The stagecoach brought more than a mail-order bride to my frontier town. Isla Dunmore stepped down with the folded contract in her grip, the one that bound her to my discipline as surely as any wedding vow, and my limp reminded me how easily a man could lose what he swore to guard.
That deputy had shouted his objections for all to hear, his eyes promising to challenge the legality before the ink dried. She met my stare without flinching, her breath quickening at the thought of the steady hand I would lay across her when the contract demanded it.
Now we stood alone by the station wall, the papers still sealed between us, and her single nod hung in the air like a challenge I could not afford to answer wrong.
