“I’d watch what I wore at midnight under a full moon, if I were you.” Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Dedication Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Prologue Chapter One Copyright

“I’d watch what I wore at midnight under a full moon, if I were you.”

As if to underscore his meaning, Delaney’s eyes traveled the length of Hannah’s pale silk wrapper—a slow and keen appraisal.

Hannah’s shoulders stiffened and her chin came up. “I’ll wear what I choose, Sheriff, and when I choose. How others react to that isn’t my concern.”

He shifted the shotgun slightly. The grim set of his mouth eased into a small smile. “That’s a fine notion, ma’am, and if you lived in a fairy-tale castle, I guess it would suffice. But you wander around like that here—” he angled his head, indicating her wrapper “—and you best be prepared to deal with the consequences.”

“Consequences!” Hannah was furious, rising from her perch on the railing as if it had caught fire. Why, the man was clearly accusing her of out-and-out seduction...!

Dear Reader,

Heroes come in many forms, as this month’s books prove—from the roguish knight and the wealthy marquess to the potent gunslinger and the handsome cowboy.

Longtime Harlequin Historical author Mary McBride has created a potent gunslinger-turned-sheriff in The Marriage Knot, and has given her hero a flaw: a wounded hand. With his smooth, almost shy demeanor and raw masculinity, Delaney is irresistible. He’s also reliable and in love (only he doesn’t know it yet), which is why old Ezra Dancer wills his house—and his young widow—to Delaney for safekeeping.

You must meet Will Brockett, the magnetically charming wrangler who uncharacteristically finds his soul mate in the tomboy who’s loved him from afar, in A Cowboy’s Heart by Liz Ireland. Fans of roguish knights will adore Ross Lion Sutherland and the lovely female clan leader he sets his sights on in Taming the Lion, the riveting new SUTHERLAND SERIES medieval novel by award-winning author Suzanne Barclay.

Rounding out the month is Nicholas Stanhope, the magnificent Marquess of Englemere in The Wedding Gamble, a heart-wrenching Regency tale of duty, desire—and danger—by newcomer and Golden Heart winner Julia Justiss.

Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historicals® novel.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Marriage Knot

Mary McBride

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARY McBRIDE is a former special education teacher who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and two young sons. She loves to correspond with readers, and invites them to write to her at: P.O. Box 4J1202, St. Louis, MO 63141.

For Joan C. Gunter

with affection and deep appreciation.

Prologue

Kansas, 1880

Until the morning Ezra Dancer shot himself, not much had happened in Newton. The railroad had come through in 1871, and for one wild summer the town was full of cowboys and longhorns, gamblers and quacks and whores. Newton was as sinful then as any Sodom or Gomorrah, but that honor—along with the cowboys and longhorns, the gamblers, quacks and whores—had long since passed west with the railroad to Dodge City.

Newton’s makeshift tents and rickety shacks had been replaced with painted clapboard and solid brick. Most of the saloons had given way to drier businesses—Kelleher’s Feed and Grain, the Merchant’s Bank, the First Methodist Church—and where Madam Lola’s canvas and cardboard brothel once had been, the citizens had built themselves a school.

As in most law-abiding towns, there was a jail for anyone who crossed the line, and there was a sheriff with a tough reputation to insure that nobody did.

Delaney.

His name was rarely spoken solo. Likely as not, it was mentioned in the same sentence as the Earps—Wyatt and Virgil and Morgan—and that reprobate dentist, Doc Holliday. But when the Earps and Holliday departed Kansas for the warmer clime and hotter prospects of Arizona in the autumn of ’79, Delaney stood alone.

Or, to be more exact, he lay alone on a cot in a back room of the U.S. Marshall’s office in Dodge City.

“Too bad you can’t come with us,” Morgan Earp had said in all sincerity, his eyes deliberately averted from Delaney’s wounded arm.

“He will, I expect, as soon as he mends,” Doc had said. “Isn’t that so, Delaney?”

Although he had nodded a grim yes to Doc, Delaney hadn’t followed them to Arizona after all, but had come—bad arm and a worse disposition—to Newton instead. And not a lot had happened in the six months since he’d taken the job of sheriff. There had been a brawl or two, and one domestic dispute that involved a horsewhip and a kitchen knife. But there hadn’t been a shooting until the morning Ezra Dancer put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

When his deputy awoke him with the news, Delaney’s first thought—like a searing bolt of lightning through his brain—was not about the deceased, but rather about the man’s wife.

No. Not a wife anymore.

Hannah Dancer was a widow now.

That notion shook Delaney to his core.

Chapter One

It was seven-thirty in the morning, already warm and promising pure Kansas heat, when Delaney walked the half mile out to Moccasin Creek where Ezra Dancer’s body had been discovered. A small group of men had already gathered under a big cottonwood, casting sidelong glances at the corpse, shrugging, pointing here and there before jamming their hands helplessly in their pockets and toeing the ground with their boots.

“Mornin’, Sheriff,” several of them murmured when Delaney joined their midst. He merely nodded in reply, his gaze immediately taking in the welltrodden terrain around the deceased. These old boys had probably been out here, shrugging and scratching their heads and feeling glad to be alive, since dawn, and while they were speculating on life in general and Dancer’s death in particular, their big boots had been crushing the grass and stomping out whatever possible footprints or evidence of foul play there might have been.

“Damned shame if you ask me,” Hub Watson said, swatting his hat against his leg. “Damned shame. What do you think, Sheriff?”

Delaney squatted down beside Ezra Dancer’s body, his sawed-off shotgun balanced across his knees. What did he think? He thought he’d seen enough death to last him several lifetimes and enough bloodshed to color his disposition, and even his soul, a deep crimson. He thought he was getting very tired of death, particularly the notion of his own, especially now that his arm had failed him. Bone tired. And he thought Ezra Dancer must’ve been ten kinds of fool and a coward to boot to stick a pistol in his mouth and fire it.

There was no question that it was Dancer—half his face was still intact—and not a doubt that the man had killed himself deliberately while he reclined against the rough trunk of the cottonwood. His pose seemed quite relaxed even now while his finger was stiff around the trigger. And damned if Delaney didn’t perceive half a hint of a smile on the man’s still lips.

“Ezra’s been very sick,” somebody said. “He took a turn for the worse just yesterday.”

Delaney glanced up to see Abel Fairfax, one of the boarders at the Dancers’ house, a man in his early fifties, about the same age as the deceased.

“Sick? I didn’t know that,” Delaney said, but even as he spoke the words he envisioned the difference six months had made in Dancer.

When Delaney had first come to town last December, Dancer—bushy—haired and barrel-chested—had come up to him at the Methodist lemonade social and pumped his wounded arm with such gusto that Delaney had had to grit his teeth to keep from screaming. And then there’d been that day in January when Dancer had taken a tumble on the icy street and Delaney just happened by in time to haul his bulky body out of the way of a wagon.

He studied the corpse now and realized that Dancer had probably dropped forty or fifty pounds in the past six months. There wasn’t so much blood on him that he couldn’t discern that Ezra’s belt was buckled two notches tighter than usual. The man’s hair appeared much grayer than Delaney recalled. It was pretty obvious that Dancer had been ill. But, of course, Delaney knew he hadn’t noticed that because, all truth to tell, he’d spent the last few months going out of his way to avoid Ezra Dancer.

No. Not Ezra.

Ezra’s wife.

“Somebody’ll have to tell Hannah.”

Whoever made that somber declaration, though, obviously wasn’t volunteering.

Delaney pried the pistol from Dancer’s cold grasp, checked to make sure the chambers were empty, then stood up.

“I guess that’s my job,” he said. “One of you men want to tell the undertaker to come out here and retrieve the body?”

“Sure, Sheriff.” Hub Watson spun on his heel, slapped his hat on and trotted back to town.

Delaney stood there a moment longer, wishing he were somewhere, someone else. He didn’t much relish telling women their men were dead. He’d always thought that the day would come when he’d be the bearer of that lethal news to Mattie about Wyatt, or to Lou when Morgan’s number was up. He suspected sometime in the future he still might have to do just that.

It was one of the reasons he’d never remarried or even gotten all that close to any woman. Not since he’d come back from the war to discover that the sweet girl he’d wed on the eve of his departure had hanged herself on hearing the news—wrong, as it turned out—that every soldier in Company H had been killed at Chickamauga. It wasn’t fair, not in the soldiering business or in the job of carrying out the law, to put a woman in that kind of jeopardy.

Hell, maybe he’d just never loved anybody the way that Wyatt and Morgan did, he thought. Maybe to them it was worth the risk. But once he joined up with the Earps again, Delaney knew he’d still probably be bringing bad news to Mattie or Lou one of these years.

But he never dreamed he’d be bringing such bad news to Hannah Dancer. And if he had dreamed it, he thought now, then he’d surely go to hell for merely entertaining the notion.

“Well, what do you say, Sheriff?”

Delaney had been so lost in his thoughts he hadn’t even realized that Abel Fairfax had spoken to him. “Pardon?”

“I said I’ll come along to the Dancer place with you. This is gonna be awful hard on Hannah.” Fairfax shook his gray head, repeating, “awful hard on her, purely awful.”

Delaney sighed as he stuck Ezra Dancer’s pistol into his belt, then settled his own weapon against his thigh. “I’d be much obliged for your help, Abel. Guess there’s no use in putting it off, is there?”

The older man shrugged, turning his gaze toward town. “Nope. No use.”

Delaney sighed again, then said, “Let’s go.”

The Dancers’ property took up a whole square block, nearly an acre of elm trees and shady grass and sunlit gardens. Ezra, or so the story went, had made his fortune outfitting—and perhaps even outwitting—hordes of gold-seekers in California back in the fifties. The house in Newton was said to be an exact replica of his previous abode in San Francisco, complete with arched doors and windows, fancy Greek columns, and fat, hand-carved balusters on the wide wraparound porch.

There was enough gingerbread on the building to decorate an entire village. Every outside nook and cranny was filled with some carved doodad or other. Even the trim had trimming of its own.

It was the damnedest house Delaney had ever seen. Not that he’d spent a lot of time looking at it, though. Whenever he passed by, on foot or on horseback, he trained his gaze elsewhere. Away. He was a practical man, if nothing else. Far from a dreamer, he saw no use in looking at what—or who—he couldn’t have.

“Well, Ezra won’t be climbing these anymore,” Abel Fairfax said as the two men made their way up the broad front steps. When one of the boards groaned beneath their feet, he added, “Hannah’s going to have to find herself a decent handyman now, I guess.”

Delaney didn’t respond. He’d never been inside this imposing residence before, and quite suddenly he felt as if he should have soaped up some after awakening that morning or at least put on a fresh shirt instead of the one he’d been wearing all week. He passed his fingertips along his jaw, vaguely wishing he had shaved.

Fairfax pulled open the screen door and motioned with one hand. “After you, Sheriff.”

Delaney stepped over the threshold and damned if the temperature didn’t feel as if it had dropped a dozen degrees in the distance of those few feet. The vestibule in which he found himself was papered in green brocade and dappled by sunshine pouring through the fanlight and through a stained glass window on the landing just ahead.

He took in a long breath, sweetened by eucalyptus and cloves and maybe a tad of cinnamon. Until now, the finest place he’d ever seen had been Corina White’s fancy house in Fort Smith. Compared to that, the Dancer house looked like Buckingham Palace. He glanced down at his boots, knowing they weren’t shiny, but hoping at least they weren’t clotted with dirt and that his spurs weren’t tearing up the Persian carpet.

He heard soft conversation to his right, then looked into the dining room where the plump little schoolteacher and the thin fellow who worked at the bank—both of them boarders here at the Dancers‘—sat across from each other at a large table, sipping coffee and taking bites of toast. It was still breakfast time. The thought surprised Delaney. He felt as if he’d been up half the day already.

“Hannah usually doesn’t come down till nine or so.” Abel Fairfax stood at the foot of the staircase, craning his neck upwards as if he could look around the landing and down the hallway on the second floor. “Hannah,” he called softly. “Hannah, are you up?”

Delaney checked the big inlaid clock on the vestibule’s far wall. It tinkled out a quarter chime just then. Eight-fifteen. Maybe Hannah Dancer was still asleep. Maybe he’d go on back to the jailhouse, have a cup of coffee and collect himself, then return in half an hour or so. Or maybe...

“Yes, Abel. I’m up.”

Her voice preceded her down the staircase like a warm, luxurious breeze.

“What in the world is going on at this hour of the morning?” A tiny trill of laughter—like the music of wind chimes—punctuated her question, then there was a flurry of bright silk and a glimpse of a delicate slipper before Hannah herself appeared on the landing.

Delaney’s stomach clenched when he saw that she wasn’t dressed yet, but wearing a gayly flowered wrapper that clung to every natural curve of her, and her hair wasn’t done up yet in its customary auburn knot. Instead it fell in a cascade of damp curls over her shoulders and bodice. She stood dabbing at those curls, almost caressing them with a small towel while sunlight through the stained glass window decked her from lovely head to dainty toe in rubies and sapphires and emeralds.

“Abel, what...?”

Even as she spoke her gaze latched on Delaney at the foot of the stairs. “Sheriff?”

Their eyes locked, and—as always—Delaney could feel his stomach tighten again when he perceived the quick jolt of desire in Hannah Dancer’s expression. Then, just as quickly, the desire was replaced by a different sort of recognition. In rapid succession came blinking bafflement and finally white, wide-eyed fear.

She knew, Delaney thought. Not a word had been spoken, but somehow she knew!

The towel fell from her hand as Hannah wobbled and reached out blindly for the bannister. Delaney propped his shotgun against the wall and took the flight of stairs in three long strides to keep her from tumbling down. Hannah sagged in his arms like a doll stitched in silk and stuffed with the downiest of feathers.

By now the schoolteacher and the banker had abandoned their breakfast and were standing, wide-eyed as well, in the vestibule with Abel Fairfax.

“Good Heavens! Mrs. Dancer’s fainted,” the young woman cried.

“I’ll go get Doctor Soames,” the banker quickly volunteered, and he was out the door before anybody could say it probably wasn’t necessary, and the door had hardly closed behind him before the plump little schoolteacher rucked up her skirts and came charging up the stairs.

“Thank heaven you were here, Sheriff Delaney,” she said. “My stars! Mrs. Dancer might have fallen and broken her poor neck, otherwise.”

If it weren’t for him, Delaney thought, and whatever she had witnessed in his expression, Hannah wouldn’t have fainted in the first place. “Maybe you could show me where I might put her down, ma’am.”

“Down the hall and to the left,” Abel Fairfax called. “You go ahead and show him to Hannah’s room, Miss Green.”

“Yes. All right. Sheriff, if you’ll just follow me.”

She bustled ahead of Delaney, until farther down the hallway, she opened a door. “In here,” she said. “You can put her on the bed.”

Delaney angled Hannah Dancer’s lax body through the doorway and lowered her gently onto the huge carved walnut bed that dominated the room.

Miss Green produced a linen hanky, moistened it in the washbowl, and began to smooth it across Hannah’s forehead, crooning a little and murmuring soft words of comfort.

Feeling helpless at best, Delaney just stood there. Rather than stare at Hannah’s fragile form on the bed, he let his gaze wander around the room. Her room, to all appearances. Hers alone. There wasn’t a single masculine touch he could discern. Not a pipe rack or an errant boot or so much as a cuff link on the dresser.

Instead there were silver hairbrushes, delicate tortoise combs, perfume bottles that captured the sunlight in prisms and sent it spilling across the carpet and over stray garments of cream-colored silk tossed here and there. The lamps were painted with roses to match the paper on the wall. The whole room, in fact, smelled like a rose garden. Lush and sweet and... Well, pink. No, not pink. It was richer than that. It smelled rose. A rich, deep and full-bodied rose.

The door to the wardrobe stood slightly ajar, and Delaney could see yard upon yard of fine silks and serges. He saw an inch or two of green plaid and recognized it as the dress Hannah had worn the evening he’d met her at the lemonade social. He remembered how the deep green garment had set off her eyes and how the gloss of her red hair had rivalled the shine of the taffeta.

And then he’d been introduced to her husband. Ezra had shaken his hand with great gusto, and Delaney had hardly looked at Hannah again. Until now.

God almighty. He had no business here in her room, he told himself, then strode to the door, down the hall and down the stairs without looking back. If Doc Soames hadn’t been coming through the front door just then, Delaney would’ve been gone.

“What’s this I hear about Ezra?” the elderly doctor asked. “Dead by his own hand?”

“It looks that way,” Delaney said.

Abel Fairfax joined them. “He took a turn for the worse yesterday, Doc. You know how sick he was. I expect Ezra wanted to go on his own terms, not wait till he was too weak to open his eyes much less pull a trigger.”

The doctor nodded somberly. “And Hannah? Have you told her yet?”

“She knows,” Delaney said.

“Fainted dead away,” Abel added. “She’s upstairs, lying down.”

“Well, in my experience it’s best to put a goodly amount of sleep between bad news and reckoning with it.” The doctor patted his black bag. “I’ll just go on up and give her enough laudanum to let her get a healing rest.”

Delaney almost stopped him. In his opinion, facing tragedy was far better than sleeping through it. He sensed that Hannah would agree. But then it wasn’t for him to say, was it?

“Well, I guess that’s that,” he said. “I’ll be getting back to the office now.”

“Thanks for your help, Sheriff,” Abel said. “I’ll be sure and let Hannah know.”

“That’s not necessary, Abel. You just give her my sympathies, will you?”

“I’ll do that, Delaney. I’ll surely do that.”

The undertaker’s buckboard rattled past Delaney as he walked back to the sheriff’s office. Ezra Dancer’s body lay in back, covered by a dark wool blanket.

. “Dum shame,” Seth Moran called down from the wagon seat as he passed.

“Yep.”

There wasn’t anything more to say, so Delaney veered left, out of the cloud of dust the undertaker kicked up. Once inside his office, he aimed his hat at the hook on the wall and propped his shotgun against the desk before he settled in his chair. It felt like noon, but it was barely nine o’clock. Death did that, he mused. Made time feel different. Slowed it down. Speeded it up. He wasn’t sure which.

In the war, some battles seemed as if they were going on for several days when in fact they only lasted from dawn until dusk. Others, when they were over and the casualties counted, seemed to have taken place in the blink of an eye.

Hell, it seemed like months ago that Ezra Dancer had dropped by the jailhouse, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat just to chew the fat with Delaney, to ask him how he liked Newton after his six-month stint as sheriff, if he meant to stay or if he thought he’d be pulling up stakes once his year’s contract ran out. But that visit had taken place a mere two or three weeks ago. And Ezra hadn’t even struck him as all that thin or ill.

Now the man was dead by his own hand. Delaney closed his eyes a minute, refusing to entertain any thought of what he might have missed in the man’s conversation or an expression of hopelessness he might have failed to recognize on the older man’s face.

The truth was that Ezra had seemed just fine to him. He wasn’t a damned mind reader, after all, and he’d been directly responsible for enough deaths himself over the years to know that in this case he wasn’t to blame at all, either for what he did or failed to do.

Sick or not, Ezra Dancer struck Delaney as nothing but a damn fool to leave a woman like Hannah a minute, a single second, a mere blink, before he absolutely had to.

Chapter Two

Hannah wasn’t sure if she was alive or dead. Sometimes it felt as if she were deep underwater, struggling against strong currents, not drowning so much as already drowned, breathing water now rather than air. Then sometimes it felt as if she were soaring, lighter than air itself, invisible as wind.

Sometimes she thought that she was in her bed because she recognized the smell of sunshine in the linen sheets and felt the familiar caress of her favorite pillow, the way it tucked so perfectly between her shoulder and her chin.

Her bed, perhaps, yet every time she attempted to open her eyes, her room seemed different. It kept changing. Once the curtains were open and there was sunlight on the elm outside her window. Then it turned somehow to moonlight. And then the curtains were drawn tight, and the only light was the pale flicker from the lamp on the nightstand.

There was always someone in the rocking chair across the room. Once it was Miss Green. Hannah saw her clearly. Once it was Abel Fairfax. For a moment it seemed to be Ezra.

Ezra. Something about Ezra.

Then she envisioned Delaney, tall and somber at the foot of the stairs. His arms were going around her and she could feel the rough touch of his wool vest and all the warmth beneath it. There was the sudden scrape of his cheek against hers.

Hannah tried to speak, but she was under water again and the current was stronger than before, pulling her down relentlessly.

“There,” whispered Miss Green. “There, there. Just sleep now, you poor dear. You’ll feel ever so much better in the morning.”

Two days later, sitting beside Ezra’s casket in the darkly draped front parlor of the Moran Brothers’ Funerary Establishment, Hannah had to remind herself once again that Ezra was no longer in pain. She’d watched the cancer eating away at him, dulling the light in his eyes, creasing his forehead, and weighing down the corners of his mouth, especially when he thought she wasn’t looking.

But now he had freed himself of all that agony, hadn’t he? Rather than allow his illness to waste him away over the course of the next few months, Ezra had mastered his own fate. He had mastered his own death. Above all else, he had vanquished the terrible pain. That alone should have given her great consolation.

Hannah edged a hand beneath the folds of her black veil to wipe away one more tear.

How like Ezra to take fate in hand. His suicide shouldn’t have surprised her. She should have been prepared. She should have read it on his face the night before he shot himself or tasted goodbye on his lips when he kissed her good-night.

Or perhaps somewhere deep inside she had suspected Ezra’s intentions, yet had chosen to deny if not completely ignore her knowledge. Life without Ezra, after all, was unthinkable. They’d been together fourteen years, half of Hannah’s life.

“Mrs. Dancer, please accept my deepest sympathies on your loss: If there’s anything I can do for you—anything at all—you only have to say so.”

Through her veil, Hannah recognized the brown checkered suit and polished brogans of Henry Allen, the young banker who’d been boarding at her house for the past year. She hadn’t seen Henry since Ezra’s death, having kept to her room until the house was quiet and all the boarders were asleep. Now the young man stood gazing at her with his brown puppy eyes. If he’d had a tail, Hannah thought, he’d be wagging it. Instead he was dragging the brim of his bowler hat through his fingers while he rocked back and forth in his glossy shoes.

“Thank you, Henry. It was kind of you to come. Ezra would be very glad and grateful.”

His puppy eyes grew darker, more glossy. His voice lowered to the intimacy of a whisper. “Shall I wait and see you safely home?”

The boy’s sweet on you, Hannah. Suddenly she heard Ezra’s voice as clearly as if he were standing right behind her, chuckling as he always did whenever Henry Allen said something particularly syrupy, or something punctuated by undisguised sighs.

Can’t say I blame him, either. You’re a fine-looking woman, Hannah Dancer. You don’t see it in yourself, honey, but others surely do.

A chill edged along her spine, and Hannah sat up a little straighter. “Thank you, Henry. I expect to be here quite a while until everyone’s paid their respects.” She looked across the parlor where her other boarder, Florence Green, sat with a teacup and saucer balanced on her knee. “Miss Green’s been here a long time. She looks a bit tired to me. You might offer to see her home, Henry. I’d consider it a favor.”

He sighed a rather boyish, recalcitrant sigh.

“I’d appreciate it enormously,” Hannah urged. “Oh, and you might leave a light burning in the vestibule for me, too. I believe I forgot to do that earlier.”

“Are you quite sure I can’t...?”

“No, thank you, Henry.”

Hannah let out a small sigh of her own when he walked away, and was heartened, even relieved, when the young man approached Miss Green and apparently offered to escort her home. The plump schoolteacher put aside her teacup, then rose and took Henry’s arm quite somberly. Then, after a last lingering glance toward Hannah, the young man escorted his companion out the door.

People came and went during the next few hours. People who were sorry, shocked, saddened, oh so sad. By ten o’clock Hannah was nearly numb and thankful, not only that her veil hid her reddened eyes, but that it disguised an inappropriate yawn or two. She hadn’t had a good sleep since she woke from her laudanum-induced stupor two days ago. When the final mourner shook her hand and murmured his sympathies, Hannah was eager to get home, to take off her black bonnet, her black dress and stockings and shoes, and to fall into a deep and unworried sleep.

“Looks like that’s it, Miz Dancer.” One of the Moran brothers—Hannah wasn’t sure if it was Seth or Samuel—plucked his watch from his pocket and clicked it open. “Ten o’clock. Pretty late. Your husband had a lot of friends.”

“Yes, he did.” Hannah wasn’t sure what to do or say next. She’d never had to preside in a funeral parlor before.

“I’ll send a boy around tomorrow with all these flowers,” Moran said, gesturing toward the many vases that decorated the room. “Just let me lock up and I’ll see you home.”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Moran. It’s only a little way. I’ll be safe enough.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m very sure. After such a throng of people, I think I’d prefer being alone for a while. Will you be picking me up tomorrow for the ride to the cemetery?”

“Yes, ma‘am. Nine o’clock, if that suits you.”

“Nine will be fine. Thank you, Mr. Moran. Thank you for everything. I’ll see you then.”

Hannah took a last look at the closed casket and felt her tears welling up again. Ezra was dead. The notion kept surprising her somehow. The hurt kept feeling fresh. Raw. She wondered how long it would be before she truly accepted the fact that Ezra was gone, that she was alone.

A soft breeze riffled her black satin skirt and bonnet when she stepped outside onto the planked sidewalk. The night was warm. She breathed deeply, cleansing herself of the smell of funeral bouquets and the lingering camphor and cedar that scented the mourners’ best clothes.

Beyond the brass carriage lights that flanked the Moran Brothers’ doorway, Newton was bathed in silver moonlight. Even the dirt of Main Street glistened here and there where moonbeams pooled. Down the street, Hannah could see the elm-shadowed facade of her own house. There was a lamp burning in the vestibule, turning the stained-glass fanlight over the door to glittering jewels.

For a moment everything was beautiful, almost magical. Then Hannah remembered Ezra was dead, and the beauty of the night seemed to mock her. Everything silver suddenly seemed to tarnish. A feeling of such loneliness engulfed her that she had to reach out to the hitching rail to steady her liquid knees.

“Kinda late for a lady to be walking home alone.”

Delaney’s voice—its deep, rough music—came out of the darkness. Hannah would have known it anywhere. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the glint of moonlight on the badge pinned to his black vest and the dull sheen of his ever-present shotgun.

“I’m sorry about Ezra, Mrs. Dancer.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.” Hannah stepped off the sidewalk, into the street. Without asking permission, Delaney fell into step beside her, so close at first that their sleeves brushed, causing both of them to veer slightly—Delaney to his right, Hannah to her left—leaving a foot or so of moonlit road between them.

“I understand you were the one who kept me from pitching down the stairs the other day. I’m very grateful, Sheriff.”

“It was nothing,” he said, his gaze directed straight ahead. “Glad I was there to help.”

They walked in silence then. Well, not total silence. There was the clash of piano music coming from several saloons behind them, a bright peal of laughter drifting out a window somewhere, and a chorus of crickets on the edge of town. Hannah’s satin skirts rustled softly while Delaney’s spurs kept up a gentle, metallic beat.

When they passed the jailhouse, Hannah caught sight of the chair where this man usually sat, shotgun at hand, casually keeping watch over the town. It seemed odd to stare so boldly at that chair now. Ordinarily, when she walked into town, she riveted her gaze on the opposite side of the street. The sight of him forever flustered her.

They were halfway up the flagstone sidewalk to her house when Delaney halted.

“I’ll wait till you’re safe inside.”

For a moment Hannah wanted to stop, too, rather than continue, alone, toward the huge house. It was happening again—that magnetic pull she always felt whenever she was near this man. She’d been intensely aware of it from their very first meeting last winter. At the first, surprising sound of his well-deep voice and the sight of his serious face with those frank hazel eyes, Hannah’s heart had quickened inside her.

Then, after the lemonade social to welcome the new sheriff to Newton, there had been the Valentine’s Day dance and a similar tug at her heartstrings seeing Delaney across a crowded room. It had confused her in the past, even irritated her, but now it shamed her—feeling that same pull—with Ezra just a few days dead.

“Good night, Delaney.” She said it almost stiffly as she forced herself to walk the final yards to the front steps, and then up to the door. With her hand on the knob, Hannah was tempted to turn and take one last look at the tall man in his black vest, black trousers, and boots. She feared, though, that if she did, she might turn to a pillar of salt.

So she went inside and softly closed the door behind her.

Delaney didn’t go back to his room at the National Hotel. Instead he pushed through the doors of the Longhorn Saloon and settled himself at a table in the back. In a matter of minutes, Ria Flowers had brought him a tall, wet glass of beer and had planted her bountiful self in the chair next to his.

“I haven’t seen you for over a week, Delaney, darlin’. Don’t tell me you’re loving up some other girl.” She leaned forward, a seductive smile on her redglossed lips and a significant amount of cleavage shimmering above her crimson laced corset.

Delaney found himself oddly and uncharacteristically immune. Ria was a beautiful young woman still on the spring side of twenty, blond and blue-eyed and finely constructed even without the unnatural allure of her tight-laced corset. Of all the women who made their livings in the saloons of Newton, she still had a softness about her, not the sulky demeanor of most whores.

It had become Delaney’s habit over the last several years, as he went from one wild town to another in Kansas, to take his pleasures in each place with just one woman. So, there’d been Joy in Abilene, Josette in Wichita, Fanny McKay in Dodge, and now pretty young Ria Flowers in Newton. It was a sort of monogamy, he thought, unsanctified as it was, unholy perhaps, but ultimately a necessity Delaney could not deny or do without.

Besides, since he never intended to get married again, it wouldn’t have done to get cozy with a proper single lady who had... well... expectations. Not that it was always easy walking away from a whore he’d had an affection for, but it was legal. Unlike Wyatt and Doc, he’d never lived as man and wife with such a woman.

In Delaney’s view, his two friends might just as well have been married to their paramours for all the grief they cost one another. He’d seen Mattie crying more than once over Wyatt. And if Doc’s Kate never shed a tear, still he thought he could read chapter and verse of sadness in her eyes.

“You tired of me?” Ria asked him now, her pink tongue glossing over her lips and her fingers smoothing up and down his arm.

“Just tired, honey.” Delaney took a long draft of the warm beer in front of him, then set it down again. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

It had to do, he thought, with a red-haired widow whose face and form seemed to have taken up permanent residence in his mind these last few days. The smart thing to do now, he knew, would be to take Ria upstairs to bed, to lose himself if only for a night in her arms and her giving flesh. That was, after all, why he’d come to the Longhorn instead of returning to his room.

But he didn’t feel particularly smart at the moment, and somehow being with Ria Flowers didn’t seem like such a good way to rid his mind of Hannah Dancer. It struck him as dishonest. Damned if he’d ever coupled honesty and lovemaking in the same breath. And damned if he’d ever turned his back on a warm and willing female.

He drained his glass and set it on the table with a thump. “I think I’ll just turn in for the night,” he told her.

“Well, if that’s what you want.” Ria’s lower lip slid out. Worry flickered in her eyes. “I could come with you to the hotel, Delaney. Harry wouldn’t mind.” She angled her head toward the bartender. “Here. There. It’s all the same to him as long as he gets his cut.”

He stood up, reached in his pocket for a silver dollar, and pressed it into her hand. “Harry doesn’t need to take a chunk of this, honey. 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 while she hems and haws over stationery and ink.” He took a sip of his fresh coffee, eying her over the rim. “You’re looking better, Hannah.”

She had taken her customary seat at the foot of the table by then and poured her own coffee cup to the brim. “Do you think so, Abel? I feel as if I’ve aged five years in the past five days.”

“It’s that black frock. You ought to go back to wearing your regular clothes. Put some color on, my dear. Ezra would be the very first one to tell you that. I’m certain.”

Hannah smiled. “He would, wouldn’t he? Ezra never much cared for me in black. He was partial to greens and blues.”

While Hannah sipped her coffee, Abel finished his oatmeal. Then he dabbed his napkin at his thick gray mustache, folded it carefully, and returned it to its silver napkin ring, which was engraved with an ornate D for Dancer.

He leaned back in his chair and flattened his palms on the table. “Hannah,” he said. “Ezra left a will.”

She blinked, surprised as much by his serious, rather official tone of voice as she was by his statement.

“I wanted to let you get your bearings before I mentioned it,” he added.

“Thank you, Abel. I’m grateful.” Hannah wasn’t all that sure she had her bearings, but at least it was encouraging that Abel thought so.

She’d always admired him. A widower who’d never had children, he’d come to Newton about the same time Hannah and Ezra had, hoping to start a newspaper in this up-and-coming cattle town. Unfortunately, though, it was the cattle that upped and went after a single wild and newsworthy year. Instead of publishing his own paper then, Abel Fairfax spent most of his time writing letters to the editors of other papers and composing long-winded articles for eastern magazines.

“I studied law back in Ohio,” Abel said now. “I don’t know if you’re aware of that or not.”

“You’ve mentioned it, I’m sure.” Hannah noticed now that Abel’s brow was even more wrinkled than usual and his lips were pursed thoughtfully, worrisomely, beneath his shaggy mustache. “Is there something wrong, Abel? Something about Ezra’s will?”

He didn’t answer her directly, but instead said, “Ezra named me his executor. I’d like to read you the will in my office, Hannah. As soon as possible. Not here, though. Do you feel up to walking downtown around three this afternoon?”

Now Hannah frowned. Did she feel up to it? She honestly didn’t know. But then she supposed the sooner she attended to legal issues regarding the house—which was, after all, in Ezra’s name—the sooner she could get on with her life. Not that it would be all that different from her past, she mused. She’d have the house. She’d have her boarders. Only Ezra’s absence would make a difference.

“Three o’clock will be fine, Abel.”

“Good.” He stood up and headed toward the front door. “I’ll see you then.” Halfway out the door, he paused. “And don’t worry, Hannah. Don’t you worry for a single minute.”

The screen door closed behind him.

Worry? Hannah thought. Worry? Why, it hadn’t even occurred to her.

By three o’clock that afternoon the big June sun had beaten down on Newton for eight straight hours and raised the temperature to ninety-two degrees in the shade. Since they hadn’t had rain in several weeks, the unpaved street was dustier than usual.

It was so dusty that Hannah felt like a black broom sweeping toward town in her mourning garb. She wondered how long it would be before the planked sidewalks stretched past the dry goods store, making her walks into town more pleasant not to mention cleaner.

When she lifted her skirt to step onto the sidewalk, several gentlemen tipped their hats and murmured their condolences. Hulda Staub, the wife of the mayor, was exiting the dry goods store just as Hannah passed, and the monumental matron immediately dropped her packages and wound her arms around Hannah, drawing her into a surprisingly tight embrace.

“My dear Mrs. Dancer. How I admire your courage in the face of your loss. How brave of you to be out and about so soon. Lord knows if my Herman passed, I’d barely be able to leave the confines of my bed much less my house.”

Caught in Hulda Staub’s flesh embrace, Hannah wasn’t exactly sure whether she was being praised or censored. She didn’t have time to decide, however, before the heavy-set woman continued.

“Well, now, you must come to our Ladies’ Sewing Circle, my dear, on alternate Wednesdays. I insist. We ladies mean to see that you’re not lonely.”

Hannah had lived in Newton for nine years without ever being invited into this exclusive little group. She had always assumed the ladies disapproved of her because she was so much younger than Ezra and also because, in those early years, she so obviously lacked some of the social polish she had later acquired. Deep in her heart, though, Hannah had a suspicion that these so-called ladies of Newton saw right through her and took her for the working girl she once had been.

She didn’t know how to respond to Hulda Staub’s invitation. And, to add to her dilemma, Hannah despised sewing and couldn’t imagine a worse way of spending her time than convening with a group of matrons, all poking needles through linen while rolling their eyes and wagging their tongues and making soft little tsk-ing sounds.

“Thank you, Mrs. Staub,” she said. “It’s very kind of you. Perhaps once I’m feeling a bit stronger...”

“Time, my dear,” the woman said, seeming to prefer her own voice and opinions to Hannah’s. “Time heals all. Shall we expect you next Wednesday?”

“Well, I...”

“Splendid!” Hulda Staub gathered up her packages. “Oh, I nearly forgot to tell you. Mr. Galt just received a lovely bolt of black moire at the emporium. You really must take a look at it.”

“Well, I...”

“Good day, my dear.”

Before Hannah could reply, the mayor’s wife was already bustling away. On her way, Hannah thought, to accost some other unsuspecting citizen. Then she immediately chastised herself for even entertaining such an uncharitable notion. No doubt Mrs. Staub meant well.

But, in the hope of avoiding any other well-meaning, solicitous folk, Hannah surveyed both sides of Main Street. The few people she saw were minding their own business while doing their best to keep to the shady portion of the sidewalk. Then, although she hadn’t planned it, her gaze came to rest on the empty chair in front of the sheriff’s office, and her heart promptly fluttered at the sight.

“Oh, Hannah,” she muttered under her breath. It wasn’t right, that feathery feeling inside her. It hadn’t been right when Ezra was alive. It was worse now that he was barely in his grave. It was downright wrong. Perhaps even sinful. Probably so. She ripped her gaze away from that beguiling chair just in time to see Henry Allen bound off the sidewalk in front of the bank.

“Mrs. Dancer,” he said breathlessly after sprinting across the street, kicking up dust in his wake. “You shouldn’t be out in this infernal heat. Why, you’ll melt away for certain.”

“I hardly think so, Henry. Unless, of course, you believe I’m made of snow or ice.”

His smooth-shaven cheeks flushed. “Oh, no. That would be an insult to one as sweet as you.” He crooked his arm in invitation. “May I escort you to Mrs. Tyndall’s for a lemonade?”

Instead of feeling flattered by his offer, Hannah was irritated. The silly young man. Why didn’t he aim those Cupid’s darts and sunbeams at someone who’d truly appreciate them? Florence Green, for example. But Henry appeared to regard the spinster schoolteacher—if he regarded her at all—as little more than a fixture in the house, a piece of furniture, a hall clock in the shape of a woman or a table draped in feminine attire.

“Thank you, Henry. That’s very kind, but I have an appointment at three o’clock.”

It suddenly occurred to Hannah that between Mrs. Staub’s aggressive attentions and now Henry’s puppyish devotions, she was probably late for her appointment with Abel. Very late.

“Oh, dear. What time is it, Henry?”

He yanked his watch from his vest pocket. “Ten past three,” he said.

“Oh, dear.” Gathering up her black skirt, Hannah started down the sidewalk toward Abel’s office. “If you’ll excuse me, Henry, I’m very, very late.”

“May I see you to your destination?” he called.

Almost sprinting now herself, Hannah just waved her hand in what she hoped was a polite but firm gesture of refusal.

Being late for the reading of Ezra’s will was hardly an auspicious beginning of her new life of independence and responsibility. On the other hand, it struck her as a mere formality. What difference did it make? There was no one else in Ezra’s life except her. His parents were long dead, and since he’d been an only child there were no brothers or sisters to be remembered in his will. No long-lost cousins or uncles or aunts. Nary a niece or nephew. As far as Hannah knew, for the past fourteen years, there had been no one in his life but her.

Abel’s office was located on the second floor above Hub Watson’s saddlery and leather goods. Hannah dragged her heavy black skirts up the outside stairs, all the while dreading being met by deep frown lines on Abel’s brow and a disapproving droop to his mustache. She stood on the landing a moment to catch her breath and to steel herself for a possible reprimand for her tardiness, then she knocked on the door, just below the brass plaque that proclaimed “A. Fairfax, Attorney-at-Law, Journalist, Scribe.”

“Come in, Hannah.” Abel’s voice came through the closed door, and she was relieved that he didn’t sound unreasonably perturbed or even slightly impatient.

She opened the door and stepped into what could only be described as a dim, dusty maze of books and journals. All four walls were lined with bookcases. More bookcases stood in front of the windows, all but blotting out the light of day. Dozens of bookcases. Crammed bookcases. There were books atop the bookcases, and towers of books on the floor. A veritable librarian’s nightmare. What little sunlight that managed somehow to filter through the windows was riddled with motes of dust.

Hannah’s skirt brushed against one literary tower and set it to swaying precariously. She was leery of taking one more step for fear of starting a domino effect that would scuttle Abel’s entire office in mere moments, so she stood still just inside the door, breathing the musty air and letting her eyes become accustomed to the dim interior.

And that was when she noticed, quite suddenly, that, in addition to all the books, there was a shotgun leaning against a bookcase and, on the far side of the office, someone—Delaney!—was leaning against a window frame.

Abel rose from behind his cluttered desk. “That’s all right, Hannah. It’s an office, not a china shop. There’s nothing that’ll break. Here.” He chuckled softly as he swept a newspaper off a chair and gestured for her to be seated.

Hannah hesitated. Her heart was in her throat now, getting in the way of speech. “Shall I... Would you prefer if I waited outside until you’ve finished your business with the sheriff?” she asked.

“No. That won’t be necessary. Sit. Come on. Sit right here.” Abel glanced over his shoulder. “Sheriff, why don’t you take that other chair. Just shove those pamphlets onto the floor.”

Delaney’s spurs made a soft music when he crossed the room. Then, when he took the chair beside hers, she could have sworn the temperature in Abel’s office went up several significant degrees. Out of the corner of her eye, she was intensely aware of Delaney’s long legs, even the ropy veins on the backs of his hands and the tanned cords of muscle below his rolled-up sleeves. Before she realized it, she had reached out to grasp a pamphlet on Abel’s desk and had begun fanning herself with it.

“I’ll make this as quick as I can, Hannah. I know it’s uncomfortable in here,” Abel said.

Uncomfortable, yes. But it wasn’t just the heat, Hannah thought. Why was it she could never breathe properly when Delaney was around? Her chest felt constricted, as if her corset had shrunk a size or two.

“Thank you, Abel.” She glanced to her left, tried to mount a tiny smile, then asked, “I suppose the sheriff is here as a witness?”

“Well, no. Not exactly, Hannah. Ezra’s will was witnessed a month ago by me and Mayor Staub. Not that Herman knows what’s in it. He just signed and certified that Ezra was competent and in his right mind.” Abel’s gaze moved slowly and deliberately from Hannah to Delaney and back. “Which he was, I think you’ll agree, in spite of his pain. Competent, I mean, and in his right mind.”

“Of course he was,” she said with more than a little starchiness. “Ezra was the sanest man I’ve ever known.”

Delaney merely shrugged.

“All right then.” Abel picked up a single folded sheet of paper. “I’ll just read this in Ezra’s own words. It’s pretty simple. No wherefore’s or furthermore’s or other legal mumbo jumbo. Just his final wishes.”

Read it! Hannah wanted to scream. Let this be done so I can go home. Home where it’s cool and I can breathe again.

After unfolding the paper, Abel stared at it a moment and then began to read. “These are my worldly goods. A house located on the corner of Main and Madison Streets in Newton, Kansas, and all the contents therein. There aren’t any secret bank accounts or railroad certificates hidden in drawers or books. There’s a thousand dollars in gold, Hannah, and you know where that is. It’s yours now.”

Abel peered over the will at Hannah. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask if she understood. Hannah nodded in reply. She knew where the gold was. Over the years Ezra had a habit of stashing coins in the pair of French porcelain ewers on the mantel in the front parlor. Since she was the one who dusted there and had to move the heavy vases, it didn’t surprise her a bit that the total came to a thousand dollars.

Abel cleared his throat and continued. “As for the furniture and all the other contents of the house, they’re yours, too, Hannah.”

She nodded again, unsurprised, for she had chosen nearly every stick of furniture and every rug, plate, picture and pillowcase there. “Fill up our house, honey,” Ezra had said. And so she had.

To her left now, Hannah was aware of Delaney shifting restlessly in his chair. He seemed as eager to leave as she was.

“About the house,” Abel read. “I’ve given this considerable thought. Delaney, you saved my life last January when my feet went out from under me in front of the bank and the McCarthy boys’ wagon just about backed over me. Maybe you don’t even recollect what you did.”

Abel glanced toward the sheriff. “You remember that?” he asked.

“Sorta.”

Hannah had a vague memory of a bruise on Ezra’s arm sometime last winter. It might have been January. “It’s nothing,” he’d told her. “Slipped on the confounded ice.” But he hadn’t said a word about any peril or apparent rescue.

Abel read on. “You said it was nothing then, yanking me out of harm’s way like that. But it wasn’t nothing to me. I was dying anyway, but at least you kept me from dying a cripple or an amputee. I’m grateful to you, Delaney. And so I’m leaving you my house.”

Hannah stopped fanning herself. “The house? What was that about the house, Abel?” Surely she hadn’t heard him correctly. Surely Ezra hadn’t meant...

“That’s what Ezra wanted, Hannah. The furniture and everything is yours, but the house goes to Delaney here.”

“Why, that’s...that’s...” She couldn’t think of a word to describe her complete bafflement. “It’s absurd. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe not,” Abel said. “But that’s the way Ezra wanted it.”

The temperature in the office suddenly seemed to increase tenfold, making Hannah feel sick and dizzy. There was some mistake. That was it. Some terrible mix-up. She was certain of that. She’d go home and wait for Abel. He’d explain it then, and they’d laugh at her misunderstanding and everything would be all right.

She stood so fast that she had to grasp the edge of the desk to keep 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 about it. Every time the notion cropped up in his brain, he did his damnedest to ignore it. The trouble was that it cropped up so often that trying to ignore it was actually thinking about it.

After he’d considered every angle of the absurdity of the bequest, he got to thinking about what a stroke of good fortune it was. Pure luck. Pure dumb luck. But things like that happened. He knew they did. Why not to him?

Just a few years ago in Abilene a cowhand had been nearly killed in a saloon brawl, then was nursed back to health and happiness by a whore named Ruby Tree. It turned out that he was some rich English duke or earl or something, and—for her nursing skills—Ruby Tree was now the Duchess of Something on Trent.

Things like that happened. Delaney had saved Ezra Dancer’s life. That was a fact. Why shouldn’t he inherit his house?

So, after not thinking about it all week, Delaney found himself knocking on Abel Fairfax’s door late one afternoon, determined to resolve this inheritance one way or another.

“I figured I’d be seeing you sometime soon,” Abel said, gesturing to a chair littered with papers. “Sit down, Delaney. What’s on your mind?”

The sheriff sat, his shotgun balanced across his knees. He cleared his throat. “I don’t think you have to be a confounded lawyer or even a genius to figure out what’s on my mind, Abel.”

“No. I suppose not.”

“What the devil was Dancer thinking?”

Abel shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not like he didn’t provide for Hannah, you know. The contents of that house are worth plenty.”

“Yeah, but...”

“Plus there’s cash,” Abel added.

“I know that, but...”

“What, then? You feel like you’re stealing from the widows’ and orphans’ fund or something?”

“Maybe.” Delaney shifted in the chair. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

“Turn it down, then.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it.”

“And?”

“I’m still considering it,” Delaney said. “I just thought you might have some advice.”

“Talk to Hannah.”

The sheriff blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if your conscience is bothering you so much over this, then talk to Hannah and see if you can’t resolve it somehow between the two of you.”

The suggestion, logical as it was, took Delaney completely by surprise. He’d spent so many months avoiding Ezra Dancer’s wife that the thought of seeking her out now—intentionally!—for conversation struck him as preposterous. And what the hell would he say to her anyway that wouldn’t make him sound even more foolish than he felt?

Sorry about your house, ma’Vam. But a will’s a will, you know. Legal and all that. Plus, a man would have to be a total fool, a stumbling idiot in fact, to turn his back on such good fortune.

“Talk to her,” Abel said again.

“All right.” Delaney stood up. “I’ll do that. I’ll do just that. Thanks, Abel.”

Someone was knocking on the front door with such force and persistence Hannah was sure the wood was splintering beneath that big fist.

Where the devil was Nancy? she wondered. That dratted girl was never where she was supposed to be. After another series of thunderous bangs, she put her teacup down and went to the door herself. She muttered a curse as she jerked it open.

“Oh.”

Delaney was so tall that she found herself staring into the knot of his black silk tie. Her eyes flashed up to his face.

“Sheriff Delaney.”

“Mrs. Dancer.” He nudged his hat back, then took it off entirely. “We need to talk.”

Hannah wasn’t sure she could. Her heart was pressing up into her throat the way it always did whenever she was within several feet of this man. She felt her face going up in flames.

“Come in.”

Hannah stepped back, and then retreated some more as Delaney crossed the threshold. He stood there a moment, silent, his gaze encompassing the vestibule, and then, with a quick and fluid flick of his arm, he lobbed his black hat onto a porcelain hook on the hall tree.

Hannah stifled a little gasp. The gesture reminded her so much of Ezra. It was so... so... proprietary. No! Not proprietary, she corrected herself. It was presumptive. It was rude and arrogant. This wasn’t his home, after all.

Not yet.

Not ever!

“I was just having tea in the back parlor, Sheriff.” Hannah turned on her heel, abruptly walking away from him. If he wanted to converse, he could damn well follow her. If not, he could damn well leave.

With her stiff skirts swishing down the hallway, she couldn’t hear his footsteps behind her, but when she sat and rather imperiously picked up her cup of tea, Delaney was right there. Close by.

“Have a seat, Sheriff.” Hannah gestured rather grandly to a chair. She was, after all, the duchess of this domain, and she intended to remain so. “Would you care for some tea?”

He sat, said nothing. As before in the vestibule, his gaze slowly encompassed the room, and then it settled, frankly, perhaps even boldly, on Hannah.

Her heart quickened. Those eyes—Delaney’s eyes—were the most stunning shade of hazel she’d ever seen. An amazing blend of gold and brown and green. Like sunlight dappling elm trees in October. Like autumn itself. The essence of the season. Quite, quite beautiful.

She had to clear her throat before she was able to speak.

“Would you care for a cup of tea, Delaney? Or perhaps you’d prefer coffee? Lemonade?”

She sounded less like a duchess now than a dizzy dolt of a girl, Hannah thought. This wasn’t like her at all.

Then, when the sheriff replied, “No, thanks”, for a second Hannah wasn’t quite sure what it was that he was so politely declining. This was no time to get bumble-brained, for heaven’s sake. If there was ever an occasion when she needed to keep her wits—every blasted one of them—about her, it was now.

She remembered then it was tea or coffee or lemonade that Delaney didn’t want. Fine. Just what, then, did he want?

He leaned forward a little then, his elbows on his knees and a serious, quite sober expression on his face while a keen light played in his lovely, autumn-colored eyes.

“About the house, Mrs. Dancer...”

The house! Hannah stood—snapped to her feet, actually—and at the same time slapped her teacup onto its saucer so hard that the little plate broke in two. The halves landed at Delaney’s feet just as he was rising. He had barely stood straight before she lit into him.

“The house! It’s mine, Mr. Delaney. And I’ll thank you to get out of it. Now.”

“If you’ll just listen...”

“No. I won’t listen. Get out.”

“But...”

“Get. Out.”

He might as well have been trying to have a conversation with a hornet, Delaney thought. Hannah Dancer was stinging mad and too busy buzzing to listen to a word he had to say. How the hell was he supposed to resolve this business if she wouldn’t talk to him? But rather than shout her down, which he felt sorely tempted to do, he decided to take her advice and get out.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

Her reply was a very undignified snort, which Delaney took to mean that he’d be even less welcome then than he was right now.

In his house, goddammit.

Delaney didn’t go to the Longhorn that night after he’d made his evening rounds. A few beers and an hour or two with Ria Flowers held little appeal for him now when he needed a clear head to sort out this house business.

“Talk to her,” Abel Fairfax had said.

Talk to her. Good God, he’d have to rope her and gag her to do that, he supposed. He’d seen a lot of facets of Hannah Dancer since his arrival in Newton. He’d seen her friendly and polite. Cool and distant. He’d seen her shocked and baffled and sad. But this was the first time he’d seen her mad. What a sight that had been. There was fire in her eyes, a lively blue-green flame, and he swore her hair had turned a deeper, fiery shade of red.

But beautiful as Hannah had been, Delaney didn’t particularly want to see that colorful anger again. Not aimed in his direction, that was for sure. And especially when he hadn’t done a single thing to deserve it.

Not yet, anyway.

Chapter Five

For the next few days there was enough excitement in Newton that Delaney didn’t have time to think about the Dancer house, much less the angry, beautiful woman who resided there.

Seth Akins, who farmed a little piece of land just north of town, apparently dived headfirst into a bottle of whiskey and climbed out drunk as a skunk and meaner than sin. When Mrs. Akins protested, he blackened both of her eyes, then booted her out of their house, locked the doors and windows, and told her he’d shoot their two boys if she tried to get back in.

The woman limped into town, and once Delaney got her calmed down and settled in at Doc Soames’s, he headed out to the Akins place alone. Ordinarily he would’ve deputized a couple of men and broken into the Akins’ house in a matter of minutes, subdued the drunk, and been done with it. But with two innocent youngsters held hostage, Delaney decided to do this job alone. He didn’t want to chance the misguided heroics of any trigger-happy, grandstanding deputies.

It took him six hours of yelling, arguing, and cajoling through the bolted front door before he convinced Seth to let the little boys go. Then, after seeing that the children got back to their mother all right, it took Delaney an entire night of through-the-door arguing to keep Seth from taking his own life.

If his right hand had been in working order, he could easily have tapped out a window, taken a bead on Seth and shot his weapon out of his hand. But, relegated to his damn shotgun, all Delaney could do was wait the man out. He didn’t know which was worse—men trying to kill themselves or him.

Finally, not long after sunrise, the fool succumbed to the effects of too much liquor and too little sleep, and Delaney was able to break through a window and take away Seth’s Navy Colt, his old buffalo gun, and Bowie knife.

When he got back to town, with Seth passed out in the back of the Akins’ buckboard, Mrs. Akins came flying out of the doctor’s office. The woman took one look in the back of the wagon, then screamed at Delaney.

“You killed my Seth. You killed him.”

“Now just hold on, Mrs. Akins,” Delaney muttered as he climbed down from the driver’s seat. “Seth’s just—”

She didn’t let him finish. The woman called him a bastard, a son of a bitch, and half a dozen other names in a single breath, and then her hand flattened across his cheek with a resounding smack while her foot came down hard on his boot.

The wiry little woman probably would have done a considerable amount of damage if her husband hadn’t chosen that particular moment to sit up, inquire as to his whereabouts, and then throw up all over himself and the wagon bed.

“Now look what you’ve done, Sheriff,” the Akins woman snapped, glaring at Delaney before she hitched up her skirts and clambered up into the wagon bed.

“Yes, ma’am.” Delaney sighed. “Seth’ll be all right once the whiskey’s out of his system. If I were you, I’d keep him away from the stuff from now on.”

Mrs. Akins sniffed with wifely indignation, then turned her entire attention as well as her sharp tongue on her sick husband.

Delaney should’ve been used to being unappreciated by now after so many years in this thankless business, but the Akins woman had taken him completely by surprise. He cursed himself for feeling so churlishly disappointed. Then, just as he was turning away from the buckboard, he thought he caught a glimpse of black silk and bright red hair on the far side of the street. His heart seized up for a moment, then settled back with a distinct thump.

Just what he needed right now, Delaney told himself. One more angry female to give him a tonguelashing, a crack across the face and a kick in the shin, just for good measure.

Well, not today, by God.

He strode back to his office and slammed the door behind him. Hard.

Hannah shrank back against the clapboards of the emporium, trying her best to blend in with the shadows and the dark paint. She had ventured into town, believing Florence Green when the young woman informed her that the sheriff was away, occupied with a disturbance at the Akins farm.

“Imagine the awesome responsibility of talking a person out of committing suicide,” the schoolteacher had said before adding a long, warm, and perhaps even infatuated sigh.

Hannah had simply sniffed at that. Awesome responsibility, indeed. Just where was almighty Delaney when her Ezra was putting a pistol to his head? she wanted to ask. Indignant as she was, however, Hannah was happy to hear she would be able to go into town for some notions without having to walk past the steady gaze of those autumn-colored eyes or to chance a confrontation with the man who was trying to take her house away.

She had purchased black silk thread and four yards of black lace at the emporium. She hadn’t quite decided yet whether or not to continue wearing her mourning clothes, but if she did, she needed to mend her petticoat. A bolt of green-and-white gabardine caught her eye the minute she walked into the store, and she nearly passed over the black notions for the bright checked fabric.

It didn’t seem right, however, putting her mourning aside so soon even though she knew that Ezra wouldn’t disapprove. So Hannah paid for the black thread and lace, tucked them in her reticule, and walked outside in time to see Mrs. Akins strike Delaney a vicious blow across the cheek. The sound of the slap seemed to echo all along Main Street.

Hannah’s hand flew up to her own cheek as if the blow had landed there. She wanted to cry out or race to the sheriff’s aid, but instead she bit her lip and stepped back into the shadows from where she watched Delaney turn his back on the irate woman.

My God, Hannah thought. What man would dare to do what the Akins woman had just done, considering Delaney’s reputation? Why, the fool would be lying face down in the street in the blink of an eye, bleeding into the dust. And why the devil would Mrs. Akins strike the man who’d obviously just saved her husband’s sorry life?

She watched the tall man stiffen with suppressed anger and then stalk back to his office. She felt the concussion from the slamming door.

Hannah stood there, her breath shallow and her heart fluttering. Delaney was her enemy, wasn’t he? He was a threat to her very existence. It didn’t make any sense at all—what she was feeling right now—what she was fighting to keep from feeling. Sympathy welled up in her throat, nearly choking her, and it was all Hannah could do not to pick up her skirts, fly across the street, burst through that slammed door, and lay a cool, soft band to his hot, stinging cheek.

“You must be suffering a sunstroke, Hannah Dancer,” she muttered just under her breath, “to even consider setting foot inside the jailhouse. Good Lord! Just go on home. Home. Where you belong.”

At supper that evening, the conversation among her boarders kept coming back to the events of the day. Everyone, it seemed, had heard a different version of the Akins affair.

Abel Fairfax and Henry Allen hadn’t witnessed the confrontation, but both were certain they had heard that the sheriff had caught Mrs. Akins by the wrist before she delivered the alleged blow. Miss Green had been told by the librarian that the Akins woman had not only slapped Delaney across the face and stomped his foot, but had launched a knee into... well... the region wasn’t named, but merely alluded to with a brisk cluck of her tongue and a knowing loft of her eyes.

Hannah, who had witnessed the confrontation, kept silent, doing her best to concentrate on the roast chicken and buttered peas on her plate. But at every reference to that awful slap, she could feel a slight constriction in her throat that had nothing to do with Nancy’s overcooked fowl or undercooked vegetables.

It shouldn’t have bothered her the way it had—that shocking blow. Heaven knew she’d been tempted to slap Delaney herself that day he came to discuss the disposition of the house. And if he ever had nerve enough to return, she’d probably have to keep her hands tucked tightly in her pockets in restraint.

Today’s incident shouldn’t have affected her at all, but Hannah reminded herself she’d have felt the same sympathy for a stricken dog or cat. The tide of emotion that had swept through her meant nothing, really. It wasn’t personal. Not in the least. Why, if Delaney had been a lowly beast—and who was to say the man wasn’t?—she would have felt a similar, perhaps even a stronger, onrush of compassion.

All of a sudden Hannah realized her dining companions had fallen silent. She looked up from her plate to find them all staring at her rather expectantly.

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