Chapter 1 - Take Off Everything
Josephine pressed herself against the timber wall and whispered, “Please don’t touch me.”
Harlan Creek stopped beside the marriage contract lying on the table.
A fresh red mark crossed the twenty-dollar payment line.
It had not been there when Josephine signed.
Someone had changed their bargain.
“Take off everything.”
The words struck Josephine harder than a slap.
For one terrible second, she forgot the pain around her ribs.
Harlan Creek stood six feet away, filling half the cabin with his height and shoulders. Snow melted along the hem of his shearling coat. His dark hair was damp from the storm. A heavy beard covered most of a face that seemed carved from the same mountain rock surrounding them.
Josephine clutched the front of her dusty-rose dress.
“What?”
Harlan’s pale eyes narrowed.
“That thing underneath.”
Her hands tightened.
He pointed toward her waist.
“You’ve been breathing like a rabbit caught in wire since we left town.”
Heat flooded Josephine’s face.
“My corset?”
“That what they call it?”
She stared.
Harlan removed his gloves and dropped them onto the table.
“Take it off.”
Josephine’s heart pounded.
Harlan saw the fear.
Something changed in his expression.
He immediately turned his back.
“Keep the dress on.”
She said nothing.
“I’m not asking you to undress for me, Josephine.”
His voice was still rough, but quieter now.
“I’m asking you to stop hurting yourself.”
No one had ever said those words to her.
Not her father.
Certainly not her mother, before she died.
A proper woman endured discomfort without complaint. A respectable bride stood straight even when the stays dug into her skin. A daughter obeyed.
That was how Josephine had been raised.
She had obeyed right up until her father, Silas Bell, announced that Harlan Creek had offered twenty dollars and two draft horses for a wife.
Josephine had thought it was a cruel joke.
Then she saw the contract.
Two days later, a preacher had spoken the vows.
Now she was twenty-five miles into the mountains with a stranger.
“Harlan?”
He remained facing the stove.
“What?”
“Why did you marry me?”
His shoulders became rigid.
“That question can wait.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
He added another piece of wood to the stove.
“It isn’t.”
Josephine swallowed.
The corset stabbed beneath her ribs again.
She finally turned slightly away and worked trembling fingers beneath the outer layer of her dress. The knots had been pulled brutally tight that morning by her father’s housekeeper, who had warned that Harlan Creek had paid for a bride, not a “slouching farm girl.”
Josephine fought the laces.
One loosened.
Then another.
The pressure released so suddenly that she gasped.
Harlan half turned.
Josephine flinched.
He immediately looked away again.
“Sorry.”
That surprised her almost as much as everything else.
She loosened the corset enough to breathe.
Air filled her lungs.
Real air.
Her knees nearly buckled.
She caught the wall.
Harlan heard it.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“That sounded like a lie.”
“I’m fine.”
“That one too.”
Despite herself, Josephine almost laughed.
Almost.
Then her eyes fell upon the table.
The marriage contract lay beside Harlan’s gloves.
Her father’s signature appeared at the bottom.
So did hers.
Harlan had signed with careful block letters.
Twenty dollars.
Two draft horses.
The price of Josephine Bell.
Her stomach turned.
“You bought me.”
Harlan went still.
Josephine’s voice strengthened.
“You can pretend to be considerate now, but you bought me.”
“I paid your father.”
“That is the same thing.”
“No.”
“It feels exactly the same from where I’m standing.”
Harlan slowly faced her.
The anger she expected wasn’t there.
Instead, she saw something more complicated.
Shame.
“You’re right.”
Josephine blinked.
Harlan pulled out a chair but did not sit.
“Your father told me you wanted out.”
“Out?”
“Of his house.”
“He told you that?”
“He said you’d agreed to marry any decent man who could give you a home.”
Josephine stared at him.
“I never said that.”
Harlan’s jaw tightened.
“He said you knew about me.”
“I learned your name the morning before the wedding.”
Silence.
The wind struck the cabin.
Harlan looked toward the contract.
“When did you agree?”
Josephine laughed bitterly.
“Agree?”
He understood.
His face hardened.
“What did he do?”
She looked away.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does now.”
“No, Mr. Creek. What matters is that you gave my father money and horses and he gave you me.”
Harlan walked to the table.
Josephine tensed.
Instead of approaching her, he picked up the contract.
“I needed a wife.”
“How romantic.”
“I didn’t say I was proud of it.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
“My sister died last spring.”
Josephine’s anger faltered.
“She left a boy. Caleb. Nine years old.”
Josephine glanced around.
There had been no child when they arrived.
“He’s staying with neighbors below the ridge until the storm clears,” Harlan explained. “Territory authorities are coming in January. They say a trapper living alone isn’t a proper guardian.”
“So you needed a woman in your cabin.”
“I needed them to see a family.”
“And any woman would do.”
His silence answered her.
Josephine looked down.
At least he wasn’t lying.
Harlan unfolded the contract.
“I was told you wanted the same arrangement. A home away from your father. Your own money from the trapping business. No expectations beyond helping with Caleb until spring.”
Josephine looked up sharply.
“No expectations?”
“No.”
“My father said…”
She stopped.
Harlan waited.
“He said you wanted a wife in every sense.”
Color rose faintly beneath the trapper’s weathered face.
“He lied.”
Josephine suddenly felt colder than she had outside.
Her father had lied to both of them.
Harlan lowered the contract.
“I won’t touch you without permission.”
She searched his face.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
His answer surprised her.
“Not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. Believe what I do, not what I say.”
He crossed to the far side of the cabin and opened a narrow door.
A small room waited beyond it. There was a simple bed, a washstand, and a handmade quilt.
“Your room.”
“My room?”
“I sleep upstairs.”
Josephine stared.
“You prepared this?”
“Caleb helped with the quilt.”
Something painful tightened in her throat.
She looked toward the marriage contract again.
That was when she noticed it.
Red ink.
A short line had been drawn through the payment clause.
Josephine stepped closer.
“What is that?”
Harlan frowned.
“What?”
“That mark.”
He examined the document.
His expression changed.
“I didn’t do that.”
“Neither did I.”
Josephine approached despite herself.
There were tiny letters beside the mark.
Harlan held the paper toward the lantern.
The writing was cramped.
DEBT TRANSFERRED UPON DELIVERY.
Josephine felt the room tilt.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You signed it.”
“Those words weren’t there.”
Josephine remembered her father folding the contract immediately after the ceremony.
She remembered another man standing near the courthouse steps.
Gray coat.
Silver-headed cane.
A man her father had told her not to look at.
“Harlan.”
He looked at her.
“There was someone with my father yesterday.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“He called him Mr. Vale.”
Harlan’s face emptied of color.
Josephine noticed.
“You know him.”
Harlan moved to the window.
Outside there was only white darkness.
“Harlan?”
“Gideon Vale.”
“Who is he?”
“A man nobody should owe money to.”
Josephine’s stomach dropped.
“My father owes him?”
“Half the valley owes him.”
Harlan reached for his rifle.
Josephine stepped backward.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking outside.”
“In that storm?”
Harlan extinguished the lantern nearest the window.
“Stay away from the glass.”
Fear sharpened Josephine’s voice.
“Why?”
He did not answer.
Then came a sound.
Not wind.
Not timber shifting.
Three knocks struck the cabin door.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Harlan raised the rifle.
Josephine stopped breathing.
Another knock came.
Then a man outside called through the blizzard.
“Josephine Bell.”
Harlan looked at her.
May you like
The stranger knocked once more.
And this time he said, “Your father sold you to the wrong man.”
