The Museum of Extraordinary Things(71)

Maureen pushed open the door before Coralie could prevent her. “Stop what you’re doing this minute,” the housekeeper called sharply to Eddie. “This yard is private property and there are private lives being lived here.”

Eddie gazed up to see a beautiful red-haired woman whose extreme disfigurement was evident even across the distance between them. He felt humbled by the strength and authority in her tone. “Miss,” he said earnestly. “Forgive me for not asking your permission.”

Hidden behind Maureen, Coralie again felt the hook of her attraction to him. The pulse at the base of her throat was pounding. As for Eddie, he spied a shadow and nothing more. Though he placed one hand over his eyes to block out the streaming sunlight, he could see no farther than the threshold of the kitchen.

“I have no permission to grant,” Maureen told him, “so you’d better hightail it out of here, before the owner finds you trespassing. Then you’ll see what trouble is.”

“He’s only a photographer,” William Reeves explained to the housekeeper. “There’s no harm done.”

“I don’t care if he’s the King of Brooklyn,” Maureen said smartly to Reeves, before turning her attention back to Eddie. “Sir, I’m asking you to leave. Take my advice if you’ve got half a brain in your head.”

Eddie put a hand over his heart and pleaded, “Don’t send me away before I take your portrait.”

Maureen laughed dismissively, though she clearly found something charming in his actions. He appeared as a scarecrow might, with his baggy pants and long arms and legs and dark, handsome features. “Like that will happen,” she called to him.

“Let him do it,” Coralie urged the housekeeper from the shadows. “You’ve never had one taken before, and it will cause no harm.”

Maureen was puzzled, but when she turned to see Coralie’s look of fierce insistence, she understood the fellow in the yard was the very man her charge had spoken of, the one she couldn’t forget.

“If that’s him, he doesn’t look like much,” Maureen said thoughtfully. “Too skinny by far.”

“Go on.” Coralie gave the housekeeper a little push. “Go!”

“Are you mad? What if your father sees?”

“I don’t care,” Coralie told Maureen. The kindness with which Eddie had treated his subjects in the yard had uplifted her. Here was an ordinary man who did not flee from what he could not explain but rather was drawn to what was different, not lewdly out of some sinister inquisitiveness, but due to sheer wonder. “I trust him,” Coralie said.

“Really?” Maureen murmured. “Shall I tell you what I think about trusting a man you hardly know? I’m proof of where that leads.”

“It’s only a portrait,” Coralie reminded her.

“Might I ask what anyone in their right mind would do with a portrait of me?”

Coralie took Maureen’s hand in her own. “Please. Do it for me.”

The photographer gestured for Maureen to enter the vegetable garden. The sky was without a cloud now, causing the shadows to be especially deep, black ribbons running through the grass. As Eddie worked to ready the camera’s plate, he thought about the apple trees in Chelsea, and the huge elms in upper Manhattan. He thought of the forest in Russia and the salty yellow wetlands he had crossed that very morning. The beauty of the world had been apparent to him through the lens of his camera, but he hadn’t known a human being could be as marvelous as a marsh or a tree or a field of grass. Maureen stood between the rows of lettuce and peas, staring straight at him, hiding nothing. She hadn’t even thought to take off her apron. Her face was beautiful and ruined and utterly devoid of artifice. When Eddie had finished her portrait, he went to her and got down on one knee. “My gratitude,” he said.

He knew he had taken his best photograph. Nothing he’d done before or ever would do again would compare to this one image. He wished Moses Levy were alive to observe the print when it was developed. Maybe he hadn’t been such a failure of a student after all.

“Don’t be an ass,” Maureen chided. There was the scent of cooking oil on her clothes. “As long as I never have to see that picture. I don’t even look in mirrors.”

Eddie rose to his feet, embarrassed by his show of emotion. Since the day of the fire, when he had photographed the dead, first on the street and then in their makeshift coffins, he’d been overly affected by his own passions. His eyes blazed with the fervor of a true believer, for though he claimed to have lost his faith, there was a jittery spark of it inside him. He clapped the soil from his trousers. Gazing up, he spied Coralie on the porch steps. Perhaps what happened next was influenced by the passionate state he was in, perhaps it was the intensity of her gaze. He fell in love with her in that instant. He had no idea what was happening, he only felt as if he were drowning, though he stood with his feet firmly on the ground. Coralie’s long black hair was gathered in a ribbon. She wore a simple black dress and a pair of old-fashioned cotton gloves, the sort most young women would have cast away on such a warm, seasonable day. The more he looked at her, the more beautiful she became. Eddie experienced an ache he hadn’t expected, immediate and undeniable, a rush of desire that might easily consume him.

“There you go.” Maureen nodded when she saw his reaction. “Now you’ve seen the treasure of the house.” She elbowed him to make herself clear. “Do her wrong and you’ll answer to me.”