“Relocate or breathe your last,” Zachary whispered hotly in his ear.
“Good to see you, Mr. Rourke. I was beginning to think you weren’t coming this evening. For days, you’ve been looking like a cockroach stuffed in a sackcloth.”
O’Reilly’s abrasive and careless manner amused the guests, yet his plea fell to Mrs. Merriweather across the table. “From threat of death, I am encouraged to move. Should I?”
Mrs. Merriweather’s lips twitched. “If you don’t move, I have a feeling you will be fitted for a wooden coffin.”
Elizabeth laughed. Not accustomed to frank discussion, she found the dialogue freeing. O’Reilly commandeered the conversation rich in outrageous and humorous anecdotes bantered back and forth between the room’s occupants. Nothing tedious and boring. The camaraderie rose infectious, tingling her fingers and toes. Was this not how the pulse of daily living should be?
Suddenly, the scorn of her mother’s face heaved in front of her. Elizabeth’s path was a fog that she pushed through each day. She waited for sunlight from her family. She felt still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully in the center of her mother’s gatherings.
Zachary’s clean scent of lemon and bergamot soap drifted over her. The warmth of his arm brushed hers as he slid in the chair next to her, lingered as a caress, and hauling her back to a quiet blooming in her soul.
Safe. Serene. Comfortable.She belonged.
Elizabeth cut through an oyster wrapped in bacon and dabbed it in the champagne-laced white sauce. Everything was lit by candles and oil lamps for the festivities. In the dim, watery illumination of the evening, glass shaded Tiffany lamps threw scarlet warmth across the table. She dared a glance to her dinner companion. Zachary sat in a triangle of vermillion light.
O’Reilly waved his fork to the Chinaman. “I heard you snoring last night, Chen.”
“I don’t snore.”
“It must have been a train going by. Or the neighbor has a pet lion.”
“Mr. Chen,” Mrs. Merriweather said. “I have much improved thanks to your medicine. I’m so delighted to have you as my new doctor.” The matron chatted on and on about Chen’s fantasticalmedical prowess, making his talents known to the rest of the inhabitants of the table, and to the growing chagrin of the Chinaman. “I can’t tell you enough how wonderful he is.”
O’Reilly lifted his glass in a toast. “May your troubles be as few and as far apart as my grandmother’s teeth.”
“Mr. O’Reilly,” the widowed matron began, “how long were you with your work on the railroads?”
The Irishman scratched his head. “How long was I. About six foot, one inch.”
The old woman could not hide her mirth. “Mr. O’Reilly, in reference to the Irish gathering, I must say I’m proud of my English origin. Your conversation I find extreme, but I’m a lonely old widow and need such unconventional banter like the desert thirsts for rain.”
“I’ll allow a bit of English flaw for you out of sentimentality. I find the English like to invade countries, but they get upset if they are followed home.”
Zachary sat back in his chair. “O’Reilly has a fascination with the morbid and a great dose of absurdity.”
O’Reilly spanned his hands. “It’s not that the Irish are cynical, it’s rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everyone and everything.”
Elizabeth turned to Zachary, caught him absently brushing his thumb back and forth over his chiseled jaw. He was troubled. “Mr. Rourke, have you finished any of your product? Are things working for you?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“I confess Mr. O’Reilly tells Fiona who tells me and Mrs. Merriweather. He also said you have great discipline, are an innovator, have unrivaled mental agility, and make well-informed, accurate and timely decisions. He said you were a prodigy at an early age, always tinkering with machines, leaving your family in awe. You even built a sawmill and then madeimprovements when you were twelve years old. O’Reilly thinks of you as a god.”
Zachary grinned with the satisfaction of the truly self-deluded. “With sermons like that even a bishop would fall on his knees to rejoice.”
O’Reilly cleared his throat. “Speaking of sermons, I’m going to escort Fiona to church and my weekly meeting with the Almighty.”
Zachary waved a hand in dismissal. “You haven’t seen the inside of a church in years.”
O’Reilly’s face took on the quality of a host of angels, an utter lack of guile like that of a child, and his smile illuminated the room. “When I was a kid, I prayed for a horse. Then I realized the Lord doesn’t work that way. So, I stole a horse and asked Him for forgiveness. Regardless, Fiona says I must choose the Bread of Life or I’m toast.”
Elizabeth allowed herself a sigh of pleasure dipping her fork into a chocolate-topped Boston cream pie. “Am I correct to understand you know several languages, Mr. Rourke?”
“Chinese, German, Italian. Needed it to communicate to the men working on the railroads. Not Latin like they tried to browbeat me at West Point. What good is a dead language?”
“I never shirk from hardcore thinkers, Mr. Rourke.” She lived to provoke him. “Regarding your work, squeeze your brain until it hurts. That’s called inspiration.”
