Eight days earlier, Rosalie Ashford had stood in front of a cracked mirror wearing her dead mother’s faded ivory wedding dress.
Her father had received fifty dollars for her.
Fifty dollars.
That was what Thomas Ashford had decided his daughter’s future was worth.
The money had paid a creditor who had threatened to seize the family’s remaining land. The arrangement had also settled part of the debt Thomas owed after months of gambling and drinking.
He called it a practical marriage.
Her older brother, Merrick, called it a blessing.
“You’re twenty-four years old, Rosalie,” Merrick had told her the night before the wedding. “You should be grateful someone wants you.”
“Someone wants a wife,” she answered. “You don’t even know whether he wants me.”
Merrick laughed into his whiskey.
“He’s a rancher with money. What more do you need to know?”
Rosalie had wanted to tell him that she needed to know whether her husband would treat her like a human being. She wanted to know whether she would be allowed to speak, whether she would be safe, and whether she would ever be able to leave.
