The Marriage Knot - Mary McBride

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from swooning.

      “You all right, Hannah?”

      Abel’s face became a blur and, when she answered him, her own voice seemed to come from somewhere else if not from someone else.

      “Yes, I’m fine. I’m leaving now, Abel. I’m going home.”

      

      A little while later Abel Fairfax found himself quite alone in his cluttered office. When he’d finished reading the will, things shook out just about as he’d expected.

      Hannah had risen from her chair—stiff as a black umbrella—dazed as a rabbit in torchlight—then steadied herself with a hand on the edge of his desk before heading out the door. She wasn’t nearly so careful of his books this time, and sent several stacks toppling.

      As for Delaney, he’d sat for a minute, expressionless, like a man whose body had turned to stone. Then, when he’d finally spoken, his voice was closer to a growl than it was to human speech.

      “What the hell is this, Fairfax? What the blazing hell?”

      In response, Abel had merely shrugged and blinked. Then, like Hannah before him, Delaney sent another dozen books flying as he stormed toward the door and slammed it behind him.

      Alone now, Abel stared at the dust motes the man and the woman had churned up in their separate wakes. In the few stray beams of light that managed to pierce his window, those particles were dancing for pure joy.

      Abel shook his head and sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Ezra, you damn fool.”

      Chapter Four

      

      

      What the blazing hell?

      Hours after hearing Ezra Dancer’s will, it still made about as much sense to Delaney as it had originally. In other words, it made no sense at all.

      Sure, he remembered that day when Ezra had slipped on the ice, then couldn’t get his feet back under him to get out of the way of that wagon. Delaney just happened to be right there and had done what anybody else would’ve done by lugging the man out of harm’s way.

      It had earned him a handshake then and a hearty thanks, and Ezra had mentioned it a time or two later. The man had been grateful. Fine. But gratitude was one thing; a bequest was something entirely different. And a house was...

      Judas!

      He tilted his chair onto its back legs, eased his head back, then slanted his hat against the bright sunset. It was quiet in town. Just about everybody was home having supper. Those who weren’t, but went to the saloons instead to drink their evening meal, hadn’t had time enough yet or liquor enough to make any trouble.

      If he looked west down the street and squinted against the sunset, he could just make out one corner of the verandah on the Dancer place, nestled in its shady patch of elms.

      It was a joke, he told himself again. A man didn’t leave a mansion like that to a virtual stranger even if he had saved his life or kept him from breaking some bones. It was ludicrous. Downright crazy, especially when the man had a wife.

      No. Delaney told himself he’d heard it all wrong. Maybe it was so dark and dusty in Abel’s office that the old fellow had gotten everything upside-down and backwards. He should have stayed and taken a look at the paper himself, but his mind had just gotten scrambled with the shock of it. The widow’s, too, he supposed. They’d just about knocked each other over trying to get out the door.

      Right now Hannah was probably eating supper with Abel Fairfax and the two of them were laughing at the misunderstanding. Delaney felt his own mouth slide into a grin.

      Hell, in all his thirty-five years, he’d never owned much more than a horse and a gun and the clothes on his back. It was a likely bet he never would.

      A house! That house! Judas priest. The place had to be worth ten thousand at least. Maybe more. With money like that, Delaney could do a little more than just buy in with the Earps. Why, hell. He could buy them out.

      

      During supper that evening, Hannah did her best to pretend nothing was wrong. But after Henry excused himself to take his evening constitutional and Miss Green went upstairs to read a new volume of poetry, Hannah couldn’t pretend a moment longer. She felt like a teakettle, all boiling and roiling inside.

      “Abel, I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to tell me this is all some terrible mistake,” she said. “Ezra’s will, I mean.”

      He shook his head. “It’s no mistake, Hannah, although I’ll be the first to admit it’s, well, unusual.”

      “Unusual!” Hannah shrieked. “Unusual! Why it’s completely absurd, Abel. More than that. It’s ridiculous. And it can’t possibly be legal.”

      “Oh, it’s legal, all right. A man can leave his property to whoever he chooses.” He leaned forward a bit. “Don’t you remember reading about that dog in New Haven, Connecticut, whose owner left him a fortune in railroad bonds?”

      Hannah rolled her eyes. “Well, at least he knew and treasured the blasted animal. Ezra hardly ever said two words to Delaney that I know of.”

      “The sheriff earned his gratitude for saving his life, I guess.” The older man tucked his napkin under his plate and then pushed his chair back from the table. “I can’t explain it to you, Hannah. I only know what Ezra said in his will.”

      She’d known Abel Fairfax long enough to know when the man would not be pressed. Right now his mouth was drawn tighter than fence wire, so Hannah kept silent. She wasn’t finished, though. She’d have her explanation. Somehow.

      

      In the week that followed, Hannah didn’t leave the house. Not once. She sent Nancy, the hired girl, to the grocery store instead of going herself, and she asked Florence Green to return her book to the library and to choose a new one for her. It didn’t matter what. Hannah couldn’t concentrate enough to read anyway.

      Her disbelief at Ezra’s will turned first to dismay, and Hannah found herself wandering from room to room in the house she had shared with Ezra for nearly a decade. It was so easy to picture him in his favorite reading chair in the back parlor, or coming through the front door and tossing his hat onto one of the porcelain hooks on the hall tree, or climbing the stairs with his big hand curved around the polished walnut bannister.

      She missed him. Dear Lord in heaven, she missed him so very much.

      But then her dismay seemed to settle into a profound, piercing anger. And there was, Hannah readily admitted, more than a little self pity, too. How could there not be? How could Ezra have done this to her? How could he have left this house—truly the only home she’d ever known—to somebody else? To Delaney!

      And just where was Delaney, anyway? She hadn’t seen him since the afternoon Abel had read the dratted will. In the beginning, for a while, she’d entertained the faint hope that the sheriff would knock on the front door, smiling, hat in hand, when he told her it was obvious, just plain as day, that Ezra hadn’t been thinking straight and that she shouldn’t worry for one second about his taking property that was rightfully hers.

      It hadn’t happened, though. A week had passed and there had been no word from the man. Not a peep. In this case, Hannah didn’t believe for a minute that no news was good news. More than likely, he was probably just waiting for her to do or say something, to make the first generous gesture so he wouldn’t appear to be such a greedy, grabby beast. That was obviously his plan. Let Hannah Dancer make the first move. As in move out all her worldly goods.

      Ha!

      Let him wait. Hell would freeze over first.

      

      To say that Delaney spent that week not thinking about the Dancer house wouldn’t have been exactly true. He tried not to think

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