The first thing Mabel noticed after Elias Graves loosened the corset was that breathing hurt.
Not because the laces were still tight.
Because she had forgotten what a full breath felt like.
For hours, stiff whalebone had pressed beneath her ribs while the secondhand beige wedding dress pulled across her large body.
Mrs. Higgins had called it necessary.
“A bride should have a waist.”
Mabel had almost asked what Mrs. Higgins believed she currently possessed in that general region, but there had been no point.
Five women had surrounded her that morning.
Pulling.
Tightening.
Pinning.
Whispering.
By the time they finished, Mabel could not sit properly.
Nobody cared.
The dress looked smaller.
That was apparently what mattered.
Now, miles beyond Red Ridge, Elias Graves sat behind her on the stopped freight wagon, patiently working the knot with fingers large enough to close around the entire back of her hand.
The instant Mabel had flinched, he stopped.
Completely.
She had expected irritation.
Perhaps a joke.
Men loved jokes when a large woman showed discomfort.
Instead Elias withdrew both hands.
“You thought I was going to hurt you.”
It was not accusation.
That made answering harder.
Mabel stared toward the road behind them.
Red Ridge was no longer visible.
Only dry foothills, pine-covered slopes, distant mountains, and the empty trail curling through late-afternoon gold.
“I don’t know you.”
“That’s true.”
“They say things.”
“I know.”
She glanced back.
His scar looked harsher this close.
Burn tissue pulled from his left temple across his cheek and down toward the jaw, pale and ridged against sun-browned skin.
One corner of his mouth sat slightly higher than the other.
From a distance, people mistook that for a permanent sneer.
Up close, Mabel could see how wrong they were.
The scar did not make him cruel.
It made smiling more difficult to read.
Elias lowered his hands into his lap.
“If you want me to stop, I stop.”
Mabel’s throat tightened.
“You’re my husband.”
“So?”
She blinked.
He frowned as if genuinely confused by her answer.
Mabel looked away.
“In Red Ridge, men would say that means something.”
“It does.”
“What?”
“I signed a paper saying I’d share what I have with you.”
His blue eye held hers.
“It didn’t say I own what you have.”
Mabel felt heat behind her eyes.
She hated crying.
Especially in front of men.
Especially now.
She looked toward the horses.
“The knot is hurting.”
Elias waited.
Mabel swallowed.
“Please loosen it.”
He nodded once.
“Turn.”
This time she did willingly.
His fingers returned to the laces.
Slowly.
One knot.
Then another.
The pressure eased a little.
Mabel inhaled.
Her ribs expanded.
The bodice still pressed too tightly, but the panic lessened.
Elias loosened another section.
Then stopped.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
“Enough?”
She hesitated.
“No.”
“Then I keep going.”
His knuckles accidentally brushed the skin at the base of her neck.
Mabel inhaled sharply.
Elias froze.
Different tension now.
She could feel him behind her.
Huge.
Warm.
Close enough that his breath shifted one loose curl near her ear.
Neither moved.
Mabel turned her head slightly.
Their faces were inches apart.
For the first time since the justice declared them married, she looked directly at him without the town around them.
No banker.
No laughing men.
No women pretending pity.
Only Elias.
And her.
She whispered:
“You stopped again.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His brow furrowed.
“You moved.”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted you to stop.”
Elias’s expression changed.