Ezra shook his head. “Not hate. Possession. Some men can’t tell the difference.”
She pressed her hands together, trembling. “I made him a promise.”
Ezra’s gaze was sharp. “A promise given under false lights may not be worth keeping.”
But she shook her head. “It was my word. My word is all I have.”
Ezra sighed, looking away. “Then may it keep you until you see clearer.”
?
The further they went, the stronger Thomas’s displeasure grew. He kept complaining of the food, the weather, and the pace, no matter how fast they went. He cursed Violet’s Boston manners, her softness, her hesitations.
One evening, as she tried to start a fire, he shoved her aside. “You’re useless,” he growled. “Can’t even set a flame. What kind of wife will you be?”
Her hands clenched in her skirts. “I can learn.”
“You’d better. Or you’ll wish you had.”
The threat in his voice chilled her more than the night wind. She turned her face toward the river, her heart silently crying for Grey Horse, for the steady warmth of his eyes, for the braid he had woven that still lived in memory.
?
At last, after days that blurred into misery, the land began to change. Fences appeared, broken in places. A scatter of cattle, thin and rangy, grazed near water. A line of trees marked a creek bed, and beyond it, she saw the outlines of a cabin and barn.
“This is mine,” Thomas said, his chest swelling with pride. “My ranch. Your new home.”
Violet stared.
The cabin was tiny, its boards weathered gray, the roof patched with tin. The barn leaned as though a hard wind might tumble it. The yard was bare earth, littered with tools gone to rust. No flowers, no porch swing, no sign of comfort.
Her breath caught. This was not the ranch described in his letters. Not at all the ranch he’d led her to imagine! He had written of wide fields, of cattle fat and sleek, of a strong house with a hearth waiting to warm her. She had believed she would step into a rough life perhaps, but livable, respectable, steady.
Instead she saw a place worn thin, struggling … empty.
Her stomach dropped.He lied.
Thomas swung from his horse with a grunt, then pulled her down after him, his grip rough on her arm. “You’ll set it right,” he said. “A woman’s touch, that’s all my ranch needs. That’s why I sent for you. Why I bought you. And now you’re here.”
She stumbled on the hard ground, her heart hammering. She could not speak. The weight of his lie pressed heavy as stone.
Ezra dismounted slowly, his gaze sweeping the yard with faint frown. But he said nothing.
Thomas’s hand clamped around her shoulder. “You’ll work, Violet. You’ll cook, you’ll clean, and you’ll keep me fed. You’ll bear my children, many boys to help work on my ranch soon as they’re big enough to walk. And girls to satisfy my desires when their mother’s too old and wrinkled for my taste. You’ll do it all without complaint. You’ll do it because you gave me your word. And a man’s not to be made a fool of.”
Her throat tightened until she could hardly breathe.
Is this my fate?
But deep within, a spark kindled: fragile, flickering, but alive. The spark of Grey Horse’s eyes in the firelight. The memory of his gifts, his quiet strength.
She lowered her gaze, hiding the glimmer of hope that burned despite the darkness around her.
Grey Horse… come,she beckoned silently in her deepest heart.
?
From the rise above the creek, Grey Horse watched. His heart was iron in his chest, his jaw set hard.
