LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

       Helena, Montana Territory, 1888

       Married?

      Sophie closed her eyes and prayed that she had heard him wrong. Then she counted to ten in an attempt to dispel the anger she could feel rising within her. Experience had taught her that it was never worthwhile showing anger when her uncle was in one of his moods. And he was in rare form today.

      She opened her eyes to see him relaxing in the leather wing-backed chair, gazing at his cigar with a self-satisfied smile curving his lips. Having just delivered the blow orchestrated to finally break her, he had every reason to smile. He crossed his legs and picked up the tumbler of cognac from the marble-topped table beside him and took a sip, seeming to forget she was there and that he had just ruined her life.

      She hated him.

      “Oncle Jean, perhaps I misheard—”

      “Non, cherie, you heard me correctly. Your wedding will be next month. Anton and I have already discussed the matter. The specifics can be worked out later. Nothing too large. An intimate gathering will suffice. You’ll need to have a gown made, but I’m sure an arrangement can be made with Martine to have it finished in time. If only your mother hadn’t run off to marry that Scot, she would have had a proper gown to pass down to you, but…” His words ended on a sigh.

      Sophie refrained from pointing out the Scot had been her father and had her mother not run off to marry him the conversation would be moot.

      “Well, what can we do now?” her uncle continued. “She did what she did and I do owe her a debt, do I not? I am here now and not in France, and look at my good fortune.” He gestured to the room, with its frescoed ceilings, exotic wood floor and gilt-trimmed furnishing; it was the epitome of excessive opulence. Then his gaze lit on her and he gave the smile she hated: worse than smug, this smile was dead. “And I repay a little of my debt every day.”

      “But Monsieur Beaudin is…is…” Old. Repulsive. Abhorrent. Each descriptor was more fitting than the last, she had trouble choosing just one.

      “Careful, cherie, he is my dearest friend.”

      Sophie looked at her uncle in his coat of maroon velvet, his garish neckerchief, his graying hair slicked back with pomade, and thought he could have been Anton sitting there for all the difference there was between them. Many of the ladies in town thought him handsome, but she saw only the evil lurking beneath the surface.

      “Oncle, you mistake me. I was merely going to point out that he is too sophisticated for a ranch girl. While you have been more than kind to take me in, that is what I am, and one never really strays far from one’s roots, no?”

      A vein twitched in his temple and she knew her barb had landed. She couldn’t check the cowardly impulse to glance at the silver hawk’s head of his walking cane where it was propped against his chair. Perhaps it was suicide to remind him that he came from Le Marais, a slum in Paris, but recklessness was as much a part of her nature as this forced deference was foreign to it. Being from the same slum, her mother never would’ve had a proper wedding gown, anyway.

      “Rejoice that I have found a Frenchman willing and gracious enough to overlook your many shortcomings. You will be a good wife to him, Sophie, or you will answer to me for it. Do you understand?” All pretense of civility had fled, leaving his eyes cold and flat. The look he gave her now was the look that had earned him free rein in the copper mines in this region of the territory.

      “Oui. Could I telegraph Alexandre? He should come to the ceremony.” She had not seen her brother since he’d signed over his inheritance and fled to Chicago five years earlier, though Jean gave her regular updates.

      His good humor restored by her compliance, her uncle smiled and took a puff of his cigar. “I will see that he is notified, but you may write a letter to post if you wish. The Nelsons’ ball is at nine tonight. Be ready.”

      Sophie stood to take her leave. “Merci, Oncle.” It was her customary closing with any of their conversations.

       Thank you, Uncle. Thank you for taking me in after you murdered my parents. Thank you for allowing me breath one more day. Thank you for not committing most of the unspeakable crimes against me your soulless eyes promise you are capable of perpetrating.

       Yet.

      She hated him! If only her life didn’t stretch out before her as one endless act devoted to playing out the whims of that monster. Already, the sounds of despair and anger that she’d had trouble containing were threatening to escape, causing her shoulders to shake with the effort of subduing them. She closed the door to his study and turned to flee to her room. But when she turned, something solid and decidedly masculine blocked her path.

      Without even looking, she knew who it was. Gray. She was always so preternaturally aware of him;

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