“And I am far from ‘the most capable.’”
“I doubt that.” A sweetly offered, sincere compliment.
He held his leather doctoring bag in both hands in front of him. When she’d interacted with him at thecéilísor briefly after Sunday services, he was always quiet and withdrawn like this. But when he’d been doctoring, looking after Lydia, he spoke and held himself with confidence and surety.
“I know all of the O’Connors on this road,” she said, “and I know where a few of the families live on the other end of town, but I don’t yet know where to find you.”
He motioned toward the back of the house. “Out in the fields.”
She eyed him sidelong, a smile tugging at her lips. “Are you teasing me?”
“Only a little. There’s a soddie not far behind the house. I live there.”
“A large soddie?” She knew sod houses could be spacious but usually weren’t.
He shook his head. “It isn’t. I have no option but to travel to my patients.”
“You don’t like that.” It was obvious he didn’t.
“I don’t mind. I really don’t. But it’d be easier for me, and for them as well, if I had a place most could come to and be seen without having to search me out in dozens of possible places about town.”
That made a lot of sense. “But you plan to stay even though the arrangement is not ideal, because Hope Springs is special.”
“It is.” He was a quiet man. She’d realized that during their very first interaction. But he was a determinedly happy man as well. She liked that about him.
Dr. Jones turned to Ryan and Maura. “Send word if you need anything.”
“We will,” Maura said.
With only the most cursory of farewells, Dr. Jones stepped from the house.
“I like him,” Eliza said. “He’s very friendly.”
“He chats more with you than anyone else,” Maura said. “I don’t know how you manage that with these standoffish men.”
“Men?” She laughed. “Plural?”
“They don’t come more aloof than Patrick O’Connor. At least the version of him walking among us now.”
“You mean the version with his hair newly cut and beard neatly trimmed?”
Maura grinned. “I still haven’t the first idea how you talked him into that.”
Eliza shrugged a shoulder. “I am very convincing.”
“Apparently.”
“Sit with me.” Maura motioned her to the table. “We haven’t gabbed in ages.”
Eliza wasn’t about to say no. She’d come specifically for a gab. They walked to the table.
“How are you faring at Archers’?” Maura asked, pulling out a chair and sitting.
“I adore those girls of theirs.” Eliza took the chair directly across from her friend. “That little boy is a handful, isn’t he?”
“He is, indeed.” Maura nodded slowly and with emphasis. “A sweet, loving, pill of a baby. He’s been running his ma ragged since the day he was born.”
They talked awhile about the Archer children, about the very fine stove in the Archer kitchen, and about Katie Archer’s near-daily fiddle practice. The topic offered Eliza an opportunity to ask a question that had hovered in her mind from nearly the moment she’d met Katie, but which she’d been hesitant to pose.
