Chapter 1 Ridgewood Territory. Autumn 1881. Norah Ashford hadn’t planned on being a mail-order bride. She hadn’t planned on much of anything, lately. Plans were a luxury that required a future. Norah had arrived at the Ridgewood station with nothing but a worn carpet bag, a train ticket purchased by a mother who couldn’t be…
Chapter 1 Red Hollow, Colorado Territory. January 1883. In winter, the mountains above Red Hollow had a way of deciding who belonged to them and who did not. They did not decide kindly. Snow came sideways for three days without mercy, driving into pine trunks, swallowing wagon tracks, burying fences and roofs and common sense…
Chapter 1 Pahrump, Nevada Territory. September 1878. Kellen Parker had written forty-three letters before she said yes. He had read her last reply so many times the paper had gone soft at the folds. I am 18, healthy, and willing to make a good life. That was all. Eight words he had built a future…
Chapter 1 Frost bit through the thin, rotted leather of Norah’s boots. But the heavy, intoxicating smell of burnt sugar, roasted pecans, and fresh yeast pulling from Omali’s bakery felt like a physical hand dragging her forward. She didn’t want to be a thief. She just wanted the wet, rattling cough in her little sister’s…
Chapter 1 The air in Cobb’s Saloon tasted of stale beer and unwashed bodies. Norah kept her head down, wiping a cracked glass until her raw knuckles ached. The water in the tin bucket was gray, filled with a greasy slick of spilled whiskey and tobacco ash. She plunged her hands into it anyway. The…
Chapter 1 Bozeman, Montana Territory. Late autumn, 1883. Dust settled around a lonely wooden crate where a woman in a faded gingham dress sat clutching a worthless marriage contract. She thought she was a forgotten bride, left to freeze in the Montana wind. She had no idea the fiercest man in the territory was already…
Chapter 1 Frost clung to the iron gates of Langley Manor like powdered glass. Snow had fallen since dusk, burying the carriage tracks and muffling the usual nighttime sounds of the estate. Gideon Roth hadn’t come here for vengeance tonight. He came to collect a debt. But what he found huddled against the stone pillar…
Chapter 1 The slap came so suddenly that Evelyn Whitmore did not see it coming until her cheek struck the edge of the vanity mirror. Crystal perfume bottles rattled across polished oak. One rolled off the table and shattered against the marble floor. For a moment, the only sound inside the dressing chamber was Evelyn’s…
Chapter 1 She stood alone at the edge of the dazzling ballroom, her gloved hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles ached beneath the satin. The candlelight of a thousand wax tapers spilled over silk gowns and glittering jewels, over laughter that rose and fell like music — but none of it touched her. She…
Chapter 1 She stood at the altar in a gown of silver gray, and he did not look at her. Not once. The chapel of Montroa Abbey glowed with candlelight and the pale hush of a winter morning, but Alexander Blackwood, the Duke of Montroa, kept his gaze fixed somewhere above her shoulder, as though…
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