“You’re too beautiful. How could you possibly be my wife?”
The words were out of Amos Mercer’s mouth before good sense could stop them.
For a moment, the woman standing ankle-deep in Bitter Creek mud simply stared at him.
Rain whispered against the roof of the stage depot. Horses shifted beneath wet harnesses. Across the road, two miners carrying sacks of flour slowed down just enough to hear what would happen next.
Amos wished they would keep walking.
He wished the stagecoach had never arrived.
Most of all, he wished the agency in St. Louis had listened to him.
He had been very specific.
Plain.
Practical.
Preferably a widow.
A woman who knew how to make bread without consulting a recipe, salt meat before winter, split kindling when necessary, and keep a stove alive when snow buried the road for a month.
He had written those exact requirements.
Almost.
He had not written that he wanted someone homely.
But he had certainly not asked for this.
The woman before him looked as if she belonged in a parlor where people drank tea from porcelain cups and discussed the weather while someone else carried in the wood.
Chestnut hair curled beneath a rain-darkened hat. Storm-gray eyes watched him steadily from a pale face made pink by the cold. Her plum traveling dress had probably cost more than every shirt Amos owned combined.
Even her gloves were ridiculous.
Soft plum leather.
In Bitter Creek.
Amos stared at them.
Then at her.
Then back at the stagecoach as though a second woman might climb down.
None did.
“You Clara?” he asked.
“I am.”
Her voice was quiet but firm.
“Clara Whitmore?”
“Clara Whitmore Mercer now, according to the documents I was given.”
Amos winced.
That sounded far too official.
“And you’re Amos Mercer?”
“Yeah.”
Something flickered in her eyes.
Amusement, perhaps.
Or disappointment.
Amos had never been handsome in the polished sort of way women seemed to appreciate in advertisements. He was thirty-seven years old, broad through the shoulders from cutting timber, with dark hair that rarely obeyed a comb and a beard that grew back almost as quickly as he shaved it.
There was a pale scar beside his jaw from a logging accident.
His knuckles were permanently rough.
His coat smelled faintly of horse, pine smoke, and the mountain.
He had not considered any of that until Clara looked at him.
Suddenly he became painfully aware of all of it.
He cleared his throat.
“They sent the wrong woman.”
Color rose into Clara’s cheeks.
“I assure you they did not.”
“Agency made a mistake.”
“They did not.”
Amos looked her up and down again.
“Papers don’t chop wood.”
The miner across the road stopped pretending not to listen.
Clara’s expression tightened.
Rain ran from the edge of her hat and down one cheek.
“I traveled nearly a thousand miles,” she said. “I paid the remainder of my fare because the thirty dollars you sent covered only part of the journey. Four days ago, the agency arranged the proxy ceremony exactly as specified in your agreement.”
She reached inside her traveling cloak and removed a folded packet protected by oilcloth.
“I have the marriage certificate.”
Amos stared at it without taking it.
“I’m not disputing the paper.”
“You appear to be disputing the wife.”
That miner laughed.
Amos turned his head.
The man immediately found something interesting about a barrel.
Clara lifted her chin.
“I am not getting back on that coach.”
The driver, already climbing onto his seat, called down, “Wouldn’t matter if you wanted to, ma’am. We’re running late.”
Amos looked at him.
“You’re leaving?”
“Usually how stagecoaches work, Mercer.”
The whip cracked.
The horses pulled.
Clara stepped aside as the coach rolled through the mud and continued west.
She watched it disappear around the bend.
Only after it was gone did Amos realize just how final the moment was.
She stood in the rain.
He stood in the rain.
They were married.
He nearly laughed at the absurdity of it.
Instead he asked, “Where’s your trunk?”
Clara pointed behind him.
Amos turned.
His heart sank.
The trunk was enormous.
Brass-bound corners.
Dark wood.
Heavy leather straps.
It looked less like luggage and more like something a respectable family might bury an outlaw in.
“That yours?”
“Yes.”
“What’d you bring, bricks?”
“Necessary things.”
“All of St. Louis?”
Her lips twitched.
That almost-smile irritated him because it made her even prettier.
Three hours later, Amos had stopped thinking she was pretty.
Mostly.
The trail to his cabin climbed northeast out of Bitter Creek, across ridges where the wind had already developed winter teeth.
The buckboard had no springs worth mentioning.
Every rut drove Clara halfway off the seat.
She never complained.
That surprised Amos.
The rain turned colder as they climbed. The mud gradually became frozen earth, and mist wrapped around the dark pines.
Clara kept both hands folded tightly in her lap.
At first Amos assumed it was nervousness.
Then he noticed the color of her fingers.
Even inside those fancy gloves, she was freezing.
“You cold?”
“I’m fine.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
She glanced toward him.
“Yes.”
He pulled the heavy wool blanket from behind the seat and tossed it across her lap.
“Wrap up.”
She hesitated.
“It smells like a mule.”
“It belongs to one.”
She looked at him.
He kept his face straight.
After a moment she gave a tiny laugh.
It was the first pleasant sound he had heard from her.
“Thank you.”
“Gets colder from here.”
She wrapped herself in the blanket.
Half an hour later, Amos noticed she had tucked one side around his leg as well.
Neither mentioned it.
The mountain road narrowed.
Below them, Bitter Creek became a silver thread winding between black timber.
“You live this far from town?” Clara asked.
“Eight miles.”
“That doesn’t sound far.”
“In July.”
“And in January?”
“Sometimes feels like eighty.”
Clara stared toward the mountains.
“You said that in your letter.”
“You read all of it?”
“Several times.”
That surprised him.
“What else did I say?”
“That the cabin is small. That winters are long. That you trap, cut timber, and keep three horses. That you dislike dances.”
“I hate dances.”
“You wrote dislike.”
“Agency probably corrected me.”
Another almost-smile.
Amos began wondering why she had answered his advertisement.
A woman who looked like Clara could have married half the unmarried men between Missouri and Montana.
Maybe all of them.
Yet she had signed papers binding her to a mountain recluse she had never met.
That made no sense.
By dusk, snow had begun mixing with the rain.
Amos pointed ahead.
“There.”
Clara leaned forward.
The cabin sat against a granite ridge surrounded by pines, a low rectangle of dark logs with a stone chimney and a small lean-to stable behind it.
Smoke no longer came from the chimney.
The place looked even rougher through Clara’s eyes than Amos remembered.
One door.
Two small windows.
Split logs stacked beneath the eaves.
No curtains.
No porch.
No flowers.
No other house visible in any direction.
“It isn’t St. Louis,” he muttered.
“No.”
He waited.
Clara looked at the mountains.
“It’s beautiful.”
Amos turned toward her.
She meant it.
That unsettled him.
He carried the trunk inside with considerable resentment toward whatever Clara had packed.
Then he immediately went back outside.
There were perfectly good chores requiring attention.
A horse needed rubbing down.
Harness needed hanging.
Wood needed bringing in.
None of those tasks required him to remain inside a cabin with the beautiful stranger who was somehow his wife.
He deliberately took his time.
Nearly forty minutes later, Amos finally opened the cabin door.
He stopped.
Warmth struck his face.
The stove was burning.
Clara stood in the middle of the room with her sleeves rolled above her wrists and a broom in her hands.
A pile of dirt sat near the door.
He stared.
“You don’t need to do that.”
She continued sweeping.
“The floor was dirty.”
“It’s a dirt floor.”
Clara drove the broom beneath another patch of dried mud.
Wood appeared.
She looked up.
“There are planks underneath.”
Amos looked down.
He had forgotten.
When his father first built the cabin, he had laid rough pine floorboards.
Years of mud tracked in from boots had hidden most of them.
Clara brushed another section clean.
“I prefer seeing them.”
Amos almost smiled.
Almost.
Instead, he carried in the wood.
“You know how to work that stove?”
“It is a stove, Amos.”
“Different from whatever you had in St. Louis.”
“My mother cooked on one nearly identical to this.”
That made him pause.
“Your mother cooked?”
“Most mothers do.”
“Not the kind of woman I figured you came from.”
Clara stopped sweeping.
“And what kind of woman is that?”
Amos immediately regretted speaking.
“The kind who wears gloves like those.”
She looked down at the plum leather.
“These belonged to my sister.”
Something changed in her voice.
Amos heard it.
He did not ask.
Supper was his responsibility because the pantry held little besides beans, salt pork, coffee, flour, dried apples, and onions.
The pork burned.
The beans were greasy.
The coffee could probably have stripped paint.
Clara ate everything.
Not one complaint.
Finally Amos said, “You don’t have to finish it.”
“I’m hungry.”
“It’s burned.”
“Yes.”
He waited.
“And?”
“And I am hungry.”
That settled the matter.
Outside, darkness swallowed the mountain.
Wind began to rise.
The small cabin seemed to shrink around them.
Then silence arrived.
Not comfortable silence.
The kind that made Amos painfully aware that he was sitting across from a woman he had married without ever meeting.
Clara placed her spoon carefully beside the tin plate.
Amos cleared his throat.
She glanced toward the corner.
So did he.
The bed.
One bed.
Wide enough for two people.
His father had built it when Amos’s parents lived there.
Until that evening, Amos had never considered it a problem.
Now it seemed to occupy half the cabin.
Clara’s hands tightened around the back of her chair.
Her face had gone pale.
Amos understood instantly.
That surprised him too.
She had survived the stagecoach.
The mud.
The wagon trail.
The freezing wind.
The crude cabin.
The terrible supper.
Not once had she looked frightened.
Now she did.
“I am your wife,” Clara said.
The words were brave.
Her voice was not.
Amos stood.
Clara stiffened.
He walked past her.
Past the bed.
He opened the cedar chest near the wall and pulled out a heavy patchwork quilt.
Then another blanket.
He carried both to the stove and dropped them on the floor.
Clara stared.
“What are you doing?”
“Sleeping here.”
“But—”
“I paid for a partner.”
He crouched and arranged the blanket.
When he looked up, Clara was still watching him.
He kept his voice quiet.
“Not a woman walking to the gallows.”
Her lips parted.
No answer came.
“Take the bed.”
“Amos—”
“I’ve slept on colder ground.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“No.”
“What is the point?”
Amos looked into the stove.
Fire moved behind the iron grate.
“The point is you’ll sleep where you feel safe.”
Silence.
Finally Clara crossed the room.
She stopped beside the bed.
“Thank you.”
Amos nodded without looking at her.
A few minutes later, the lamp went dark.
Clara lay beneath the blankets staring toward the faint orange glow of the stove.
Amos stretched out on the hard floor.
Neither slept.
Clara listened to his breathing.
She had expected many things when she answered his advertisement.
A harsh man.
Perhaps a cold man.
Possibly a man who believed thirty dollars had purchased more than companionship.
Instead, the rough mountain man who had insulted her beauty, mocked her gloves, and questioned her usefulness had surrendered the only bed without hesitation.
Near midnight, Amos heard her whisper.
“Are you awake?”
“No.”
A pause.
Then, unexpectedly, Clara laughed softly.
Amos smiled into the darkness.
Neither knew it yet, but that small laugh was the first crack in two carefully built walls.
And winter had not even begun.