She opened it.
I am sorry.
Rosalie looked
at him.
He was watching her carefully.
She wrote beneath his words.
For what?
He took the pencil.
That this happened this way.
She looked away.
For the first time that morning, she almost cried.
The wagon ride to the Rook ranch took nearly three hours.
Neither spoke.
Rosalie sat beneath a wool blanket while snow covered the surrounding hills.
Gideon held the reins.
He occasionally looked at her.
Not possessively.
Not expectantly.
Almost apologetically.
When the ranch finally appeared, Rosalie expected something dark and abandoned.
Instead, she saw a large wooden house surrounded by fences, barns, cattle sheds, and towering pine trees.
Smoke rose from the chimney.
Warm yellow light glowed through the windows.
Gideon stopped the wagon.
He carried her trunk inside.
Then he opened the bedroom door.
A clean bed stood beneath the window.
