The Virgin Bride Arrived With Fear in Her Eyes Mountain Men Said “Darlin, I Don’t Bite Unless”

Chapter 4

He stepped into the room, and even that simple motion carried weight. The floorboards creaked beneath his boots. The wolf moved with him, silent as a shadow.

Beatrice stood. “I will leave you two to talk.”

“No time.” His eyes did not leave Evelyn. “Storm is coming. We need to leave now if we are going to make it up the mountain before it hits.”

Evelyn looked out the window. The snow was falling harder now, but the sky was still bright. “How can you tell there is a storm coming?”

“Two hours, maybe three.” His voice carried absolute certainty. “If we wait, we will be trapped here for days.”

She could stay here. She could take Beatrice’s offer and remain in town, in the spare room, safe and warm. But safe was a lie. Safe meant they would find her. Safe meant her father would arrive with Julian Croft and his money and his men, and everything she had sacrificed to escape would have been for nothing.

She stood, her hands trembling only slightly. “I am ready.”

Something flickered in his gray eyes. Surprise, perhaps. Or respect. He glanced at her thin coat, her impractical boots, her bare hands. “You will freeze.”

Before she could respond, he shrugged off his massive bear fur coat and held it out to her. Evelyn stared at it. “I cannot take your coat.”

“You can, and you will.”

It was not a request. It was not quite an order. It was simply a statement of fact delivered in that gravelly voice that seemed to come from somewhere deep in the earth. She took the coat. It was so heavy she nearly staggered under its weight. And when she wrapped it around herself, she was completely engulfed. The fur smelled of pine and wood smoke and something wild, something untamed.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He nodded once, then turned to Beatrice. “I will send word when we are settled.”

Beatrice caught his arm as he passed. “Be gentle with her, Elias. She has had a hard journey.”

He looked down at the older woman, and for just a moment, something softened in his expression. Something almost human. “I know.”

Then he was moving toward the door, and Evelyn had no choice but to follow.

The wagon was sturdy and practical, built to withstand harsh mountain terrain. A single horse stood in the harness, a massive draft animal with a dark coat and calm, patient eyes. Elias loaded Evelyn’s small trunk onto the back, handling it as though it weighed nothing. She climbed onto the wagon seat, the bear fur coat wrapped tight around her, and watched as he checked the harness one final time.

The wolf had disappeared into the trees, but she could see its pale form moving through the shadows parallel to the road.

“That is Wraith,” Elias said, following her gaze. “He will not hurt you. He is a wolf, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

Elias climbed onto the wagon seat beside her, and the whole vehicle shifted under his weight. “Found him as a pup, half-dead in a trap. Raised him since.”

“He let you keep him?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Not sure either of us keeps the other. We just stay close.”

He clicked his tongue, and the horse began to move. The wagon rolled out of Millbrook, past the last few buildings, and onto a trail that wound upward into the mountains.

Evelyn had never seen landscape like this. The forests of the east were tame, cultivated, controlled. This was something else entirely. Pine trees rose toward the sky like cathedral spires, their branches heavy with snow. Cliffs of gray stone jutted from the earth. The trail grew steeper, narrower, winding around hairpin turns that made her grip the edge of the seat.

And the silence. She had not expected the silence. In Boston, there was always noise. Carriages and voices and factory whistles and the constant hum of civilization. Here there was only the creak of the wagon, the steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves, and the whisper of wind through the pine needles.

It was beautiful. It was terrifying. It was the most alone she had ever felt in her life.

“You are from Boston,” his voice cut through the silence.

“Yes.”

“Never been to the mountains before.”

“No.”

“You will find it different.”

She almost laughed. Different. That was one word for it.

They rode in silence for another mile. Evelyn tried several times to think of something to say, some way to break the tension, but every attempt died in her throat. He did not seem interested in conversation. He did not seem interested in her at all. He simply drove the wagon, his eyes scanning the trail and the trees and the sky with the watchfulness of a man who had learned to see danger before it arrived.

“Mr. Blackthorn,” she said finally.

“Elias.”

She swallowed. “Elias. The letters you wrote. They said you were looking for a wife. That is correct.”

“May I ask why?”

He was quiet for a long moment. The wagon rounded a bend, and suddenly the view opened up before them — a vast expanse of valley and mountain and sky that seemed to stretch on forever.

“I have been alone a long time,” he said finally. “I am tired of it.”

“But you do not know me. I could be anyone. A criminal. A liar. Someone who would rob you blind and disappear in the night.”

He turned to look at her then, and his gray eyes held hers with an intensity that made her breath catch. “You are not.”

“How can you know that?”

“The same way I know when a storm is coming.” He turned back to the trail. “Some things you just know.”

Evelyn did not know what to say to that. She pulled the bear fur coat tighter around her shoulders and watched the snowflakes begin to fall faster.