Page 19 of Valley of Dreams

“Aye.”

She suspected he was more entertained by her cheeky questions than he let on. “Is yours a severe allergy to them, then?”

If only the man’s face weren’t hidden, she could see if he was smiling or his eyes dancing.

He finished the hammering of that piece of wood, then turned toward her. “I’ll grant you the state of my hair, lass, but I’ve no odor hanging about me.”

“Have you considered the possibility that you’ve simply grown so accustomed to your smell that you don’t notice it any longer?” Oh, and he was fun to tease. Too many men grew threatening in the face of anything but flattery.

“I’ve not had any ladies launch complaints about my stench.” He spoke with such a comical tone she felt certain that beneath all those whiskers, he was smiling.

She gave her own voice a ponderous tone and asked, “Have you known, then, a great many women without a sense of smell?”

Then something amazing happened: Patrick laughed. Not loudly; if she hadn’t been sitting next to him, she wouldn’t have even heard it. The sound was magical.

She’d felt certain that sound could lift her spirits on even her darkest days. But how did one go about pulling a laugh from someone determined to be a perpetual grump? Teasing had worked this time, but would it always?

“You’re looking at me like you would a slug trying to win a jumping contest.”

Shehadmeant to stare him into discomfort. “I was only admiring your laugh.”

He turned back to his work. “I didn’t laugh,” he muttered.

“You did so.”

“No,” he said flatly, taking up the hammer once more.

Why did the idea of having laughed bother him so much? It wasn’t a bad thing. He was so difficult to sort out.

As they continued working, he didn’t speak. His wasn’t an angry silence, or even a frustrated one. She suspected he wasn’t upset, but, to her surprise, embarrassed. Embarrassed at what? At a moment of happiness?

They were nearly finished assembling the odd bed for Lydia when the girl herself interrupted the silence between them. “I-und!” She had, apparently, only just recognized the man who’d been in the room for a quarter of an hour.

Eliza looked over at the bed in time to see Lydia crawling to the edge of it. “You’ll fall,” she warned.

Almost before she finished the two words, Patrick had reached back, scooped up her daughter, and set Lydia safely on the floor.

“Thank you,” Eliza said

He simply nodded.

Lydia sat beside her, the handkerchief doll in her hand, and watched Patrick. Was her little girl as confused by this mysterious man as she was? With the last board in place, Patrick spun the hammer around in his hand before setting it beside two leftover nails.

“This’ll do, I imagine.” He motioned to the floor-level bed they’d created.

“Thank you for your help.”

“I suspect you’d’ve managed.” Coming from him, the offhand comment felt like the biggest compliment.

“I appreciate not having to . . . manage. Sometimes it seems that’s all I do.”

Patrick stood. To her shock, he offered her his hand. She set hers in it, and he helped her to her feet. Her late husband used to do that, a simple gesture of kindness that had always made her feel more important than someone of her birth and circumstances generally ever felt.

Her grief had grown less acute in the two years since his death, but she felt it again in that moment, lapping over her like waves on the shore. Not brutal, not painful, but quiet, an almost gentle wash of sadness.

Other than Maura, no one had seen her grieve for Terrence. Her family was across an ocean. Her in-laws had disowned their son the moment he’d announced his intention to marry her. She was not ready to mourn in front of Patrick O’Connor, let alone in front of anyone else.

She forced a smile. “I’ll not keep you.”

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