“You’re going to put that inside me?”
Adelaide Mercer’s voice cracked through the little log cabin just as another gust of October wind struck the walls hard enough to shake snow from the roof.
Silas Rourke stopped beside the narrow bed.
In one hand he held a bone-handled hunting knife. Around its tip he had carefully wrapped a clean strip of boiled linen soaked in hot pine resin. Steam curled upward into the lamplight.
Adelaide stared at it as though he were holding a rattlesnake.
Blood had already soaked through the side of her burgundy wool skirt. Her face had gone nearly as pale as the snow piling against the cabin window.
Silas’s pale blue eyes moved from the cloth to her face.
“I’m not putting the knife inside you.”
“That isn’t nearly as comforting as you seem to think it is.”
“I need the cloth against the wound.”
“Inside it?”
“Enough to stop the bleeding.”
Adelaide swallowed hard.
Silas looked at her for another moment, then slowly lowered his hand.
“If I don’t stop it,” he said, “you won’t make it until morning.”
Two days earlier, Adelaide Mercer had been afraid that the man waiting for her in Montana might decide she was too large to marry.
Now she was afraid she would die before either of them could make that decision.
And as she stared at the rough mountain man standing beside her, she could hardly believe how quickly everything had gone wrong.
It had begun at a muddy trading station below the western Montana mountains.
October, 1891.
Adelaide had arrived with nine dollars, one enormous trunk, three letters from home she had no intention of reading again, and the uneasy understanding that she had agreed to marry a stranger.
The stagecoach had barely stopped before the driver, Otis Grady, dragged her trunk down from the rear rack.
He dropped it directly into a puddle.
Adelaide flinched.
“That trunk has everything I own in it.”
Otis wiped rain from his mustache.
“Then I suppose you ought to keep an eye on it.”
“You might have set it down somewhere dry.”
He looked around at the muddy yard.
“You see dry anywhere?”
Adelaide gave him a look.
Otis sighed, bent over, and moved the trunk approximately six inches onto a patch of mud that was only slightly less wet.
“There. Palace treatment.”
“Your kindness is overwhelming.”
Otis climbed back onto his coach.
Before taking the reins, he studied her again.
Most people did.
Adelaide was six feet two inches tall.
She had been taller than many grown men by the age of sixteen, and by twenty-two she had become accustomed to the same predictable sequence whenever strangers saw her.
First came surprise.
Then came the second glance.
Then the downward inspection, from her broad shoulders to her strong arms to the size of her boots.
Occasionally, there was a smirk.
Sometimes a joke.
Once, at a church social in St. Louis, a young man had asked whether her father fed her oats.
Adelaide had poured lemonade into his lap.
She still considered it one of her better decisions.
Otis Grady did not joke, but he did shake his head.
“Rourke’s place is high country.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Winter comes early.”
“I’ve been told that too.”
“Man doesn’t talk much.”
“That would make him a pleasant change from this conversation.”
Otis’s mouth twitched.
“You sure about this?”
Adelaide looked toward the mountains.
Dark clouds had settled around the peaks. Pines disappeared into the mist. Somewhere above that gray wall of wilderness lived Silas Rourke, the man whose name she had answered in a matrimonial notice four months earlier.
His first letter had contained no poetry.
My name is Silas Rourke. I am forty-one years old. I have a cabin, livestock, eighty acres under claim, and no talent for writing charming letters. If you require charm, I am likely the wrong man.
Adelaide had laughed when she read it.
His second letter had been shorter.
If you come, I will treat you fairly. I will not strike you. I will not drink away money. I will not expect you to become someone else merely because we marry.
Those words had stayed with her.
Especially the last ones.
Become someone else.
That was what everyone in St. Louis seemed to expect.
Stand smaller.
Speak softer.
Laugh quietly.
Do not lift heavy things in front of men.
Do not walk too fast.
Do not look too capable.
Do not remind anyone that you are stronger than their assumptions.
Adelaide had spent twenty-two years being told how much room a woman was supposed to occupy.
She was tired of apologizing for occupying more.
“Yes,” she told Otis. “I’m sure.”
The driver nodded toward the storm.
“Good luck, Miss Mercer.”
Then he drove away.
Adelaide watched the coach disappear down the road.
The sound of the wheels faded.
Rain began.
Then sleet.
She pulled her coat tighter and stood beside her trunk under the station’s narrow overhang.
Five minutes passed.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
By twenty, Adelaide’s certainty was beginning to freeze around the edges.
What if he had changed his mind?
What if Silas Rourke had received her final letter, discovered exactly how tall she was, and decided not to come?
She had deliberately avoided giving the number.
Tall, she had written.
Apparently, that had been open to interpretation.
A branch snapped somewhere beyond the trading post.
Adelaide turned.
A gray mule emerged from the trees.
Then another.
Walking between them was a man Adelaide recognized only vaguely from a badly printed photograph.
Silas Rourke.
The photograph had not prepared her for him.
He was tall, though Adelaide suspected she could look nearly straight into his eyes. His shoulders were broad beneath an old buffalo-hide coat darkened by rain. Black-and-gray whiskers covered his jaw. Wet hair curled around his temples.
He looked like the mountains had carved a man out of stone and then forgotten to smooth the rough edges.
Silas stopped several feet away.
His pale blue eyes moved over Adelaide.
Face.
Shoulders.
Arms.
Boots.
There it was.
The familiar inspection.
Adelaide braced herself.
Silas said, “You’re big.”
She lifted her chin.
“I had noticed.”
His gaze shifted toward the trunk.
“You didn’t mention being a giant.”
“You didn’t mention smelling like wet leather and a smokehouse.”
Silas went perfectly still.
Adelaide immediately wondered whether she had traveled fifteen hundred miles just to insult her future husband within thirty seconds of meeting him.
Then one corner of his beard moved.
He was smiling.
“Fair enough.”
Adelaide blinked.
Silas walked past her.
He bent, grabbed the handle of her enormous trunk, and lifted it onto one shoulder.
Adelaide stared.
Two baggage handlers had complained about moving that trunk in St. Louis.
Silas carried it toward the mule as though it contained blankets.
“What did you pack?” he asked.
“Everything.”
“I can tell.”
He tied it securely.
Then he pointed toward the second mule.
“Get on.”
Adelaide looked at the saddle.
“You always this romantic?”
“Storm’s coming.”
“That’s your answer?”
“Romance won’t keep you from freezing.”
She almost smiled.
Within minutes, they were climbing.
The trail rose sharply through pine forest.
At first Adelaide tried to make conversation.
“How far?”
“Three hours.”
“You live three hours from the station?”
“In good weather.”
“This is good weather?”
“No.”
That answer ended the conversation for several minutes.
Freezing rain became sleet.
Sleet became stinging ice.
Silas walked rather than rode, leading his mule and keeping one hand near Adelaide’s reins whenever the trail narrowed.
The higher they went, the more dangerous the path became.
To Adelaide’s right stood a wall of stone and pine.
To her left, the mountain dropped away into darkness.
“You could have warned me about this trail,” she called.
Silas glanced back.
“Would you have stayed?”
“No.”
“Then warning you wouldn’t have helped.”
She hated that he had a point.
Thunder rolled over the ridge.
The mule beneath Adelaide flinched.
Silas immediately turned.
“Easy.”
Another crack exploded overhead.
The mule jerked.
Its rear hoof slid on wet stone.
Everything happened at once.
Adelaide grabbed the saddle horn.
The mule twisted.
Her body went sideways.
Silas shouted her name.
She hit the ground hard.
For one breath there was no pain.
Only shock.
Then fire ripped through her side and upper thigh.
She gasped.
A jagged piece of broken stone had torn through her skirt.
Warmth spread beneath the freezing fabric.
Adelaide looked down.
Blood.
Too much blood.
Silas dropped beside her.
“Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning to dance.”
His hands moved quickly, checking her leg, hip, ribs.
Then he saw the wound.
Something changed in his face.
The humor disappeared.
“Silas?”
He tore a strip from his shirt and pressed it firmly against the injury.
Adelaide cried out.
“Sorry.”
“That sounded sincere.”
“It was.”
“Is it bad?”
Silas did not answer.
Her fear sharpened.
“Silas.”
“We have to reach the cabin.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
“No, it isn’t bad?”
“No, I’m not answering.”
Despite everything, Adelaide nearly laughed.
Then dizziness swept over her.
Silas caught her shoulders.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m right here.”
“Look at me.”
She did.
His pale blue eyes were steady.
“Can you stand?”
“I’m six foot two. Standing is one of the things I’ve always done quite well.”
“Adelaide.”
The way he said her name changed something.
No teasing.
No judgment.
Only concern.
“I’ll try.”
She could not.
The moment she put weight on the injured leg, her knees folded.
Silas caught her.
Before she could protest, he slipped one arm behind her back and another beneath her knees.
Adelaide stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Carrying you.”
“You can’t carry me.”
He lifted her.
Apparently, he could.
Adelaide had spent years watching men pretend not to struggle when moving furniture around her.
Silas simply picked her up.
No comment.
No joke.
No grimace.
He placed her carefully across the mule, secured her as best he could, and continued toward the cabin.
By the time they arrived, darkness had fallen.
Adelaide remembered fire.
A rough bed.
Silas removing her soaked coat.
The hiss of water heating.
Pain.
Then waking again to find him kneeling beside the stove.
He had boiled cloth.
Cleaned his knife.
Heated pine pitch.
She watched him wrap the linen.
Her stomach tightened.
Silas turned.
That was when she saw the steaming cloth.
And that was when the question escaped her.
“You’re going to put that inside me?”
Now Silas stood beside her.
The storm screamed outside.
Adelaide’s breathing came fast and shallow.
Silas set the knife down.
He crouched until they were nearly eye level.
“I won’t lie to you,” he said. “This will hurt.”
“How much?”
“A lot.”
“That’s not terribly encouraging.”
“I’m not good at encouraging.”
“I noticed.”
“But I know what I’m doing.”
“How?”
He hesitated.
“Mining camp. Years ago. Men got hurt. Doctor was four days away.”
“And they survived?”
“Some.”
Adelaide closed her eyes.
“That answer may have been worse than the last one.”
Silas reached toward her hand, then stopped before touching it.
Adelaide noticed.
He was waiting for permission.
That small restraint mattered more than she expected.
She extended her hand.
Silas took it.
His palm was rough and warm.
“If you tell me to stop, I stop,” he said.
Adelaide opened her eyes.
“And then?”
“Then we figure out something else.”
She studied his face.
There was fear there.
Not fear of her.
Fear for her.
“You barely know me,” she whispered.
His thumb moved once against her knuckles.
“Doesn’t mean I’m letting you die.”
Something in Adelaide’s chest tightened.
Silas reached for the knife.
She suddenly grabbed his wrist.
He froze.
“Silas.”
“What?”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you before I came here.”
The wind rattled the window.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Adelaide forced herself to speak.
“I didn’t come to Montana only because I wanted a husband.”
Silas waited.
“I came because there is a man in St. Louis who believes I belong to him.”
Silas’s expression became unreadable.
Adelaide’s grip tightened.
“And if he discovers where I am,” she whispered, “this storm may not be the most dangerous thing waiting outside your door.”
Silas looked at her for a long moment.
Then he picked up the steaming cloth.
“First,” he said quietly, “I keep you alive.”
His pale eyes met hers.
“Then you tell me everything.”
And for the first time since leaving St. Louis, Adelaide wondered whether she had finally found a man who would not ask her to become smaller just so he could feel bigger.
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