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

Chapter 8

That night after supper, Evelyn sat by the fire reading one of Elias’s books. It was a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the pages worn soft from countless readings. She had been surprised to find it on his shelf, even more surprised to see the notes written in the margins in Elias’s precise handwriting.

“You studied Shakespeare?” she asked.

Elias looked up from the harness he was mending. “Some. Before I came to the mountains.”

Evelyn considered this. “I am just trying to understand you.”

“Why?”

“Because we are married,” she said. “And I know almost nothing about you.”

Elias set down the harness and leaned back in his chair. His gray eyes studied her face in the firelight. “What do you want to know?”

Everything, Evelyn thought. But she knew better than to push too hard. “Where did you learn to read like this?” She gestured to the book. “These notes are better than anything my tutors wrote.”

“My mother was a teacher,” he said, “before she married my father. She taught me to read when I was four. By the time I was ten, I had read more books than most men read in a lifetime.”

“And your father?”

“He was a farmer. Good man. Hard worker. He could barely write his own name, but he made sure I had every book I wanted.”

Elias’s voice carried a warmth that Evelyn had never heard before. A softness that spoke of love and loss and memories too precious to share easily.

“What happened to them?” she asked.

“Fever.” He said the word simply, without drama. “Took them both in the same winter. I was eighteen.”

Evelyn set the book down. “I am sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“That does not mean it stopped hurting.”

He looked at her, then really looked at her, and she saw something flicker in his gray eyes. Recognition, perhaps. Understanding.

“No,” he said quietly. “It does not.”

The blizzard came without warning. One moment the sky was clear and pale, the winter sun casting long shadows across the snow. The next, clouds rolled over the mountains like a great gray tide, and the wind began to howl.

Elias was in the barn when the first flakes fell. He came through the cabin door with armfuls of firewood, his face set in grim lines.

“Bad one coming,” he said. “Worse than the last.”

“How long?”

“Three days. Maybe four.” He stacked the wood beside the fireplace with efficient movements. “I am going to check the animals. Stay inside.”

Evelyn spent the next hour watching through the window as the world disappeared. The snow fell so thick she could barely see the barn. The wind screamed against the walls, finding every crack and gap in the logs, sending fingers of cold into the cabin.

When Elias finally returned, he was covered in white. His beard was frosted, his cheeks raw from the wind.

“The animals are secure,” he said. “Now we wait.”

Waiting was harder than Evelyn had expected. The cabin that had seemed cozy now felt like a trap. The walls pressed in. The howling wind made conversation nearly impossible. And when it briefly subsided, the silence that followed was somehow worse.

By the second day, the cold had become a living thing. It crept through the floorboards and the window frames. It settled into Evelyn’s bones, no matter how close she sat to the fire.

That night, she woke shivering so violently she could not stop. Her blankets, which had seemed adequate before, were no match for this kind of cold.

“Evelyn.”

She opened her eyes to find Elias kneeling beside her bed. In the dim glow of the dying fire, his face was all shadows and sharp angles.

“You are freezing,” he said.

“I am fine.” Her teeth chattered so hard she could barely form the words.

Elias disappeared and returned a moment later with his own bedroll and blankets. Without asking permission, he began layering them over her, tucking them around her body.

“It is not enough,” he said. “We need to share warmth.”

Evelyn’s heart stuttered. “I do not know if I can—”

He held up a hand. “I am going to lie beside you on top of the blankets, just to keep you warm. Nothing else.”

She wanted to refuse. Every instinct she had developed over years of learning to fear men’s intentions screamed at her to say no. But she was so cold. And she trusted him. Somehow, against all reason, she trusted him.

“All right,” she whispered.

He stretched out beside her, still fully clothed, his body a wall of heat against her back. Even through the layers of blankets, she could feel the warmth radiating from him.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. Sleep now.”

But she could not sleep. Not with him so close. Not with her thoughts spinning in circles.

“Elias.”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me about them? Your wife and daughter?”

The silence that followed was so long she thought he would not answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely louder than the wind.

“Anna. Her name was Anna. She was the kindest person I ever knew. She used to sing while she cooked. Hymns, mostly. Songs her mother taught her.”

Evelyn felt his breath warm against her hair.

“Rose was three when she died,” he continued. “She had Anna’s eyes — blue like summer sky. She used to follow me around the farm, asking questions about everything. Why is the grass green, Papa? Why do chickens lay eggs? Why does the sun go away at night?”

Evelyn’s throat tightened. “She sounds wonderful.”

“She was.”

“What happened to them?”

Another long silence. When he spoke again, his voice had changed. Harder. Colder.

“Outlaws. A gang that had been terrorizing homesteads across Kansas. They came while I was away selling horses. They took everything. Burned the house. Killed them both.”

He stopped. Evelyn felt his body tense behind her.

“You do not have to tell me,” she said softly.

“I hunted them. For two years, I tracked them across three territories. I found every single one. And I killed them. All five. With my own hands.”

Evelyn absorbed this. She should have been horrified. She should have been afraid. But all she felt was a terrible, aching sadness.

“Is that why you came to the mountains?” she asked.

“I came to the mountains because I did not know how to live anymore.” He shifted behind her, and she felt his arms settle carefully across her waist. “After I finished — after they were all dead — I realized I had nothing left. No home. No family. No purpose. So I came here to disappear.”

“But you did not disappear,” Evelyn said. “You sent for a wife.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

He was quiet for so long she thought he had fallen asleep. Then, so softly she almost missed it, he said, “Because even ghosts get lonely.”