“Take off everything.”
Josephine Vale had been alone with her new husband for barely sixty seconds when Harlan Creek spoke those words.
Behind her, a December blizzard swallowed the mountain trail and buried the tracks of the sleigh that had brought her there. Snow struck the cabin windows in hard white sheets. Wind clawed at the roof as though the Colorado winter itself wanted inside.
Before her stood the man her father had traded her to for twenty dollars and two draft horses.
Harlan Creek was even larger than the stories claimed.
He had to duck beneath the thick beam over the doorway. His shoulders nearly filled the space between the cedar chest and the woodstove. Snow melted into his dark beard, and a heavy fur-lined coat made him appear less like a husband than something that had walked down from the mountains with the wolves.
Josephine pressed her back against the timber wall.
Her heart was racing.
But fear was not the worst of it.
She could barely breathe.
Beneath her burgundy wedding dress, Aunt Lydia had wrapped Josephine inside a whalebone corset and pulled until Josephine had thought her ribs might break.
“You cannot arrive looking like that,” Lydia had said that morning.
Looking like what?
Josephine had wanted to ask.
Like herself?
At twenty-two, Josephine had spent most of her life being told her body entered a room before her character did.
Too broad.
Too soft.
Too heavy.
Too much.
She learned early that people often believed cruelty became acceptable once they called it honesty.
Her cousins whispered that she would never marry.
Women at church offered diets disguised as prayers.
Men made jokes when they thought she could not hear.
Her father, Silas Vale, had treated her as an expensive mouth that would eventually need to become somebody else’s responsibility.
So when Harlan Creek offered twenty dollars and two draft horses for a legal marriage agreement, Silas had behaved as if fortune itself had knocked on his door.
Josephine had refused to sign.
That was the part Reverend Stokes would never mention.
Her father had caught her wrist beneath the kitchen table so hard that the bones ground together.
“My roof,” Silas whispered. “My food. My name. You think those things cost nothing?”
Josephine stared at him.
“You cannot sell a daughter.”
“I can arrange a marriage.”
“I said no.”
His grip tightened.
“You will say yes.”
Across the table, Reverend Stokes lowered his eyes.
Josephine never forgot that.
Not the pressure around her wrist.
Not her father’s cold face.
Not the minister discovering something fascinating in the grain of the tabletop while a frightened young woman was coerced into putting her name on a document.
Hours later, Stokes drove her into the mountains.
He talked most of the way.
Harlan was strange, he explained.
Harlan was dangerous.
Harlan had once broken a man’s jaw in the valley.
Harlan lived alone.
Harlan trapped wolves.
Harlan came to town only a handful of times each year.
“You should be grateful,” Stokes added. “You’re getting a home. More than most women in your position should expect.”
Josephine looked through the sleet and said nothing.
Her position.
There was always a phrase like that.
A polite arrangement of words allowing someone to explain why she deserved less.
By the time they reached Harlan’s property, Josephine expected to find a collapsing shack.
Instead, a solid timber cabin stood beneath towering pines, smoke rising steadily from a stone chimney.
Split firewood filled a covered rack.
A small barn stood beyond the cabin.
Fencing had been repaired carefully.
Even in the storm, the place looked maintained rather than abandoned.
Harlan appeared from behind the barn.
Josephine’s stomach dropped.
He was massive.
He wore heavy boots, wool trousers, a brown coat edged with fur, and a leather belt scarred by years of work.
He gave Stokes one glance.
Then he looked at Josephine.
Not at her waist.
Not at the size of her hips.
Not at the curve of her face.
At her eyes.
It was such an unusual experience that Josephine almost distrusted him more because of it.
Harlan lifted her trunk from the sleigh.
She tried to climb the icy steps herself.
Her tight corset made bending difficult, and one boot slipped.
Harlan reached toward her.
Josephine jerked away.
He stopped instantly.
Without irritation.
Without embarrassment.
He simply lowered his hand.
Then he carried her trunk inside.
Reverend Stokes followed as far as the threshold.
“Well,” the minister said with a nervous laugh. “I suppose I should see the marriage properly settled.”
Harlan turned.
“Go.”
Stokes blinked.
“The weather—”
“Go.”
“I came a long distance.”
“So did she.”
Something in Harlan’s voice ended the discussion.
Within minutes, Stokes was gone.
Josephine watched the sleigh disappear through the white storm.
For the first time, she understood the absolute isolation surrounding her.
No father.
No aunt.
No minister.
No town.
No witnesses.
Just Josephine and the stranger who possessed a marriage contract with her signature on it.
She turned.
Harlan stood several feet away.
The cabin surprised her again.
There were clean shelves lined with jars.
Bundles of dried mint and yarrow hung above the hearth.
Cast-iron cookware had been scrubbed.
Blankets were folded.
Wood was stacked.
Tools were arranged rather than scattered.
It smelled of cedar smoke, leather, coffee, and cold air.
Nothing smelled of whiskey.
Nothing smelled rotten.
Nothing suggested the neglect she had imagined.
Josephine folded her arms.
“If you’re waiting for gratitude,” she said, “my father already collected it.”
Harlan’s brow moved slightly.
“That what he told you?”
Josephine looked at him sharply.
Before she could answer, pain cut under her ribs.
She inhaled.
The corset seemed to tighten.
Her fingers gripped the table.
Harlan immediately noticed.
“What’s under that?”
Her head came up.
“That is none of your concern.”
“You can’t breathe.”
“I can breathe perfectly well.”
She attempted a deep breath simply to prove him wrong.
Black dots burst across her vision.
Her knees softened.
She caught herself against the table.
Harlan moved one step forward.
“Don’t touch me.”
He stopped.
Josephine waited for anger.
None came.
His expression changed instead.
Concern.
His gaze traveled to the unnatural narrowness forced beneath her dress.
Then he said it.
“Take off everything.”
The room became very still.
Josephine heard the blizzard.
The crackling stove.
Her own shallow breathing.
“If you mean what I think you mean,” she whispered, “you may have paid my father, but you did not buy my cooperation.”
For several seconds, Harlan said nothing.
Then he turned his back.
He walked toward the cedar chest beside the fire and opened it.
Josephine’s hand moved toward the iron poker leaning near the hearth.
It scraped softly over the floorboards.
Harlan heard.
“Keep it.”
Josephine froze.
He searched beneath folded wool blankets.
Then he removed a loose blue flannel garment.
It looked like an oversized sleeping shirt.
Soft.
Warm.
Unstructured.
Harlan placed it on the table without approaching her.
Then he added a pair of blunt-handled shears.
Josephine looked at the shears.
Then him.
“What are those for?”
Harlan pointed at her middle.
“Not you.”
His eyes hardened, not at Josephine, but at the shape beneath her dress.
“That thing hurting you.”
Josephine stared.
For one strange second, she could not understand him.
Harlan stepped backward.
“My sister wore one once.”
Josephine’s grip on the poker loosened.
Harlan continued.
“Too tight. Summer dance. Passed out in the road. Hit her head.”
His jaw tightened.
“She nearly died.”
Josephine glanced toward the blue flannel.
“You expect me to undress because of that?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“I expect you to breathe.”
He pointed toward a narrow interior door.
“Room’s yours. Lock works from inside.”
Josephine did not move.
“And you?”
“Barn.”
Her confusion deepened.
“In this storm?”
“Animals need checking.”
The wind struck the cabin so hard the walls groaned.
Josephine studied him.
“You would leave?”
“You asked me not to touch you.”
She had.
Harlan pulled off his gloves.
He placed them beside the door.
Then he removed the marriage document from inside his coat.
Josephine recognized her father’s handwriting.
Her stomach tightened.
Harlan looked at the paper once.
Then set it on the table.
“Your father said you wanted the arrangement.”
Josephine laughed without humor.
“Of course he did.”
“He said you chose it.”
“He lied.”
Something shifted behind Harlan’s eyes.
Danger appeared there at last.
But not toward Josephine.
“Did he force your name?”
Josephine swallowed.
The memory of Silas’s fingers crushing her wrist returned.
“Does it matter now?”
“Yes.”
She almost smiled at the absurdity.
“To whom?”
“To me.”
The answer was so simple that it landed harder than any speech.
Harlan took his hunting knife from his belt.
Josephine raised the poker.
But instead of approaching her, he laid the knife beside the marriage contract.
“You sleep behind the locked door.”
He looked toward the shears.
“Cut the laces if you have to.”
Then toward the stove.
“There’s soup.”
Finally, he looked at her face.
“Nothing happens in this house because somebody paid money.”
Josephine’s throat tightened.
She hated herself for it.
She had promised she would not cry.
Not in front of her father.
Not in front of Reverend Stokes.
Certainly not in front of Harlan Creek.
But tears burned anyway.
Harlan seemed uncomfortable with them.
He reached for his coat.
Josephine found her voice.
“Why did you buy the contract?”
His hand stopped.
For the first time, uncertainty crossed the mountain man’s face.
“I didn’t.”
Josephine stared at him.
“What?”
“I gave your father money and horses.”
“That is called buying something.”
“Not for you.”
“What else could it possibly have been for?”
Harlan looked at the document on the table.
“He owed me.”
Josephine’s anger vanished beneath sudden confusion.
“Twenty dollars and two horses?”
“More.”
Her heartbeat changed.
“What did my father owe you?”
Harlan did not answer.
He opened the cabin door.
Snow exploded inward.
“Harlan.”
He paused.
Josephine took one careful breath.
“What did he owe you?”
The mountain man looked over his shoulder.
“Your freedom.”
Then he stepped into the blizzard and pulled the door closed behind him.
Josephine stood absolutely still.
The marriage contract lay beside the knife.
The blue flannel garment sat beside the shears.
And somewhere beneath the suffocating wedding dress her aunt had forced around her body, Josephine felt the first dangerous spark of something she had almost forgotten existed.
Hope.