“By Winter, You’ll Have My Son Growing Inside You” — The Giant Cowboy Vowed To The Lonely Widow

Chapter 6

The morning of the wedding dawned clear and cold, with the kind of crystalline sky that promised snow before nightfall. Clara woke before sunrise in Bea’s guest room, where she’d spent the night to preserve the tradition of not seeing her groom on their wedding day. Through the frosted window, she could see her breath in the chilly air, and she pulled the quilt tighter as she tried to calm her racing heart.

In a few hours, she would be married to a man she’d known for exactly one week.

Bea bustled in with a breakfast tray and the determined efficiency of a woman on a mission. “Eat. You’ll need your strength today.”

Clara managed a few bites of porridge, but her stomach was too unsettled for much food. Her wedding dress was a simple affair — her best blue wool, freshly pressed, paired with the white lace collar that had belonged to her mother. Bea had insisted on lending her a pair of pearl earrings, something borrowed to bring good luck. In her reticule, Clara carried Jonah’s ring — no longer around her neck, but not yet ready to be completely put away.

“You look beautiful,” Bea said, stepping back to examine her handiwork after pinning Clara’s hair into a neat chignon. “Different somehow. More hopeful.”

“I feel different. Terrified, but different.”

They arrived at the church to find a surprising number of people already gathered despite the early hour and the casual nature of the ceremony. Word had spread, as it always did in small communities, and it seemed half the county had turned out to witness the unlikely union of the giant and the widow who’d captured his attention.

Gideon was waiting at the altar with Earl Calloway, both men dressed in their Sunday best and looking uncomfortable in the confines of their formal clothes. But when Clara walked down the aisle on Bea’s arm, Gideon’s expression transformed — his face lighting with something that might have been wonder.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured as she took her place beside him, his voice pitched low enough that only she could hear.

“You clean up well yourself.” She noted how the dark suit emphasized his broad shoulders and made his pale eyes seem even brighter.

Reverend Hale began the ceremony with the traditional words about marriage being a sacred institution designed by God for the comfort and companionship of man and woman. But Clara found herself focusing on Gideon’s presence beside her — the warmth radiating from his large frame, the steadiness of his breathing, the way his hand felt when he took hers during the exchange of vows.

“Do you, Gideon Stone, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, until death do you part?”

“I do.” His answer was firm, unwavering, spoken with the same certainty he’d shown when making his original proposal.

“And do you, Clara Vance, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, until death do you part?”

Clara looked up into Gideon’s face, seeing patience and hope and something deeper that made her chest tight with emotion. “I do.”

The ring he slipped onto her finger was unlike anything she’d expected. Not gold like Jonah’s had been, but silver, with intricate engravings that caught the light from the church’s tall windows. She realized he must have made it himself — just as he’d made everything else he’d given her.

“By the power vested in me by the territory of Dakota, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.”

Gideon’s hands came up to frame her face with surprising gentleness, his thumbs brushing across her cheekbones as he leaned down to press his lips to hers. The kiss was soft, reverent — a promise rather than a demand. But even so, it sent warmth flooding through her body and made her understand, perhaps for the first time, what Bea had meant about physical compatibility.

The congregation erupted in applause and well-wishes, and for the next hour Clara found herself accepting congratulations from people she’d known for years, who now looked at her with new interest. She was no longer the pitied widow struggling to survive. She was Mrs. Gideon Stone, wife to one of the most respected men in three counties.

“They’re wondering if you’re already carrying his child,” Bea murmured in her ear during a quiet moment. “The speed of your courtship has set tongues wagging.”

“Let them wonder,” Clara replied, though she felt heat rise in her cheeks. “It’s none of their business.”

Finally, as the sun began to sink toward the horizon, Gideon approached her with their coats. “Ready to go home, Mrs. Stone?”

The name sent a thrill through her that she hadn’t expected. “Yes. I think I am.”

The ride north took them through increasingly rugged terrain, the wagon loaded with her belongings bouncing over ruts and rocks as they climbed into the foothills. Clara’s first sight of her new home took her breath away. It was larger than she’d expected, built of honey-colored logs with a wide porch that wrapped around three sides. Window boxes held the brown stalks of flowers that had bloomed earlier in the season, and a kitchen garden showed evidence of careful tending despite the lateness of the year.

“Gideon, it’s beautiful.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I suppose I am. I was expecting something more primitive — more like a trapper’s cabin than a real home.”

He helped her down from the wagon, his hands spanning her waist with easy strength. “I told you I’d been building it for three years, thinking someday I’d have a wife to share it with. I wanted it to be worthy of the woman who’d live here.”

Inside, the house was even more impressive. A massive stone fireplace with a carved wooden mantle dominated the main room, and the furniture was clearly handmade but showed real craftsmanship. Everything was clean and well-maintained, though it had the slightly sterile feel of a place where a man had lived alone.

The room that would be theirs was large and airy, with windows facing east to catch the morning sun. The bed dominated the space — a massive frame that had clearly been built to accommodate Gideon’s size, covered with quilts in deep blues and greens. The sight of it made Clara’s mouth go dry with nervousness.

“I’ll give you some time to settle in,” Gideon said, setting her trunk at the foot of the bed. “There’s hot water on the stove if you’d like to wash. I’ll be in the kitchen when you’re ready.”

In the bottom of her trunk, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, she found the wooden spoon Gideon had carved for her during their brief courtship. She’d almost forgotten about it in the rush of wedding preparations, but now she held it up to the lamplight, examining the careful work that had gone into its creation. The wood had been polished to a satin smoothness that spoke of hours of patient labor. Along the handle, barely visible unless you knew to look for them, were tiny carved flowers — wild roses, she thought, the kind that bloomed in mountain meadows during the brief summer season.

When he carved this spoon, he’d been thinking of her hands. Of meals they would share. Of the domestic intimacy that was already growing between them.

They ate supper in comfortable silence — venison stew with fresh bread and preserves made from wild berries — both of them aware that the evening would bring them to the moment they’d been building toward since the day he’d first proposed.

“Are you nervous?” he asked finally, setting down his coffee cup.

“Yes. But not the way I expected to be.”

“What way are you nervous?”

“I’m nervous that I won’t be what you’re hoping for. That I won’t know how to be the kind of wife you need.”

“And what kind of wife do you think I need?”

“Someone warmer, maybe. Someone who comes to your bed with passion instead of duty.”

Gideon was quiet for a long moment. Then he rose from his chair, came around the table, and knelt beside her so they were at eye level. “Clara, I didn’t marry you expecting you to be someone you’re not. I married you because of who you are — a woman strong enough to survive what would have broken most people, honest enough to speak her fears, brave enough to trust a stranger with her future. And if passion doesn’t come, if you can’t learn to want me the way a wife should want her husband, then we’ll build something else. Respect. Companionship. Partnership. Not every marriage is based on grand passion. But the best ones are built on trust and genuine affection. Is that enough for you?”

“It’s a beginning.”

He reached up and touched her face, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. “But I think you might surprise yourself, given time and patience.”

And for the first time since accepting his proposal, Clara allowed herself to believe that their unconventional beginning might lead to something beautiful after all.

That night, in the large bed that had been built to hold a giant and the woman brave enough to love him, Clara learned that some promises are kept with tenderness. Gideon kept his word to be patient while still claiming his rights as her husband, and when she woke curled against his warm chest, she felt changed in ways that had nothing to do with the physical act of consummation and everything to do with the gentle way he’d introduced her to pleasures she’d never imagined possible.

Sometime in the dark, she lay awake and watched his sleeping face in the moonlight, and she wondered what else the giant was hiding beneath that quiet surface.

There was a secret in his stillness, she thought. And it had roots.