“Walk behind me,” the man said, turning on his heel. “Step in my tracks. Don’t lag.”
For the next two hours, Maeve stumbled through the dark, her eyes fixed entirely on the massive, dark imprint of the stranger’s boots in the snow. Every muscle in her body screamed in protest, her lower back throbbing with the deep, sickening ache of a woman pushed past the edge of physical endurance, but she forced her feet forward, terrified that if she fell behind, she would be left to freeze in the dark.
When they finally broke through a screen of dense spruce trees, Maeve saw it: a cabin built of massive, squared-off logs, tucked tight beneath the protective overhang of a sheer granite cliff. Smoke curled from a stone chimney, and a warm, golden rectangle of firelight spilled out from the grease-paper windows across the pristine snow.
Inside, the cabin was a miracle of warmth and order. A massive hearth blazed with dry pine logs, casting dancing shadows across split-log walls adorned with cured pelts and hanging bundles of dried herbs. A cast-iron kettle simmered softly on a swinging iron crane, filling the air with the rich, savory aroma of venison stew.
The stranger—whose name she had not yet been given—set Henry down in a makeshift cradle lined with soft rabbit skins. He poured goat’s milk from a stone crock into a small tin pan, warmed it by the coals, and handed it to Maeve without a word, before turning to tend the fire.
Maeve fed her baby in front of the roaring hearth, watching the infant’s eyelids droop as the warm milk lulled him into a deep, untroubled sleep.
The absolute silence of the mountain sanctuary pressed in around her. There were no shouts, no breaking bottles, no cruel jests about her size or her worth. For the first time in ten years, Maeve was somewhere where no one was laughing at her.
Yet, as the heat thawed her frozen bones, a cold, hard knot of dread began to tighten in her stomach.
She knew how the world worked. Men didn’t drop gold coins into the mud out of the goodness of their hearts. They bought what they wanted, and sooner or later, the bill would come due. She had been sold as a chattel, and sooner or later, the master of this lonely cabin would demand the use of the goods he had purchased.
When Henry was fast asleep, Maeve rose slowly from the hearth bench. Her legs still trembled, but she forced her chin up, determined to face her fate with whatever shred of dignity she had left.
She walked to the center of the cabin, her fingers shaking as they caught the hem of her damp, frayed dress. With a sharp, resigned breath, she pulled the fabric up and over her head, letting it pool in a sodden heap around her boots.
Standing there in the firelight, exposed, shivering, and profoundly vulnerable, Maeve closed her eyes as every cruel, cutting word she had ever heard about her body rushed back to suffocate her.
*Too big.*
*Too soft.*
*Too much woman for any decent man.*
She waited for the laugh. She waited for the critical appraisal of her wide hips, the stretch marks of six pregnancies across her abdomen, the thick, ungraceful lines of her arms. She braced herself for the heavy footsteps to approach, for the rough hands to take what had been bought and paid for in the Misery Bend mud.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps sounded on the plank floor.
Something heavy and warm settled over her bare shoulders.
Maeve gasped, her eyes snapping open.
The heavy buffalo-hide coat was draped completely over her, its thick fur collar brushing her cheeks, sealing her in a cocoon of rich, pine-scented warmth.
The stranger stood a few paces away, his back half-turned as he stared into the flickering flames of the hearth, his face shadowed and unreadable.
Maeve clutched the heavy lapels of the coat together across her chest, her voice cracking with bewildered humiliation. “What are you doing?”
The stranger did not look at her. “Put your clothes back on before you catch a lung-chill.”
“I’m giving you what you paid for,” Maeve whispered, the bitterness tasting like copper on her tongue. “I know what I am. I know what men use women like me for.”
The man’s broad back stiffened. Slowly, he turned his head, his pale gray eyes fixing on hers with a sudden, searing intensity that made her breath catch in her throat.
“My name is Boone,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, resonant growl.
He took one step toward her, his expression hardening into something fierce and unyielding.
“I didn’t buy a whore.”
Maeve stared at him, the words echoing off the timber walls.
“And,” Boone continued, his gaze never wavering from her eyes, “I didn’t buy a slave.”
Maeve’s knees nearly buckled beneath her a second time, though this time not from the cold.
Boone pointed a massive, calloused finger toward the corner where little Henry slept peacefully in his rabbit-skin cradle.
“I saw a drunken coward selling his own blood for rotgut whiskey,” Boone said, the controlled fury in his voice vibrating through the small room. “And I saw a woman freezing to death in the sleet, using the last of her strength to keep her boy alive.”
Maeve shook her head, tears blurring her vision as the magnitude of what had happened finally broke through her defenses. “You paid a hundred dollars in gold. That’s a fortune.”
“I bought your debt,” Boone said, stepping closer until she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. “I cleared the ledger. Roy has his whiskey, and the law of Misery Bend has its receipt. But I didn’t buy your soul, Maeve. And I didn’t buy your body.”
Maeve’s breath hitched, a sob tearing its way out of her chest as the tears spilled over her lashes, cutting clean paths through the soot and grime on her cheeks. For her entire life, her body had been a curse—a punchline for cruel men, a burden to be fed, a vessel to be used and discarded. No one had ever looked at her without measuring the circumference of her waist, judging the softness of her flesh, or deciding that a woman of her size should be grateful for whatever scraps of affection or mercy she could scavenge from the bottom of the barrel.
Boone didn’t look at her like she was too much, or too big, or broken.
He looked at her like she was a woman. A mother. A human being worthy of defense.
Then Boone said something that sent a shockwave straight through her heart, shattering the last remnants of the defensive shell she had built around herself over a decade of abuse.
“I’ll be father and husband both.”
Maeve froze, the breath trapped in her lungs, every old terror flaring up in a blinding flash of suspicion.
Before she could pull away, Boone raised a hand, palm outward, and his next words changed the meaning of the promise entirely, altering the landscape of her universe forever.
“We do it right,” Boone said quietly, his gray eyes steady, solemn, and offering a depth of honor she had never known existed, “or we don’t do it at all. There’s a preacher three ridges over come spring thaw. Until then, you have the back room, the boy has a cradle, and this cabin is yours.”
Maeve stood wrapped in the massive buffalo coat, the fire crackling softly in the hearth, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, the crushing weight of her existence lifted. She looked down at the heavy fur draped over her wide shoulders, then up at the mountain man who had walked out of the freezing gloom to rescue her, and for the first time in her life, she wondered if the nightmare on that wooden crate in Misery Bend wasn’t an ending at all, but the brutal, necessary birth of something real.