“I usually drink only at night,” he said quickly.
“Usually?”
He pushed his hand through his hair. “This isn’t an easy thing to overcome.”
“Did you ever plan to tell me?” Her anger was giving way to hurt. “You told me heavy things from your past, weights that effectyou. But this thing, this secret that impacts my safety, and mychild’ssafety, you never bothered to do me the courtesy to tell me any bit of it.”
“I’m not violent when I drink,” he said. “It doesn’t make me dangerous.”
“No.” She stepped away, holding Lydia in a protective embrace. “What it makes you is a liar.”
He watched her walk away, taking his heart with her. The pull that whiskey had on him, the destructive role it played in his life, was claiming yet another casualty.
Two, in fact. It was pushing away Eliza and drying up the last drops of hope he had.
Chapter Twenty-two
Patrick knocked atthe back door of the Archers’ house every morning and afternoon for the next five days. Eliza never answered. A few times, Emma Archer did. She firmly but apologetically told him that Miss Eliza was busy and couldn’t come talk with him. The rest of his knocks were simply ignored.
He spent his days building the interior walls of Finbarr’s house. They, too, were made of sod, though Patrick had cut these bricks narrower. He’d be done with the house soon. He hadn’t the first idea where his next job would come from.
And, heaven help him, he was struggling again with the same losing battle he’d been fighting for ten years. The progress he’d made in the short months he’d been in Hope Springs was disappearing fast.
Everything was falling apart. He hardly had enough strength left to even hope.
Friday evening, Patrick summoned what little remained of his resolve and returned once more to the Archer home and knocked once more. If he could just explain in a way that she would believe he hadn’t meant to mislead her, hadn’t meant to hurt her . . . He’d given the same speech before. To landladies, employers, friends, women who’d interested him but not come close to captivating him the way Eliza had. No one had ever believed his pleas, and he didn’t blame them. But he needed Eliza to believe. He desperately needed her to.
Please, Eliza. Please answer the door.
The handle turned. Would it be Emma again? Maybe Ivy this time. The younger sister would likely be an even harsher doorman than the older had been. He wouldn’t stand a chance.
But it wasn’t a guard or sentinel who opened the door.
“Eliza.” Her name fell from his lips as a plea. “Hear me out. Please.”
She didn’t slam the door, but she also didn’t invite him in or say a word.
