Gideon Hayes stopped directly in front of Clementine.
Three hundred people seemed to stop breathing with him.
The fiddle player had lowered his bow. The mayor stood beside the cider barrel with his mouth half open. Even Arthur Dawes, who had rejected Clementine only moments earlier, had turned around to stare.
Clementine remained seated.
She could see Gideon's boots first—scarred brown leather coated in gray mountain mud. Above them were heavy buckskin trousers, a hunting knife at his belt, and the hem of a hide coat darkened by melted snow.
Then she lifted her gaze.
And kept lifting.
The man was enormous.
Not merely tall. Substantial.
Gideon Hayes looked as though somebody had chipped him out of one of the granite cliffs above Bitter Creek and then forgotten to sand down the edges.
His dark beard covered most of his face, but it did not hide the sharp line of his jaw or the pale scar disappearing beneath his left ear.
His slate-colored eyes met hers.
Clementine waited for the familiar sequence.
The glance.
The hesitation.
The calculation.
Then the retreat.
She had seen it seven times tonight.
Instead, Gideon's eyes dropped briefly to her hands.
Not her waist.
Not her hips.
Her hands.
Calloused palms. Short nails. A small burn scar across her right thumb from pulling a skillet out of her aunt's stove.
He looked back into her face.
"You dance?"
His voice was deep and rough, as though he didn't use it often enough to keep it polished.
Someone gasped.
Clementine stared at him.
She had expected many things that night.
Pity.
Mockery.
Another rejection.
She had not expected the richest man in the territory to ask her a question as casually as if they were alone.
"I know how," she said.
A nervous laugh rippled through the crowd.
Gideon's head turned slightly.
He didn't glare.
He didn't need to.
The laughter died immediately.
Then he extended one enormous hand.
"Then stand."
Clementine looked at it.
His palm was scarred. His fingers were rough and cracked from cold weather and hard work despite the fortune everyone whispered he possessed.
A rich man's hand should have been soft.
His wasn't.
That interested her.
Still, she did not move.
"Why?" she asked.
The room stirred.
Several women looked scandalized.
A man like Gideon Hayes was not questioned in Bitter Creek.
Clementine didn't care.
She had spent an hour being inspected like livestock. If this was some elaborate joke, she intended to know before becoming part of it.
One of Gideon's eyebrows lifted.
"Why what?"
"Why me?"
A murmur spread.
Her aunt, Beatrice, stood near the back wall and pressed one hand to her mouth.
Clementine heard someone whisper, "For heaven's sake, girl, just take his hand."
Gideon ignored them.
His gaze remained on Clementine.
"Because you're the only woman in this hall who looks like she could survive February."
Silence.
Then, from somewhere near the cider barrel, somebody choked on a laugh.
Clementine almost smiled.
Almost.
"That's your courtship?" she asked.
"I wasn't aware we were courting."
That time, she did smile.
Just slightly.
It changed her face.
Gideon noticed.
Clementine put her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers.
For perhaps the first time in her life, Clementine's hand disappeared inside somebody else's.
The realization startled her.
Gideon pulled gently.
She rose.
There was no struggle.
No grunt.
No visible surprise at her weight.
He simply stepped backward and gave her room.
The plum skirt fell around her boots.
Clementine stood nearly five feet ten, taller than many men in Bitter Creek.
Beside Gideon, she felt something unfamiliar.
Not small.
She didn't want to feel small.
But she didn't feel oversized either.
She simply felt like herself.
Gideon led her onto the dance floor.
People moved aside.
They did not move because of Clementine.
They moved because of him.
She disliked how satisfying that felt.
The fiddler blinked.
Gideon looked toward him.
"You planning to finish the song?"
The man nearly dropped his bow.
"Yes, sir."
Music resumed.
Slowly at first.
Then stronger.
Clementine expected Gideon to dance badly.
A man who lived seven months of the year above the snowline did not strike her as somebody who practiced reels.
She was wrong.
He moved simply but confidently, keeping rhythm without flourish.
"You've done this before," she said.
"My mother believed a man ought to know how to dance and sew a wound."
"Useful combination."
"Both keep you from embarrassing yourself."
She laughed before she could stop herself.
Several faces around them hardened.
Clementine saw them.
Girls who had ignored her for years.
Mothers who had whispered about her.
Men who had passed her chair tonight.
Now those same people watched Gideon Hayes place a steady hand near her shoulder blade as if dancing with her were the most natural thing in the world.
Tommy Barnes stared openly.
Clementine leaned toward Gideon.
"You've caused a scandal."
"I opened a door."
"You asked me to dance."
"That too."
"People are going to talk about this for months."
"They already talk too much."
Another unexpected smile pulled at her mouth.
They completed one turn.
Then another.
Clementine slowly forgot the eyes surrounding them.
Gideon did not attempt flattering conversation.
He asked where she had learned bookkeeping.
That surprised her.
"How do you know I keep books?"
"I've seen the mercantile ledger."
Clementine missed a step.
"You've seen my handwriting?"
"Your numbers."
"My aunt owns the mercantile."
"And you're the one keeping it alive."
Clementine looked sharply at him.
Gideon continued as though discussing the weather.
"Your aunt orders stock. You calculate margins. Her invoices changed handwriting three years ago. Profits went up."
"You study mercantile ledgers?"
"I invest money. I study everywhere it goes."
That made more sense.
The Black Vein had not made him rich through luck alone.
People in Bitter Creek liked to pretend Gideon Hayes had swung a pickaxe once, struck a mountain of silver, and become wealthy overnight.
Clementine suddenly suspected his success had required considerably more intelligence.
"What else do you know about me?" she asked.
"Enough to know seven men in this room are idiots."
Heat rose into Clementine's face.
She hated that he could produce a blush after she had survived so much humiliation without one.
"They didn't owe me a dance."
"No."
His voice remained calm.
"They owed you manners."
That distinction mattered.
Clementine looked away.
The music ended.
Applause broke out awkwardly.
Gideon released her.
Clementine expected him to bow and walk away.
Instead he said, "I need a bookkeeper."
Her stomach sank.
There it was.
Not admiration.
Employment.
She should have known better.
Clementine pulled herself taller.
"My aunt needs me."
"I'm not asking you to leave tonight."
"Then what are you asking?"
"I lost my mine superintendent in an avalanche last winter."
The bluntness of the statement stole her irritation.
"I'm sorry."
"He was a good man. Poor with arithmetic."
Gideon's expression changed almost imperceptibly.
"He kept three sets of books because he thought that made them three times more accurate."
Despite herself, Clementine laughed.
Gideon continued.
"I have thirty-eight miners, twelve freight hands, a sawmill crew, supply contracts, payroll, and enough invoices to bury a mule."
"And no bookkeeper."
"Not one I'd trust."
"Why trust me?"
"I don't."
That was the strangest answer yet.
Clementine folded her arms.
"You're remarkably bad at making offers attractive."
"I trust your numbers. Trusting you would take longer."
Fair.
Annoyingly fair.
"What exactly are you proposing?"
"Come to Black Vein for six weeks. Straighten the accounts. I'll pay you three times what your aunt pays you."
"My aunt barely pays me anything."
"Then five times."
"That isn't the persuasive argument you think it is."
His mouth twitched.
There was humor buried under all that beard.
Before Clementine could answer, Arthur Dawes pushed through the crowd.
Whiskey had reddened his nose.
"Hayes."
Gideon turned.
Arthur looked at Clementine and smirked.
"You're taking the joke too far."
Every muscle in Clementine's body stiffened.
Gideon's face did not change.
"What joke?"
Arthur laughed.
"Come on. Her."
He gestured toward Clementine.
Not at her face.
At all of her.
"Don't tell me you've been in those mountains so long you've forgotten what women are supposed to look like."
The room went utterly still.
Clementine felt the old familiar burn behind her ribs.
She prepared to defend herself.
Gideon spoke first.
"Arthur."
Something in his voice made Arthur's smile fade.
"I passed your place on my way into town."
"So?"
"Your bay mare has a split hoof."
Arthur's eyebrows pulled together.
"What's that got to do with—"
"She's been limping for weeks. You keep riding her."
Arthur's face reddened.
"That's my horse."
"Correct."
Gideon stepped closer.
"And Clementine is her own woman. Yet somehow you think both exist for you to judge by usefulness and appearance."
Nobody laughed now.
Arthur looked around for support.
Found none.
Gideon continued quietly.
"I wouldn't let you choose a horse for me."
His eyes moved briefly toward Clementine.
"I certainly wouldn't let you choose a woman."
Arthur cursed under his breath and walked away.
The crowd parted for him.
Clementine watched him leave.
Then she turned to Gideon.
"I didn't need rescuing."
"I know."
"You did it anyway."
"I wasn't rescuing you."
"What were you doing?"
"Correcting an irritating man."
She stared at him.
Then laughed.
A real laugh this time.
Deep enough that several people turned again.
Clementine no longer cared.
Later, when the dance finally ended, Gideon escorted her to the porch.
Snow had begun falling.
Early for the season.
Large white flakes drifted through the dark.
Her aunt waited near the wagon.
Gideon stopped.
"Six weeks," he said.
Clementine wrapped her shawl tighter.
"At the mine."
"Yes."
"Three days into the mountains."
"Yes."
"In a place where snow reaches the roof."
"Sometimes higher."
"And you expect me to simply agree?"
"No."
"What do you expect?"
"An answer by sunrise."
Clementine frowned.
"Sunrise?"
"My freight wagon leaves at seven."
"You're impossible."
"So I've been told."
He walked away.
Clementine watched him disappear into the snowy darkness.
Her aunt came beside her.
Beatrice waited three seconds.
Then said, "Well?"
Clementine exhaled.
"He's insane."
"Rich."
"That doesn't cure insanity."
"Handsome."
"Under half a forest of beard."
"Interested."
Clementine's humor disappeared.
"He wants a bookkeeper."
Beatrice looked at her niece.
"Maybe."
Clementine turned.
"What does that mean?"
"It means that man crossed a room containing every unmarried woman in Bitter Creek."
Beatrice adjusted Clementine's shawl.
"And he stopped at you before he ever mentioned a ledger."
That night, Clementine did not sleep.
She lay beneath a quilt listening to wind scrape branches across the roof.
Seven men had rejected her.
One man had seen her.
Perhaps only as a bookkeeper.
Perhaps as something more.
But one sentence Gideon had spoken refused to leave her mind.
You're the only woman in this hall who looks like she could survive February.
At six forty-five the next morning, Gideon Hayes was tightening a freight rope behind the general store when he heard footsteps.
He turned.
Clementine stood in the road wearing a heavy coat.
A carpetbag sat at her feet.
Beatrice stood behind her trying not to look pleased.
Gideon's gaze moved from Clementine to the bag.
"Six weeks?" she asked.
"Six weeks."
"Five times my current wages."
"Agreed."
"Private room."
"Agreed."
"I handle the books. Nothing else."
"Agreed."
"And if I decide you're unbearable, you bring me back immediately."
A slow, rare smile appeared beneath his beard.
"That one might become a problem."
Clementine narrowed her eyes.
"Why?"
"Because by supper tonight you'll already know I'm unbearable."
For the first time in years, Clementine climbed into a wagon headed somewhere nobody in Bitter Creek had chosen for her.
And as the town disappeared behind them, she had no idea that the journey would change not only her life, but Gideon Hayes's mountain, the Black Vein mine, and eventually Bitter Creek itself.