North Dakota, November 1885

Lena Stevens huddled on the cold ground and clung to her eighteen-month-old son, trying to silence his screams of terror as flames licked up the roof of her house and poured down the walls like a boiling pot.

Back and forth she rocked, pressing Charlie to her chest, whispering, “Hush, hush. Stop now.”

Dark shadows leaped and danced around her like someone in agony. Her nostrils filled with the smell of burning wood and wool, vegetables and sugar. It was the odor of despair.

She and Charlie had nothing left. No home. No place to get away from the bitter wind filling her veins with ice. No food. Nothing but the clothes they wore and the thin blanket about them like a shawl.

A horse reared to a stop at her side. The rider hit the ground running and skidded to the trough to pump water like mad.

She glanced up and saw Anker Hansen, her neighbor. The man who had been at her husband’s side last winter as he lay drawing his last tortured breaths. The man who had promised Johnson he would take care of her and little Charlie. He took his vow seriously, often coming by to make sure she was all right and to offer help. But she didn’t want taking care of and had frequently been rude to the persistent man.

A wagon pulled up a few feet from her. It was Mr. Hampton from the south. Four gangly youths armed with shovels, buckets, and gunnysacks tumbled over the side. They quickly filled the buckets and attacked the fire.

Water hit the flames and sizzled.

One of the boys dampened his sack and beat out flames springing up where sparks hit dry grass.

A second wagon pulled to a stop beside the first and two men jumped down. In the glare of the firelight and the sharp shadows, Lena wasn’t certain but thought them to be the two families from down by the river. The men joined the battle.

After a hard fight, the fire died down to glowing embers. Lena shuddered at the sight of the charred corner posts. Her house had been reduced to rubble.

“I’m sorry, missus.”

She nodded to Mr. Hampton, unable to speak around the throb in her throat.

“It’s too bad,” one of the other men said. “But now you’ll have to go home, for sure. This is no place for a young woman with a baby.”

By “home” she knew they meant back east. But she had no one back there to go to. Her only friend, Sky, shared a tiny room with her husband at the back of their store and had recently had a baby. They had no space for two more people.

Besides, Lena wasn’t about to ask for charity. She would make it on her own. Owe nobody.

Lena shuddered. She’d heard people speak of being burned out but, until now, it was only an expression, not something reaching down into her body and pulling hope out by its heels.

One of the youths slapped his sack against his boot. His eyes met hers and she saw a mixture of shock and fascination before she turned away.

Four more wagons pulled into the yard, drawing into a semi-circle facing the smoldering house.

While the men climbed down from the wagons to gather and compare notes, the women who had come with them remained in their seats, staring straight ahead.

Lena didn’t need to study their stiff posture and averted eyes to understand the unspoken message. They would make sure the neighborly thing was done in controlling the fire, while pretending she didn’t exist.

She hugged Charlie close, silently daring any of them to make a comment about him.

I don’t need them. But her insides were frozen. What will I do?

One man inched toward her. “You will need a place to stay.”

“Albert,” the nearest woman croaked, and the man turned away without offering anything.

Shock, cold, and fear raced through Lena and she shook violently.

The biggest of the Hampton boys grabbed a blanket from the wagon seat and ambled toward her. Awkwardly, he draped it across her shoulders. It did little to ease the cold encasing her, but she murmured her thanks and pulled it close.

“Lady.” His voice cracked. “We don’t have an inch to spare at our house, or we’d take you with us.”

She nodded, painfully aware no one was about to offer help. Despair filled her mind, as black and empty as the darkness beyond the fire.

“She will come with me. I have the room. I take care of her and Charlie just like I promised her good man before he die.”

The women gasped at Anker’s suggestion.

Mr. Hampton stepped forward. “We don’t do things that way in this country. She can’t live with you unless you two are married.”

“I will marry her.”

“No.” Lena tried to gain her feet. Anker, seeing her struggle, took Charlie, who went to him all too readily. Then Anker grabbed her hand and pulled her to his side. When her legs wobbled, he steadied her.

“I can manage on my own.” She’d meant to sound bold and strong, but her words were little more than a whisper.

Disbelieving eyes watched her.

“We talk.” Anker steered her toward the barn. He waited until they stepped into the dark interior before he shifted away to stand in front of her. “You have no place to live.”

“I will live in the barn.”

“You will freeze.”

“I’ll build a little room and put in a stove.” Maybe the kitchen stove had survived the fire. And she’d find bits of lumber somewhere. Maybe from a kindly neighbor, though she’d seen few enough of those in the past months.

“Little Charlie will freeze. You be wanting that, ja?”

“Of course not.” Hadn’t she fought the elements all summer, struggling to run the farm on her own for Charlie’s sake? So he’d have this farm when he grew up? “Nor do I want to owe you for your kindness.”

He mumbled something in that strange language of his. It sounded harsh.

“What did you say?”

“I say you are one stubborn woman. I tell you over and over I take care of you and little Charlie.”

“You’ve already done enough.”

“I promised Johnson. You fight me all summer, but now you need to let me do this. First, we must marry, but I not be one to push you to do something you not want.”

He stopped and let her consider his offer.

“I don’t want to marry again. I want to keep my farm.” She heard the doubt and fear in her voice and clamped her teeth together.

He waited silently.

If she could see his expression, perhaps she could guess how he felt, what his offer meant.

But she already knew. He believed he was obligated because of a foolish promise. The last thing she wanted was to feel beholden.

Charlie made snuffling noises. The poor baby was tired. He’d lived through so many disasters in his short year and a half of life.

She could not add to those hardships by trying to survive the winter in a barn. “I will agree to a marriage on paper only.”

She felt Anker’s stillness as he considered her words.

“I do not understand.”

“Charlie has enough narrow-mindedness to deal with already.” For herself she did not regret that her son clearly showed the evidence of his father’s half-breed status. But for Charlie’s sake she wished he looked more like her. “I don’t want to add to it. So I will go with you to your house. I will marry you to make it look honorable. But in truth, I am not marrying you, and I want you to agree that in the spring we will have the marriage annulled and I will come back here.” People would talk but she had grown used to that.

“This ‘annulled.’ I don’t understand.”

Grateful the darkness hid the heat rushing up her neck and nipping at the tips of her ears, she sought for a delicate way to explain. “If two people don’t...ahh...don’t share the marriage bed—” She choked, but forced herself to continue. “They can declare the marriage to be...”

“Only pretend?”

“Yes.”

“This is possible?”

“Will you agree? Promise to—” How did she ask a man to share his home yet not expect anything in return? Did he truly understand?

“If this is what you want, I will agree.” His voice deepened and he sounded weary.

“You’ll release me come spring?”

“If this is what you want.”

“I promise I will do my share. I won’t leave owing you for giving me a home.”

“You will owe me nothing. I made a promise to your man and I will keep it. Come.” He reached for her hand but didn’t give her a chance to decide if she would let him take it. He pulled her out into the orange light. “We are getting married,” he announced loudly and firmly.

“And the preacher’s here to do it right now,” one of the men said.

Reverend Sorrow stepped forward. “I came to see if anyone needed my services.”

Lena understood he meant he feared someone had perished in the fire. No one had. At least she had that to be grateful for.

Anker’s hand held her upright when her legs threatened to melt.

With curious neighbors gathered around, Lena faced her wedding, in a cotton dress that had seen better days even before she’d soaked it with water, smoke, and mud. Charlie still perched contentedly in Anker’s arms.

Through Johnson’s death and the long hard summer, she’d clung to what Johnson had taught her about God. She was sure he would have been proud.

But now what? What was God doing?

Despair swelled inside her head, reaching bony fingers into her heart and gouging at her ribs.

Had God’s care been for Johnson alone? Perhaps, with him gone, she no longer qualified for it.

* * *

A pretend marriage? Anker had never heard such a thing. But pretend or real, he had promised Johnson he would take care of Lena and Charlie. The day Johnson died they’d been on their way to get coal, each with a wagon. He had never been that way before and let Johnson lead. Something he regretted to this day. If he’d been in front when the pair of wild dogs went after Johnson’s horse, it would be him that got hurt. He would not be leaving behind a wife and baby.

Anker had shot the dogs, but not before Johnson’s horse bolted and threw Johnson. He had never told anyone the awful details of Johnson’s death. He tried to forget it himself, but the pictures were forever embedded in his brain. As he did his best to ease the last hour of the man’s life, he listened to Johnson’s regrets over not being able to say good-bye to his loved ones.

“Lena will try and do everything on her own, but she isn’t as strong as she thinks. And Charlie will need a man in his life.” Johnson had grabbed Anker’s arm. “Will you take care of them for me?”

Anker had squeezed the man’s hands. “I will. I promise.” He fully intended to keep that promise even though Lena pushed away his attempts to do so. A man was only a man if he kept his word.

Johnson had fallen back and seemed to forget Anker’s presence as he stared into the distance. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he whispered, and with a sigh and a smile he was gone.

Anker had tried to keep his promise, but Lena made it a challenge. Now she didn’t have a choice. He wished she could see it was for the best. Instead, she made him promise it was only temporary . . . pretend. The idea didn’t sit well with him but how else was he to take care of them?

It will work out anyhow.

He repeated a Norwegian saying he heard often from the mouth of his old grandfather. But he must speak English now. Think English.

The preacher said words that Anker struggled to understand. “Ja. Yes,” he said, as the preacher nodded at him.

He held his hat in one hand and Charlie in the other arm. Charlie babbled away at Anker as if telling the man his whole life story. Anker smiled. At least the child liked him. And he liked the child.

Anker glanced around. He’d never been to a wedding like this. A couple of the men held burning torches to give light. The women had left their high wagon seats to join the curious circle surrounding the participants in this odd ceremony. Besides curiosity, he saw pity, and an unhealthy glare of dislike.

Knowing what triggered that attitude, his arms tightened around Charlie. He was just a baby. His father had been a good man even if part Indian. Johnson had not shown his heritage as much as Charlie. The boy had bottomless black eyes and shiny black hair like a fine piece of coal. More than once, Anker had seen and overheard how the women treated Lena because of Charlie’s heritage. And it had made him...he searched for an English word to describe the rolling of his thoughts at the idea of such injustice, but he could think of no word except anger.

“I now pronounce you man and wife. What God has joined together, let not man tear asunder.”

The preacher’s words accused Anker. He’d agreed to do exactly that, but he didn’t see what choice he had. God in heaven, forgive me.

“You gonna kiss your bride?” one of the men called.

Anker looked at Lena and saw a mixture of fear and determination. She pushed her shoulders back, causing the blanket to slip down her arms.

“It’s cold out here.” He lifted the blanket, tightening it around her, and stared into challenging eyes. He thought of the women watching. Did Lena want to say something to them about this marriage? Or about who she was? The thoughts and questions sped through his brain and pooled into one certainty.

Whatever she needed or wanted, he would give, if he had it in his power. And he could make this marriage appear real to the onlookers.

He leaned forward and brushed her lips with his.

Cold.

“You’re freezing.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, felt her trembling against his side. “Mr. Hampton, would you be so good as to give my wife and child a ride to my place?”

“My pleasure.” The Hampton bunch headed for their wagon.

Anker led Lena to the back where the two older boys lifted her in. A third boy took Charlie and put him in his mother’s lap. Someone held out another blanket and Anker wrapped it tightly around Lena and Charlie.

“I will follow you home.” He swung into his saddle and trailed the wagon from the yard.

What would it be like to share his life and his home with a woman and child?