Adelaide did not scream when Silas began treating the wound.
She intended to.
She felt the scream rise into her throat when he cleaned the torn flesh with boiled water and whiskey, but instead she bit down hard on a folded strip of leather he gave her.
Her fingers crushed his forearm.
Silas never complained.
“Almost done.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
“Been three.”
“Then your mountain minutes are longer than normal minutes.”
His mouth twitched.
“That complaining means you’re still conscious.”
“I can complain unconscious if you give me enough practice.”
The pain came in waves.
Adelaide had never felt anything like it.
The resin-treated cloth was not some magical frontier cure. Silas explained that its purpose was pressure and protection, not miracle healing. He packed and bound the wound carefully, using the cleanest material he had and keeping the blade itself away from her flesh.
By the time he finished, Adelaide was shaking.
Silas pulled blankets around her.
Then he sat beside the bed and watched her breathe.
“You can stop staring,” she murmured.
“No.”
“That was quick.”
“Need to know you don’t faint.”
“I already fainted.”
“Then I need to know you don’t do it again.”
Adelaide opened one eye.
“You make marriage sound delightful.”
“We aren’t married.”
That hurt more than she expected.
She looked away.
Silas seemed to realize how his words sounded.
“I mean,” he added, “not yet.”
Adelaide stared at the cabin wall.
Not yet.
That was something.
The fever came after midnight.
Silas stayed awake.
He changed the dressing.
Fed the stove.
Melted snow.
Made a bitter tea from willow bark.
Whenever Adelaide drifted awake, he was there.
She once opened her eyes and found him asleep upright in a chair, arms folded, boots still on, his head tipped against the wall.
For a man who claimed not to be romantic, Silas Rourke possessed a strange habit of doing things that felt more meaningful than pretty words.
Near dawn, Adelaide’s fever eased.
When she woke again, pale sunlight had replaced the storm.
Silas was frying potatoes.
The smell made her stomach growl.
He looked over his shoulder.
“Good.”
“What?”
“Hungry.”
“Is that another medical diagnosis?”
“It’s better than dead.”
“You have an extraordinary bedside manner.”
He placed a plate in her lap.
Eggs.
Potatoes.
Biscuits.
Adelaide stared.
“You cook?”
“I eat.”
“Those aren’t always the same thing.”
She took a bite.
The biscuit was surprisingly good.
Silas leaned against the table.
“St. Louis.”
Adelaide stopped chewing.
He waited.
She knew what he wanted.
The truth.
She set down her fork.
“His name is Theodore Voss.”
Silas’s expression did not change.
“He owns warehouses near the river. Freight companies too. My father did bookkeeping for him.”
“Did?”
“My father died last winter.”
“I’m sorry.”
Adelaide nodded.
“After Papa died, Mr. Voss told my mother that our debts were larger than we knew. He offered to forgive them.”
Silas’s jaw tightened.
“In exchange for you.”
It was not a question.
Adelaide stared.
“How did you know?”
“I’ve met men.”
She looked down.
“Theodore never said it that plainly. Men like him don’t. He said marriage would provide security. He said my mother would keep the house. He said I should be grateful.”
“You didn’t want him.”
“I despised him.”
“Why?”
Adelaide gave him a humorless smile.
“Do you need reasons beyond the fact that he thought debts gave him ownership of me?”
“No.”
But Adelaide continued.
“He liked humiliating people. Especially people who couldn’t fight back. Workers. Servants. My father. He once fired a dockman because the man’s wife refused to serve Theodore at a company supper after Theodore grabbed her.”
Silas’s eyes hardened.
“And your mother?”
“She was terrified of losing the house.”
“That doesn’t make selling you right.”
Adelaide’s gaze snapped toward him.
She had expected sympathy.
She had not expected certainty.
“No,” she whispered. “It doesn’t.”
“The letters?”
“What letters?”
“You said you carried three from home.”
Adelaide looked toward her trunk.
“My mother.”
“What do they say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t opened them?”
“No.”
Silas considered that.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“If reading them hurts you, don’t.”
Adelaide almost laughed.
Every woman she had ever known would have told her that a daughter owed her mother an answer.
Silas Rourke simply accepted that pain did not become obligation just because family caused it.
“How did you find my notice?” he asked.
“A widow who rented the room beside mine showed me the newspaper.”
“You answered a mountain man because you were running.”
“I answered because your letter said you wouldn’t ask me to become someone else.”
Silas went quiet.
Adelaide continued.
“I was running too.”
“Fair.”
“I meant what I wrote to you.”
“What part?”
“That I can work. I can cook. Sew. Keep books. Handle horses.”
“You also wrote that you were tall.”
“I was protecting you from shock.”
“You failed.”
She threw a piece of biscuit at him.
Silas caught it and ate it.
Adelaide laughed before she could stop herself.
Then pain shot through her leg.
She gasped.
Silas crossed the room immediately.
“Easy.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re terrible at lying.”
“I am not.”
“You told me you were tall.”
Adelaide glared.
He almost smiled.
For the next three days, snow closed the trail.
Adelaide could not walk beyond a few steps.
Silas slept near the stove and gave her the bed.
On the second morning, she demanded that he stop treating her like glass.
“You’re injured.”
“I’m not useless.”
“Didn’t say you were.”
“You keep telling me to stay in bed.”
“Because you’re bleeding.”
“Less.”
“Still counts.”
She folded her arms.
Silas looked at her.
She looked at him.
Finally, he brought the account books.
Adelaide spent the afternoon studying his ranch records.
By supper, she had found three errors.
“You’re being cheated,” she announced.
Silas stopped stirring stew.
“By who?”
“Benson Trading Company.”
“How?”
“They charged you twice for salt blocks in August.”
Silas leaned over the table.
Adelaide pointed.
“Here. Twelve dollars and forty cents.”
“That’s not much.”
“It is when someone intends to do it every month.”
He looked at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is clearly something.”
“I’ve never had anyone check.”
“Why?”
“I live alone.”
The words carried more weight than they should have.
Adelaide glanced around the cabin.
Silas’s life was everywhere.
One plate.
One cup.
One chair repaired repeatedly.
A shelf containing three books.
A rifle above the door.
A pair of old snowshoes.
No photographs.
No decorations.
No softness.
She wondered how long he had lived this way.
“Why did you advertise for a wife?” she asked.
Silas turned back to the stew.
“Needed one.”
“That sounds charming again.”
“You asked.”
“For companionship?”
“Partly.”
“Children?”
His shoulders tightened.
Adelaide noticed.
Silas placed the spoon down.
“I had a wife.”
Adelaide stared.
“She died?”
“Eight years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Her name was Miriam.”
He looked toward the window.
“We had a boy.”
Adelaide’s chest tightened.
“What happened?”
“Winter fever. Both of them.”
Silence settled over the cabin.
Silas rarely offered pieces of himself.
This one seemed pulled from someplace deeply buried.
“I left Montana after,” he continued. “Worked mines. Freight. Trapping. Came back four years ago.”
“Why?”
“This was the only place that ever felt like mine.”
“And now you want a family again.”
He nodded once.
Adelaide looked down at her hands.
“I’m not Miriam.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t want to compete with a dead woman.”
“You wouldn’t.”
His answer came so quickly she believed him.
“Miriam was Miriam,” he said. “You’re Adelaide.”
“That simple?”
“No.”
He met her eyes.
“But true.”
Something shifted between them.
Then a knock struck the door.
Three heavy blows.
Silas moved instantly.
His hand went to the rifle.
Adelaide’s blood turned cold.
“No one comes up here in this weather,” he said.
Another knock.
Silas approached the door.
“Who?”
A voice came from outside.
“Jonah Pike.”
Silas relaxed slightly.
He opened the door.
A bearded man stumbled inside carrying a saddlebag covered in snow.
“Trail’s a devil.”
Jonah saw Adelaide.
His eyebrows climbed.
“Well. You actually did it.”
Silas frowned.
“Did what?”
“Got yourself a wife.”
“Not yet.”
Jonah grinned.
Adelaide lifted a hand.
“Adelaide Mercer.”
“Jonah Pike. I own the nearest neighboring cabin, which means I’m only twelve miles away.”
“That qualifies as neighbor here?”
“Practically family.”
Jonah’s grin disappeared.
“I brought mail from the station.”
He reached inside his coat.
Adelaide froze when she saw the envelope.
Jonah handed it to Silas.
The paper was addressed in elegant black handwriting.
MISS ADELAIDE MERCER.
Rourke Claim.
Western Montana Territory.
Her stomach dropped.
Silas saw her face.
“Voss?”
Adelaide nodded.
Silas offered the envelope to her.
She did not take it.
“Burn it.”
Jonah looked between them.
Silas asked no questions.
He opened the stove and dropped the letter into the flames.
Adelaide watched the envelope curl.
Then Jonah cleared his throat.
“There’s more.”
Silas turned.
“A man came through town yesterday asking about a woman from St. Louis.”
Adelaide’s pulse thundered.
“What man?” Silas asked.
“Said his name was Preston Vale.”
Adelaide’s face drained.
“You know him?” Silas asked.
“He works for Theodore.”
Jonah’s expression became serious.
“He’s offering money to anyone who tells him where she is.”
Silas slowly closed the stove.
“How much?”
“Fifty dollars.”
Adelaide stared.
Fifty dollars was enough to tempt nearly anyone in a struggling mountain settlement.
Silas seemed to understand the same thing.
Jonah continued.
“He says she stole from Theodore Voss before fleeing Missouri.”
Adelaide surged upright.
“That is a lie.”
Pain tore through her leg.
She nearly fell.
Silas caught her.
“I never stole anything.”
Jonah raised both hands.
“I believe you.”
“They’re making me a criminal.”
Silas’s jaw hardened.
“Because a runaway bride draws sympathy. A thief draws a posse.”
Adelaide looked at him.
Exactly.
Theodore was not coming after her because his heart was broken.
He was creating a legal excuse to drag her home.
Jonah lowered his voice.
“Silas, if Vale brings papers from a judge—”
“He won’t take her.”
“Law might say different.”
Silas looked down at Adelaide.
She saw something fierce in his eyes.
Not ownership.
Protection.
But Adelaide had escaped one man who believed he had the right to decide her future.
She could not let another decide it either.
“I won’t hide,” she said.
Silas frowned.
“You’re not walking.”
“I mean from Theodore.”
“You’re injured.”
“I’ll heal.”
“You need time.”
“And if Vale comes before then?”
Silas did not answer.
Adelaide pulled herself straighter.
“If Theodore wants to accuse me of theft, then I’ll prove he’s lying.”
“How?”
A memory surfaced.
Her father’s accounting books.
A conversation behind a locked office door.
A ledger she had found the week before he died.
Adelaide suddenly understood why Theodore was so desperate to bring her back.
It might not be about marriage at all.
“I think,” she said slowly, “my father discovered something Theodore never wanted anyone else to see.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Money disappearing from his freight companies. False names. Payments to officials.”
Jonah whistled.
Adelaide looked toward her trunk.
“And I think I brought the proof with me.”
For the first time since arriving in Montana, Silas Rourke looked genuinely surprised.
Adelaide swallowed.
“The problem is, I didn’t know it was proof until now.”
Outside, snow began falling again.
And somewhere below the mountains, a man was offering fifty dollars to anyone willing to tell Preston Vale where Theodore Voss’s missing bride had gone.
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