Sweet Unrest (5 page)

He was already walking away again by the time I shook myself out of my inane thoughts. “It was very nice meeting you, Lucy,” he called over his shoulder.

“Likewise, Alex,” I muttered.

He stopped short at the shortened name and turned back to look at me again. I shrugged, trying for a nonchalance I didn’t at all feel. “Sorry. I just thought you look more like an Alex.”

He shook his head and his mouth pulled up—just a little—at the corners. Not enough to be a real smile, but enough that I knew he was amused. “As you wish,
ma chère
.” He gave me a small bow and then headed off through the trees on the far side of the pond.

I lifted my camera and captured his tall form as it receded into the copse, a stark figure against the darkness of the trees beyond. He looked back as the shutter snapped, but when I looked up from the viewfinder, he was gone.

Seven

“You have to take me, Chloe. Pleeeease?” I was this close to getting down on my hands and knees and begging her.

Chloe looked at me doubtfully as she peeled herself out of the hoop skirt she was wearing and tossed it aside. We were in the outbuilding that held the employees’ dorm and break room, and she was just finishing up her morning shift. “Last time we went, you practically took over my lesson,” she said.

“But I have to talk to Mama Legba again. And anyway, she invited me back,” I reminded her.

“I thought you didn’t believe in Voodoo,” Chloe fired back with one brow arched at me. “Are you saying you believe now?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted. But I was willing to suspend my disbelief if I could get some answers.

“Then why would I want to give up
my
time with Mama Legba, just so you can go messing around with something you don’t even think is real? Hmmm?”

I didn’t have time to answer before Chloe launched into a tirade. “Do you know how long it took me to convince Mama to let me come learn from her? Do you?”

“No, I—”

“And do you know how many times I had to go and do nothing but reorganize her bottles and jars and sweep her floors before she would even talk to me about
anything
? Do you?”

“But, I jus—”

“No, you don’t know. You just walk in and she gives you a
reading
.” Chloe said the word with an amazing amount of contempt. “She doesn’t
give
readings, Lucy. She charges famous people, rich people,
important
people big money to do their readings. And she just up and gave you one.”

“I’m sorr—”

“And at first I was all like, ‘that’s fine. I got to see her do a reading.’ But then I started thinking about it, and I decided it’s not fair! I’ve been going to Mama Legba for months now, and she still refuses to read me. Keeps telling me I’m not ready yet. Well, I’m never gonna be ready if you’re taking all her attention.”

“Chloe, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to get in your way.” I rubbed her arm, trying to calm her down. I’d started to think of Chloe as a friend, and the last thing I wanted to do was make her angry. “I know Mama Legba’s important to you. I do. And I promise,
promise
that if you let me come with you, I won’t make a peep. You won’t even know I’m there. I swear.”

Chloe looked at me warily. “You won’t say a single word?”

“Cross my heart. And if she offers to read me again, I’ll refuse. I’ll tell her to read you instead.”

Chloe considered that idea. “She seems to think you have some powerful energy, so maybe she’d listen to you.”

“You never know.” I doubted it.

“You won’t take over at all? You swear?”

I crossed my heart and held up my pinkie. “Any way you want me to. I just really want to learn more about what she was saying.”

I needed to learn more. I couldn’t help but feel that maybe somewhere in the stories Mama Legba spun there might be enough truth for me to understand why I’d grown up having such a horrible dream. Or maybe I just hoped she could help keep the Dream away, because in the days after I visited her shop, I’d had wonderful, glorious, dreamless nights. I didn’t drown. I didn’t die. I woke up feeling rested and refreshed.

But the night before—the night after meeting Alex by the pond—I’d started dreaming again. Not about drowning and guilt, though. I’d dreamt about
him
.

This new dream had started out so dark that at first I thought I was drowning again. I expected to feel the cold pull of the water around me, but it never came. Instead, I felt stifling air and smelled the sharp bite of some chemical I couldn’t identify. With a click of the door, light flooded the darkness, and I realized I’d been in a darkroom of sorts.

I walked out of the darkroom into the oppressive heat of a large studio—a room with high, ornate ceilings and delicate furniture. One end had French doors. They opened onto a narrow balcony, made from delicate ironwork, which overlooked a street that reminded me of the ones in the Quarter. A breeze filtered through the doors, but it offered very little relief from the heat.

This dream was every bit as vivid and real as the Dream, but the colors in it were strangely muted, like one of those old Kodachrome pictures that’s faded over time. Everything seemed washed-out or overdeveloped.

In the dream, I moved without consciously meaning to and set the large object I’d been holding on a long table that held other equipment—photography equipment, I realized. The photographer in me wanted to reach out and examine the different pieces one by one until I understood how they worked. Instead, my attention turned to a mirror hanging over the table, and I found myself staring at a stranger.

Her hair was the color of ebony, and she wore it pulled back from her heart-shaped face in a long, thick braid. Here and there, a curl threatened to break free. She had a delicate, bow-shaped mouth, and her nose was slightly turned up at the end, a bit rounder than my own and without the smattering of freckles I can never seem to get rid of. Her skin didn’t have the pinkish undertones that cause me to burn so easily. It was darker, more Mediterranean-looking, like she’d just came back from a tropical vacation, but I knew somehow that her complexion had nothing to do with the sun.

We looked nothing alike, and yet we were similar enough that we could have been sisters. Mostly it was in the eyes, I thought, that she looked like me. Although the shape was a little different, her eyes were precisely the same dark brown flecked with gold that I looked at in the mirror every day.

I realized then the dream wasn’t about me. I mean, I was
in
the dream, but I wasn’t myself. I was a passenger and observer, not a participant. I could feel everything she felt, knew everything she knew, and that duality—being both completely myself and completely someone else, all in the same moment—was almost more jarring than the deep waters that often pulled me down during the night.

As I was still contemplating her delicate features, a loud rap sounded at the door, making her jump. She looked at the clock in confusion. There were no appointments that morning, and she wasn’t expecting any deliveries. Uneasy with the disruption, she calmed herself by taking another moment to tuck back the last stray curl, and remove the heavy apron that covered a blue dress with a delicate lace trim, before heading to answer it.

When she opened the door, she was surprised by the impeccably dressed gentleman waiting on the other side.

Alex.

Or at least I thought it was Alex. He looked different—larger and more imposing, somehow. His face was a bit less angular and more filled out. He was wearing a dark morning coat that fit his wide shoulders and tall form perfectly, and when the door opened, he removed his hat and smiled. Her breath caught a little as his mouth curved into a rakish grin.

“I am looking for Monsieur Lyon, but I fear I may have the wrong address,” he told her, his voice much more carved by his accent than it was when we’d talked by the pond. He smiled at her again. “Although, if you tell me I am not mistaken, I will be a very happy man indeed.” He made a slight bow, a completely charming and ridiculous gesture.

She couldn’t quite find the words to answer him.

“I see,” he said, placing his hat back atop his head. “I am very sorry for having disturbed you, madame.”

She stood in the door, shocked for a moment by her reaction to him, but then gathered her wits and called out to him as he began walking away. “No. Wait,
monsieur
. This is Jules Lyon’s studio, but he’s not available today.”

He looked back at her. “I see. And you are Madame Lyon?”

She shook her head. “No, but I am his assistant. Is there something I might help you with, sir?”

He studied her for a moment. I could sense her wanting to turn away and shut the door in his face. I understood that feeling, having experienced being under his careful scrutiny myself.

“Perhaps I might wait a bit for him to return?” he said, after a moment.

It was not a new experience to be dismissed by a gentleman calling for her guardian’s services. “Mr. Lyon has traveled out of the city for the week, but I assure you,” she said with a practiced calm, “that I am more than capable of assisting you if you are inquiring about Mr. Lyon’s services.”

He hesitated, but then seemed to relent. “May I come in?”

The girl hesitated for a moment before nodding and stepping back to allow him to enter the studio. She shut the door and leaned into it as it latched, taking a moment to compose herself. She often found that being alone in the studio with a stranger was unnerving. But something about this stranger, or perhaps her own response to him, especially made her wary.

When she turned back, he was already prowling through the studio with the grace of some big, sleek cat on the hunt. He moved from one point to the next with obvious interest, examining equipment and studying the portraits displayed on the walls as he went. Perhaps, she thought, she had made a mistake in not sending him away.

“Is it a portrait you require?” she asked, trying to draw his attention back to the reason for his visit.

“
Oui
, but not of myself.” He turned back to her then, fixing her with flashing green eyes.

“Of a lady perhaps?”

“Actually, yes.”

She felt unaccountably deflated at that admission. “I see.”

He grinned at her look of defeat, and the charming tilt to his mouth made her stomach flip. “I do not think you do,” he said, moving closer until he hovered above her. That close, she realized exactly how much larger than her he was.

She should have backed away, but her foolish body wasn’t reacting properly. Her nerves thrummed at his closeness. She knew instinctively he was not a man for her—could not
be
a man for her—but it didn’t stop her from leaning the tiniest bit closer to breathe in the warm spice of his cologne. Sandalwood and bergamot. And something else, something expensive and unusual that made her forget the closeness of the room, the stink of the hot city streets.

He leaned in as well, and for the briefest of moments she worried he might try to take some advantage there in the empty studio. For the briefest of moments she stupidly, recklessly, wished he would.

“My sister.”

“What?” His smooth, melodic voice had shaken her out of her fantasy and she stared at him in confusion, which only made his grin widen.

“The portrait. I wish to enquire about a portrait for sister.”

“Oh,” she said, stepping back. His close proximity had made her a bit breathless, and that was unacceptable. She was not interested. She would not
be
interested. He could want nothing from her but a dalliance, and she had sworn years ago that she would not find herself in the same position as so many of the other girls who went off to their first Quadroon Ball with stars in their eyes and ended up with a white man’s babe in their belly.

His smile faltered when he realized she was pulling away. “I’m visiting my sister Josephine and her husband, Roman Dutilette, at their plantation a few miles up river,” he said. “She has been quite taken by the wonders of Monsieur Lyon’s new portraiture, and I thought I might procure one of her and her husband as a sort of wedding gift.”

“I see.” She knew of the family. He was most definitely, then, not one for her. She forced herself to regain her business persona. “Will they come here for the sitting, or will they require Mr. Lyon to come to their home?”

“What would it entail, exactly?” he asked, his eyes sharp as he took as step toward her. “Coming to their home?”

She nodded. “He simply brings the camera obscura into the home and finds a place with generous light. They would stand or sit while he exposes the plate for a few minutes.” She gestured at one of the pieces of equipment he’d been examining. “And then he returns later with the finished portrait. It’s perfectly easy.”

“Show me.” He took another step toward her.

“Excuse me?” She stepped back again, feeling once again like she was being hunted by some much bigger and more dangerous animal. She wondered for a second what it might be like to be caught. “Show you what?”

“Show me how you do it. Take one of these portraits now, and prove it is safe. I will not have my sister put into any sort of danger.”

Livid at being herded like some dumb rabbit, she squared her shoulders. “Truly, it’s no different than posing for a painted or sketched portrait. The most that will happen is the subject will become bored. And, I daresay, boredom isn’t fatal or even dangerous.”

“And yet you refuse to demonstrate.”

She huffed out a sigh of exasperation. “The materials are very costly, monsieur. We can’t simply demonstrate the process for anyone who asks.”

“I will gladly compensate you.” He stepped forward again. “Please.”

She studied him carefully, refusing to cower or back up even with his large body crowding hers. “It’s that important to you?”

He nodded, his eyes hard and serious.

“Very well. Why don’t you have a seat over there, and we’ll begin.” She turned to get the camera, but a large hand latched onto her wrist. Its warmth sent a shock of awareness up her arm, and when she turned to look at him, he looked just as thrown off as she felt. He took a breath and released her but did not step back.

“You misunderstand,
mademoiselle
. I wish for you to demonstrate by taking your
own
portrait.” He leaned over until his scent enveloped her again and she could feel the sweet warmth of his breath. “That will not be a problem, yes?”

She felt an absurd burst of pleasure when she realized why he was asking. “Oh! Don’t tell me you think these portraits really are magic?” She couldn’t keep the humor out of her voice. So many who didn’t understand the science of the process believed that the daguerreotypes were dangerous. So starkly perfect were the likenesses produced that many of the uninformed believed they could steal a person’s soul.