Chapter 2
“Perhaps. But you married me, so that makes it your difficulty.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—not a smile, not quite—but the expression vanished when the shelf under her left knee collapsed another inch.
Henrietta turned her head against the wind and forced herself to study what lay above instead of what waited below. The white surface looked featureless, but twenty feet upslope a ragged clump of brown showed through the snow. Not a branch. Roots. A pine had once grown from the edge before wind or lightning had torn it away. If enough of the root mass remained—
She could not climb toward it while holding Calvin.
But she had not brought the ranch rope to admire it.
“Calvin, I’m going to let go of your hand.”
His face changed.
Not fear for himself. Fear for her.
“No.”
“You just ordered me to do precisely that.”
“That was before you started talking like you had a scheme.”
“I do have a scheme.”
“That’s what worries me.”
She flexed her stiffening fingers around his wrist. “I’m going to fasten you to the rope, then lower myself beside you. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“That was not a complicated sentence.”
“I understand the words. I’m telling you no.”
The wind howled over the ridge, whipping loose snow around them. Henrietta blinked ice from her lashes. “You are hanging over a ravine with one leg bent in a direction God did not intend. Your authority is temporarily suspended.”
“Henrietta.”
“I’m going.”
“You lower yourself onto this slope and you won’t get back up.”
“Then it is fortunate I brought enough rope for both of us.”
His jaw clenched. She knew that look. She had seen it at the breakfast table when she corrected his cattle-feed calculations, at the woodpile when he found she had split enough kindling for three days, and in the accounts room when she placed neat columns of figures beside his chaotic ledgers. It was the look of a man who could endure hardship more easily than assistance.
But this time he had no room to walk away.
Henrietta hauled his wrist as high as she could and caught the rope at her waist with her free hand. The knot she had tied before leaving the ranch had tightened beneath his weight. Her frozen fingers fumbled at it.
“What are you doing?” Calvin demanded.
“Making certain that when I release you, you remain attached to something more reliable than my shoulder.”