The Marriage Knot - Mary McBride

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You keep it. I’ll see you later. Tomorrow maybe.”

      “You sure?”

      “I’m sure.” He bent to kiss her forehead, then caught a whiff of her orange-blossom talc and nearly changed his mind. Nearly. “Good night, Ria.”

      

      His room on the second floor of the National Hotel was similar to all the other hotel rooms where he’d resided during the past decade of lawing. This one had new wallpaper, though, unlike the fly-specked patterns of some of his former residences. The mattress was decent enough and there were fresh sheets every two weeks.

      He propped his shotgun against the wall between the nightstand and the bed, then took off his clothes without bothering to light the lamp. There was still plenty of moonlight coming through the window to keep him from cracking a shin on the rocker or tripping over the worn Oriental runner.

      Delaney dropped onto the bed. It was true, what he’d told Ria. He was tired. God, he was tired. Of his present circumstances. Of Newton. Of living in this hotel. Of a job that paid him just enough to keep on being poor.

      Out of habit, he flexed his right hand—the hand that had once been fast and deadly accurate. That hadn’t been the case since he’d been shot last summer in Dodge by a fool kid who wanted to earn a reputation by killing an Earp. But the boy had winged Delaney instead, then found himself pistol-whipped by Wyatt and Virgil both and promptly tried and sent to jail. If it hadn’t been for the kid’s bad aim, Delaney would probably be in Arizona now.

      He’d come to Newton last winter less by choice than by default. With his gun hand out of commission, he knew he couldn’t pull his weight with the Earps. It was all well and good that he was still pretty lethal with a shotgun, but then anybody was that. With enough buckshot, even a blind old granny was a threat to life and limb.

      Hell, he’d even quit wearing his gunbelt and holster when he’d come here because he’d felt like a damn fool when he knew they were pure decoration. So he’d locked the leather and iron in the bottom drawer of his new desk, then he’d spent the next couple weeks feeling like a gelding. Just half a man somehow. Not that he thought wearing a gun made somebody a man, but not wearing his had taken a definite chunk out of his pride.

      He doubled up the pillow behind his head, sighing at the notion that, bone tired as he was, sleep wasn’t within easy reach tonight.

      Up till now, he’d adjusted pretty well. The shotgun wasn’t the total embarrassment it used to be. He’d had the occasional comfort of Ria, and he’d even managed to save a little cash. Not enough yet to buy in with the Earps in all their financial schemes in Tombstone, but enough to at least keep that particular dream alive.

      Things hadn’t been perfect. Hell, far from it. But Delaney’s life had been on a fairly even keel these last few months. Now he felt off center again, detoured if not downright derailed.

      Hannah.

      He shouldn’t have walked her home tonight. He should have just stood there, out of sight, and watched to make sure she got to her door safe and sound. But something always drew him to her like a magnet, like a dizzy moth to a dancing flame. Whatever it was, Delaney didn’t care for it one bit.

      It was time to start thinking about leaving town. So what if he couldn’t grip a pistol anymore? Doc Holliday did well enough with his sawed-off shotgun and nobody thought any less of him. So what if Delaney couldn’t buy into a silver mine or a saloon right away? He could save money in Tombstone just as readily as here. Maybe more, for all he knew.

      It was June. There were six months left on his sheriffing contract. He courted sleep by counting the dollars and cents he planned to save before that contract expired.

      Chapter Three

      

      

      It wasn’t like Hannah to take to her bed, but that was exactly what she did for the next three days. Right after Ezra’s burial, she had joined her little trio of boarders for supper in the dining room, but she hadn’t even made it past the soup before she was dabbing her linen napkin at her eyes.

      First, Ezra’s place at the head of the table—the empty chair and blank stretch of tablecloth—kept drawing Hannah’s gaze, again and again. Then Miss Green’s continual expressions of sympathy made any other topic of conversation quite impossible. Henry Allen’s mournful glances didn’t help a bit, and neither did Abel Fairfax’s understanding nods or his encouraging smiles.

      Hannah had excused herself from the table, rushed upstairs, and hadn’t come back down since. The only person she had allowed in her room was Nancy, the hired girl who helped with household chores. Bigboned, raw-knuckled Nancy never spoke more than a word or two and kept her eyes downcast as she came and went with tea and toast or rice pudding. Her silence suited Hannah fine.

      She needed that silence and solitude to deal with Ezra’s passing, to find her balance now and learn how to be alone after sharing her life with him for fourteen years. Had it really been that long? she wondered. So often it seemed like just yesterday that the big, barrel-chested man in the gray frock coat had come storming into her narrow little crib in Memphis. He’d had a graying beard and mustache back then, but Hannah could’ve sworn it was gray smoke issuing from his nostrils and mouth.

      “Get dressed,” he’d ordered her. “I’m taking you out of this foul place.”

      Hannah had just sat there on the worn mattress, gaping at the huge stranger.

      “Come along now. You needn’t fear me. Put your dress on and let’s go.”

      When she told him she didn’t have a dress, but only the underclothes she wore, he raised his fists toward the ceiling and bellowed like some wounded thing. Then he took off his fine gray coat and wrapped it carefully around her shoulders.

      How warm that coat had been. How safe it had felt, shielding her from her chin down past her knees. It had smelled like Ezra, too. Even after all these years Hannah could still remember the pleasant shock of that unique blend of fragrances. One minute she’d been wearing cotton rags, then suddenly she was cloaked in yards of finely tailored wool, in the scents of cherry pipe smoke and rye whiskey and oatmeal shaving soap.

      She’d been with Ezra ever since that night in Memphis. There had been at least half a dozen girls her age or younger—all as destitute as they were pretty, most of them orphaned by the war—all of them trading their bodies for a roof over their heads and a pittance of food in their stomachs. Why Ezra had rescued her in particular, Hannah never knew. Somehow she’d never had the courage to ask, perhaps because she was afraid it was all a dream and, if examined too closely, it might simply disappear.

      Now, fourteen years later, it was Ezra who had disappeared and Hannah felt more alone than ever before in her life. Part of her wanted to pull the bedcovers over her head and never get up again, but the sensible, strong part of her knew that was a coward’s way out. She had a house to run and boarders to tend to. Ezra hadn’t brought her to Newton and built this grand mansion just to have them both—Hannah and the house—fall to wrack and ruin after his demise.

      Tomorrow, she vowed, she’d rise early, then after her bath she’d don her widow’s weeds once more and begin living the rest of her life.

      Tomorrow.

      She promised.

      Just for tonight, though, Hannah pulled the covers over her head once more and wept into her pillow.

      

      

      The next morning, when Hannah brought the coffeepot into the dining room, she wasn’t surprised to see Abel Fairfax sitting alone at the table.

      “I meant to get up earlier,” she said as she refilled his cup. “I’m sorry, Abel.”

      “Nobody minded, Hannah. Henry’s gone off to the bank and Florence is down at Galt’s Emporium, most likely aggravating the devil out of poor Ted Galt

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