They Said No Woman Would Wed the Scarred Blacksmith — Then His Mail-Order Bride Arrived

Chapter 10

They talk about you, you know, Ruth said one afternoon, shelling beans at the cabin table. In the store. The women.

What do they say? Josie asked.

Mrs. Dowd called you iron-willed. Ruth paused. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment, but it sounded like one.

It is one, Josie said. I’ll take it.

The afternoon of a Thursday in late May was the kind of Colorado afternoon that almost justified the winters — the air clean and cold at the edges, the sky a blue so deep it looked painted, the wildflowers coming up along the creek bank in the particular joyful chaos of mountain meadows.

Josie sat on the porch in the wide chair Gideon had built for her in February — solid, carefully measured, constructed with the same patient attention he brought to all his work. She was mending a shirt. Buster slept under the railing. From the forge came the steady heartbeat of the hammer.

She was, she realized, content.

Not happy in the uncomplicated way of people who have not suffered. It was something more durable than that — the particular contentment of a woman who has endured a great deal and arrived somewhere that is genuinely hers, and knows it.

The hammer stopped.

Gideon appeared in the door of the forge, wiping his hands on his apron. He walked to the porch and sat on the step — not in a chair, which he rarely used, but on the step with his back against the railing the way he always sat when he wanted to be near her without making it a production.

They sat in the afternoon quiet.

A meadowlark somewhere. The creek. The distant sound of Oak Haven going about its business.

Mayor Miller stopped by this morning, Gideon said eventually.

Did he.

Asked if I’d be interested in a contract to supply iron work for the new courthouse they’re planning. He looked at his hands. Said the town could use a reliable blacksmith. Said I was a reliable blacksmith.

Josie kept her eyes on her mending, but the corner of her mouth moved.

What did you say?

Said I’d have to talk to my wife first. Since she handles the billing.

She looked up then. His good eye was watching her with the quiet attentiveness he’d always had — the way he watched iron on the anvil, understanding its properties, its temperature, what it was ready to become.

Tell him yes, she said. And tell him we want three months of work agreed in advance before the first piece leaves the forge.

That what you want?

That’s what we’re worth.

Gideon smiled. The full smile — both sides of his face, the scarred and the unscarred together. He didn’t smile often enough that she had stopped noticing it when it came. She set down her mending.

I want to tell you something, she said.

He waited.

When I wrote that letter, I thought I was asking for very little. A quiet life. A man who wouldn’t look at me with disgust. She turned her needle in her fingers. I thought that was the most I could hope for.

Josie—

I’m not finished. She looked at him directly. What I want you to know is that I was wrong about how much was possible. I was wrong about a great many things. She paused. You are not what I expected, Gideon. I expected an accommodation. I did not expect a partner.

His jaw worked. He was not, as she had long since established, a man who reached easily for words when the words mattered.

Neither did I, he said at last. His voice roughened slightly. I thought I was asking for company. Someone to keep the cabin from being so— He stopped. I did not expect this either, Josephine.

He reached out his right hand — the massive, scarred hand that had steadied her on the train platform, that had snapped a cracker barrel like kindling, that built furniture specific to her dimensions and never made anything of it — and rested it on top of hers.

She turned her hand over and held his.