored, just as Tess was about to remonstrate with them again. “If you two chatterboxes could hush up while we get this picture done, I’ll present him to you.”

      Even as the girls squeaked blissfully and went into their poses again, Mr. Dupree spoke up. “I’d rather you didn’t, Sam. I don’t like what I’ve heard of the man. They say Sandoval Parrish is two different people, depending on which side of the border he’s on.”

      Taylor blinked in surprise, then said, “Very well, a father has that prerogative, after all. Now, if we could let Tess take her picture? I believe there are several others who also want theirs done. Tess dear, thank you for your patience.”

      “Of course, Uncle Samuel.” Tess took one last, fleeting glance at the object of the Dupree girls’ attention. The stranger had paused to accept a drink from a tray proffered by a servant, and was now lifting it to his mouth as he continued to look in their direction.

      Had he seen her staring right along with the giddy Dupree girls? Tess ducked under the canvas with the same feeling a mouse must have as it darts into a hole to escape the scrutiny of a hungry hawk. Half a minute later, she had completed the exposure.

      “I’m done now. You are free to move,” she said, coming back out from under her cover. She watched the Dupree girls stroll away, their bustles swaying as they each took one last, longing look over their shoulders. Apparently they had lost their nerve and weren’t bold enough to stay and hold Taylor to his promise of an introduction.

      Tess wondered if the stranger was still standing where he had been, but she was much too busy now to look at him again. Carefully, she removed the glass photography plate from the camera and strode over to where her wagon stood parked in the shelter of three shady live oaks. Her darkroom while at a job consisted of a larger, dark canvas tent stretched over the square, shallow bed of the wagon, in which sat the developing bath. She had only ten minutes to develop the picture or the collodion in the plate would no longer be wet, and her efforts would have been in vain.

      Tess wished Francisco, her assistant in the shop, could have come to the barbecue today to take care of the preparation of the collodion plates and the developing while she took the pictures so she could be done sooner. But he had told her he had to help his father today. She straightened her shoulders, reminding herself that Uncle James had often worked alone to photograph the aftermath of battles during the war. Whatever he had done in the hardship of the battlefield, she could certainly do at a barbecue.

      “Tess, can you come out for a minute? There’s someone here who’d like to meet you,” Sam Taylor said, just after she had gone into the developing tent.

      “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t right now, Uncle Samuel,” Tess said, staying under the tent and using her metal dippers to lower the undeveloped picture into the dipping bath. “If I don’t bathe this photograph right now, then hang it up to dry, the picture will be ruined. I’ll have to be in here for a few minutes, I’m afraid. Why don’t I find you when I’m done, before I start posing another photograph?”

      Idly, she wondered who it was her godfather wanted her to meet. She feared her mother had infected him with her anxiety about the possibility of her daughter’s spinster-hood. Tess hoped he was not trying his hand at matchmaking.

      She heard a rich chuckle outside the tent. “Well, if the picture needs a bath, it needs a bath,” an unfamiliar voice drawled. The voice was deep and accented in such a way to suggest that while Spanish was the speaker’s first language, he was equally fluent in English. For a moment, she was curious about the possessor of such a voice. Then, when she heard nothing more, she assumed the men had taken her at her word and moved off. She had work to do, Tess reminded herself, and in the shadows of the dark canvas tent, she concentrated on producing the best image she could.

      Minutes later, the photograph laid out on cloth and pinned into place so it could dry next to the others she had taken, Tess backed out of the tent. Before she left the party, she would have to brush a coat of varnish over the images to fix and protect them from the dust and moisture, but that could wait until all the images were dry.

      “Ah, there she is, our lady daguerreotypist,” Sam announced as she emerged.

      Tess blinked, her eyes momentarily blinded by the brilliant sunlight after the semi-darkness of the tent. As her eyes adjusted to the afternoon light, her jaw fell open.

      “Oh—it’s you!” she said, before she could think.

      Chapter Two

      He watched with great interest as Tess Hennessy’s lovely oval face went pale, then flamed as she realized what she had said.

      “I—I mean, I didn’t think y’all were going to wait right here!” One hand self-consciously flew to smooth her hair, which was coming down after brushing the overhead canvas too many times. Her gaze fled to Samuel Taylor, standing next to him.

      Taylor stepped forward. “Tess, I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Sandoval Parrish. That is to say, he’s not old, but our friendship is. Sandoval, Miss Teresa Hennessy, youngest child of Patrick Hennessy, my good friend who owns the land next to ours. I’m her godfather.”

      Parrish saw Tess blink as she heard his name. Sandoval, she would be thinking, a Spanish name, yet his last name sounds Anglo.

      “I am pleased to meet you, Miss Hennessy,” he said, and remembering that Anglo women thought hand kissing too forward, offered his hand instead. “My given name is from my Mexican mother. My surname, as well as my height, is from my father, who was an Anglo.”

      She colored again as if embarrassed that he had guessed her thoughts. “I see, Mr. Parrish. But you haven’t taken your mother’s name, too, as I understand most Mexicans do?”

      He smiled, pleased that she knew of the custom. “Yes, my full name is Sandoval Parrish y Morelos, but it’s much too big a mouthful, at least on this side of the border.”

      “And on which side of the border do you live, Mr. Parrish?” she asked.

      Parrish cleared his throat. “I have ranch property on both sides of the river, Miss Hennessy, inherited from each side of the family.”

      He watched her eyes narrow at his noncommittal answer. She probably thought he was one of the many Tejanos, Texans of Mexican heritage, whose larger allegiance lay with Mexico. When it came to the test, Anglo Texans didn’t trust them.

      Ah well, it was a pity she seemed to feel that way, but maybe it was better. He hadn’t known he would СКАЧАТЬ