Miners heading to the smelters, ranchers loading supplies, women with baskets moving between the dry goods store and the butcher. Silas tied his horse near the Great Northern station and tried not to notice the way people glanced at him, then away as if embarrassed to witness whatever was about to unfold. News traveled fast in small towns. Word of the mail order bride had spread through Great Falls like wildfire through dead grass. At the saloon, men had placed bets that the church women had clucked their tongues.
The general consensus seemed to be that Silas Boon, poor, quiet, undersized Silas Boon, was about to make a spectacular fool of himself. He stood on the platform as the morning stretched toward noon, twisting his hat in his hands until the brim went soft. Around him, other people waited. A family bound for Helena, a merchant expecting freight. A cluster of young men hoping to catch sight of whatever unfortunate woman had agreed to marry the smallest rancher in Cascade County. The train's whistle cut through the valley like a knife through prayer.
Silas's heart hammered against his ribs as the locomotive rounded the bend, black smoke streaming, metal wheels screeching against the rails in a sound like the world tearing open. The Great Northern's westbound passenger train was 10 minutes early, which felt like either Providence or doom, and Silas couldn't decide which. Steam hissed, brakes caught. The train shuddered to a stop with a final metallic groan that Silas felt in his bones. Passengers began to disembark, a minister in black, two children chasing each other, a drummer with cases full of patent medicine.
Silas scanned each face, looking for delicate features, gentle eyes, the kind of woman who wrote about pie crust and wildflowers and lavender scented letters. Then she stepped down from the third car, and the world stopped. Norabel Hutchkins was not small. She was not delicate. She was not any of the words she'd used to describe herself in 4 months of careful correspondence.
She was enormous. 6 ft tall in her travel boots, she towered over every man on the platform. Her shoulders were broad as a farmhand's, her arms thick with the kind of muscle that came from hard labor, not needlework. She wore a simple gray traveling dress that had clearly been made by someone with more practical skill than fashion sense, cut to accommodate a frame that seemed built for different purposes than the dainty parlors of polite society. But it was her face that made Silas forget to breathe.
She was beautiful, not in the soft flower petal way of the women in advertisements, but beautiful the way a mountain was beautiful or storm. High cheekbones, strong jaw, eyes the color of honey, catching sunlight. Her hair, dark as creek stones, was pulled back severely beneath a plain bonnet, but a few strands had escaped during the journey and curled against her neck. When she smiled, and God help him, she was smiling. A smile that split her face like sunrise over the eastern plains.
It transformed her from intimidating to incandescent. She spotted him immediately. Perhaps it was the only man on the platform short enough to make her tower even more obvious. Or perhaps it was the sheer terror written across his face, but her eyes locked onto his across 15 ft of Montana dust, and she strode forward with the confidence of someone who'd long ago stopped apologizing for the space she occupied. You must be Silas Boon," she said, and her voice was like honey poured over gravel, feminine, but big, filling the air in a way that made people turn and stare.
She stuck out her hand, not daintily, but for a proper shake, the way men greeted each other. "Hello, husband." The crowd snickered. Silas heard it ripple through the onlookers like wind through grass. Laughter poorly disguised as coughs.
Whispers that weren't quite whispered. The sound of judgment being passed without trial. He stood there, hat crushed in one hand, staring up. Up, God. He had to look up to meet her eyes at this woman who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the delicate creature he'd imagined.