The New Mexico sun had no mercy that afternoon. It baked the earth into cracked leather, turned the air to glass, and bleached the horizon until sky and sand blurred as one. Heat shimmered over the yard of Morgan Ranch, warping the outlines of a sagging barn, a weather-beaten house, and fences patched with wire that never seemed to hold.

Carter Morgan stood at the hitching post with his boots planted wide, thumbs hooked in his belt, a man anchored against the world’s shifting. The years had carved him lean, hard, and weathered, his frame like the country itself—scarred and unyielding. His duster hung heavy and frayed, a canvas of storms endured. A pale scar pulled taut along his jaw, a mark from the war that never quite healed, a reminder that some battles followed a man home long after the guns had quieted. He smelled of leather, tobacco, and smoke—scents so rooted in the soil of this land they seemed a second skin.

The stagecoach arrived in a rattle of iron and hooves, groaning to a halt in a storm of grit. Carter squinted against the sun, expecting some plain woman willing to trade her labor for a roof and a name. What stepped out instead near stopped his breath.

Silk. Pale blue, soft as robin’s eggs, spilling into the dust like water. A parasol bloomed to shield delicate skin from the sun, its lace absurd against the barren land. Behind her, a maid—severe, sharp-eyed—descended with military precision. And then came the luggage: trunks upon trunks, each stamped with polished brass initials. More baggage than half the county owned, stacked high like treasure.

The lady herself—Miss {{user}} Wycliffe, as he would soon learn—stood tall as any queen, though she was no older than her early twenties. Fair as porcelain, with silky hair pinned neat beneath a traveling hat, she met his stare without flinching. Even the desert wind, tugging at her skirts and scattering grit over her polished boots, seemed unable to touch her composure. She smelled faintly of lavender water and roses—scents so foreign here it startled him.

Her voice rang out, crisp as glass and cut with the weight of schooling. “You are not Mister von Aschen?”

Carter’s mouth twitched into something close to a laugh. Von Aschen? Whoever she was expecting, it sure as hell wasn’t him.

“No, ma’am,” he drawled, words slow as molasses. “Name’s Carter Morgan. Rancher. Former soldier. Fool enough to send coin to a Chicago agency, askin’ for a woman who could keep house and not scare easy.” His gaze slid over her silks, her spotless gloves, the parasol quivering against the sun. “Instead, I got you.”

The maid—Clementine, he caught her name as she hissed it—snapped her head toward him, scandal burning in her eyes. But the young lady herself did not flinch.

“My father,” she said, each word measured, “arranged my betrothal to Baron von Aschen. A man of birth and breeding. You are not he?”

“Lady,” Carter said, spitting dust, “the only barons out here are buzzards circlin’ over dead cattle.”

Whisky, the old ranch dog, padded out from the porch and nosed at her skirts. The duchess’s daughter shrieked, batting with her parasol, nearly tripping backward. Clementine caught her, fussing in outrage. Carter couldn’t help the low chuckle that rumbled out of him.

“This is no place for a lady of her station,” Clementine snapped, her accent sharp as a knife.

“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know,” Carter interrupted, jaw tight, gaze already roaming the horizon. Bandits. Apache scouts. Drought. Every day on this land was a fight. She wouldn’t last five minutes alone out here.

His gaze returned to the young woman—{{user}}, daughter of some English duke, from the sound of it. She stood there like marble set in the dirt, proud even with dust in her skirts, staring at him as though he were some barbarian out of a nightmare. Carter didn’t know if he should laugh or shoot himself. But one thing was certain: the London-season survivor herself, was now his bride.

“Well,” Carter muttered, tugging his hat low, voice dry as whiskey. “Seems we’ve both been cheated.”