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“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.”
