THE COLD IN the air stung my cheeks. I pulled my coat tightly round my neck as Dickens and I walked against the icy wind back to our district. A carriage had been called for Adelaide, who wished to visit Guilfoyle before meeting me at the counting-house.
With lips numb from the chill, I told Dickens about the late-night visit from the young entrepreneur, even slipped him the ring I’d been given. He knew something of this strange photographic process. The camera obscura had been around for centuries, and a Frenchman named Niépce, who had only just died this year, had developed photo etching and a rough chemical process that might explain what I’d seen.
Little, though, could explain the base use that Smithson, whoever the bastard truly was, had come up with for the process. “Deplorable,” I
