Behind a Lady's Smile (16 page)

“Genny, stop it,” he said, trying to sound stern but laughing instead.

She gave him a look of complete innocence. “Didn’t I look pretty? What an awful man you are.”

“The plate will dry and I’ll have wasted all the chemicals.”

Genny shook herself as if to throw off her mischievousness. “I’ll be good. Promise.” And then made another face.

Mitch couldn’t help it, he laughed again, only serving to reward her for her bad behavior. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to go over there and kiss you silly.” As threats went, it wasn’t a very good one, because Genny’s face lit up and she smiled, a perfect smile, and he thanked the man who had invented photography for allowing him to preserve this moment as he removed the lens cap and allowed the light to flood the glass plate.

“Hold that, Genny, please God.” And she did.

“I still want that kiss,” she said, not moving a muscle in her face.

He pulled out his pocket watch to mark the time. “If you stay still, I just might give you one.” Mitch looked at his watch, then assessed the amount of light hitting Genny, and at twenty-five seconds, he covered the lens again, blocking any more light from hitting the plate.

“You can relax,” he said, and walked over to her. He gave her a quick buss on the cheek, nearly laughing out loud at the disappointed look on her face. “Someday you’ll thank me for not taking advantage of you. Do you have any idea how improper it is for me to kiss you?”

“You kissed me before.”

“Yes, and it was a mistake.” The biggest mistake he’d ever made, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. Those kisses had stayed with him and haunted both his waking and sleeping hours.

Genny put on a pout as he went over to the camera and pulled the container with the glass plate out. “I’m going to prepare the negative now. You can relax. It will be several minutes before I’m done.”

Mitch ducked beneath the black cloth of his tent and immediately set to work. Creating a negative in complete darkness had become second nature to him and his hand went unerringly to the bottle of developer, which he carefully poured over the plate. A few seconds later, he placed the plate into a bath of water, rinsing the developer off.

“Are you almost finished?” Genny asked from directly behind him. She so startled him, he nearly dropped the plate.

“Finished,” Mitch said, pulling back the black cloth. He immediately held the negative up, examining it with a practiced eye. “Lovely. But I’m not done yet.”

“More chemicals?” Genny asked, wrinkling her nose at the smell.

“More chemicals. Come here, you can watch this part. See? I have to soak the plate in this solution for a moment. That washes away the extra silver. Then water.” He held the glass plate by the edges, never touching the actual surface of the negative for fear of leaving a fingerprint. He’d done that a time or two when he was learning.

“Now to dry.” He lit a small lamp and held the negative over it, moving it so that the entire surface dried. “And now, varnish.”

“Goodness, you do all this outside?”

“It’s a bit more difficult, but yes. Once this dries, I’ll make the print. But look here,” he said, studying the negative. “See this dark area? That’s going to be the light area of the picture. It’s difficult to know precisely how the photograph is going to look until I make the print, but it looks sharp.”

Genny leaned over to study the glass plate, and Mitch found himself looking at her, at the gentle curve of her jaw. He wished he could take a hundred photographs of her so that he would never forget how soft her skin looked, the way her lashes, thick and long, framed her eyes. “Tillie made your hair look real nice,” he said, nearly wincing at the gruff way his voice sounded.

“She said my braid was awful.”

Mitch chuckled. “Not awful, but not as pretty as this.”

“She has so many pins in my hair I feel as if my head is made of metal. Braids may not be pretty, but they’re far more comfortable. So much about being a lady is uncomfortable.”

Genny sounded so disheartened, Mitch laughed again. “You’ll get used to it all. And you’ll be glad you went through all this when you have one of those fancy lords dancing with you.” Mitch forced himself to say that last, just to remind himself that he had no claim over her and never would.
I’m just an escort, nothing more.
But, damn, it was hard to stay focused on that reality when she was standing so close he could smell the floral soap she’d used to wash her hair.

“I can hardly breathe in this dress. I shall become one of those ladies who faints from lack of oxygen.”

Mitch furrowed his brow. “Tell Tillie not to make everything underneath so tight.”

Genny laughed. “How ferocious you look, Mitch.”

Mitch took a deep breath. She was right, he likely did look like a man bent on murder—just from the thought that someone had made her feel a bit uncomfortable. “It’ll be a while before the plate is dry enough to make a print. I’ll come get you when I’m done. You can get out of that dress now. And put your hair in a braid, if you’d like.”

Genny tilted her head a bit, studying him. “You know, sometimes you sound angry, but I don’t think you are.”

“Just go change, Genny. You’ll ruin your new dress.”

“There you go again, sounding angry,” she said in a singsong way.

“I am angry.”

“Ha. No, you’re not. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not angry.” She gave him a saucy look before leaving him alone to stew over the fact that she was right. He wasn’t angry. He was in love.

 

When Genny saw the picture, it was the oddest thing. It was almost like looking at someone else, someone she didn’t recognize. She looked regal and sophisticated, and the expression on her face was one of suppressed joy. “Is that what I truly look like?”

“You really do look like a princess,” Tillie said.

The two women, heads close together, were looking down at the print, studying it as if it were a painting by a master. It was that beautiful, and Genny couldn’t stop the surge of pride she felt that Mitch, grumpy Mitch who swore too much, could have produced something as beautiful as this. It wasn’t vanity that made her think that; she had a good idea what she looked like. The woman in the picture was not the woman she saw when she looked in the mirror every day. The woman in the picture was almost lovely beyond words.

She looked up to see Mitch studying her, no doubt looking for her reaction. “It’s lovely, Mitch. Really. I don’t know how you made me look so pretty.”

“You are pretty,” Tillie said, laughing.

“Not
that
pretty,” Genny said.

“That’s true,” Tillie said, then turned to Mitch. “You think you could take a picture of me and make me look that good?”

“Of course.”

Tillie shot him a look of disbelief.

“It’s so strange,” Genny said, staring at the picture again. “When I’m an old lady, I’ll know just what I looked like. I’ll remember this day, and you, and I’ll have this image to hold forever. It will almost be like going back in time.”

“That’s why so many people take pictures of their children, so they can remember them always,” Mitch said.

“Even the dead ones,” Tillie said dramatically.

“Dead children? Why would they do that? It seems so macabre,” Genny said.

“So they can remember them,” Mitch said, coming around to look at her photograph. “It gives the parents comfort. William took one picture of a young woman holding her little dead baby. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. We were all a little shaken up by it. But when she got the picture, days after the little one was put in the ground, she was so happy she cried. She held that picture almost like she was holding her baby. Near broke your heart to see it.”

Tillie’s eyes flooded with tears, and when Genny saw Tillie cry, her eyes started burning too. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Genny said.

“It is sad, but that picture made her happy. That’s why I like photographing people, not things. You’re giving someone something they can hold onto forever, almost as if you have a piece of them.” Mitch stopped talking abruptly and looked away. “Anyway, I’m glad you like the picture.”

“I do,” Genny said, wondering why Mitch’s eyes had momentarily looked so bleak. She knew so little about his past. Did he have someone he wished he had a photograph of? Someone now gone? She wished suddenly she had a picture of Mitch or even one of the two of them. She thought that was a wonderful idea.

“We should have a picture of the two of us, Mitch. Tillie can take off the lens and put it back on. Then I’d have a memento of our time together. And so would you.”

Mitch’s jaw tightened and he shook his head. “I don’t have enough chemicals left for another negative.”

Genny nodded, but had a feeling he wasn’t telling her the true reason he didn’t want a picture of the two of them. She swallowed her disappointment and forced a smile. “At least I have this photograph.”

T
wo days before Mitch, Genny, and Tillie were due to board the ship, his mother and Tillie disappeared on an errand of “finding costumes for Tillie’s role.” Mitch couldn’t recall the number of times he counted himself the biggest of fools for getting caught up in this scheme. He was out nearly all of his savings, had fallen in love with a girl he could never have, and was facing the prospect of preparing her to attract another man.

It was a cruel irony that when Mitch finally found himself in a place where he thought he could give a woman what she needed, he’d found one he could never have. Mitch had grown up in a world of misfits, so the idea of not being good enough hadn’t really entered his mind until he reached adulthood. But he understood it now. His mother’s friends had welcomed everyone into their fold, and as a boy Mitch just figured that’s how people were. It wasn’t until he reached the Army that he realized rank and privilege had anything do with respect and authority.

It had been a hard lesson for a seventeen-year-old kid who’d spent his life practicing lines and dance steps with his mother. The first week of his training had nearly destroyed him. Sgt. Baker had seen his weakness the first day of training. He saw a kid who had no business putting on a uniform, a kid who had never really been in the company of other men. Something inside Mitch wouldn’t let him give up, wouldn’t let the sergeant break him, though God knew the older man had tried. Or maybe he’d seen something in Mitch that he hadn’t even known was inside him. Either way, the Army changed him.

In the end, he’d survived the war, Sgt. Baker had died in Petersburg, Virginia just seven days before Lee surrendered. Mitch hadn’t seen the man fall, but he’d seen plenty around him die. It was only dumb luck Mitch had survived the fighting. He learned later that more than seven thousand men had died; it was easy to believe given the bodies he’d seen. Mitch had been part of the New York 40th Infantry regiment, trying to take back a city that had fallen early in the war. He was wiry and strong, a tall target for the Confederates. A bullet grazed his head and he went down. That bullet saved his life, for when he came to, it was all over. He was in a ditch surrounded by dead men, and for a while Mitch wished he’d been among their number.

Mitch had only been in the fight six months before that day, but he came back to New York a changed man, one who saw everything his mother and her friends did as frivolous and silly. He’d tried to return to his old life, but the war had reshaped him into a new person, though he didn’t know who that person was until much later.

Years of wandering led him to Nebraska and Will Jackson, a man Mitch came to think of as a big brother. Mollie and Will took him in, let him heal, showed him what a normal life could be like, made him realize that what he wanted more than anything was peace and a soft place to put his head each night.

Now he was twenty-seven years old, and he’d let his heart destroy that dream of peace he’d been working so long to achieve. All those years, all that focus on one goal—to save enough money to start his own studio—would be gone if his gamble did not pay off.

What had he done? What had he
allowed
?

He looked down at the photograph he’d taken of Genny and felt as if his chest was on fire. This was all so wrong. This was not supposed to have happened. Part of him wanted to rip the picture, to throw the negative into the fireplace and smash it. She was his peace. She was his soft place. But she was going to England and he was coming back to New York to start a business he no longer even had the heart to care about.

The morning of July ninth, Mitch took a long, hard look in the mirror and saw a man he wanted to hit. Hard. He was aching for a fight and only wished he was back with his crew in California, for certainly one of them would have obliged him. As it stood at the moment, he was left feeling he wanted to hit something, but there was nothing to hit.

It was this dark mood in which Genny found him. He was in what his mother called the library, but was really nothing more than a dark room on the north side of her apartment with over-large leather furniture and not a book in sight. He didn’t even know why he’d gone there, except perhaps it was a room Genny rarely visited. It was warm, stifling, actually, for the windows in this particular room didn’t open wide. The room felt the way he did. Like hell.

“There you are,” she said, and with just those innocuous, cheerfully spoken words, a sweat broke out on his brow that had nothing to do with the New York July heat.

“Here I am.” He stiffened at the sound of her voice and calmly turned the photograph over, hoping she hadn’t seen what he’d been staring at.

“We’re leaving in two days.”

He took a deep breath, feeling impatient and in a foul mood. “So we are.”

“Are you looking at something interesting?”

He slowly turned toward her and saw that she was wearing one of her ready-made dresses from Nebraska; her hair was in a simple braid down her back. The sight of her, looking as she had when they’d first met, nearly made his knees buckle. He’d thought that girl was gone.

“Just staring at the bricks.” He knew he sounded put out but couldn’t stop himself. He
was
put out.

Genny’s smile faltered a bit. “Are you angry with me?”

She said it in such a small, un-Genny-like voice, his heart lurched a bit. “No, Genny. I’ve never been mad at you and I don’t expect I ever will be.”

“Then why . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It just seems as if you are.”

“I’m not.”

A long silence, and then, “Could you dance with me?”

He jerked slightly before he could stop himself, and he gave himself a mental shake. Innocuous words should not hurt, but it seemed that almost everything she said felt like a blow to his gut. “There’s no one here to play the piano. Besides, you know all the dances well enough.”

“I’m a bit worried about the waltz.”

Mitch closed his eyes briefly, his entire body on fire with needing her. He wanted to bury his face against her hair, breathe her in, hold her, kiss her. Oh, God, did she even have the smallest idea what she was doing to him? If she did, if she knew the dark thoughts coursing through his brain, she’d run.

“No piano,” he said, almost desperately.

“I could hum. Or you could.”

She was worrying her hands together and he hated that he was hurting her. He couldn’t allow her to know just how difficult this had become for him. God knew, he had only a hair’s breadth of control left. If she took another step toward him, if she smiled again, he doubted he’d be able to stop himself from kissing her. And if he started kissing her, God knew whether he’d be able to stop at that. Not when he lay in bed each night and dreamed what it would be like to see her next to him with that sleepy grin of hers, not when he could still recall the earthy-sweet scent of her hair.

“Listen, Genny. I’m tired and not feeling too good. I just want to be left alone, all right?”

She nodded but didn’t leave. “I miss you,” she said with a little shrug. “It seems these last few days you’ve already left me behind.”

“I guess that’s about right.”

She dipped her head a bit, and it seemed to Mitch she was almost trying to duck his words. “I wish you wouldn’t. I wish—”

“Don’t matter what you wish, Genny. The only thing that matters is what’s happening. I’m taking you to England and I’m saying good-bye. That’s what’s happening. Get it? That’s what has to happen.”

She looked as if she was trying not to cry; she knew how much he hated it when she did. “I understand,” she said, and he could hear her voice tighten.
Damn it to hell.

He walked up to her and gently grabbed her upper arms, giving her the smallest of shakes. “Look at me. I’m trying to do the right thing, Genny,” he said, hating the way his voice broke, the way she looked at him as if her heart were shattering, as if she knew his was too. “Please, let me do the right thing.”

“I can’t.” She leaned to kiss him, and Mitch didn’t know how he had the will to push her away. It would kill him, that kiss.

“If you won’t leave, I will,” he said, and stalked from the room.

 

Genny let him go. When Mitch was in a foul mood, she found there was nothing she could do but let him stew a bit. She looked around the gloomy, hot space and walked to the window that Mitch had been staring out to see if there was anything of interest outside. Craning her neck, she looked down at the bricks, but saw nothing noteworthy. Leaning out further, she rested her hands on the narrow table that stood beneath the sill and felt a piece of thick paper.

It dawned on her suddenly what Mitch had been looking at; she wondered if it would be a terrible violation of his privacy if she were to turn the paper over. Biting her lip and feeling rather guilty, she looked. “Oh.”

It was her picture. He’d been staring at it, his hands braced on either side, his body tense.

Genny wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away from the photograph.
Please, let me do the right thing
.

Genny suddenly closed her eyes and sagged against the table. She had no experience with love, but she had a pretty good idea that’s what she felt for Mitch. And now . . .

“Does he love me?” she whispered, feeling none of the joy she should with such a thought. The minute she said the words aloud, doubt filled her. He didn’t act like a man in love; he acted like a man who wanted to kiss her and knew he shouldn’t. That wasn’t love. Then again, she had no idea what a man acted like when he was in love. Didn’t they write poetry and send a girl flowers? Or maybe they took your picture and made certain you had pretty clothes.

Genny pressed her fingertips against her temple. This was all so confusing, not at all like the fairy tales she’d read where the princess knew immediately that she was in love. If this was love, it was nothing like in the books. This
hurt
.

Genny sat down in one of the big leather chairs. Nothing was as it was supposed to be. Other than the day her father died, she’d never felt quite so miserable in her life. She sat there for several minutes before she heard Tillie calling out for her. Part of her wanted to remain silent, to pretend she hadn’t heard, but she ended up shouting, “In here.”

In a few moments, Tillie peeked around the corner, her blonde wig seeming to glow in the gloom of the room. Other than that first day when she’d taken it off and the morning of her photography session, Genny hadn’t seen her without it on. “There you are. What are you doing in here all alone in the dark?” Tillie’s smile faded slightly, as if sensing something was troubling her. She peered at Genny’s face. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong?”

Genny’s throat closed up so suddenly, she couldn’t speak, so she just shook her head. Clearly, the desperation she felt was easy to read, for Tillie rushed over to her, went down to her knees and grabbed her hands.

“What’s happened?”

Genny swallowed, willing the lump in her throat to disappear; she would not cry in front of another person. “It’s just that nothing is the way it was supposed to be,” she said, barely getting the words out. “I promised my father to go home to England, but . . .”

“It’s not home, is it?”

Genny shook her head. “No, it’s not. And it just occurred to me. I’ve been so worried that they won’t like me, but what if I don’t like them? My mother had to run away to marry my father. What kind of parents would be so awful that a daughter would do that?”

“You say your grandparents are a duke and duchess?”

Genny sniffed, still desperately trying not to cry. “Yes.”

“And your dad, what was he?”

Genny furrowed her brow, trying to remember what he’d been doing before her mother escaped with him to America. “I think he was a land steward for my mother’s neighbors.”

Tillie’s face cleared, as if everything was dropping into place. “That explains it then. Why, your mother falling in love with a steward would be like you falling in love with a jailbird. Daughters of dukes marry sons of dukes or earls or some such. It’s just not done.”

Her father had never spoken of the precise reason he’d run from England. Genny had only known it had something to do with her grandparents’ not liking her father. “How do you know all this?”

“Jane Austen,” Tillie said with a nod. “Well,” she equivocated, “not quite, but her books gave me a general idea that class is a very important thing in England. It’s important here, too. Do you think John D. Rockefeller would let his son marry me? Not hardly.”

“I know my grandfather was terribly upset by my mother leaving. Then he wrote the dearest letters begging her to come home.”

Tillie dipped her head, forcing Genny to make eye contact. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I know about a hundred girls who would take your place in a second.” She snapped her fingers. “What’s happening to you is the stuff of dreams. Look at this dress, your hair,” she said, flicking Genny’s long braid. “Is this the girl you want to be or that girl in your picture?”

“I’m not certain. I know who
this
girl is. I haven’t the foggiest idea who that girl in the picture is.”

Tillie’s expression became fierce. “I’ll tell you who that girl in the picture is. She’s a girl who isn’t going to ever wonder where her next meal is coming from or deal with some masher trying to take things he oughtn’t. She’ll have a warm house and a soft bed and a place to stay for the rest of her life. And that girl ain’t ever going to have to do something she doesn’t want to just to survive. That’s who that girl is.”

The more Tillie said, the worse Genny felt. She knew she should be grateful, but she couldn’t tell Tillie the real reason she was feeling so low. Even she knew how foolish it would sound to tell Tillie she had fallen in love with Mitch. “I do have one question,” Genny said. “What’s a masher?”