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How was Eliza supposed to slip away for a private conversation about a half-formed idea she didn’t particularly want to be overheard, if the Archers never left home, and Patrick never visited? Four days passed without a single opportunity to ask him about the difficulties and considerations of building an inn.
She couldn’t get the idea out of her head. Imagining her own inn gave her something pleasant to focus on during laundry and floor scrubbing. At night, she told Lydia stories of the Charred Oak, inwardly dreaming of raising her daughter in an American version of that magical place. But she knew building such a place would be quite an undertaking. Until she knew precisely what it would take, she couldn’t let herself fully hope.
Finally, the Archers left home to spend the afternoon and evening with Ian and Biddy O’Connor. Eliza had her chance. She took off her work apron, plopped on her wide-brimmed bonnet, and set Lydia on her hip.
“We’re going to go visit with Mr. Patrick,” she said. “You’ll like seeing him.”
Lydia held tight to her handkerchief doll in one hand and clutched Eliza’s sleeve with the other.
“But we have to be quick about it. Miss Emma and Miss Ivy’s family will be back in only a couple of hours.”
Sometimes having conversations with a not-quite two-year-old was tiring. The Archer girls, at least, could carry their half of it. And though she hadn’t had a great many talks with Katie Archer, Eliza had enjoyed the ones they’d had. Even if Patrick had no insights for her, she looked forward to simply talking with him.
Eliza knew the way to Finbarr’s future home: follow the river to the small pond, then turn left at the outcropping of rocks. She hadn’t visited the site yet, but she’d heard Ivy tell Aidan about “Finbarr’s land” more than once.
She made her way there, assuming he would be at the building site. Finbarr’s future house was the most likely spot to find Patrick, and the directions proved perfect. She found her way directly to a vast expanse of unplanted land. And very nearby was the start of a comfortably sized house built of sod. The outer walls were knee high all the way around. As she understood it, Patrick had only recently begun the actual building of the house. He’d made fast progress.
He carried an armful of large sod bricks from a wagon to the walls. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, heavy work trousers, thick boots—and no shirt. That stopped her in her tracks for a moment. She felt as if she were walking in on someone in a very private moment, even though he was out of doors and not the least bit hidden.
An urge to apologize seized her. But apologize for what? She was intruding, but not intentionally.
Eliza summoned her self-possession and traversed the remaining distance to the future house. “You’ve built so much already.”
“Aye.” He didn’t sound the least startled. Apparently she’d not made her approach undetected. “Work goes fast when a fellow’s doing what he enjoys.”
Which explained why Eliza’s days sometimes seemed to drag on endlessly.
A wood frame, the exact size of a doorway, sat in the middle of one of the long walls. Eliza stepped up near it, still holding Lydia. “This will be the door, won’t it?”
“It will.” He set another sod brick in the wall. “And the walls’ll be full of windows. Cecily says it’s important for Finbarr to have light.”
Eliza stepped over the threshold and into what would be the interior of the house. “He’ll have a lot of room in here.”
“And when he has money enough for building a finer house, this’ll be a good size for a barn.”
Lydia rested her head against Eliza’s shoulder. The poor thing had missed her nap. She’d be either asleep or fussy in a few more minutes.
“You know a lot about building.”
“Aye. A decade spent doing something’ll give you a knack for it.”
He could help her solidify her currently vague idea. “What do you know about building things other than houses?”
“I’ve built a great many things. Most weren’t houses.”
She turned to face him again. “I— What do—” She took a breath, trying to collect her thoughts, even as they continually spun back to the upending reality of a very handsome man standing half-dressed nearby. “I was—”
Heavens.
He looked over at her. “Something amiss, lass?”
“I’m sorry, it’s only that you—you don’t have a shirt on and it’s very . . . distracting.”
He smiled, his eyes sparkling. “Enjoying it, are you?”
“I’m not disliking it.”
For the second time since Eliza met him, Patrick laughed. The sound was every bit as magical as before. So much of her tension, built up over days of pondering her far-fetched dreams, eased.
“Do you mind if Lydia and I stay a minute and talk your ear off while you work? I promise not to keep you from your task.”
His smile still hadn’t faded. Worse, the troublemaker didn’t seem the least inclined to put his shirt on. She could focus if he could. “Lydia’s going to talk m’ear off, is she? That’d be worth getting behind in my work to witness.”
Even if her little girl were fully awake, she wasn’t likely to be chatty. A word or two here and there was all she ever offered.
“I’ll do the talking for both of us,” Eliza said, as if making a great sacrifice.
“Grand.” He returned to the wagon and took up another armful of sod bricks.
“Do you have any objections to us sitting inside your house?”
“’Tisn’t mine.” Though he didn’t struggle, the load was clearly a heavy one.
“While you’re building it, I think you can claim some ownership of it.”
He set his bricks on the ground. “And what do I claim when I’m done? The loft in my parents’ house? Quite the fine, successful fellow, I am.”
“I live in the kitchen of a family I didn’t know a month ago,” Eliza answered. “I haven’t exactly room for bragging.”
He returned to the wagon again but didn’t fetch more bricks. He pulled two wads of fabric from the front bench before walking back to the house and through the soon-to-be door. He unfurled what proved to be a blanket and spread it out on the dirt beside her.
“I haven’t any furniture for you to sit on,” he said. “But this’ll be better than the dirt. It’s what I sit on when I eat m’lunch.”
“Do you know, for a beggar man you’re very considerate.”
He shook his head, but the gesture was one of amusement.
“And that other lump of fabric?” She motioned with her free hand to the light green cloth flung over his bare shoulder.
“I’m taking pity on you, woman.” He pulled it off his shoulder and shook it out.
A shirt.
“Unless, of course, you’d be heartbroken at losing this stunning view you’ve had.”
She offered nothing but a smile before setting Lydia on the blanket and sitting beside her.
Patrick shrugged. “I’ll take that as you saying, ‘Get on with you, you handsome man, and work bare-chested as you have been.” He tossed the shirt over the low sod wall and set back to work.
“I think you’ve a bit of mischief in you, Patrick O’Connor.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t until you came ’round.”
Eliza doubted that. Still, she wouldn’t press it. “What is the largest thing you’ve built?”
“A shipping warehouse in Winnipeg.” He lifted a sod brick into place, adjusting it to sit perfectly on the existing wall.
“What was the most complicated?”
He didn’t have as ready an answer for that. His hat shaded his eyes, but she could tell he was contemplating her question. A trickle of sweat dropped from his face. “I worked on the viceroy’s residence in Ottawa. It was an expansion and renovation, which made it more complicated.”
“Did you enjoy building it?
“Aye.”
“Even though it was complicated?”
“The challenge makes a job more fun.”
Whether it was his breathtaking smile or the fact that he not only had built something large and difficult but had actually enjoyed doing so, her heart hopped in her chest.
“If I told you about an idea—a dream, really—that I have, would you promise not to laugh at me?” she asked.
“Do people usually laugh at this dream of yours?” He sounded sincerely concerned.
“I haven’t told anyone about it yet. Well, except for Lydia, but, as you can see, she isn’t spilling any of my secrets.” The little girl was fast asleep on the blanket, lying on her back with one arm flung outward and her legs bent. When Lydia was exhausted, she could fall asleep in the most uncomfortable-looking positions.
“Still carrying her handkerchief,” Patrick said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen her without it.”
“It’s her doll. The closest thing to a doll I’ve been able to get her, at least.” Eliza pushed through her embarrassment on that count. “I realize that’s a little pathetic.”
Patrick hefted another large brick. “Do you think so low of yourself because you haven’t mountains of money at the ready?”
“I’m not looking to have mountains,” she said. “But enough for a doll and shoes for Lydia would be nice. I want to have a home of our own. To be able to contribute something to the weekly céilís.”
He looked over at her. “Is that the dream you were speaking of?”
She smiled. “Oh, I dream much bigger than that.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He returned to his efforts. “I’ll not laugh.”
Eliza stroked Lydia’s hair as she spoke. “Do you remember when you were visiting a few days ago and I told you about the inn I grew up in?”
“Aye.”
“That’s my dream, to have that again.”
He grew very still facing the wall he was building. He didn’t look back at her. “You’re wanting to return to England?”
“No.” Even if she’d wanted to, she could never have afforded passage back. “I’d like to run an inn, like my family does, but here.”
He resumed his work. “Here in America?”
“Here in Hope Springs.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. His posture grew less rigid. He looked over at her. There wasn’t any of laughter or mockery in his expression. He seemed content more than anything.
“There’s not an inn in Hope Springs.” It wasn’t a dismissal of her ambitions, simply a statement of fact. She appreciated that.
“One would have to be built.” She spoke a little hesitantly, unsure of her footing going forward. “But that’s not something I know anything about.”
Patrick pulled his hat off long enough to push his hair back off his forehead before replacing it. “I know something about that.”
“Could it be built, do you think?”
“Oh, sure. The building of it is the easy part.”
She shook her head. “Spoken like someone who has actually built something like this. I wouldn’t have the first idea how to begin.”
He stood quite nearby, feet shoulder-width apart, hands tucked into his trouser pockets. “You’d want to have access to water and level ground if possible.”
Heavens, he was distracting standing there like that.
“You’d need materials, workers,” he continued.
She was pretty sure she was blushing a little. She hadn’t done that in ages.
“You’d need land you owned or had permission to build on.”
“I don’t have that,” she said, dropping her gaze to her hands.
She could hear him walking around but didn’t look up. She needed to focus, and the sight of him was far too distracting.
A moment later, he sat next to her. There would be no avoiding looking at him now, not without an explanation.
She looked up. “You put your shirt on.”
He grinned a little wickedly. “Thought I’d take pity on you, stop all that blushing you were doin’.”
The warmth in her cheeks turned fiery hot. “You aren’t going to tease me about this, are you?”
“Of course I am.”
She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Believe it or not, I really did come to talk about an inn, not to gawk at you while you were working.”
“I believe you.” He tucked Lydia’s handkerchief up closer to her. “You do have a difficulty building yourself an inn beyond needing land. I’m building Finbarr’s house of sod because timber comes very dear around here. Now, I’m building it better and larger than most soddies. He’ll not be living in a shambles, but it’s still not considered anything elegant. Eventually he may have enough to build himself a proper house and change this to a barn, but even saving money for as long as he has, he hasn’t enough for anything finer.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “I can’t have an inn made of sod. Few people would stay in it.”
“You’d likely encounter a lot of hesitation.”
“How much money would Finbarr have needed to build a frame house?” she asked.
He quoted a price far beyond anything she could likely ever scrape together, not after years and years of saving. “How am I supposed to come up with that when I can’t even put shoes on my daughter’s feet?”
“You don’t.”
She released a slow, deep breath. “It was a ridiculous dream. I suppose I knew that, but I let myself imagine not being a housekeeper or living in someone else’s house or—” She swallowed back the emotion rising in her throat.
Patrick set his hand gently on hers. “I wasn’t trying to say you ought to give up your dream. Only that you need to find someone willing to invest in your business, someone who has the money you don’t.”
“Who would invest in an inn out in the middle of nowhere?”
“If I had two dimes to rub together, I would.”
She turned her hand enough in his to weave her fingers through his. Having that connection made it easier to endure the disappointment of feeling her tender dream wilt. “You’re very kind to try to help me feel less defeated.”
“I’m in earnest.” He didn’t pull his hand away. “Having made the stage ride from the depot, I know the misery of not having a place other than the unforgiving ground to break the journey, of not having a hot meal in my belly. Your inn would provide both.”
“I’m as poor as you are,” she said. “I can’t buy lumber. And a sod inn wouldn’t be a comfort to weary and wary travelers.”
“Joseph Archer’s a businessman by trade. He’s invested in any number of things, including quite a few out this way, from all I understand. And when Finbarr and I talked to him about this house, he showed himself to have a good head on his shoulders and to be a man of fairness.”
True though that might be, she wasn’t reassured. “Well-off people don’t have much faith in the poor and unimportant.”
“I do think Joseph’ll hear you without dismissing you.”
She let out another deep breath. That was how she released tension when she felt overwhelmed. “Dismissal I can endure. It’s the insults and vitriol and being treated like I’m not even a person . . . I don’t want to go through that.”
He held her hand a little tighter. “Again?”
He’d pieced that together, then. She nodded.
“I’m not a terrible listener, if you’re wanting to talk about it.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m keeping you from your work.”
“I’ll catch back up. Go on with you, then.”
After another deep breath, she began. “I had a job in New York working as a maid in a fine family’s home. It wasn’t my favorite work, but it was better than the factory I’d worked at before.” Lydia moved a bit in her sleep. Eliza tucked the girl up against her with her free hand. “The family I worked for had a nephew who visited them regularly. Our paths crossed quite a bit. He was kind and didn’t look down on me the way the others did. We talked often. He began attending Sunday services at the same church I did, and, after a time, he even sat with me and walked me home after services.” Those had been happy days. Her heart filled with a quiet sort of warmth when she talked about them. “His family learned of our growing attachment. After dismissing me, they threatened him with disownment if he didn’t cut ties with me. Not just a financial disownment—completely cutting him out of their lives.”
“So he tossed you over?” Bless him, Patrick sounded offended on her behalf.
“No.” She smiled a little to herself. “He married me.”
“Ah.”
“His family made good on their threat. They had nothing more to do with him. We both found work and a place to live, and we built a life together. But losing his family weighed on his heart. He missed them. Their coldness hurt.”
“Of course it did. Hurt both of you, I’d imagine.”
She stroked Lydia’s hair. Talking about that time was not easy, though the hurt didn’t ache as much as it once had. “After he—after he died, I sent word to his family so they could attend his services and know where he was buried. They responded with accusations, saying I was trying to extort them for money, that I had, essentially, killed him, and that I wasn’t ever to contact them again.”
Patrick let go of her hand and, wrapped his arm around her in a gentle, kind embrace. “And they didn’t come to the funeral?”
“No. They said he’d been dead to them from the moment he declared his affection for me.” She leaned against him, letting herself rest in his arms. Other than Maura, he was the first person she’d told this part of her past to in any degree of detail. “Lydia was born five months later.”
“Oh, lass. I hadn’t realized the order of things. What a weight to bear.”
“I sent word to his family again, telling them they had a new granddaughter and grandniece. The response I received was, without question, the most hateful, belittling, insulting . . .” To her horror, emotion rushed to the surface. Her breath shook. She truly didn’t want to cry, but doing so felt inevitable. “I’m poor and unimportant. The well-to-do consider that a fatal flaw. What my late husband’s family said about me was viciously cruel, and I don’t want to endure that again. But what they said about Lydia—” Eliza curled into him, not wanting to remember the hateful words they’d written. “I want to believe that Mr. Archer is not like they were, that I’ve nothing to fear from him.”
“But a fear, once learned, is difficult to unlearn.” He put her thoughts so perfectly into words.
“I don’t dare give the rich man I work for reason to think ill of me—to think of me at all, really. Invisibility is far safer for Lydia and for me.”
“You are a lot of things, Eliza Porter, but invisible’s not one of ’em.”
His kind compliment offered a salve to her battered heart. She found she could breathe again. She could even jest a little. “With your shirt off, you certainly aren’t exactly invisible either.”
He shook a little with a quiet laugh. “Are you ready to admit you enjoyed the view?”
“‘Enjoyed’ is such a strong word.”
His laugh returned, louder this time. How she adored the sound of it. The noise, however, woke Lydia. She whimpered. History said the girl would be crying loudly in a few more breaths. She picked Lydia up and held her, gently and slowly patting the girl’s back.
“Will it help, Eliza, if I go with you when you talk to Joseph Archer about your inn?”
“You would do that for me?”
His arm dropped away, and he rested back with his elbows on the ground behind him. “I’ve a vested interest in the success of this endeavor.”
“Do you?”
He nodded. “For one thing, I suspect I’d get paid for building the inn, something I can’t say for this house. And, being a grown man, I’d prefer not to continue living off the charity of m’parents.”
“Fair enough.” She kept Lydia in her arms and turned to face him. “What is the other thing?”
“Other thing?”
“You said ‘for one thing.’ I am curious what else is on your list of reasons.”
He leaned on one elbow and reached his other hand out to brush his fingers over Lydia’s flyaway hair. His tender kindness to her daughter nearly brought tears to the surface yet again.
“For another thing,” he said, “I think Lydia should get to have a doll, and shoes, and a house of her own. And her ma should get to have a dream come true.”
“A dream you kindly didn’t laugh at.”
He got to his feet and offered a quick, friendly smile. “No one should have to dream entirely alone.”
Patrick set back to work. She stayed only a few minutes longer. But his words stayed with her. What dream was he harboring in his loneliness?