The Whole Town Called Her Cursed for Her Size—Then the Mountain Man Took Her Into His Cabin and Warned, “I Can’t Control Myself”

Chapter 3

“And they’ve already told me everything they need to.”

He crawled to the window on his elbows, rifle in one hand, and rose just far enough to shoulder it. The shot cracked like a frozen branch breaking. A horse screamed. A man shouted in pain.

One down.

Eliza pressed her back against the hearth and tried to count. Two more shots struck the cabin. One tore through the wall above her head, flinging splinters into her hair. She cried out, then bit the sound down.

“Behind the woodpile,” she said, pointing. “He came off his saddle.”

Caleb looked at her as if he hadn’t expected her to be useful.

“Keep pointing.”

He fired again. The second man dropped into the snow and did not rise.

The cabin went quiet except for the wind. Eliza’s ears rang. Her hands shook so badly she had to press them flat against the floor to make them stop. She could smell the powder smoke, the cold, the wet wool of the blanket still clutched in her fist.

“Two left,” Caleb murmured. He was watching the treeline through the jagged hole where the window had been, and there was something in his stillness she recognized—a man who had done this before. “They’ll come through the door.”

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s what I’d do.”

She pushed herself up. “Give me something to fight with.”

“You’re not fighting.”

“Four men just tried to kill me. I think I’m allowed an opinion.”

Caleb studied her for a long moment, and something like respect flickered behind his eyes. He reached down and pulled the iron fireplace poker from its hook and pressed it into her hands.

“Stay behind the door. If one gets past me, swing for the knees.”

She wrapped her fingers around the cold iron. It was heavier than she expected. Heavier than she wanted it to be. But it was real, and it was hers, and for the first time since the coach had rolled, she felt something other than fear.

The barn door creaked.

Caleb moved toward the front of the cabin, and Eliza took her place behind the door with the poker raised, her breath fogging in the cold air, her whole body one held note.

The door burst open.

A man came through with a knife in his hand, eyes wild, snow crusted across his beard. He saw Caleb and lunged. Caleb was faster—the rifle came up, the stock swung, and the man went down with a crack that made Eliza flinch.

But there was a shadow behind him.

She saw it before Caleb did—a second man filling the doorway, pistol raised, and he was aiming not at Caleb but at her.

Eliza swung.

The poker caught him across the knee with every ounce of strength a lifetime of being underestimated had stored in her shoulders. The man screamed and buckled. The pistol fired into the ceiling. Plaster rained down.

Caleb turned and brought the rifle butt down once. The man went still.

The cabin held four bodies now. Two dead in the snow, two breathing shallowly on the floor. Eliza stood over them with the poker still raised, shaking, her breath coming in great white clouds.

“Those were the men who were supposed to take me to Red Pine,” she said, and her voice sounded strange and thin.

“No.” Caleb crouched beside the knife man and began searching his coat. “Those were the men who were supposed to make sure you never got there.”

He pulled something from the man’s inner pocket—a folded paper, sealed with dark red wax.

Eliza watched him break the seal.

Caleb read. His face changed.

“What?” she asked.

He held the paper out to her.

It was a letter, written in a careful hand. At the bottom, in place of a signature, stood two initials.

V.H.

The letter read:

The girl must not reach Red Pine. If the coach fails, see that the witnesses fail with it. When it is done, come to the house on Silver Street. Your payment is waiting.

Eliza read it twice. Her hands were steady now, which surprised her.

“V.H.,” she said.

Caleb looked at her. “Who?”

And in the silence that followed, she heard the answer come out of her own mouth like something she’d known all her life.

“Victor Harrow.”

“The man you’re meant to marry.”

“Not yet.” She folded the letter carefully. “But he believes he’s going to be.”

Caleb stood, looking at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “You know him?”

“I know he’s waited nine months for me to reach Red Pine.” Her voice caught. “I know my father made the arrangements. I know the wedding was supposed to be next month.”

“And you never asked why.”

She looked at him. “I was too ashamed to ask why anyone would want me at all.”

Something moved behind Caleb’s eyes.

“Well,” he said, and his voice was low and rough. “Now you know.”

Outside, the wind rose again, and for a long time neither of them spoke. But Eliza kept staring at the letter, at the two initials, at the shape of a betrayal she had almost walked into with her eyes closed.

Her father had sold her.

And the man she was meant to marry had been trying to kill her.

She looked down at the poker in her hands, still warm from the fire.

“It seems,” she said softly, “I have a great deal to survive.”