Her Father Traded Her for $20 and Two Horses — The Mountain Recluse Opened a Trunk on Their Wedding Night

“Loosen that dress before you hurt yourself.”

The young bride pressed her back harder against the log wall.

There was nowhere else to go.

Behind her, rough-hewn pine boards were cold even though the stone fireplace only a few yards away burned hot enough to throw orange light across the entire cabin. Snow struck the small glass window in dry white bursts, rattling softly whenever the mountain wind turned against the house.

Standing between her and the fire was the man she had married less than four hours earlier.

The mountain recluse.

The savage.

The brute.

The creature decent women in Dry Creek supposedly crossed the street to avoid.

He looked even larger inside the cabin than he had standing outside it.

He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, nearly a head taller than most men she knew, with broad shoulders that strained beneath a weather-darkened leather coat. A gray wolf-fur collar framed his thick dark hair and beard. His hands looked capable of breaking wagon spokes. A revolver hung low at his hip, and an old scar disappeared beneath the hair along his jaw.

The bride had heard every story.

He had once knocked a man unconscious with one fist.

He had lived through winters that killed cattle where they stood.

He trapped alone.

Hunted alone.

Drank alone.

And, according to half the people in town, there had to be a reason no respectable woman had ever agreed to share his cabin.

Now she was that woman.

Except nobody had asked her whether she agreed.

Her father had accepted twenty dollars and two draft horses.

Her aunt had called it providence.

The reverend had called it marriage.

The bride called it what it felt like.

A sale.

And now the buyer was staring at her waist.

Her fingers flew to the front of the ivory wedding gown.

“Please,” she whispered.

The mountain man stopped.

He had taken only one step.

Still, he immediately moved backward.

Then another.

He raised both hands where she could see them.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

She said nothing.

Her lungs already felt too small.

The whalebone corset beneath the gown was cinched so tightly that each breath came shallow and high in her chest. Her aunt had laced her into it that morning until her natural waist seemed carved inward by force.

Every jolt of the wagon ride into the mountains had driven the boning deeper beneath her ribs.

Now there was a stabbing pain along her left side.