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 thinkofme at all, really. Invisibility is far safer for Lydiaandfor 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.”
