She dropped into the snow.
The fall knocked the breath from her lungs. Cold surged under the cloak, through lace and silk, across skin never meant for mountain weather. She bit back a cry, rose shaking, and ran.
Behind her, Blackthorn Hall burned with light. Before her lay the orchard, the stable yard, the ridge path, and beyond that the high pass leading into a wilderness people spoke of only when firelight was strong and doors were locked. Maribel had ridden the lower trail in summer with grooms and picnic baskets. In winter, no sensible person climbed it after dark.
That was why she chose it.
The wind erased her tracks almost as quickly as she made them. Her slippers tore. Her gown caught on brambles. Twice she fell and came up with snow plastered to her sleeves. Somewhere behind, a bell began ringing.
They had discovered her absence.
She ran harder.
By the time she reached the pines, her lungs burned and the world had narrowed to white ground, black trunks, and the frantic drum of her heart. The ridge path rose sharply. The wedding gown became a weight dragging her backward. She tore at the skirt until lace ripped from hip to hem, freeing her knees. The sound might have made her laugh on any other night. Now she only climbed.
Hours blurred.
Snow filled her hair. Ice formed along her lashes. The storm stole direction, distance, sense. The ridge path vanished beneath drifts. Maribel kept moving because stopping felt too much like surrender. Once she heard hooves below and pressed herself behind a fallen pine, scarcely breathing as lantern light bobbed through the trees.
Callum’s voice carried upward.
“She cannot have gone far.”
Another man answered, “Not dressed like that, my lord.”
“Find her,” Callum said. “Alive if convenient.”
Maribel’s blood turned colder than the snow.
She waited until the lights moved away, then crawled from hiding and climbed toward the darker shoulder of the mountain. The wind had become a living thing, clawing at her cloak, shoving her sideways, hissing in her ears. Her feet had gone numb. Her hands no longer felt like hands.
When she saw the cabin light, she thought it was a star fallen among the trees.
It glowed small and amber beyond a stand of firs. Smoke bent low from a stone chimney. A mule stood under a lean-to, head down against the weather. Maribel stumbled toward it, no longer caring who waited inside. Wolf, thief, madman, saint—it did not matter. The cold had become a voice telling her to lie down.
She reached the door and lifted her fist.
The world tilted.
The last thing she heard before darkness took her was the door opening and a man saying, “Merciful heaven.”
Warmth returned as pain.
Maribel woke to firelight and the smell of pine smoke. She was lying beneath heavy blankets on a narrow bed. Her wedding gown hung in stiff, ruined folds over a chair. Her cloak had been spread near the hearth to dry. For one wild moment she thought she had been brought back to Blackthorn Hall.
Then she saw the room.
A single table. A rough shelf of tin cups. A rifle above the mantel. Snowshoes near the door. Bundles of herbs hanging from beams. No velvet. No portraits. No polished lies.
A man sat on the floor with his back against the wall, asleep but not peacefully. He was large in the way mountains were large, broad-shouldered, bearded, wrapped in a patched coat with one hand resting close to a knife. His dark hair fell across his forehead. Firelight carved deep lines beside his mouth and eyes, giving him the look of someone who had outlived more than one version of himself.
Maribel tried to sit up.
The man woke instantly.
“Easy,” he said, rising but not approaching. “You took half the storm into your bones.”
His voice was low, roughened by solitude. It did not soften for her like a gentleman’s performance. It simply existed, steady and unadorned.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“My cabin.”
“That tells me very little.”
“A fair answer for a woman who fell on my doorstep wearing a wedding dress in a blizzard.”
Maribel looked down. Someone had wrapped her in a clean wool shirt and loose trousers. Heat rushed to her face.
He noticed and turned toward the hearth at once, giving her his back. “Your clothes were frozen stiff. I cut away what I had to. I kept my eyes where a decent man keeps them. My name is Rowan Hale. Most folks in the valley call me North, on account of I live farther up than common sense.”
“Maribel Ashford.”
“I guessed the Ashford part.”
Her fingers tightened around the blanket. “How?”
“Only people from Blackthorn Hall wear silk in weather that can kill a horse.”
The name of the house struck like a hand around her throat. “Did anyone come?”
“Riders passed below an hour before dawn. Didn’t see the cabin.”
“Were they led by Lord Voss?”
Rowan looked over his shoulder, his expression unreadable. “A pale man on a black horse?”
“Yes.”