“What is the current state of color photography?” she asked Mr. Wright a few hours later. “Is there any interest in developing colored photographs?”
Wright’s bushy brows rose. “I assume so. The industry employs legions of miniaturist painters.”
“I don’t mean retrospective coloring by second parties,” she said. “I’m interested in transferring the color straight from the scene to the plate.”
Because Lucian was working in the main room, they were in the small side chamber, which Wright had turned into a tiny laboratory by adding a narrow side table the day before. Her camera was on that table, with all the accessories laid out around it like the innards of a thoroughly dressed kill. Mr. Wright, in his calm yet insistent manner, had already made her memorize the name and function of each of the parts and probably meant to test her.
“I’m not an expert on physics,” he now said, frowning. “However, color is nothing other than a material’s reaction to light. And as Newton found out …”
“I was hoping there would be some research on it in this century,” she said quickly.
“Maxwell’s research might be of interest to you, then,” Wright said after a pause. “He proved that technically, you can create any color by mixing red, green, and blue light. I suppose one could experiment with colored lenses … but the photographic emulsion would also play a part …”
“Mixing light,” she murmured. “Like mixing pigments …”
“Why not focus on the things we understand?” Wright suggested. He pointed to the small portable blackboard he had procured from nowhere. “There are two chemical processes involved in developing a photograph—one to prepare the plates with a silver-bromide gelatin emulsion—this here is a silver nitrate molecule, by the way,” he said, and drew some threatening-looking structure on the blackboard, “and one to develop the images on the plate.”
The words chemical processes made her break out in a cold sweat; the whole situation with the blackboard already harkened back to her school tutorials, which had usually ended with her in pain and feeling stupid. She let out a shaky breath and thought of Mhairi’s sweetheart, Hamish, and of Anne’s little face, and slowly released her death grip on her notebook.
“… Mr. George Eastman’s recently automated the coating process, so we don’t have to trouble ourselves with the preparatory emulsion …”
They were halfway through the lesson when the skirl of a bagpipe filtered into the room, and at first, Harriet thought she had imagined it. But then the old floorboards vibrated with the rhythmic stomping of feet and a distant roar of voices raising as one.
“Oh dear,” said Mr. Wright, and cast an alarmed glance around the walls.
“How exciting,” said Hattie. There was most definitely dancing and singing. There were people in this inn who were actually enjoying themselves as opposed to feigning enjoyment over tangential plate-coating history. “I wonder what they are celebrating.”
She stuck her head through the curtain gap to where Lucian sat at the table, working through his freshly delivered folder. “Do you know—”
“A wedding,” he said without interrupting his note taking.
She stepped into the room. “How do you know?”
He looked up. A feral curl fell distractingly over his left eye. “I paid for food and drink,” he said.
“That’s kind of you,” she murmured, surprised. “Whose wedding is it?”
“Boyd’s daughter.”
She glanced back over her shoulder at Mr. Wright. “Would you mind finishing early?”
The engineer stroked his mustache, looking resigned. “No, no. Seems quite impossible to work with such noise in the background.”
He gathered his belongings and took his leave, and Hattie slunk around in front of the table. “Is it considered rude in Scotland to join a wedding celebration uninvited?”
“As rude as anywhere,” Lucian said, his eyes back on the page. “But since I paid for it, I received an invitation.”
“Then why are we here? Don’t you wish to go?”
And there it was, his exasperated nape scratch. “I’m working,” he said.
Working—when there was music, and merry people, and in immediate reach! “I bet Mhairi and Hamish are in attendance.”
Lucian looked up. “Who is Hamish?”
“One of the lads from Heather Row. Should we not go downstairs to congratulate the couple?”