At 19, She Was Forced to Marry A Millionaire Cowboy — But His Wedding Gift Silenced the Whole Town

Chapter 2

The house smelled of wood smoke and coffee and the particular hush of a place where no one had laughed in a long time. Gideon showed her through the front room with its stone fireplace and hand-carved furniture, then up the stairs, past oil lamps burning low in the dark, to the second door on the right.

“This is your room.”

Four-poster bed, quilt in blues and cream, a washstand, a window facing east. And on the inside of the door, a lock — bright and new, the kind a man installs when he wants a guest to feel safe rather than a prisoner to stay caught.

Gideon pointed to it. “Use it if you need to. I won’t knock unless you ask me to. You understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He nodded once and left her to the settling dark.