Too many rejections changed a person. It made one want desperately to avoid more. Perhaps that was part of what he was struggling with. He’d been rejected by nearly everyone he’d ever known. Though he knew, logically, that there were many reasons why he might have been left at the orphanage with no hint as to his identity, there was part of him that felt that as a rejection. Not knowing thewhyhad proven a struggle over the years. Perhaps if the rest of his life had included more encouragement and solid foundations instead of further humiliations, he might have managed to come to terms with that. Instead, it haunted him.
He and Mrs. Archer settled into a long silence as the dancing continued. He didn’t know what she was pondering, but his mind refused to leave the topic that had occupied it since Tuesday night. What was he running from? What was he afraid of? What would it take for him to feel like he was enough?
Never in all his life had he met someone who had tossed him as easily and quickly into the depths of self-reflection as Sophie Kingston had in one single conversation.
There was something remarkable about her; the puzzle every bit as enormous as the one she insisted he presented.
Patrick came by and claimed his daughter after the song ended. By then, Burke had come to a decision. A new song was beginning, and Sophie didn’t have a partner. He rose from his seat, excused himself to Mrs. Archer, and crossed to where she stood.
Heavens, he was nervous. She might reject him, and he would deserve it. He hadn’t exactly been friendly and welcoming the last little while. But he hoped she would give him a chance.
“Will you dance with me?” It wasn’t a very elegant invitation.
“Do you really wish to?” She looked surprised, even a little confused, but she didn’t look displeased. He chose to see that as a good sign.
“I do.”
She nodded. Her gaze on him narrowed as they walked down toward the dancing. “I wasn’t certain if you would even come tonight. I know you have a great deal you’re working on before your friend visits.”
“I also know I’ve been a bit neglectful of the town,” he said. “And I’m determined to work on that.”
“Truly?”
He nodded. “There needs to be a balance. I’m determined to find it.”
“That seems a good first step.”
“At the moment”—he smiled, a little embarrassed— “I’m focusing on the steps of the dance. No point embarrassing myself further.”
“Further?”
He held his hands out, this being a dance that began that way. “Embarrassment is not an unfamiliar thing.”
She laughed. “That, Dr. Jones, is something we have in common.”
Maura Callaghan, one of the O’Connors’ daughters-in-law, was the reason Burke had originally been brought to Hope Springs. She had lived for many years in New York and had contracted a lung disease working in a factory there. It was her husband, Ryan, who had found Burke in the mercantile near the train depot and convinced him to come and treat her. She was doing far better than she had been when he first arrived. He made a point of checking on her regularly, making certain there wasn’t anything more she needed. Factory-damaged lungs couldn’t be healed, but they could be helped.
He’d just finished looking in on her and was making his way back up the road when he came across Sophie. When making his rounds in the town he usually brought his buggy. But that day he’d wanted to enjoy nature and had left it at the inn.
He greeted her, and she smiled. He found that encouraging.
“Are you on your way back to the Archers’?” he asked.
“I am.”
“Would you mind terribly if I walked alongside you?”
Her smile grew. It was a fine thing that, though she had been a bit put out with him a week earlier, she seemed to have not held it against him.
“The weather is very fine today,” she said. “Though it is windy.”
He nodded. “It’salwayswindy in Hope Springs.”
“I’m told it’s quite cold in the winter.”
“It is. But, having lived in Chicago, I’m not unfamiliar with cold.”
“Baltimore can be frigid as well. There are times when ice falls instead of snow.”
