Mary McBride - The Marriage Knot

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?”