The Marriage Knot

The Marriage Knot
Mary McBride

“I’d watch what I wore at midnight under a full moon, if I were you.” (#u8574d593-221d-5007-b42b-962ac4885c13)Letter to Reader (#u8bd17edf-dc75-524c-8184-a1f3f2f7ed66)Title Page (#uf9eb7f26-3c6e-5b4e-9bd7-a8cfefe51b79)About the Author (#uab36fced-1b38-53ae-a474-53bdb750a4f0)Dedication (#u1144a1f8-1eec-5a83-a14d-b10a4dd1c34b)Prologue (#uf31b0cf3-879e-5de2-b2ad-bc0cd3cd45bd)Chapter One (#ud91376d6-2b33-5c82-ae52-4ab3f18914ff)Chapter Two (#u30f46e5c-eba1-5217-a15b-177fc9e96022)Chapter Three (#ue44ea23d-313c-549f-be45-921b197d2bdb)Chapter Four (#u9caadd03-8512-57f9-9a54-764623698396)Chapter Five (#u44855e19-b4da-5ae4-8bbe-af49b1ac6bea)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter One (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“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 (http://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.