"I know that one," he said, pointing to an image of a bride and groom. "I've seen it before."

"Where?" Carly demanded. "Winifred ignored it when I asked questions."

"Newspaper archives. I can't remember if it was a drawing or a photograph of the original daguerreotype. But that's the first Andrew Jackson Quintrell and his bride, Isobel Quintrell y Castillo. Only after her marriage, she was careful to use an Anglicized version of her name-Isobel Castillo Quintrell. So the daguerreotype was taken in 1865, New Mexico Type Territory, the year of their marriage. Probably taken in Santa Fe, but I can't be sure. The article might name the photographer, or daguerreotypist, or whatever they were called, and will certainly give a date for the marriage."

Carly grinned and planted a smacking kiss on Dan's cheek. "Fantastic! Has anyone ever told you you're a genius?"

"Kiss me again and you can call me anything you want."

"Oh, the temptation."

"The kiss or the name-calling?"

"Yes."

He pulled her close with startling speed, kissed her lazily, thoroughly, and released her with a slow smile. "Let the name-calling begin."

Carly couldn't catch her breath, much less use it to yell at the man who had just showed her that when it came to kissing, she had a few things left to learn. The thought was dizzying.

"No comment?" he asked.

"Does 'Whew' count?"

His hand snaked around her nape. "Want to go for 'Wow'?"

Her body said yes.

Her mind said not yet.

Dan read her well. He released her with a slow caress along her jaw-line. "What comes after the daguerreotypes?"

"The what?" Abruptly she looked away so that she wouldn't get lost in the hothouse green of his eyes. "Ambrotypes." She let out a long breath. "You're a very disturbing man."

"Thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment."

"Sure it was. When you're concentrating, it would take dynamite to break through. Therefore, I'm dynamite."

She laughed almost helplessly. Then she just laughed. It had been a long time since she'd enjoyed a man as much as Daniel Duran. In truth, it had been forever.

"If I'm going to earn Winifred's bonus for finishing early, I have to stay focused," Carly said. The slow trailing of her fingertips down his stubble-rough cheek said focus wasn't easy right now. "Help me out, okay?"

He nodded, brushed a kiss over her fingertips, and turned back to the computer. "Ambrotypes."

She sighed. "Right. Ambrotypes." Very gently she picked up the first one in her cotton-clad fingers. "Eighth image. Size, quarter plate. Case is probably mid-1850s. The collodion is very badly damaged and curling away from the glass in fragments. I doubt that restoration is possible. In any case, Winifred doesn't want to pay for it. The best I can do is photograph the ruined image and play with it digitally."

Dan typed while Carly photographed and mourned the ambrotypes that hadn't survived the passage of time. Sometimes cheaper and faster wasn't good in the long run; daguerreotypes survived intact while ambrotypes were reduced to little more than black flakes and glass.

"How long were ambrotypes popular?" he asked when she paused.

"Less than a decade, thank God. Tintypes are a lot more durable." She shook her head. "It's almost not worth the hard drive space, but you never know. Some bright tech type might eventually figure out a way to resurrect the images."

When Carly reached for the first tintype, she glanced sideways at Dan. From the way he was acting, the kiss had never happened. Even as she told herself that she couldn't complain, that he was doing exactly what she'd asked, she looked at his mouth. Soft and hungry over hers, hard to forget, impossible not to want again.

"You're distracting me," Dan said without turning from the computer.

"Work on your concentration."

He snickered.

"Image twenty-one," she said briskly. "Tintype, half plate, brown tint, very probably Isobel Quintrell or a close relative based on the line of the chin, the space between the eyes, and the cheekbones. This woman is in full mourning clothes holding what appears to be a stillborn baby wrapped in baptismal white."

Dan's ringers paused over the computer keyboard. "You're joking."

"No."

He glanced up at her in disbelief.

"It's true," Carly said. "Women often were photographed with their dead children and the image sent to distant family members as a kind of memorial for the dead child. With multiple camera lenses, multiple photos could be taken at the same time, so you could send out as many memorial photos as you had the money and patience for."

He raised his dark eyebrows. "A lot of cultures make offerings to the dead, but this is a new one to me."

"The nineteenth century had a much greater understanding of the inevitability of death and the importance of death rituals than we do in the twenty-first. They lived a lot closer to the bone then."

"So some of the men in those photos who look like death masks probably were?"

"Dead?"

"Yes."

She nodded and began photographing the tintype, talking as she worked. "Mortuary photos or funerary photos or whatever you call them had quite a vogue. They were a way to unite families separated by miles that couldn't be covered any faster than a horse could gallop or a ship could sail."

He glanced sideways at Carly. She was wearing jeans and one of his old sweatshirts, no makeup, barefoot, clean white cotton gloves on her hands, wielding a high-tech camera, and talking matter-of-factly about the great American taboo-death.

"Not that they didn't pretty up death," she added. "The family corpses were washed and dressed in their finest for the photographers.

The only time death was taken head-on was with posthumous photos of criminals. Then the bodies were just propped up so that the camera could record the bullet holes and the faces. Proof of death, as it were. Much easier than hauling a corpse all over the West to claim a Dead or Alive reward." She put her fists into the small of her back and stretched. "Same for hangings. Photo cards of executed outlaws were real moneymakers for some photographers."

Subtly Dan shifted in his chair, easing his healing leg into a new position.

Carly saw the motion. "Maybe we should take a break."

"I've got another two hours before I get restless."

"But your leg-"

"Is fine." He held his hands over the keyboard. "What's the next image?"

She swallowed her objections and picked up the next tintype, describing the presentation case, background, and other pertinent aids to dating. "Same woman, different mourning dress, different baptismal wrap for the child, who looks to be perhaps two months old. Dress is very flat down the front, cinched severely at the waist, and has a short train. Probably late 1870s."

Dan typed in the description of the mortuary image. The next three tintypes were the same-only the style of the mourning clothes and the age of the dead child changed.

"Okay, that takes care of the deceased," Carly muttered, taking a final photo. "On to the kids that made it."

"Six dead children, none of them old enough to crawl. It's a wonder that she survived," Dan said. "You're sure they're all the same woman?"

"The black rosary dangling from her hands looks the same in each image. When I enhance it digitally, I'll be certain."

The next three tintypes were of living children, two girls and a boy. Even as a baby, the stamp of the first Andrew Jackson Quintrell came down in the son's pale, brilliant eyes. His mother was in the shape of his jaw and the tiny ears.

"If you're right and the woman is Isobel," Dan said, "then the boy is

A. J. Quintrell Junior. His sisters are…" He frowned and rummaged in his mind through old research, the kind that had made his mother so angry she didn't speak to him for a week. "Maria and Elena, I think. Their birth would have been announced in the newspaper. Ditto for their death."