A Mountain Man Came Home for His Long-Awaited Bride — Then Found Her Freezing Alone in the Snow

PART 2

The fever broke on the third day, hard — soaking sweat, a blanket he had to change, small frequent sips of water so she wouldn’t slide into something worse. She woke fully the following morning, trying to sit up.

“Don’t,” he said. She stopped, looked at him — eyes clear for the first time in three days, cataloging the room, then him.

“Ridge Mercer,” he said. “You answered my advertisement.”

“I know who you are,” she said, voice barely there.

He told her the damage plainly, the way he’d learned was kindest: frostbitten toes she’d keep if she stayed off them, bruised ribs, a broken left collarbone. “I know about the bruising on my face,” she said, before he could raise it.

“Thank you,” she said later, watching the fire. “For coming in after me. Some men would have kept riding.”

“Some men,” he agreed.

On the ninth day, once she was steady enough to talk without exhausting herself, he finally asked the question he’d been holding since the fever. “The men who did this,” he said. “Do you know who they were?”

“One name,” he said. “You said it in the fever. Silus.”

Something crossed her face — not surprise, something older and more complicated. “My brother,” she said. “Half-brother. His name is Silas Vain. He’s been in debt to dangerous men since before I can remember.” She paused, gathering the rest of it. “I was carrying money. Everything I had — the stage fare, two years of savings, and additional funds from settling our father’s estate.” She stopped again. “Silas knew about it. He must have followed the stage.”

“How much?”

“Enough that it was worth leaving me under a tree to die for.”

Ridge held her gaze a moment. “Your own brother did this.”

“He’s been the same choice made over and over for twenty years,” she said. “Taking rather than earning. He was reasonable, once, right after our father died. I thought he was trying. Then his debts caught up with him in Chicago, and reasonable Silas turned back into the other one, and the other one needed money, and I was the only one left.”

Ridge set down the knife he’d been working with, slow and deliberate. His jaw worked side to side. “I can find him,” he said, voice gone flat in a way that wasn’t emotionless but too controlled. “I know this region. I know where men like that hole up in winter.”

“I know you can,” she said. But she held his gaze steadily. “But I need you to wait.”

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