Nathan pushed back from the table.
"I'll ride to Red Willow tomorrow."
Emily caught his sleeve.
"And do what?"
"Ask him."
"No."
His eyes hardened.
"He frightened Lucy into riding into a storm."
"I know."
Nathan's voice rose.
"So, what exactly do you suggest?"
Emily did not release his sleeve.
"That you stop giving Charles what he expects."
Nathan stared at her.
"What does he expect?"
"A giant angry cowboy."
Silence.
Nathan's expression changed.
Emily continued quietly.
"He wants you to lose your temper. He wants Judge Briggs hearing stories about Nathan Reed threatening people in town. He wants everyone looking at your size instead of his papers."
Nathan looked down at her hand on his arm.
Emily loosened her grip.
"We don't need you frightening Charles."
She tapped the land notice.
"We need Charles explaining this."
Nathan breathed slowly through his nose.
Then he sat.
It was not surrender.
It was restraint.
And Emily knew how much harder that could be.
That evening, Lucy fell asleep at the kitchen table while practicing her letters.
Nathan lifted her at the stairs.
He stopped beside Emily.
"You were right."
She glanced up.
"About Charles."
Nathan adjusted Lucy carefully against his shoulder.
"I would have ridden into town angry."
"Yes."
"Probably said something foolish."
"Almost certainly."
He gave her a look.
Emily smiled.
Nathan didn't leave.
"You're good at seeing what people are trying to make you become."
Emily's smile faded.
"I've had practice."
His eyes stayed on hers.
Then he shifted Lucy into one arm and offered Emily his free hand.
She looked at it.
"What?"
"Nothing."
She placed her hand in his.
His fingers closed around hers.
They stood like that in the dim hallway, saying nothing.
Then Lucy murmured in her sleep.
Nathan carried her upstairs.
Two weeks later, another envelope arrived.
This one came openly through the Red Willow post.
It was addressed to Nathan.
Inside was notice of the spring guardianship hearing, and beneath it, a short letter from Charles.
Nathan read it once, then passed it to Emily.
Charles claimed he had witnesses prepared to testify that Nathan's marriage was fraudulent, that Emily had accepted the arrangement for financial benefit, and that Double Pine remained unsuitable for Lucy.
The final sentence was underlined.
"The court will learn what sort of woman you brought into that house."
Emily read it twice.
Nathan watched her.
"He's coming after you."
She folded the letter along its original crease.
"No."
She placed it beside the questionable affidavit and the land broker's notice.
"He's coming after what he thinks people will believe about me."
Outside, Black Ridge stood dark above the snow.
Inside, Emily opened a fresh page in her notebook.
At the top, she wrote three names.
Charles Reed.
Martin Bell.
North Creek.
Then she drew a line beneath them.
Nathan sat opposite her.
Neither spoke.
Spring was coming, and this time they would not walk into Red Willow desperate for a wife before dawn.
They would walk in together with questions Charles Reed had never expected anyone to ask.
The spring hearing came on a gray morning, when the road through the foothills was half mud and half stubborn strips of snow.
Nathan drove the wagon carefully.
Lucy sat between him and Emily beneath a wool blanket, holding her wooden horse in one hand.
Emily had packed the questionable affidavit, Charles's letters, and the North Creek notice inside a leather document case resting beneath her boots.
Nathan had checked that case three times before sunrise.
Emily had noticed every time.
"You planning to wear a hole through the latch?"
Nathan kept his eyes on the road.
"Making sure it's closed."
"It was closed the first time."
A pause.
"I know."
Emily looked at his hands on the reins.
Those hands had once shaken while he saddled a horse to search for Lucy.
Now they were perfectly still.
That worried her more.
She slipped one gloved hand over his wrist.
"Don't let Charles choose the man you become today."
His jaw moved once.
"He won't."
By 9:00, the roofs of Red Willow appeared beyond the cottonwoods.
People noticed them immediately.
The Double Pine wagon had barely reached Main Street before heads turned outside the mercantile.
Two men stopped unloading grain. Someone stepped from the barber shop with shaving soap still along one cheek.
Emily knew those looks. She had lived among them before Nathan ever rode into the Copper Star asking for a wife.
But something was different now.
She wasn't arriving alone.
Nathan pulled up outside the Willow House.
Helen Foster came down the steps before the wheels stopped.
"Lucy."
Lucy flew from the wagon.
Helen caught her against her apron and held her so tightly the wooden horse pressed between them.
Nathan climbed down next.
When he came around for Emily, he offered his hand without ceremony.
She took it.
Across the street, two women whispered.
Emily heard her own name.
Then Nathan's.
Then the word desperate.
Nathan heard it, too.
His shoulders began to straighten.
Emily squeezed his fingers.
He looked at her.
She shook her head once.
Nathan exhaled and helped her down.
They entered the Willow House together.
The hearing had been arranged upstairs in the boarding house parlor because Judge Briggs wanted privacy and the courthouse room was being repaired after winter damage.
A long table stood beneath the front windows.
Coffee steamed beside a stack of chipped cups.
Charles Reed was already there.
He rose when Nathan entered.
Charles shared enough of the Reed features to make the family connection plain.
But where Nathan seemed carved out of rough timber, Charles was narrow and carefully kept.