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

Chapter 5

She stopped. Tried again.

I am too much of a burden.

Gideon set down the iron poker. He turned slowly and walked to the bed and pulled the wooden chair close and sat down so he was at eye level with her.

Look at me, he said.

She raised her eyes to his ruined face.

When I walk down the street, Gideon said, children cry. Men cross to the other side to avoid looking at me. I wrote that advertisement hoping you could look past this. He gestured to the left side of his face. You think I have any right to judge you for taking up a little more space in the world?

Josie let out a breath that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. It is a lot more space, Gideon.

A small, crooked smile pulled at the unscarred side of his mouth.

More to hold on to, then. He met her eyes steadily. You stay, Josephine. This is your home now, if you want it.

It was not romantic, exactly. It was not poetry. But it was the most honest thing anyone had said to her in years, and Josie sat with it in the warm, cramped cabin and felt something that had been braced against a blow slowly, cautiously begin to release.

Two days after the wedding, Josie decided to go to the general store.

She wanted flour and sugar. She wanted to begin making this cabin into something that felt like a home, and baking was the thing she knew how to do when she needed to feel capable.

She squeezed through the narrow door of the mercantile, the bell chiming overhead, and the conversation inside stopped the way conversations stop when something unexpected enters a room.

Clara Jenkins was at the counter. Jeb Stone lounged by the cracker barrel with the ease of a man who considered himself an institution.

Jeb spat a stream of tobacco juice toward the spittoon. It landed near the hem of Josie’s dress.

Well, well. He looked her up and down with the slow, deliberate pleasure of someone who has never faced consequences for his cruelty and doesn’t expect to start. Looks like Mercer’s prize heifer got loose from the barn. Tell me, Mrs. Mercer, how much grain do you eat a day to keep that figure?

Clara Jenkins made a sound that was half gasp and half suppressed laughter.

Josie stood very still.

The familiar weight descended — the crushing, suffocating pressure of public mockery that she had endured her entire life. In St. Louis, she would have dropped her head and gone red and left without her flour, and cried all the way home, and said nothing.

She stood still and breathed.

She thought about Gideon’s voice in the cabin. You stay, Josephine. This is your home now.

Slowly, she turned her large body toward Jeb Stone.

She did not lower her head.

I eat enough to sustain my strength, sir, she said. Her voice shook. But it was remarkably loud. Strength enough to know that a man who mocks a woman to make himself feel tall is the smallest creature in God’s creation.

Clara Jenkins dropped her parcel on the counter.

Jeb’s face went through surprise and landed on fury. He pushed off the barrel and took a step toward her, his voice dropping to something menacing.

You listen to me, you fat—

The mercantile door came open with a sound like a cannon shot.

It didn’t swing — it was kicked, with enough force to slam the frame against the wall and send a display of tin cups clattering to the floor. Gideon Mercer filled the doorway, his leather blacksmith’s apron still on, a massive pair of iron forging tongs gripped loosely in his right hand. He had apparently come directly from the forge. There was still heat coming off him.

His scarred face wore an expression that was not anger, exactly. It was colder than anger. It was the specific expression of a man who has made a decision.

He didn’t rush. He never rushed. He moved through the mercantile with the slow, certain weight of an avalanche, and the sound of his boots on the floorboards was the only sound in the room.