He heated water.
He fed the stove.
He sat beside her, watching her breathing.
Clara drifted in and out of consciousness.
At midnight, she opened her eyes.
“Henry?”
“Here.”
“Did I ruin the bed?”
He stared.
“What?”
“Snow. Mud. Soot. I’m afraid I’ve ruined your blankets.”
Something broke inside him.
This woman had risked her life to hold a ladder steady.
Now she lay shaking with cold, worried about his blankets.
He took her hand.
“Clara, listen to me.”
She turned toward him.
“You could burn this entire cabin to the ground, and I’d be grateful if you walked out alive.”
Her eyes filled.
“That almost sounded romantic.”
“Don’t tell anybody.”
“I may put it in the newspaper.”
He smiled.
Then her expression changed.
“Henry?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you kiss me when we married?”
The question struck him harder than the wind.
He looked away.
“I thought you wouldn’t want me to.”
Clara frowned.
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t know me.”
“Neither did you.”
He swallowed.
“I didn’t want you to think I’d bought the right.”
Silence filled the cabin.
Clara studied his face.
Then a tear slid down her cheek.
“Do you know what the minister said before I left Chicago?”
Henry shook his head.
“He said I should be grateful that any man would marry me. He said women shaped like me don’t get to ask for affection. We should accept shelter and kindness and not expect more.”
Henry’s expression darkened.
“Who was he?”
“Henry.”
“Name.”
She laughed weakly.
“Are you planning to ride to Chicago and frighten a minister?”
“Considering it.”
Her laughter faded.
“I believed him, you know. A little.”
Henry leaned closer.
“Then stop.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I suppose it isn’t.”
He stared at their joined hands.
Then, with obvious difficulty, spoke again.
“I’ve been alone so long I forgot how to let another person matter.”
Clara watched him.
“You matter to me,” he said.
Her breath caught.
“More than I expected.”
She touched his cheek.
Henry closed his eyes.
For a moment, he looked less like the hardest man in Montana and more like a lonely boy who had spent his whole life learning not to need anyone.
Clara whispered, “Then kiss me because you want to.”
He did.
Gently.
Without hurry.
Without embarrassment.
And in that small cabin, with a blizzard raging outside, Clara Mercer received the first kiss of her marriage.
It was not a reward for becoming smaller.
Not a gesture of pity.
Not an obligation.
It was a kiss given freely to the woman Henry had begun to love exactly as she was.
When he pulled away, tears shone in her eyes.
“What?” he whispered.
“Nothing.”
“Clara.”
“I just didn’t know it could feel like that.”
Henry pressed his forehead against hers.
“Neither did I.”
That night, he moved the canvas cot beside the bed and remained close enough to hold her hand.
By dawn, the worst of her shivering had stopped.
The storm continued for two more days.
But the distance between them was gone.
Chapter Six: The Letter Beneath the Floor
On the fourth morning, sunlight finally reached the cabin.
Henry stepped outside to assess the damage.
A shed roof had collapsed.
One fence lay buried.
Two trees had fallen across the trail.
But the cabin stood.
And Clara was alive.
When he returned, she was sitting at the table, wrapped in the buffalo hide, drinking coffee.
His coffee.
She grimaced.
“Your brew still tastes like boiled horseshoes.”
Henry leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“Then stop drinking it.”
Her face brightened.
“You kissed me in daylight.”
“Would you rather I waited until dark?”
“I’m considering my options.”
For several days, life was almost impossibly sweet.
They cooked together.
Henry taught her how to bank the stove properly.
Clara taught him to knead bread.
He was terrible at it.
“Your dough looks frightened,” she told him.
“It’ll cook.”
“That’s not the point.”
He kissed her cheek.
She forgot what she was saying.
They began speaking about the future.
A proper kitchen.
A bigger bed.
Perhaps a garden come spring.
Clara wanted red curtains.
Henry argued that red curtains would look ridiculous.
Two days later, he quietly asked the mercantile to order red fabric.
But happiness has a cruel way of lowering the guard around old wounds.
One afternoon, Henry returned from repairing the barn to find Clara kneeling beside a loose floorboard near the stove.
She had pulled it up.
Beneath it lay a tin box.
Henry stopped in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
Clara looked up.
“I dropped my needle. It rolled into the crack.”
He moved forward.
Then saw the box in her hands.
His face went white.
“Put it down.”
Clara hesitated.
“Henry—”
“Put it down!”
She set it on the floor.
The sudden anger stunned her.
Henry knelt, seized the box, and stood.
“You had no business touching that.”
“I didn’t know it was there.”
He turned toward the door.
Clara rose awkwardly.
“Is this about the woman in the photograph?”
Henry stopped.
For a long moment, he did not move.
Then he answered in a voice Clara barely recognized.
“That was my mother.”
Clara’s heart lurched.
The young woman.
The wagon.
The blue ribbon.
“Your mother?”
Henry nodded.
“She disappeared when I was fourteen.”
Clara gripped the edge of the table.
“What happened?”
He stared at the tin box.
“My father said she ran away with another man. Said she took my little sister.”
Clara went still.
“You had a sister?”
Henry’s eyes darkened.
“Her name was Eleanor.”
The room seemed to tilt.
