Hennessy put one hand on his wife’s shoulder, the other on his daughter’s, and smiled the charming smile that usually mellowed his wife’s anxious reaction to his daughter’s individuality.
“Yes, she is a beautiful girl. Thanks be to God, our last chick in the nest got your looks, Amelia—especially your blue eyes, and only my red hair,” he said, with a quirk of amusement that lifted the corners of his mouth and eyes. “When—and if—” he added, with a hint of steel “—she’s ready, our youngest has only to crook her finger to have any man she wants. But she’s not a brainless belle with no thought but how many beaux she can collect. If she wants to be a photographer and carry on for James, I don’t see the harm.”
Amelia Hennessy’s lips thinned and she sighed again. “You never do, when it comes to Tess, Patrick, but she’s already twenty and she’s going to end up an old maid, you mark my words.”
“I always do, Amelia,” he said, giving his wife an affectionate peck on the cheek. “But an old maid? Nonsense. Our Tess is the prettiest girl in Hidalgo County. A man would be a fool to think otherwise if he had eyes in his head. And now, we’d better leave or we really will be late.”
Tess sighed, too, knowing the battle was only postponed, not won, and followed her mother out of the shed. As she left the dimness, the tropical heat of the Rio Grande Valley washed over her. For a moment she envied her mother’s lightweight dress, low cut over the shoulders.
In front of them stood two carriages, the open victoria, with its matched bays and driven by Mateo, and a smaller vehicle that resembled a Civil War ambulance, covered on all sides and in back by heavy canvas and pulled by Ben, the same mule that had once pulled the wagon for Uncle James. Tess had requested that her photography wagon be ready at the same time as her parents’ vehicle, and Mateo had done so.
“We’re going to be the laughingstock of the party with that wagon following us,” Tess heard her mother grumble as her husband assisted her up into the carriage.
“Horsefeathers,” her father scoffed. “They’ll be lining up to have their pictures taken, and Tess will be very popular indeed.”
“If it comforts you to think so,” her mother sniffed. “But I just wish Lula Marie had had the decency to ask me first before hiring our daughter. I would have forbidden it.”
“Sam talked to me,” Patrick Hennessy told his wife. “I said it was all right.” There was a warning note of finality in his voice. Tess heard no more objections. She climbed into the driver’s seat and gathered up the reins.
Her heart warmed with love for her father. He’d always supported her dreams, God bless him. She loved her mother, too, and knew despite her mother’s fretting about her future, that the feeling was fiercely reciprocated.
Tess understood that her mother had grown up in a simpler time. She’d been a belle in the truest sense before the charming Patrick Hennessy, an Irish immigrant, had swept her off her feet. Everyone said she was marrying beneath her, but apparently she had known what she was doing. Starting from scratch, Hennessy had built his empire in south Texas until he was one of the richest cattlemen in the state, even after the Civil War.
If only she could convince her mother that she, too, knew what she was doing. Tess had grown up on her uncle James’s tales of working as a photographer for the famous Mathew Brady during the war. She had taken her first daguerreotype at her uncle’s direction when she was only seven. By the time she was fifteen, she was working alongside him in his shop in nearby Chapin whenever she wasn’t away at school, and by the time he died, he had taught her everything he knew.
Tess glanced backward into the wagon to assure herself that all her bottles of chemicals were safely and securely bestowed inside. “Giddup, Ben,” she said, clucking to the mule. And the beast obediently took his place behind the victoria for the short drive to the Taylors’ plantation.
“I tell you, Dupree, we’re going to have to call the Rangers in again to deal with these Mexican cattle thieves like McNelly did in seventy-five,” Samuel Taylor said, turning to the man sitting next to him. “He certainly showed Cortinas what was what.”
“I’m sure you’re right, Sam,” Mr. Dupree agreed. “I’m sick and tired of losing cattle to these bandits, not to mention two of my best broodmares.” He slapped his hand on his knee as if to emphasize his disgust.
Tess threw off the heavy, dark canvas cover under which she had been crouching and faced the two men she had posed standing in front of their wives and daughters.
“Please, Uncle Samuel, Mr. Dupree. You must remain still, or you will be a blur,” she pleaded, striving for a tactful tone. She swatted at a horsefly that had taken advantage of her coming out from cover to land on her neck. “The exposure will take only a few seconds and then you may talk all you want.”
“I certainly hope we’ll be done so soon,” Maribelle, one of the Dupree daughters, complained. Like her sister, she was sitting at her father’s feet with her skirts spread out decorously in front of her. “I’m roasting here in this heat, and without my parasol, the sun will bake my complexion, I’m sure. I don’t know why we could not have sat on the veranda where it’s shady.”
Tess had already explained the need to use natural light, so she didn’t bother to do so again. “Just another minute, Maribelle, and you can go back to the party. Just think, you and your family will always have this picture to commemorate the day.”
Maribelle made a little moue of distaste, as if nothing Tess could create with her camera could possibly compensate her for her suffering, but then her eyes shifted to something behind Tess and her camera. Her eyes widened. Without turning her head, she spoke out of the side of her mouth to her sister. “Melissa, who is that?”
“Who is who?” snapped her sister, also irritable in the heat.
“Ladies,” Tess begged. She had been about to duck back under the canvas again and take the picture.
“That man who just stepped off the veranda, the one who’s now standing by the fiddlers’ platform,” Maribelle Dupree told her sister. “Don’t look now, because he’s looking this way, but my stars, he is quite the handsome fellow!”
“You know I can’t see that far without my spectacles,” Melissa whined, “and I could hardly wear them here.”
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.