The Wyoming wind did not care about a woman's dignity.
It tore across the little train platform at Oak Haven with enough force to lift the edge of Cora Miller's skirt and send frozen grit against her cheeks. She stood beside an iron-bound trunk that looked nearly as stubborn as she felt, her gloved fingers wrapped tightly around the handle of her reticule.
She was thirty-two years old.
She was unmarried.
And, according to nearly everyone she had ever known, she was much too large for either fact to be forgiven.
Cora had spent most of her life hearing people describe her before they bothered learning anything else about her.
Big.
Heavy.
Sturdy.
Broad.
Sometimes they used kinder words when her mother was within hearing distance. More often they did not.
Her size had kept her against the walls at dances while smaller women filled the floor. It had made her useful in kitchens, where relatives praised her pies while joking that she probably sampled half the filling before it reached the table. It had made her brother increasingly impatient after their parents died and the responsibility for supporting his unmarried sister fell to him.
So when an advertisement appeared from a Wyoming mountain man seeking a wife, Cora answered it.
The notice had been painfully brief.
Wanted: a sturdy woman for a hard life. No nonsense.
There had been no poetry.
No promises of romance.
No flattering description of the husband waiting at the other end.
Cora had almost laughed when she read it.
At least the man was honest.
Her brother had been happier about the arrangement than she was. He had paid twenty dollars to send her west, including the freight charge for her trunk, and had treated the expense less like generosity and more like the final payment on an inconvenient obligation.
Cora had boarded the train knowing that whatever awaited her in Wyoming could hardly humiliate her more completely than the life she was leaving behind.
Then the magistrate's warning arrived with her travel papers.
Elias Boone has a black temper. Keep your head down, do your chores, and do not cross him.
Now she stood in a town where two men near the depot were openly staring at her.
One whispered something.
The other laughed.
Cora didn't hear the words.
She didn't need to.
Thirty-two years had made her fluent in smirks.
She raised her chin.
Let them laugh.
The train that had brought her was already disappearing eastward, smoke thinning against a colorless winter sky.
There was nowhere to go back to.
A heavy wagon came rumbling along the frozen street.
Two massive draft horses pulled it, their breath rising in white clouds. The driver hauled on the reins, bringing them to a stop beside the platform.
Then he climbed down.
Cora forgot the cold.
Elias Boone was enormous.
Not heavy like she was, but built with the frightening density of a man who had spent his life lifting logs, hauling carcasses, splitting timber, and surviving winters that killed weaker men.
A battered Stetson sat low above his eyes. His buffalo coat was worn smooth at the elbows. A dark beard covered most of his face.
The eyes above it were pale and watchful.
He approached without smiling.
His boots struck the depot boards with slow, heavy thuds.
Cora's heartbeat accelerated.
The mountain devil.
That was what the magistrate's letter said people called him.
Elias stopped two feet away.
"You Cora?"
His voice sounded like gravel rolling beneath deep water.
"I am."
She was proud that her voice remained steady.
He looked at the enormous trunk beside her.
"That all you brought?"
"Yes."
There was no disappointment in his face.
No disgust.
No surprised widening of the eyes.
Elias simply walked past her, bent down, grabbed the trunk and hoisted it into the wagon as though it contained feathers.
"Climb up."
The wagon seat was high.
Cora stared at it.
Of course.
After surviving hundreds of miles by rail, her first challenge in Wyoming would be climbing onto a wagon while strangers watched.
She gathered her skirts and placed a boot on the wheel.
Her foot slipped against frost.
Heat rushed into her face.
She heard another chuckle somewhere behind her.
Before she could try again, Elias stepped close.
Cora stiffened.
Two enormous hands pressed firmly against her lower back.
Then he lifted.
She gave a startled gasp as sheer strength propelled her upward. She caught the side of the wagon and hauled herself onto the bench.
Mortification burned through her.
Elias climbed up without commenting.
The stationmaster stepped outside.
He was a narrow man with a nervous voice and a cruel smile.
"Mr. Boone!" he called. "Looks like you got your money's worth in bulk! Better reinforce the floorboards up at the ridge!"
Cora closed her eyes.
There it was.
The familiar strike.
Her brother would have laughed.
Her cousins would have laughed.
Most men did.
Elias Boone did not.
He reached beneath the bench.
For one terrible second, Cora thought he was drawing a weapon.
Instead he pulled out a long bullwhip.
He cracked it.
The sound exploded through the street like a rifle shot.
The stationmaster stumbled backward.
"Keep your mouth shut, Davis," Elias growled, "before I come down there and wire it shut."
Silence swept across the depot.
Elias slapped the reins.
The horses moved.
Cora stared forward, unable to speak.
No man had ever defended her like that.
Not once.
The wagon left Oak Haven behind.
The road became progressively worse until it was barely more than two frozen wheel ruts climbing into pine forest. Every bump jolted through Cora's spine.
Elias said nothing.
Neither did she.
The silence should have been uncomfortable.
Instead it gave Cora time to observe him.
His hands were scarred.
His coat had been carefully repaired several times rather than replaced.
He handled the horses firmly but never cruelly.
And when the temperature dropped sharply as they climbed toward the timberline, he reached behind them and pulled out a thick bear pelt.
He dropped it across her legs.
"Keep it tucked under your boots. Wind bites harder past the tree line."
Cora stared at him.
"Thank you."
He grunted.
They rode another three hours.
By the time the cabin appeared, twilight had stained the mountains purple.
Cora had expected a shack.
Instead she saw something closer to a fortress.
Thick peeled logs formed a solid cabin against the mountain. Smoke curled from a stone chimney. A stable stood nearby, built against the wind.
Elias stopped the horses.
"We're here."
Cora looked at the cabin.
Her new home.
Perhaps her prison.
Perhaps something else.
She did not know.
Inside, another surprise waited.
The cabin was clean.
Sparse, yes.
Rough, certainly.
But clean.
The table was scrubbed.
Firewood was stacked neatly.
Leather tack hung from pegs.
A large bed occupied one corner beneath heavy wool blankets.
Elias carried in her trunk and dropped it at the foot.
Then he started the fire.
"I sleep in the loft."
Cora blinked.
"The bed's yours."
She swallowed.
"You don't want—"
She couldn't finish.
They were married by proxy. She understood what husbands were permitted to expect.
Elias slowly turned.
The firelight caught something she hadn't seen beneath his coat.
Scars.
Jagged marks ran along the left side of his neck and disappeared beneath his shirt collar.
"I sleep in the loft," he repeated.
Something in his expression stopped her from arguing.
He showed her the stove, the root cellar, the pump and the pantry.
Then he went back outside.
That first night Cora lay beneath thick blankets listening to the wind scream beyond the walls.
She kept expecting the ladder from the loft to creak.
It never did.
In the morning, Elias was gone before she woke.
For three days they settled into a strained routine.
Cora cooked.
Cooking she understood.
The root cellar contained potatoes, beans, winter squash and cured pork. There was flour enough for biscuits and hotcakes if she was careful.
Elias returned each evening smelling of pine, snow and sometimes blood from whatever he had hunted or trapped.
He ate enormous portions.
He never criticized her food.
He never complimented it either.
But on the second evening, after consuming three biscuits, he quietly pushed the empty basket toward her as though hoping another might magically appear.
Cora hid a smile.
On the third evening, she placed four extra biscuits on the table before he sat down.
His eyes flicked toward her.
Neither mentioned it.
Something almost peaceful began forming between them.
Then came the fourth morning.
A storm trapped Elias indoors.
He sat near the fireplace repairing a damaged harness while Cora fried fatback and turned hotcakes at the stove.
For nearly an hour, the only sounds were the snapping fire and the howl of wind.
Then the awl slipped.
It drove deep into Elias's thumb.
Blood appeared instantly.
He roared.
The sound shook Cora to her bones.
Elias exploded from the chair.
It crashed backward.
He hurled the awl across the room.
It struck a ceramic cup.
The cup shattered.
"Useless, rotten son of a bitch!"
He kicked the fallen chair.
Wood splintered.
The hotcake turner fell from Cora's fingers and clattered onto the stove.
Her mind disappeared from Wyoming.
She was seventeen again.
Her father was drunk.
Her brother was angry.
Something had gone wrong, and the closest weaker person was about to pay.
Cora stumbled backward until the log wall stopped her.
She raised her hands toward her face.
Her breathing became shallow.
Elias turned.
Their eyes met.
His chest heaved.
Blood ran across his hand.
Cora squeezed her eyes shut.
She waited for his heavy boots.
They came.
One step.
Then another.
She raised an arm over her head.
"Please."
The word escaped before she could stop it.
Silence.
Cora waited.
Nothing happened.
After several seconds, she opened her eyes.
Elias Boone stood in the middle of the cabin.
He looked nothing like the man who had been raging moments earlier.
His face had gone pale.
His hand hung uselessly at his side.
And he was staring at the way she had curled herself against the wall as though the sight had struck him harder than any fist.
"Cora."
His voice was barely more than a whisper.
She flinched anyway.
Elias immediately stepped backward.
Then another step.
He opened his hands where she could see them.
"I would never hurt you."
Cora stared at him through tears.
On the floor between them lay the broken pieces of the cup.
Beside them, the chair had split beneath his boot.
Cora looked at the destruction.
Then at him.
"You expect me to believe that?"
Elias lowered his eyes.
For the first time since meeting him, the huge mountain man looked ashamed.
"No," he said quietly.
His gaze moved to the scars along his neck.
"Not yet."
Then his voice dropped lower.
"The man who gave me these scars taught me what it feels like to wait for a blow."
He looked back at her.
"And I just made you feel the same thing."
For the first time, Cora wondered whether the terrifying man everyone had warned her about might understand fear better than anyone she had ever known.