Chapter 1 - The Bride Nobody Wanted
By the time Henrietta Miller stepped into the Silver Crown Saloon, she had learned that humiliation could have a sound.
Sometimes it was laughter.
Sometimes it was a whisper deliberately spoken loudly enough for her to hear.
Sometimes it was nothing more than a room becoming suddenly quiet.
That afternoon in Colorado, it was all three.
Ten women had traveled west together under the supervision of Mrs. Agnes Pritchard, a sharp-nosed widow who arranged marriages between unmarried women from the East and lonely men scattered through mining settlements and ranching country.
Nine of the women entered the Silver Crown expecting husbands.
Hattie entered hoping only for survival.
At twenty-four, she had already lost nearly everything.
Her father had died the previous spring.
Three weeks after the funeral, her uncle Horace had produced documents claiming the Miller family butcher shop belonged to him.
Hattie knew the signature was false.
Knowing and proving were different things.
Horace took the building.
He took the smokehouse.
He took the delivery wagon.
He even took the apartment upstairs where Hattie had slept since childhood.
By midsummer, Henrietta Miller had been sleeping in a room behind a widow’s kitchen and wondering how long pride could fill an empty stomach.
Then she saw Mrs. Pritchard’s advertisement.
Respectable women wanted in Colorado Territory.
Marriage prospects available.
Transportation provided.
Hattie had stared at those words for nearly an hour.
She was not searching for love.
She was searching for a door that had not yet been slammed in her face.
So she went west.
And now she stood inside a saloon smelling of tobacco, whiskey, wet wool, and woodsmoke while nearly fifty men examined the arriving women as though they were inspecting horses.
Loretta Finch stood near Hattie.
Loretta was everything society had spent Hattie’s entire life telling her a woman ought to be.
Slim.
Blonde.
Delicate.
Blue-eyed.
Her waist had been tightened so brutally by her corset that Hattie had once watched her nearly faint while climbing into a stagecoach.
Hattie had thrown away her own corset somewhere in Kansas.
It had bruised her ribs until every breath hurt.
When Mrs. Pritchard discovered what she had done, she nearly suffered an apoplexy.
“No respectable gentleman wants a woman shaped like a flour barrel,” she had hissed.
Hattie had continued folding her clothes.
“Then it’s fortunate I don’t intend to marry a man who mistakes his wife for furniture.”
Loretta had laughed for half an hour.
She was not laughing now.
The saloon doors opened.
The room went quiet.
Hattie looked toward the entrance.
The man standing there was so tall that for a moment he seemed to fill the doorway.
Snow dusted the shoulders of his long brown coat.
A dark hat shaded a hard, weathered face.
He had broad shoulders, strong hands, and a thin scar running beside his left cheek.
Nobody greeted him.
Nobody needed to.
Someone near the bar whispered, “Hayes.”
Hattie heard another man mutter, “God help whichever one he chooses.”
So that was Gideon Hayes.
She had heard the stories during their final week of travel.
He lived alone beneath Dead Man’s Peak.
He hunted wolves.
He trapped through winters that killed experienced miners.
Some claimed he had once carried a wounded man twelve miles through snow.
Others claimed he had thrown a gambler through a second-story window.
Hattie suspected at least half the stories were lies.
Unfortunately, she had no idea which half.
Gideon removed his hat.
His gaze moved over the women.
Loretta straightened immediately.
So did Margaret Bell.
So did Sarah Whitcomb.
Hattie did not.
If Gideon wanted to inspect cattle, he could visit a stockyard.
His eyes settled briefly on the first blonde.
Then moved on.
He looked at Margaret.
Then Sarah.
Then Alice.
Each woman seemed to hold her breath.
He passed over all of them.
Finally his gaze reached Hattie.
It stopped.
Hattie felt something tighten beneath her ribs.
Not hope.
Certainly not hope.
More like irritation.
Gideon looked at her boots.
Her broad shoulders.
Her uncovered waist.
Her hands.
Especially her hands.
They were not soft.
Years in her father’s butcher shop had left small scars across two fingers and strong calluses in both palms.
Gideon stared at those hands for a long moment.
Then he pointed.
“I’ll take her.”
Silence.
Someone coughed.
Mrs. Pritchard blinked.
“Miss Miller?”
Gideon’s voice remained flat.
“The heavy one.”
The words struck harder than Hattie expected.
Heat rushed into her face.
Someone snickered.
Then another.
Loretta stared at Gideon in disbelief before glancing at Hattie.
“Her?”
Gideon did not respond.
Loretta lowered her voice, but not enough.
“Look at her. She’s enormous.”
A man near the card table laughed.
Hattie’s humiliation turned instantly into anger.
Good.
Anger was useful.
She stepped toward Gideon.
“If your idea of introducing yourself is pointing at women and describing their weight, Mr. Hayes, you’ve lived alone too long.”
A few men stopped laughing.
Gideon looked at her.
Something almost invisible changed behind his eyes.
Interest, perhaps.
“You’re Henrietta Miller?”
“Hattie.”
“You know how to work?”
She stared at him.
“I crossed four states in a stagecoach full of women wearing corsets. I’d say that demonstrates unusual endurance.”
A laugh escaped someone near the bar.
Gideon did not smile.
But one corner of his mouth moved.
Barely.
He reached inside his coat.
Mrs. Pritchard stiffened.
Then Gideon dropped three leather pouches onto the table.
Gold coins spilled across the wood.
The room became silent again.
Mrs. Pritchard’s eyes widened.
“Three hundred dollars?”
“That was the arrangement.”
Hattie stared at the money.
Three hundred dollars.
More than her father’s shop sometimes earned in months.
Enough to return East.
Enough to hire a lawyer.
Enough to—
No.
The money was not hers.
It was part of the ridiculous contract that had brought them here.
Gideon turned toward her.
“Collect your trunk.”
Hattie did not move.
“You haven’t asked whether I agree.”
Now Gideon’s expression changed completely.
For the first time, he looked genuinely surprised.
Mrs. Pritchard hurried forward.
“Miss Miller, you signed—”
“I know what I signed.”
Hattie kept her gaze on Gideon.
“But I’ll hear the man himself say it. Do you want a wife or a hired mule?”
Several men suddenly found their drinks fascinating.
Gideon studied her for several seconds.
“A wife.”
“Why me?”
His eyes moved briefly toward the windows, where snow had begun falling.
Then back to her.
“Because winter’s coming.”
Hattie frowned.
“That explains absolutely nothing.”
“It will.”
He put his hat back on.
“The preacher is waiting.”
Hattie almost refused simply because he clearly expected obedience.
Then she remembered the boardinghouse in Philadelphia.
The empty cupboards.
Her uncle’s smug smile.
The final dollar in her purse.
She looked at Gideon Hayes.
He was rude.
Hard.
Almost frighteningly unreadable.
But when Loretta had insulted her, he had not laughed.
And when Hattie challenged him, he had not become angry.
That counted for something.
Perhaps not much.
But something.
Two hours later, Henrietta Miller stood inside a tiny church while snow tapped against stained glass.
Gideon stood beside her.
The preacher spoke quickly.
Neither of them smiled.
When he asked Gideon whether he accepted Henrietta Miller as his lawful wife, Gideon answered immediately.
“I do.”
Then the preacher turned toward Hattie.
She looked up at the stranger she was about to bind her life to.
His face revealed nothing.
Hattie thought about hunger.
She thought about loneliness.
She thought about the way the world had already decided what kind of future a woman like her deserved.
Then she lifted her chin.
“I do.”
Outside, the storm was strengthening.
Before sunset, Mrs. Gideon Hayes was riding into mountains so enormous they swallowed the road behind her.
She did not know her new husband.
She did not know where he was taking her.
And she certainly did not know that another woman had once made this same journey beside Gideon Hayes.
A beautiful woman.
A thin woman.
A woman named Mary.
May you like
A woman who had never come back down the mountain.
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