Then Mabel asked:
“Do you always threaten people with silence?”
“Yes.”
“It’s effective.”
“I’ve practiced.”
She looked at him.
His profile was hard beneath the brim of his hat.
Scar along the temple.
Nose crooked slightly from an old break.
Beard dark against weathered skin.
Not handsome in the polished way Ridge Creek admired.
Something stronger.
Mabel looked away before he noticed.
Too late.
“You’re staring.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I was observing.”
“That sounds worse.”
Mabel smiled faintly.
Gideon reached inside his coat.
The vial appeared.
Her smile vanished.
“What is this?”
She looked toward the road.
“Poison.”
The reins stopped moving.
The horses continued a few steps before Gideon pulled them to a halt.
Snow drifted around them.
“What?”
“Arsenic.”
He stared.
Mabel swallowed.
“I think.”
“You think?”
“I’ve compared it with descriptions.”
“Descriptions where?”
“My grandfather’s journals.”
“You told me later.”
“This is later.”
“Mabel.”
His voice sharpened.
She flinched.
Gideon saw.
Immediately softened.
“Sorry.”
She nodded.
“Tell me.”
So she did.
Not everything.
Not yet.
Enough.
The illness.
The soups.
The doctor.
Her mother’s will.
The silver mine.
The birthday.
Jonah’s increasing insistence she take medicine.
The strange metallic taste.
The numbness.
The vomiting.
The weakness.
The way symptoms improved whenever Mabel secretly skipped the powders.
Gideon listened without interrupting.
By the end, his hands were white around the reins.
“He was poisoning you.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Months?”
“Maybe years.”
Gideon looked toward the valley below.
“We go back.”
Mabel grabbed his arm.
“No.”
“We take this to the sheriff.”
“The sheriff eats dinner at Jonah’s house every Sunday.”
“Doctor.”
“The doctor prescribed the powders.”
Gideon’s expression darkened.
“County judge.”
“Jonah financed his campaign for clerk before he was appointed.”
Gideon swore.
Mabel continued.
“That’s why I agreed to marry you.”
He turned.
“You knew I was part of your escape.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
The answer caught him.
Mabel looked down.
“You met me three times.”
Gideon said nothing.
“The town already believes I’m lazy, hysterical, gluttonous, and desperate.”
Her voice weakened.
“Jonah has spent years building that story.”
Gideon’s eyes narrowed.
“If I told people my stepfather was poisoning me because of a mine, who would they believe?”
He looked away.
Mabel whispered:
“Exactly.”
“No.”
She frowned.
Gideon turned back.
“I mean I don’t accept that.”
“It is true.”
“I know it is.”
He looked furious.
“But I don’t accept that nobody would believe you.”
“Who?”