“Please don't run, Eleanor. I need you to see what my father spent nineteen years hiding.”
Caleb Mercer's voice trembled as he unfastened the final button of his fur waistcoat.
Outside, a Colorado blizzard battered the lonely mountain cabin, burying the trail beneath fresh snow and rattling the wooden shutters. Inside, the fireplace cast an amber glow over a man who stood six feet four inches tall, with enormous shoulders, powerful hands, and a rugged face framed by dark hair and a thick beard.
He looked capable of carrying a fallen tree across his back.
Yet his fingers shook so badly that he struggled with the fastening.
His new wife watched him from beside the cabin door.
Eleanor Whitmore was thirty-two, with emerald-green eyes, long chestnut-brown curls, an exceptionally full figure, and a beautiful round face that still carried the nervous expression of a woman accustomed to being criticized. She weighed approximately seven hundred and fifty pounds, and the ivory wedding gown she wore had been specially made to accommodate her extraordinary size, with a carefully structured bodice, embroidered lace, broad supportive seams, and an enormous flowing skirt.
Her dark curls had slipped loose during the journey up the mountain. One hand rested against her cheek while the other gathered the fabric of her dress, and her eyes remained fixed on Caleb's chest.
They had been married for only four hours.
She had come to this remote cabin expecting hardship, loneliness, and perhaps another marriage built upon obedience rather than affection.
She had not expected her husband to stand before her with tears in his eyes.
“Caleb,” she whispered, “what happened to you?”
He drew the waistcoat open.
A long, pale scar crossed the upper part of his chest, disappearing beneath the open collar of his cream-colored linen shirt. It was broad and uneven, the old injury pulling across his skin in a pattern that looked as though something terrible had happened beneath it.
Then Eleanor saw the movement.
Near the lower end of the scar, a small section of his chest shifted strangely with each breath, the healed skin moving over an area where the underlying ribs had never recovered their original shape.
She gasped.
Caleb immediately looked away.
“I knew you would be frightened.”
“Wait.”
He swallowed.
“You don't have to stay here. When the storm passes, I'll take you back to town.”