The Marriage Knot

“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.