“Can You Make Me Come Tonight — The Mail Order Bride Asked… The Virgin Mountain Man Whispered, ‘I…’”

Chapter 2

The wind picked up around eight o’clock. It didn’t blow. It battered the cabin walls like a living thing trying to break in, rattling the window frame and hissing through the cracks around the door. Inside, the fire snapped and hissed, casting long shadows that crawled across the pine walls.

Margaret sat on the edge of the bed.

She had changed into her nightgown behind a canvas screen Elias had hastily erected near the stove — a thin cotton shift, worn at the elbows but clean. She had unbraided her hair and run a bone comb through it, staring at her reflection in a small cracked mirror propped on a barrel. She looked tired. Dark circles under her eyes. Sharp cheekbones from years of scraping by on too little food and too much worry.

She was twenty-eight years old. She felt sixty.