Suddenly, Josephine tried to draw a full breath to steady her hammering heart. A jagged bolt of agony shot directly beneath her ribs, sharp as a rusted knife. She gasped, her vision greying out entirely, and she lunged forward, grabbing the heavy oak table with both hands before her buckling knees gave out completely.
Harlan moved with terrifying speed. Josephine immediately recoiled, throwing her hands up in self-defense. “Don’t touch me!”
He froze instantly. There was no anger in his rugged, bearded face, only a stark, piercing concern. His dark eyes fixed immediately on the unnatural, rigid taper beneath her wedding gown. “What’s under that?” he demanded, his voice deep and rumbling.
“That is none of your concern,” she hissed, fighting the black spots dancing in her eyes.
“You can’t breathe.”
“I can breathe perfectly well.” She tried to puff out her chest to prove her lie.
The movement triggered a spasm so violent she nearly collapsed onto the plank floor.
Then Harlan spoke the terrifying words that made every whispered valley warning about his savage nature come rushing back into her racing mind. “Take off everything.”
Josephine froze, the blood draining from her face. The monster had shown his true colors at last. “If you mean what I think you mean,” she whispered, her voice shaking with a desperate fury, “you may have paid my father for my body, but you did not buy my cooperation.”
Harlan stared at her for a long, agonizing beat, his jaw tight. Then, without a word, he turned his massive back on her. He strode over to a heavy cedar chest beside the fire and began rifling through folded woolen blankets and winter garments.
Panic surged through Josephine’s veins. Her hand shot out blindly across the table until her fingers grazed the cold, heavy iron of the fireplace poker. The metal scraped loudly against the hearthstone.
Harlan paused. He did not turn around, but his deep voice cut through the sound of the wind. “Keep it,” he said flatly.
Instead of attacking, he withdrew an object from the chest and walked back toward the table, keeping a respectful distance. He laid a folded garment down on the scarred wood: a soft, loose blue flannel shirt-dress, clean and worn into comforting submission. Beside it, he placed a small, sharp pair of blunt-handled shears.
Josephine stared at the two items, her chest heaving painfully against the cage of bone and steel, as Harlan finally explained why he had demanded she strip away the armor her aunt had forced upon her.
“Your father didn’t sell you to me as a bride, Josephine,” Harlan said quietly, his eyes searching hers for comprehension. “He unloaded a liability he was terrified would expose his ledger books.”
She swallowed hard, the iron poker still clutched defensively in her white-knuckled grip. “What are you talking about?”
“Look at the shears,” Harlan urged gently, nodding toward the table. “Cut the lacings of that corset. Then look at the inner lining of the wedding dress bodice. Your father didn’t just take twenty dollars from me. For ten years, he’s been embezzling every cent of the valley relief fund, hiding the paper bonds inside the quilted layers of your wardrobe because no one would ever dare search a fat girl’s clothes for fear of mocking her.”
Josephine’s breath hitched, the air finally rushing into her lungs as the horrific, brilliant reality settled over her. Her father hadn’t married her off out of cruelty or poverty; he had used her as a walking vault for stolen gold, sending her away to a man he thought was a brute so the secret would stay buried in the mountains forever.
“He called you savage,” Josephine whispered, tears finally breaking free as she dropped the heavy iron poker to the floor with a dull thud. “Because he knew a savage is the only one who wouldn’t hesitate to cut through the lies.”
Harlan stepped back, offering her the privacy of the roaring hearth and the safety of the storm-locked cabin, while Josephine picked up the shears and prepared to finally cut away the weight of her entire life.