Chapter 13
Elias knew it too.
He backed toward the trees.
His hired man dragged me with him.
“No,” I muttered.
The man twisted my bound wrists.
Pain shot up my arms.
I stopped resisting.
For the moment.
They pulled me behind the tree line.
The cabin disappeared from sight.
That scared me more than the pistol had.
Elias spoke quietly to the hired man.
“Take him to the horses.”
“What about her?”
“She’ll come.”
“How?”
Elias looked at me.
“Because she still thinks other people’s suffering is her responsibility.”
The certainty in his voice told me he had used that against her before.
I needed to understand him.
Not later.
Now.
“You keep saying she belongs to you,” I said.
He ignored me.
“What exactly did she do?”
That got his attention.
His eyes turned toward mine.
“She embarrassed my family.”
I waited.
That was all.
At first I thought I had misunderstood.
“That’s it?”
His jaw tightened.
“She was taken into our home. Educated. Fed. Treated above her station.”
There are moments when a man reveals himself so clearly that anything he says afterward becomes unnecessary.
Elias believed kindness was ownership.
A meal became a chain.
A room became a debt.
Education became a contract written without the other person’s consent.
I thought of the fifty dollars I had sent.
And suddenly I understood why Cora had looked at me so carefully during our first meeting.
Perhaps she had wondered whether I believed the same thing.
Perhaps, at first, I had.
The thought sickened me.
“She said no,” I said.
Elias gave a thin smile.
“To a marriage that would have protected her.”
“From what?”
“From becoming what she is now.”
I looked around at the burning shed, the snow, my bound wrists, and his hired gun.
“Free?”
His face changed.
There.
I had found the wound.
He did not love Cora.
Maybe he never had.
He wanted the world corrected.
He wanted the woman who had defied him returned to the place where she had been told she belonged.
He wanted proof that no one could tell Elias Vane no.
That was more dangerous than love.
Love could grieve.
Pride only punished.
The hired man pulled me toward two horses tied beyond the trees.
I stumbled deliberately.
He cursed.
“Walk.”
“My leg.”
“Walk.”
I fell again.
When he bent to drag me up, I twisted.
The knife in my boot was small.