Chapter Twenty
Eliza had helped theArcher girls get ready to leave for thecéilíand now stood with them in the front entry, buttoning up Ivy’s coat.
“We need to be going, Joseph. We’ll be late for thecéilí.” Katie’s voice carried through the house. She didn’t sound angry, only excited for the weekly outing.
The wind was blowing even more fiercely than usual, and the air held a hint of rain. The party might be cut short.
Joseph peeked his head around the doorway to the sitting room. “Do you have a minute, Eliza?”
She nodded, fastening Ivy’s last coat button, then joined her employer in the more formal room. “Is something the matter?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” He motioned to the papers on his desk near the front windows. “A telegram arrived from the stage company.”
For perhaps the hundredth time since proposing her idea, Eliza’s heart dropped to her feet, weighed down by yet another impending disappointment. “They didn’t like our compromise?”
“They still think even a few miles outside of Hope Springs won’t be an ideal stopping point.”
She pushed out a deep, heavy breath, trying to will herself to be calm and confident. “If I move it as far away as the stage company wishes, I’ll be hours and hours away from the nearest town or farm or anything else. Dr. Jones won’t want his infirmary there. We’d be too far away for Mr. Johnson’s mercantile to benefit, so I cannot imagine that he’d continue to be an investor.”
“I can guarantee he wouldn’t,” Joseph said. “And I wouldn’t own the land you’d be building on. You’d have no choice but to buy it yourself, assuming we could find the owner and that the owner isn’t the United States government, which would make any transaction so complicated I can’t imagine it being completed in your lifetime.”
The obstacles kept piling higher and higher. How could she possibly overcome one of them, let alone a mountain of them?
Katie stepped into the room, little Sean in her arms. “Are you about ready, love?”
“I am.” Joseph held his arms out for their son. After the transfer was made, he wrapped one arm around his wife. “I am sorry to have brought you bad news, Eliza.”
She waved off his worry. It wasn’t his fault, after all. “I will think on all of this and see if I can’t dream up a solution.”
“As will I.”
The family was gone after a moment, leaving the house quiet and Eliza’s thoughts spinning. She fed Lydia and herself and buttoned them both up in their coats, but she couldn’t bring herself around to the idea of joining thecéilí. If she’d thought Patrick would be there, she might have been tempted. But he hadn’t attended the last two, having moved out of his parents’ house. She’d heard enough from his sisters and sisters-in-law at their weekly sewing circle to know that things were a little better between Patrick and the rest of the O’Connors. Certainly not whole or even truly happy, but better. She longed to ask him about that change and longed to tell him of her frustrations with her inn. He’d listened before; surely he would again.
“Should we go visit Patrick?” Though she asked Lydia, she was really inquiring of herself. As soon as she asked the question, she knew the answer.
Five minutes later, they were making their way toward the river, not to cross at the bridge, but to turn and walk toward the house Patrick currently called home.
