The first thing Judson McIntyre said when he saw the woman who had crossed two thousand miles to marry him was something he would spend the rest of his life wishing he could take back.
“I asked for a wife, not a cook.”
The stagecoach had barely stopped shuddering in the frozen street of Silver Creek when the words cut through the December air.
Winifred Hayes stood beside the coach with one gloved hand resting on a battered brown trunk.
Snow clung to the shoulders of her green wool dress.
She was twenty-eight, soft-faced and round-bodied, with chestnut hair pinned beneath a modest hat and cheeks reddened by three days of mountain cold. Around her, miners, trappers, teamsters, and shopkeepers had stopped what they were doing to stare at the Boston woman who had answered Judson McIntyre’s advertisement for a bride.
Judson stared too.
Then his mouth hardened.
He turned toward Amos Bell, the marriage broker who had arranged everything.
“You said she was strong.”
Amos shifted uncomfortably. “Mrs. Hayes is healthy, respectable, hardworking—”
Judson glanced at Winifred again.
His expression made the meaning unmistakable.
“She’ll eat through my winter stores before Christmas.”
A few men laughed.
Winifred heard them.
Of course she did.
She heard everything.
The laughter.
The snort from a man beside the saloon.
The whispered remark from a woman outside the mercantile.
And she saw Judson’s face when he realized she had heard him.
For half a heartbeat, something resembling regret passed through his gray eyes.
Then pride buried it.
Winifred lowered her gaze.
“All right,” she said quietly. “Where is your wagon?”
Judson blinked.
“You still want to come?”
She looked directly at him.
“Mr. McIntyre, I have traveled seventeen hundred miles by train, four days by stagecoach, and spent my last twelve dollars getting here. It would be remarkably inconvenient to change my mind now.”
Nobody laughed.
Judson’s jaw tightened.
“My cabin is four hours up.”
“Then we should leave before dark.”
She lifted one end of her trunk.
Judson watched her struggle for three seconds before taking it from her.
That was how their marriage began.
Not with romance.
Not with tenderness.
Not even with kindness.
It began with humiliation in a frozen street and a woman who had nowhere else on earth to go.
They were married twenty-three minutes later.
The preacher’s wife served as witness.
Judson spoke his vows as if negotiating the purchase of a mule.
Winifred spoke hers softly but clearly.
When the preacher said Judson could kiss his bride, he hesitated so long that Winifred finally extended her hand.
“You may shake it instead.”
The preacher coughed into his fist.
Judson shook her hand.
Outside, the snow had begun falling harder.
