Adeline had rehearsed the confession for almost four hundred miles.
On the train.
Inside crowded stations.
On the stagecoach.
While staring at the ceiling of Nathaniel’s guest room each night.
Not once had she imagined that when the moment finally came, Nathaniel would simply stand there.
No shouting.
No accusation.
No hand striking the table.
Just one word.
“Whose?”
Adeline tried to answer.
Nothing came.
Nathaniel’s jaw tightened.
“Adeline.”
“A man named Thomas Bell.”
Nathaniel looked away.
The name meant nothing to him.
That somehow made it worse.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
The answer hit harder than Nathaniel expected.
He turned toward the window.
“Does he know?”
“Yes.”
“Does he want the child?”
“No.”
Nathaniel gave a quiet, humorless laugh.
He picked up his gloves from the floor.
Adeline stepped forward.
“Please.”
Nathaniel stopped.
“I know I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t let me come.”
“I might not have.”
Her face crumpled slightly.
Nathaniel hated himself for noticing.
“You asked for honesty,” he continued. “You wrote that you respected mine.”
“I did.”
“But you didn’t think I deserved yours?”
Adeline flinched.
“That isn’t fair.”
Nathaniel finally turned around.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then explain it.”
Adeline took a trembling breath.
“Thomas Bell was supposed to marry me.”
Nathaniel said nothing.
“We were engaged for eleven months. My mother had died. My father was already gone. I worked sewing dresses for Mrs. Pike in Omaha.”
She stared into the fire.
“Thomas worked for a bank. He was charming when he wanted to be. Everyone said I was fortunate.”
Nathaniel had already begun to dislike Thomas Bell.
“Two months before the wedding, he came to my boardinghouse after supper. We had been promised to each other nearly a year.”
Her voice weakened.
“I believed him when he said nothing between people who would soon be married could truly be wrong.”
Nathaniel understood.
His anger changed shape.
Adeline continued.
“Three weeks later, Thomas received an offer from a bank in St. Louis. His employer’s daughter was going with him.”
Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed.
“He married her?”
“Eleven days ago.”
Silence.
“When I told him about the baby, he gave me forty dollars.”
Nathaniel’s expression hardened.
Adeline gave a broken little laugh.
“He told me it would be enough to solve the problem.”
Nathaniel looked at her sharply.
“What problem?”
“The child.”
His face became stone.
Adeline wiped her cheek.
“I threw the money at him.”
Despite himself, Nathaniel almost smiled.
“What happened after?”
“My employer learned I was pregnant. Mrs. Pike was kind, but customers complained. She couldn’t keep me.”
“So you answered my advertisement.”
“Yes.”
Nathaniel stared at her.
“Because I couldn’t father children.”
Adeline lowered her gaze.
“Yes.”
The admission sliced through him.
He walked toward the fireplace.
“So that was it.”
“No.”
“You needed a husband who wouldn’t question the timing.”
“No.”
“A man grateful enough for company that he’d accept another man’s child.”
“Nathaniel—”
“What else am I supposed to think?”
“That I read your advertisement and saw a man who told the truth about the one thing that hurt him most.”
Nathaniel turned.
Adeline’s eyes were wet now, but her voice had steadied.
“Do you know how many men would admit something like that publicly?”
He said nothing.
“Most would hide it. Blame the woman later. Pretend. Lie.”
“That doesn’t excuse what you did.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
The immediate agreement stole some of Nathaniel’s anger.
Adeline stepped closer.
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
His voice broke slightly.
Nathaniel hated that.
“I have spent fifteen years believing I would never have a family. I finally allowed myself to believe maybe there could still be something. Not children. I made peace with that. But someone. A wife. A person at this table.”
He gestured toward the room.
“And after four days, I find out the beginning of that life was built on something you deliberately didn’t tell me.”
Adeline covered her mouth.
Nathaniel walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Barn.”
“It’s snowing.”
“I noticed.”
“Nathaniel, please don’t go out angry.”
He looked over his shoulder.
“I don’t know how else to go.”
The door slammed behind him.
Adeline remained beside the fire.
Then her knees gave way.
She lowered herself onto Nathaniel’s chair and cried into both hands.
In the barn, Nathaniel shoveled a stall that did not need shoveling.
He threw hay too hard.
Buck watched him suspiciously.
“Don’t,” Nathaniel muttered.
The horse chewed.
Nathaniel leaned both hands against the stall door.
He wanted to hate Adeline.
That would be easier.
But every time anger rose, another memory followed.
Her laughing at his ruined biscuits.
Her folding towels.
Her thanking him for giving her a separate room.
The way she looked frightened before telling him.
She could have waited until the wedding.
She could have hidden the pregnancy longer.
Instead, after only four days, she told him.
Too late.
But before vows.
Nathaniel sank onto a bale of hay.
The truth he did not want to confront was simple.
He had not fallen in love with the idea of Adeline Foster.
He had begun falling in love with the actual woman.
Pregnant or not.
Honest or frightened.
Complicated.
Real.
That made everything worse.
He slept in the barn.
Or tried to.
At dawn, he returned to the house.
Adeline was sitting at the table wearing her traveling dress.
Her carpetbag stood beside her.
Nathaniel stopped.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll leave.”
“Where?”
“Casper.”
“How?”
“I’ll walk to the Morris place. Perhaps they’ll let me ride with them when someone goes to town.”
“It’s six miles.”
“I know.”
“In snow.”
“I know.”
“You’re pregnant.”
Adeline’s chin trembled.
“I know that too.”
Nathaniel removed his coat.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“No?”
“You’re not walking six miles.”
“I can’t stay if you don’t want me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Nathaniel sat across from her.
His eyes were red from cold and sleeplessness.
“I’m angry.”
“You should be.”
“I don’t know whether I can trust you.”
She nodded.
“I understand.”
“And I don’t know whether marrying you would be the smartest or stupidest decision I’ve ever made.”
A tiny, unwilling smile touched Adeline’s mouth.
Nathaniel noticed.
“Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not.”
“You almost did.”
“I’m sorry.”
He exhaled.
For several seconds, they simply looked at each other.
Then Nathaniel asked, “How far along?”
Adeline lowered her eyes.
“Almost four months.”
He mentally counted.
“When would the baby come?”
“Late June. Maybe early July.”
Nathaniel stared toward the window.
July.
He had never imagined a baby in this house.
He had deliberately avoided imagining it.
Now the image arrived without permission.
A cradle near the stove.
Small blankets.
Crying at midnight.
Tiny hands.
Nathaniel shoved the thought away.
“What do you want?”
Adeline looked confused.
“For the child,” he clarified. “What life do you want?”
Her answer came immediately.
“I want my baby wanted.”
Nathaniel’s throat tightened.
“Not tolerated. Not hidden. Not treated like shame living beneath someone’s roof. I would rather scrub floors until my fingers bleed than let my child grow up believing they were a burden.”
Nathaniel studied her.
That answer mattered.
More than he wanted it to.
He stood.
“You can stay.”
Adeline looked up sharply.
“Nathaniel—”
“I did not say we’re getting married.”
Hope faded slightly.
“I said you can stay.”
“For how long?”
“Until we decide what comes next.”
Adeline swallowed.
“Thank you.”
Nathaniel nodded once.
Their relationship changed after that.
The warmth did not disappear completely.
But caution returned.
Nathaniel became polite.
Painfully polite.
He called her Miss Foster again.
Adeline stopped using his first name unless necessary.
They worked beside each other, but the easy laughter vanished.
Three days later, Nathaniel rode into Casper alone.
He told Adeline he needed supplies.
That was true.
It was not the whole truth.
He visited Dr. Harris.
The doctor who had examined him after the fever had long since retired, but Harris had Nathaniel’s old medical file.
Nathaniel sat rigidly while the physician read.
“What exactly do you want to know?”
Nathaniel stared at the floor.
“Whether the diagnosis was certain.”
Harris adjusted his spectacles.
“Certain?”
“That I couldn’t father a child.”
The doctor looked back at the file.
“This says reduced fertility was considered likely.”
Nathaniel frowned.
“Likely?”
“Yes.”
“Not impossible?”
“No responsible physician should have told you impossible without testing.”
Nathaniel stared.
“What testing?”
“Which, judging from these records, you never had.”
Nathaniel’s heart began pounding.
“Doctor Bellamy told me the fever probably left me sterile.”
“Probably is not the same as certainly.”
Nathaniel gripped the chair.
For fifteen years, he had built an entire life around one physician’s cautious prediction.
“Could I father a child?”
Harris leaned back.
“It may be difficult. It may be unlikely. But based on this record alone, Nathaniel, I would never say impossible.”
Nathaniel walked out of the clinic feeling as though the street had tilted beneath him.
He rode home slowly.
When he arrived, he found Adeline behind the house hanging laundry.
She smiled uncertainly.
“You were gone a long time.”
Nathaniel dismounted.
“There was business.”
She nodded.
He almost told her.
Then didn’t.
Trust, he had learned, could not be repaired with one conversation.
That evening, Adeline became sick.
Nathaniel heard something fall in the kitchen.
He rushed in and found her gripping the counter.
“Adeline?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re white as flour.”
She tried to wave him away.
Then collapsed.
Nathaniel caught her before she struck the floor.
“Adeline!”
Her eyes fluttered.
Fear unlike anything Nathaniel had felt in years tore through him.
He carried her to the bed, wrapped her in blankets, then rode through gathering darkness to the Morris ranch.
By midnight, Mrs. Morris—a widow who had delivered half the children in the county—was examining Adeline.
Nathaniel waited outside the bedroom.
He paced.
Stopped.
Paced again.
Finally, Mrs. Morris emerged.
“Well?”
“She’s exhausted.”
“The baby?”
“Alive, far as I can tell.”
Nathaniel exhaled so hard his knees nearly weakened.
Mrs. Morris studied him.
“You care for her.”
Nathaniel stiffened.
“She’s under my roof.”
“That wasn’t what I said.”
He looked away.
Mrs. Morris smiled knowingly.
“She needs food, rest, and less worrying.”
Nathaniel almost laughed.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Decide whether that child is another man’s mistake or your opportunity.”
Nathaniel looked at her.
Mrs. Morris put on her coat.
“You don’t have to be the blood father of a child to become the man that child calls Pa.”
After she left, Nathaniel entered Adeline’s room.
She was awake.
“You scared me,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing for everything.”
She watched him.
Nathaniel sat beside the bed.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Then Adeline whispered, “You don’t have to stay.”
“I know.”
He remained anyway.
And sometime after midnight, Adeline fell asleep with her hand resting inches from his.
Nathaniel stared at that small distance.
Then slowly covered her fingers with his own.