Marry or be disinherited.
There was only one woman he would ever consider asking to marry him, the only woman who had never recoiled at the sight of his ravaged face. He would track her down, propose if she wasn’t already married, and if she refused, that would be it. His inheritance would be gone. He’d just keep going and never return to the 7 Heart Ranch.
“You are undoubtedly the most addle-brained female it has ever been my curse to be saddled with. A three-legged, blind donkey could work the button punch better than you.” Uncle Zeb towered over Elise Rivers at her station in the button factory, his hand raised.
She jerked her head at the last instant, but not quickly enough to avoid the slap altogether. Hot pain shot through the side of her face, and tears welled in her eyes in spite of her vow never to cry in front of Uncle Zebulon. The clack and punch of the machines around her and the sickening miasma of old seafood hanging in the air made her nauseous.
His rant continued as the women on the factory floor kept their heads bent to their work. Elise didn’t blame them. To draw attention to oneself was to call down wrath.
“Look at these. Wasteful.” Uncle Zeb held up a fistful of oyster shells, each pierced with many round holes. “It isn’t enough that you’re a charity case forced on me. Now you try to rob me? Look how far apart you’ve spaced these punches. And you’re nowhere near the edges, leaving all this behind.” He flung the shells at her, and she threw her hands up to protect her face.
Fear burned away, flaming into indignation. She stiffened her spine, knowing she would regret challenging him but unable to stop the flow of words. “You slapped me last week because a batch was returned as defective. You had us cut the buttons so close together, they overlapped and weren’t round. And I would cut them closer to the edge where the shell is thicker if you’d ever sharpen the blades on the punches so I could get through the mother of pearl without shattering it. It’s your own miserly fault we can’t turn out a decent product.”
One of the workers gasped, and Uncle Zeb’s face reddened. He floundered for a moment, spittle flecking the corners of his mouth, his fist rising. “You ungrateful leech! When I think of how I took you in, fed you, clothed you, gave you a place to live and work, and this is how you repay me? Insolence, wastefulness, laziness. I’ll teach you to backtalk me!”
Elise braced herself, her eyes slamming shut, already ruing her hasty accusation, though every word of it was true and she wouldn’t take it back.
An odd squeak from her uncle had her eyes popping open. Elise sucked in a breath that snagged in her throat.
Silhouetted against the sunlight streaming in the open factory door, a massive man stood firm, his huge hand gripped around Uncle Zeb’s fist. At his side, a muscular dog bristled and snarled, his eyes glowing hot.
“Touch her again, and I’ll break you into kindling,” the big man growled.
Where had she heard that voice before? Low and gravelly, making eddies in her middle. He stepped farther into the workroom, pressing down on Uncle Zeb’s fist, forcing him to stagger back and drop to his knees. The women at the presses sat open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Machinery stopped, and hands and expressions froze.
Buckskin fringe swayed along the big man’s sleeves, and in one hand he carried a long rifle. The other maintained its hold on Uncle Zeb with seemingly little effort. Zebulon squeaked again, his eyes wide, all the fight gone out of him.
Elise swallowed and half rose from her stool. She knew that voice, but from where? Then the man looked at her, his long, dark hair swinging back so she could see his face.
It wasn’t the patch or the black-powder burns on his cheek and neck that she recognized … no, it was the single, brown, thickly-lashed eye that she remembered. Watchful as a bird of prey, trained on her as she had moved through the hospital ward tending the broken bodies of men fighting for what they believed in.
“Captain Hart.” The whisper came, not so much from her lips as from her memory. The heartbreak, the despair, the desperate longing to be able to do more for the wounded…
“Let go of me, you … you … brute. I’ll have the law on you.” Zebulon writhed, unable to loosen the captain’s hold on his fist. The dog inched closer, his fangs bared by his curling lips. Zeb stilled, sweat globbing on his reddened face.
“Miss Rivers?” Captain Hart tossed her uncle aside like an old newspaper, snapping his finger to the dog that quieted but never took his eyes off Zeb. “I’d like to talk to you.” He glanced at the workers, frozen at their presses, then at her uncle, stock-still and rigid, held at bay by the dog. “In private.”
“This ain’t her break time.” Uncle Zebulon barely moved as he spat out the words.