The Prospector's Only Prospect by Dani Collins

Author:Dani Collins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gold rush;California;American historical;gold mine;gold mining;mining camp;small town;survival;wilderness;marriage of convenience;mail order bride;divorce;single parent;single father;housekeeper;nanny;wild west;sisters;half brother;Small Town & Rural Fiction;Family Life Fiction;Contemporary Western Fiction;Contemporary Women's Fiction;American Humorous Fiction;Women's Historical Fiction;Western Romance;Genre Fiction;Entangled publishing;Amara;Mass Market paperback romance;new romance book;popular romance book;single title romance;stand alone romance book;2022 Romance book;2022 Mass Market Romance;books with a Happy ending;HEA;American Historical Romance;Western Rom Com;RomCom;new historical book;What to read after Bridgerton;The Prospector’s Only Prospect by Dani Collins;The Prospector’s Only Prospect;Dani Collins;mail order bride;Satisfying romance;adventure romance book;romance book with adventure;gunslinger romance;exciting romance;thrilling romance;historical romance;sexy romance;romance with sex in it
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2023-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Marigold started the beans, adding a dab of molasses. Then she walked Nettie and Harley to a spot on the far side of the stream.

It was late in the day for an outing, but Harley was filled with milk and peach preserves and mischief. He needed the exercise. Marigold needed something to occupy her thoughts so she wouldn’t dwell on what had happened with Virgil. Would one call that lovemaking? Or wanton fornication?

Virgil had said she had nothing to be ashamed of, but men only said that until it was no longer convenient to have a woman of loose morals cluttering up their lives.

She seemed to have an unseemly appetite for relations, Ben had claimed in court.

As newlyweds, were you not trying to start a family? her attorney had argued. Would that not account for Mrs. Davis showing enthusiasm for the marriage bed? A wife is expected to submit to her husband, is she not?

To be frank, sir, she wished me to submit to her desires.

It had been humiliating. Intentionally so.

And had pierced her so keenly because there’d been a grain of truth to it.

Marigold hadn’t been sure what she sought when she and Ben were abed, but there’d been a hunger for something. To learn. To discover. Each time they’d joined themselves together, she had felt teased into welcoming him the next time he reached for her. She had wanted his touch and penetration without fully understanding why it was so beguiling.

Now she knew. That culmination Virgil had drawn forth in her was more than disconcerting. It was knowledge. It was dangerous because it incited a desire to feel that way again, uncaring that they weren’t married. Even though it was sinful and shameful and wrong.

“What about bears?” Nettie asked with an anxious look into the brush up the hill.

“Hmm? Oh. We’re only going this far.” Marigold took stock of where they were. “See? There are men over there making noise.” One was using a pickaxe against the bank, and another was rocking a wooden box so water and gravel sloshed. “I don’t think we’ll be bothered by anything other than mosquitos.”

Marigold had walked them a little distance downstream from the abandoned Ute camp. Leyohna had told her to watch for blossoms on a patch of brush to turn into berries here. The leaves looked like currant bushes, and the berries were a glossy red with fine hairs all over them. They were tart, perhaps not ripe enough, but they would make a nice marmalade. They would pick some today and check back over the next week to see if they sweetened up.

They stayed until the mountain shadow was across the whole valley. By then, she had also dug up some dandelion greens while Nettie kept Harley amused with catching grasshoppers. Every time she opened her hands to show one to Harley, it jumped away, startling them into squeals of laughter.

Marigold noticed the men nearby had stopped working to watch and laugh along with them. She waved and offered a weak smile as she gathered up the children for the walk back to the cabin.

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