Prologue

1866, Montana Territory, near Miles City

Calder woke groggily. A half-remembered sound had woken him from a deep slumber, and sleep still clung to him. He had been dreaming about riding his horse across a vast savanna under the glare of a cruel sun. In the dream, he was riding frantically toward someone who needed help. He couldn’t tell who they were or why they needed him, only that he was needed, and needed badly. Right now, no time to spare.

He lay in bed, his eyes still shut, listening in case the noise came back.

The memory of the sound, whatever it was, was already fading with the dream. Had someone cried out? Had they called his name? Had they been shouting out for help? Maybe that had only been in his dream. Even now, as he lay in his narrow bed back home on the ranch, he could still feel the heat of the scorching sun, and urgent worry still burned in his heart, telling him that someone needed help.

He tried to remind himself that it was just a dream. That, at thirteen years old, he was practically a man and too old to be frightened by nightmares. He knew that his parents, his little brother, and his small sister were deep asleep nearby. Out in the stable, his trusty horse, a dusty mare named Mabel, was safe in her stall. It was the same old ranch that it had always been.

So why did it feel so different?

The dream clung to him like a film of sweat in a fever. His breath was ragged and shallow, like he really had been riding with all his might, standing up in the stirrups, every muscle taut and burning with the effort. His heart hammered, and he could hardly draw breath.

Inhaling deeply, a ragged cough erupted from his throat like gunfire. His head hurt and his nostrils stung.

Still only half awake, he took another breath, anything to ease the tightness in his chest, the tightness that held his heart as though in a vice. His eyes were still half closed, the room an indistinct haze through fluttering lashes.

He opened his eyes now, and they stung. Instead of growing clearer, the room remained a dark blur. Rubbing his eyes didn’t make the slightest difference. He looked about him, and it was like a fog had crept into the room. Through the thin curtain, there was an angry red glow which, for a moment, he took to be sunrise.

That was no sunrise. It was a fire, a blazing inferno, and it was licking at Calder’s window.

At once, he came to his senses. That’s when he understood: He had woken from one nightmare into another.

The first thing Calder understood was the acrid bite of smoke in his lungs, in his eyes. It filled his throat, thick and suffocating.

The darkness of his small room had been swallowed by a fierce orange glow that danced across the white walls.

He coughed again, desperate, trying to clear the choking smoke, but it was no good. His mind raced. What should he do?

At thirteen years of age, Calder felt himself stuck between the boy he had been and the man he would become. He knew he needed to act—he needed to save the people he loved—but he longed for his mama and his papa. His throat ached with the tears he wouldn’t allow himself to shed.

A thought struck him like a lightning bolt.

Lola.

His little sister. So small and helpless. Only three years old. She’d be all alone in her little room down the hall.

All alone and afraid.

He had to go to her.

In a flash, his dream came back to him; his heart hammered like hoofbeats across the scorched earth.

“Lola,” he whispered, voice hoarse and starting to break.

His bare feet hit the floor. The wood was hot against his skin like the ground in high summer. Downstairs was the kitchen; it must be on fire.

This was no dream. It was real. It was here.

“I’m coming, Lola,” he hollered out as loud as he could, despite the smoke, before doubling over with a coughing fit.

He had to conserve his strength, his breath. Everything was more effortful in this murky, toxic air.

His legs felt weak, but they carried him out of the door and along the corridor before his brain could catch up. There was no time for fear or second thoughts. If he thought about it for too long, he would stay right where he was, paralyzed by fear.

He darted along the familiar hallway, which had now transformed into something hostile and strange. The flickering light from the stairway cast monstrous shadows that lurch at him, twisting like demons on the walls.

The fire wasn’t here yet. Only the smoke. But the smoke was bad enough. And he could already tell, from the heat and the terrible red light, that downstairs was engulfed in flame.

Every step was a risk. The house was old, worn out in places, and the fire had weakened it so that the beams and struts couldn’t be trusted to take weight anymore.

A sudden creak from above made his heart leap—would the roof fall down on him?

Despite his fear, he did not stop. He could not stop. All his thoughts were on Lola in her little bed. Her little lungs filling up with filthy, unbreathable air by the minute.

He could hardly see where he was going and had to find his way by touch. His hands brushed the cracked plaster as he passed his parents’ bedroom door, shut tight. The stillness behind it was heavy and strange. There was no fire here yet. There was time. And surely his father was awake?

He knocked and shouted as loudly as he could, which was not loud since he could hardly draw breath.

“Fire!”

There was no sound from within, but perhaps they were only drowned out by the fire, which was roaring like a terrible beast by now.

A knot formed in his stomach, a dread that settled like ice. He shook his head and gathered his failing strength.

For now, he couldn’t think about that. He could only think of Lola. Lola, who wouldn’t be able to help herself. Who was trapped and alone and afraid.

With agonizing slowness, he walked on, feeling his way along to the end of the corridor.

He found her door ajar.

A sliver of pale moonlight cut through the smoke that billowed in thick, gray clouds.

“Lola?” he said in a croaky voice that hardly sounded like his own.

He inched into the room, his hand reaching out in front of him.

He heard a small whimper and made his way as quickly as his legs would carry him to her small bed.

She was curled up under her thin quilt, small and shaking.

Her wide eyes, shimmering with tears and fear, looked into his. Relief and love mingled with her terror.

“Lola,” he said again, his voice firm but gentle. It sounded strange to his ear, hoarse from the smoke and tremulous with fear. “We have to get out. Now.”

She didn’t argue, didn’t cry out. Her eyes were wide and shining. Her small hands reached for him, trembling, and he slipped his hands beneath her arms, lifting her with all the strength his thirteen years could muster. She clung to him. Her head rested against his shoulder, and he could feel her quick, shallow breaths against his neck.

The heat was crushing now, like an invisible weight pressing down. His skin was slick with sweat. His limbs felt heavy and would hardly obey him. It took a considerable effort to take each step.

Back in the hallway, flames snaked their way along the walls.

The stairs groaned perilously as he placed each foot down carefully. He reached out for the banister, and it burned. He let out a stifled cry and kept on moving. He didn’t look down; he dared not.

Lola whimpered breathlessly, like a rabbit caught in a trap.

“Hold on, Lola,” he whispered fiercely. “I’m going to get you out of here if it’s the last thing I do.”

A terrible crack split the air behind him. The ceiling above them groaned. Dust and splinters rained down, fizzing as they hit the flames and were consumed.

His breath hitched in his aching throat. Fear sharpened his senses. Every sound was amplified: the crackle of the fire, the roar of the flames as they ate through the house, the distant shouts of neighbors running across the fields toward the blaze.

He could see that the kitchen door was open. Through the flames, he glimpsed the shadowy silhouettes of men at the threshold.

“Is anyone there?” one of them yelled. “We’re bringing water to douse the flames.”

Calder tried to reply, but his voice was entirely gone.

The cool night air seemed a distant and tantalizing promise. He could see through the smoke that figures were gathering at the edge of the yard where the water butt and the horse’s drinking trough stood. They were shouting back and forth and passing buckets between them. Their voices were frantic.

The kitchen was an inferno, but he could see one path through was still open. If he made his way around the old oak table, the way would be clear.

One step at a time, Calder made his way across the kitchen.

He gritted his teeth and kept moving. He had to get Lola out.

Just then, when he was nearly out and safe, a windowpane over the sink shattered, and a gust of heat hit Calder like a runaway train.

He cried out and sank to his knees. For a moment, he thought he might never stand up again. But then Lola let out a terrified mewling sound, more animal than human, and he found the strength to stagger to his feet.

“Easy, Lola,” he breathed. “I’ve got you.”

His heart hammered wildly. He forced himself to carry on, though the heat and smoke made him woozy. His clothes were damp with sweat. Glancing down, he saw that they were coated in something darker. He couldn’t be sure if it was ash or blood.

The house shuddered again, a low, ominous rumble that made the floor beneath him tremble. The fire was winning, that much was sure. The men with their buckets wouldn’t quench it. The only way it would end was when there was nothing left to consume.

He staggered the final few steps as fast as he could, bursting out into the cool night air just as the roof behind him collapsed in a thunderous crash and a gust of impossibly hot air.

Neighbors rushed forward, their faces pale in the firelight, hands reaching for buckets and blankets.

One of them took Lola from his arms and doused him with water. It was only then that he realized that his clothes had begun to catch fire.

Calder collapsed to his knees. He saw Lola cradled in the arms of their neighbor, Mrs. Higgins. The small girl’s fragile little body was limp now, exhausted and scared, but alive and, from what he could see, unhurt. For a moment, his entire world narrowed to the steady rise and fall of her breath.

But then a terrible thought hit him, and he gasped, coughing uncontrollably. He staggered to his feet and toward the house.

Strong arms pulled him back as he tried to run.

“Calder, no! You can’t go back in there!”

“I have to…” His voice cracked. “My parents… my brother.”

“They’re gone,” the voice said softly but firmly. “No one is going back in there. The fire’s too strong. You’d never make it out alive.”

“You’ve done all you could,” another voice chimed in. “You saved your sister. And you’re terribly hurt, my boy. Please rest. Let us do what can still be done.”

“I have to go,” Calder wailed into the night. Above him, diamond-bright stars twinkled through a veil of smoke. Seen through his tears, they splintered. “I have to find them.”

“No one is coming out of there, sonny,” someone said, a firm hand on his shoulder, partly to reassure him, partly to hold him back.

He still struggled and writhed, but his strength was failing him, and they were older than him, stronger.

His lungs burned, and his vision swam. His knees gave way again, the world tipping sideways as he crumpled to the ground.

Darkness claimed him then. An unrelenting blackness swallowed the fire and the night and the sound of crying, which Calder dimly recognized as his own.

Chapter One

19 years later

1885, Deerfield, Massachusetts

Nora sang softly to herself beneath the swaying green leaves of the canopy. This part of the path twisted through a wooded glade, and it was one of her favorite places in the world. Wildflowers swayed about her ankles as she walked, and overhead, birds sang melodiously. She couldn’t help but join in. From her lips, quite unbidden, tumbled a song about a girl and her true love. Nora wandered in a blissful daydream, without a care in the world. The tune escaped her like a delicate thread spun from pure joy.

She had no beau. Not yet. But she liked to imagine what it might be like to fall in love and to be loved in return. She dreamed of dashing ranchers on horseback. Courteous young gentlemen who doffed their hats to her and helped her down from horseback or held the door as she went through. She was only twenty-three, and the future was brimming with possibilities as open as the prairies and rolling grasslands that surrounded her home. She felt like a young horse galloping free through life toward a wide horizon. Who knew what glorious adventures might be just around the corner?

She skipped as she walked and sang; she couldn’t help it.

In one hand, she swung a bag of groceries, not much, just some things her mother had asked her to fetch. Flour and coffee and some beans. It hardly seemed worth making the special trip, but her mother had insisted she go as though it were urgent. Almost as if she wanted to get Nora out of the house…

Nora’s brow furrowed in a particular way she had when she was thinking about something. With the hand that wasn’t encumbered with a shopping bag, she twirled her chestnut hair thoughtfully where a glossy ringlet had come loose.

She shook her head, and her thoughts turned back to dashing young men and ballrooms and all manner of other things she’d read about in dime novels.

The warm breeze teased loose strands of her hair, which shone like fresh buckeyes in the spring sunshine. The scent of blooming lilacs mingled with the crisp air. How could anyone be worried or downhearted on a day like this?

Today was ordinary, homey, and safe in its gentle rhythm. Tomorrow could hold anything at all.

She smiled to herself as she neared the whitewashed farmhouse. The familiar porch swing creaked faintly in the breeze. The kitchen window glowed golden with the afternoon sun.

“Perfect,” she said aloud to the empty yard.

Pushing open the screen door, Nora stepped inside, still humming softly to herself.

But the scene that greeted her made her fall abruptly silent and freeze mid-step. Her parents stood in the kitchen, their faces drawn tight with a solemnity that chilled her despite the warmth in her cheeks from her walk in the golden morning sun.

Her mother’s lips pressed into a thin line, while her father’s usual warmth was replaced by a sternness that made her stomach clench.

Something must have happened. At once, Nora’s imagination raced to illness or death in the family, or financial ruin. Were they to lose their precious home?

“Mother, Father,” she said hesitantly in a trembling voice. She set down her parcel of groceries on the table. “Is something wrong?”

Her father cleared his throat, exchanging a glance with her mother. “Nora, we need to talk.”

The words fell into the quiet of the sunny kitchen like stones into a dark pool.

Nora’s heart fluttered with uneasy anticipation. “What is it?”

Her mother folded her hands tightly, voice low and formal. “It’s about your future. We have been talking. That’s why I sent you to fetch the groceries this morning.”

Her mind raced. Her future? What on earth could that mean? And why would this subject—a subject which she had always thought of with great pleasure—make them seem so solemn?

Before she could so much as take a breath, much less gather her thoughts enough to speak, her father stepped forward, his tone firm, unyielding.

“We have decided that you will marry Mr. Whitaker.”

Nora blinked, the name hitting her like a blow. Mr. Whitaker. Her father’s business partner, a man known for his wealth and standing. Admired by people for whom Nora had no admiration.

She had seen him at dinners and business meetings, but never as anything but a figure of authority, not someone she could love. He was cold as a winter’s night. And so terribly old!

“My future?” she echoed, voice trembling. “You mean… I’m to marry him?”

All she could do was repeat what she had heard, in the forlorn hope that she had misunderstood somehow.

It didn’t seem possible that this could really be her life. No disaster could have been worse.

Her father nodded. “It is a match that will secure the family’s position. We expect you to accept this without question.”

He didn’t meet her eye, and there was a shiftiness about his lips that told Nora he felt guilty. And rightly so, she wanted to scream; this was a crime they were committing on her. Selling his own daughter to the highest bidder like this was a cattle market, and she was nothing more than a prize heifer.

Instead, she composed herself, as she was accustomed to doing as a well-brought-up young lady who had been taught to face the world with a polite smile, come what may.

“No,” Nora said in a quiet voice that sounded far calmer than she felt. She took a step back toward the door. “I won’t. I want love, not duty.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed. Ah, Nora thought, so you’re the one who wants this, mother of mine? Her father was examining the kitchen table, as if something fascinating was written on its gnarled, old surface. He couldn’t meet her eye. He knew what they were doing was wrong.

But her mother? She had a face full of fury and a hardness in her eyes that said she would not be gainsaid.

“You owe us everything. We took you in when you were a baby, left on our doorstep. You belong to this family only because of our kindness.”

Nora’s throat tightened. She knew she was different. Always had done.

Her adopted parents were nothing like her, for one thing, which made it hard to forget that she was a foundling child. While her eyes and hair were chestnut flecked with gold, and her face was wide open with a feline femininity, they were small, gray people with doughy features.

She was like a wild colt being raised by a pair of old farm mules.

But to hear it spoken aloud like that, so cold and merciless, by a woman whom she had always thought of as her mother, whether or not they were blood related… well, it was a blow she hadn’t anticipated.

It wounded her as sure as if she had really been struck. She stood breathless in the middle of the familiar old kitchen, which suddenly seemed so strange.

“We have no choice but to do what is best for the family,” her father said, still not looking her in the face even as he delivered this terrible pronouncement. “It’s a good match for us.”

But what about for me? Nora thought but did not say.

Her legs shook, and she turned away.

She could hardly breathe, let alone think straight.

All she could think to do was retreat to the safety of her room.

She stumbled across the kitchen, along the corridor, and up the stairs, bouncing off the walls like a bee trapped in a bottle.

The door slammed shut behind her, the sound echoing in the hollow space of her heart. She sank onto the window seat, tears blurring her vision as the painful truth settled deep inside her: They had never loved her as parents should. She was a tool, a bargaining chip, a chattel to be disposed of. A means to an end.

The steely glint in her mother’s eye came back to her. It was the same look she got when she was haggling with a peddler, when all she cared about was getting the best price.

She couldn’t breathe. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the window latch.

She lifted the sash, climbed out onto the narrow ledge, and swung her legs onto the waiting branch of the apple tree that reached out to her like it wanted to help. It had been years since she made this climb. Memories of childhood adventures when she’d climbed out on dreary Sunday afternoons to gambol free in the fields away from disapproving eyes came back to her like a dream from another lifetime.

She breathed deeply, and the smell of the prairie reached her; it filled her head with the intoxicating promise of wide-open spaces.

When she opened the window, she had only meant to let in the air. But now a different idea came to her, unbidden but insistent. She would run away. They weren’t her family, not really; they had made that quite clear. Very well, then. She didn’t belong to them; she was her own woman.

With an unexpected ease, she shimmied and clambered down the tree, landing as quietly as any cat.

She stood beneath the apple tree, one hand caressing its gnarled bark, and looked out across the farm and along the track she knew she must take.

The world seemed like a different place. She looked about her in wonder at a place that was exactly the same and strangely changed.

The farm looked somehow smaller now, as she took her leave of it, maybe forever. It was a place of childhood, and that was in the past now.

Nora stepped away from the apple tree, the dust rising in soft clouds around her ankles as she took her first careful steps. The sun warmed her shoulders through the thin fabric of her light summer dress. The sun was really up now—it was nearly noon—and the light seemed to bleach the world around her—the red barn, the picket fence, the white-washed house—into something pale and distant. It was as if it were already fading out of her memory.

“One foot in front of the other,” she whispered to herself under her breath.

She walked, and she didn’t look back again. She didn’t need to. The farmhouse lived inside her, and she knew it always would, even as she left it behind: the cracked step that always caught her toe; the kitchen where she’d shelled peas and scrubbed the table; the rafters above her bed, where spiders wove their silken webs. She remembered the feel of flour between her fingers, the smell of sun-warmed linens, the long shadows cast by the kerosene lamp on the parlor walls. The quiet creak of the rocking chair, her mother’s voice humming a hymn under her breath.

She had grown up there, among the rhythms of chores and seasons, of planting and threshing, of Sundays in stiff shoes and nights lulled by the wind stirring across the prairie. There had been laughter once, she remembered. Kindness, too.

But that had been before expectations hardened into commands, before the warmth of duty turned to cold control. Before she became a thing to them, to be traded away.

Nora clenched her fists and straightened her spine as she walked away.

Now the house stood behind her like a sealed box. She felt its presence, heavy and silent, but it could no longer contain her. She was on the outside now.

Despite the warmth of the day, she shivered and rubbed at her shoulders for warmth.

Ahead, the road snaked away, little more than a wagon track carved through the grass. It led east, toward Margaret’s place, a white clapboard house with green shutters and tangled roses climbing the fence. That was a place where Nora had always felt welcome and something like ease. Something like safety. Margaret was her friend, and that was what she needed most right now.

She walked faster, dust rising behind her like a veil as she left all the old certainties behind her