Elanora gazed blindly out of the carriage that was taking her and Amelia home from Lottie’s, her head so full of Amelia’s chatter she was barely aware of her surroundings. Her father had lost his will to live since her mother’s death. She knew that.
But she’d never considered his illness would harm her marriage prospects. He was comfortably off, a former solicitor who no longer practised his craft but still — she had thought — held a place of respect in New York’s business circles.
She’d taken her family’s place in the upper echelons of New York’s commercial and professional life for granted. They rented a pew in Trinity church. She’d gone to the right private school, attended the favored dancing classes.
She knew what cutlery to use, understood the admonition for a woman to be modest at all times — everything in her upbringing prepared her to expect she’d take her place at the top table. To hear her father dismissed in the way Amelia had, admittedly based on her parent’s hearsay, shocked her.
The carriage came to a sudden jolt in the Broadway traffic, and she realized with a start that they were heading downtown towards Trinity and the wharves, not uptown towards their homes closer to Fifth Avenue. She turned to Amelia in alarm.
“Where are we going? I thought you said we were going home?”
“Oh, we are, but father asked if we could go via the office and pick him up on our way. He said he’d be finishing about the time we were planning to leave, and as we’ve got his carriage …”
At the mention of Amelia’s father, Elanora felt nauseous. The last thing she wanted was to share a ride home with a man who’d so unflinchingly dissected what a poor prospect she was as a rising merchant’s wife.
“But I need to get home. Father will start worrying.”
The tight band across her forehead made her frown. “Really, Amelia. I’m not feeling well.”
“We can’t turn back now. We’re nearly there.”
Sure enough, they were rounding the square closest to Mountfort’s offices — Mountfort and Wollander she didn’t doubt soon — and fleetingly wondered if Wollander had a daughter William was lining up for Eustace.
She clenched her hands in her lap and fought to appear nonchalant as their ride drew to a halt outside.
“I’ll stay here,” Elanora said. “No need for me to come inside.”
“Sure. I’ll only be a minute.”
Amelia’s eyes had a bright anticipatory gleam. The girl was head over heels in love, Elanora saw with a lurching heart. Poor Aunt Coco. Did she have any idea? Did she care?
A tap at the window startled her out of more day dreaming. Eustace stood outside, alert and eager. “Elanora! Amelia said you were outside! Can I have a word?”
She was shaking her head before he’d completed his sentence. “No, Eustace. I’m not feeling well. I’ve got a funny tummy. Not now.”
He opened the door anyway and leaned in. “Dear Elanora, I’ve wanted to see you so much. After that dreadful scene with Father … I’m so sorry …”
He sucked in his cheeks and his eyes darted past her. She’d never seen him so ill at ease.
“It was awful, Eustace. It really was, I can’t pretend otherwise. But this isn’t the time or place.”
“Why not? I want you to know …” He gave her a longing look. “It doesn’t change anything, Ellie. You know, about the way I feel …”
The words she’d secretly been hoping to hear. He’d said them.
But instead of the weight on her heart lightening, instead of the great wave of sadness rolling away, she felt a strange blocked sensation in her ears, as if she’d gone deaf.
The man leaning adoringly over her was nearly twenty-four years old, as she kept reminding herself. He should be a man capable of making his own decisions, of raising his own family. And he was lolling against the doorway spouting nonsense. She licked her lips and waited for the funny silence in her head to disappear, while he gazed at her expectantly. And suddenly her head cleared and she was furious.
“Perhaps you feel the same way, Eustace,” she said with a waspish tone. “But what about your father? That paragon of moral rectitude and politesse?” Have his feelings changed?”
Eustace took a step back, his jaw slack.
“Oh, come on old girl, what’s got into you? That’s not like you …”
“So has your father explained to his son and heir that the Travers blood line isn’t good enough? How a sick old invalid isn’t going to be of any benefit to the firm?”
A guilty, shamed expression skittered across his face, and she knew William had said something exactly like that.
“I can’t believe you would go so far as to … as to …” her voice faltered, and a wave of dizziness washed over her. “Well, as far as giving me that ring the other night. When you knew he will never allow it.” She said the words quietly, emphatically, trying to finally grasp the certainty of her disaster and not let go.
“He will never allow it.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “Why did you do that?”
He stood in shamed silence, his mouth open, lost for words. She thrust up from her seat, stepped through the doorway and pushed past him into the busy late afternoon street. A curse on all the etiquette books that stipulated a lady was never to push past a gentleman.
“Elanora, you can’t … Where are you going?”
“As far away from you as I can Eustace. It doesn’t matter to me where that is, just a very long way away.”
She plunged blindly onto Broadway, grateful to have her misery engulfed in the bright energy of the surging crowds of Christmas shoppers which had become such a thing over the past few years.
Stores stayed open till midnight on the days leading up to Christmas, and the pavements were crowded with visitors, some shopping for toys, fruit, and baubles and treasures of all kinds, others content to window shop the gorgeous succession of storefronts piled high with tempting merchandise.
She followed some boys who were busking Christmas carols with a flute and guitar, collecting dimes from cheery passers-by. They led her into a magical street lined with lit Christmas trees. She was wondering if she should buy one and take it home, and then as quickly realized there was no one at home except her who would appreciate it.
She wandered listlessly, basking in the happiness of those around her, barely aware of her progress until she found herself on a quiet back street. She paused and looked around, an uncomfortable sensation of someone at her back bringing her to sudden alertness. Ten yards or so back up the street a man with lank shoulder length hair loitered, his shifty eyes refusing to make eye contact.
She felt a shiver of discomfort and wheeled around to cross the street and move away from him. But when she glanced back, he was shadowing her progress, hanging back in the shadows but purposefully tailing her.
She castigated herself for her carelessness. There was no one else around, nowhere she could escape, and she was well off the routes where the hack cabs picked up random fares. Most of the premises in this neighborhood faced the street with block fences and locked gates.
She surged on, for the first time feeling a rising panic inside. She was being driven further and further away from the busy thoroughfare, and deeper and deeper into a dangerous unknown.
Then she saw it, up ahead, the glass front of a building that opened onto the street, some sort of merchant’s premises or artist’s studio?
She could hear her stalker’s footsteps closing in; she glanced around wildly and saw he was coming up fast behind her. He was cross-eyed, leering at her through blackened teeth, reaching out an arm to grab her elbow.
In one quick move she got her hand to the one door she’d passed that opened to the street. An overhead bell jangled as she stumbled into a cavernous low-lit room and stood there, waiting for her heart to stop racing and her eyes to adjust to the reduced light.
Along the walls black and white portraits hung, each artfully highlighted, and with a rush of relief she realized she’d chanced upon one of the many daguerreotype studios that had opened on and off Broadway — she’d heard fifteen or more of them in this area alone.
The portraits on the walls were overwhelming in their intense simplicity, and the panicky fear she’d felt moments ago lifted like a weight from across her shoulders as she gazed toward them. The big room was silent, as if wrapped in a blanket of serenity and protection. She hastily glanced to where she’d come in. The door was firmly shut, and no one had followed her.
With a deep sigh of gratitude, she tiptoed across the room and sank onto a leather covered ottoman, clearly placed there for visitors to sit and contemplate the images. She felt as if she’d arrived in a safe harbor, but wasn’t sure if she was permitted to dock. It was like slipping past St Peter to gain entry to heaven. For now, she was just glad to be free of the lout tailing her.
Through a doorway at the back, the dimness was pierced by sparkling pin points of light. A myriad of slender candles, fixed with an array of other twirling red, yellow, blue decorations shone out from the branches of a fresh smelling Christmas tree. The clean pine fragrance reached across the space and dispelled the final threads of jittery panic that had enveloped her.
Her ragged breathing slowed back to normal, and a wave of calm wellbeing flooded in. This was her world. She recognized some of these people — well known burghers and politicians. She thought she even spotted a former US President among them.
She allowed herself to slump with relief into the soft padded leather. She was safe. She was strong. She was unhurt. And her philandering once-upon-a-time father-in-law was not going to destroy her.
Rafael Castellanos y Ordonez was putting the finishing touches to a photographic plate in the back room of the Philip Haas Gallery when he heard the street door jangle its warning alert.
The gallery space at the front was elegantly fitted out, but out the back was much more utilitarian. Here were the operating rooms where young boys cleaned and buffed the metal plates, where the cameras were set up, and where trained technicians developed, fixed and framed the images.
Funny. They weren’t expecting their visitors to start arriving for another half hour. His German colleague Haas was a celebrated daguerreotypist with a flair for sales, and tonight they were holding a Christmas reception for key clients and enthusiasts with all the festive trimmings from Haas’s homeland.
There’d be mulled wine, rum balls and roasted chestnuts, musical entertainment and gifts for the children. And, of course, an opportunity for potential customers to admire the latest work and commission portraits of themselves or their loved ones. They had a big night planned — but it wasn’t due to begin for another hour.
He quickly finished the delicate print he was working on and wiped his hands on a towel before ducking his head through the doorway into the main gallery. A young woman rested on one of the gallery ottomans, deeply contemplative, gazing up at the portrait of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States.
He stepped into the room, and she started at the sound of his boot hitting the floor. “Can I be of assistance, madam?”
She rose, half in alarm, as if she’d been caught eavesdropping or shoplifting.
“No … no, I’m absolutely fine, thank you. Couldn’t be better really.” She laughed in a low musical rush, enjoying, it seemed, a private joke, because he couldn’t see anything amusing.
“I was Christmas window shopping and I got waylaid.” Her face clouded over. “And then I got followed by a worrisome vagrant. Actually, I was semi-lost. And I found safe harbor.” She smiled.
He stepped across the room, his hand outstretched, to greet her formally.
“Rafael Castellanos y Ordonez at your service Miss …”
He took her hand in his and felt the lingering iciness.
“Elanora Travers,” she said. “My father was a lawyer with one of the local import houses down on the wharves until he was invalided.”
“I see. So a born and bred New Yorker?”
“That’s right. And this gallery? Is it your gallery?”
“Oh no, no, I’ve only recently arrived in New York. Philip Haas is a celebrated photographer. One of the pioneers in fact. We met in Paris. We were both fascinated by the new daguerreotype process and had gone there to learn more. You knew it started there?”
She hunched her shoulders forward in a wistful shrug. “I guess … I haven’t had much opportunity to learn about it. But these portraits … They are wonderful. You feel as if the soul is bared … And what it shows sometimes isn’t what the sitter might have been expecting.” She gave another light, tuneful laugh. “I imagine appearances don’t always deceive, at least when Mr Haas is at work. I presume this is his work — or is it yours?”
“Oh no, all his. As I say, I’m just getting started.”
She stepped toward him and offered him her arm. “So you are also a daguerreotypist, Mr Castellanos? Why don’t you show me around the exhibits, and explain the finer points of your art to me.”
He accepted the gesture of friendship with a smile. “Delighted, I’m sure. We have a few minutes before our guests arrive for our Christmas show. And if you don’t have to be somewhere else, I’m sure Philip would be delighted to have you stay for that as well.”
She inclined her head gracefully toward him. “My turn to be delighted, I’m sure. My fairy godmother has given me permission to stay out tonight. After everything that’s happened today, it feels like it was meant to be.”