Page 2 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Samuel,

Enclosed you will find updated inheritance documents. They await signatures from both you and the new beneficiaries. Please note the addended marital clause, per your request. Once received, all copies will be notarized and returned.

Best,

Louisville Family Law Offices of Holland & Kirk

Margaret couldn’t even pretend to know whose miniature Victorian mansion on the outskirts of Louisville they were visiting tonight. Nearly every evening, Pa paraded her somewhere new, making endless introductions, hoping he might find one that would stick.

They never did. And time was rapidly running out.

At the age of twenty-two years—the last several spent as a recluse—Margaret was something of a mystery to polite society, reintroduced this season like a bolt from the blue. But while her softly curved, cherubic figure made short memories for the men, the women remembered perfectly well…

Three summers ago, her disastrous debut. The prolonged social isolation—half self-imposed, half societally necessary—that followed.

No one could gossip like southern society women, and they had the collective memory of a steel trap.

They clustered in groups, whispering behind hands like vultures pecking at a carcass.

There’s something off about that Greenbrier girl, something not quite right.

Pretty enough, sure, but a bit touched in the head.

Margaret was not crazy. She was not.

But perception was reality, and all the money in the world couldn’t buy the illusion of sanity. Nor, apparently, could it convince even the most red-blooded of men to get into bed with her.

Margaret kept her chin up, eyes level with those who sniped behind closed fingers as she moved through the crowd.

The judgmental stares were like darts, a barrage of prickling attacks.

A faint flush rose on her neck, creeping higher with each step.

Black spots dotted the corners of her vision, closing in.

No. Not now. Not again.

There was so very much at stake.

“Ah, Alastair.”

Pa’s voice cut through her rising panic. The sight of the suitor before her was enough to turn Margaret’s scalding blood cold.

Alastair Pendry was a widower, agriculture titan, and old friend of her father. Emphasis on old, all silver-streaked hair and fleshy lips. Lips that curled in a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile as he gazed at Margaret.

“Samuel.” Alastair extended a hand. “And Margaret—looking simply grand this evening, as always.”

His tone was above reproach. As was his gaze, pinned firmly on Margaret’s cornflower-blue eyes, never drifting down the shapely curves of her body, not even once.

It was perhaps why her father considered Alastair a respectable match despite the nearly thirty-year age difference.

There was also the simple but unavoidable matter of no other man offering, and their time had all but run out.

But prey always recognized predator, and Margaret was not fooled by Alastair Pendry. She knew this man would be the death of her. Her fingers drifted absentmindedly to the pearls at her throat, an instinctive tic.

Pa turned to her, expectant. Margaret was to play nice by acknowledging Alastair’s compliment, perhaps even offer a warm smile or her hand for a kiss.

But she had no intention of spending a single moment with her soon-to-be fiancé. The discussion had occurred in her father’s study only yesterday. The offer was made, and Pa intended to accept. He had no choice. Alastair would take care of her. She needed to be taken care of.

Margaret didn’t want to hear it.

“Pardon me,” she said to both gentlemen, prying her arm from her father’s grasp.

She fought to keep her steps unhurried as she walked away, cutting a course for the opposite side of the ballroom, to a spot near the wall with the other single women—the spinsters and widowed aunties—where she belonged.

Fate was a devil who couldn’t be bargained with.

Margaret had learned that lesson long ago. The day Elijah died.

With each successive step, she moved faster, hands coiling in tight fists.

Then came the haunting taunt of the physician’s voice. Prone to fits of hysteria. Avoid distressing circumstances...

Well. That was fine and dandy for him to say atop his clinical high horse, but this was Margaret’s life.

She was distressed. And feeling that way did not make her crazy or hysterical or any other ignominious label a man might slap across her forehead to silence and discredit her pain.

First Eli, then Ma, had left her to face this mess alone. And now—

“Oof!” The exclamation tore from her lips, masking a rising sob as she collided with a powerfully built man.

Margaret was sent reeling, the floor rushing up to meet her.

She closed her eyes and stretched out an arm, bracing for impact.

Felt the barest sweep of the man’s fingers as he reached to catch her…

But no one had been there to catch Margaret in years. She hit the ground hard, twisting her wrist when she landed. The society crowd gasped, stunned by Margaret Greenbrier’s latest faux pas.

“Oh, mercy.” The man was aghast, eyes wide at the sight of her on the floor. “Are you all right? I’m simply…” His words dried up as his gaze swept her face.

Margaret stared at him in turn. The rational part of her mind recognized him as bourbon aristocrat Merrick Dravenhearst. A man who, much like herself, had curated a persona of recluse over the last several years.

But whereas Margaret’s malingering made her a social pariah, Dravenhearst’s gave him an air of rakish mystery…

helped along by the indisputable fact the man was handsome as hell. As handsome as the devil himself.

Merrick Dravenhearst’s eyes were the same color as the bourbon his family was infamous for pandering. Eyes that, at first glance, were appreciative, but the longer he stared, twisted with something that looked an awful lot like horror.

Horror—at the mere sight of her!

“Beg pardon,” Margaret murmured, lowering her lids in shame, cheeks coloring. “I was in a state, not looking—”

“The fault is mine.” His voice was loud and confident, cutting through the whispers of the highfalutin crowd. The horror vanished from his eyes, replaced by something that looked quite appallingly like pity.

She preferred the horror, honestly.

“Are you all right, Miss…?” He let the question dangle and extended a hand to help her rise. The sharp line of his jaw was freshly shaved but shadowed with a hint of black. The kind of dusting that never truly went away, no matter how close the shave.

“Greenbrier.” She placed her uninjured hand in his. His long fingers dwarfed hers, swallowing them. “Margaret Greenbrier.”

“Margaret?” he repeated, his face twisting again, this time in an expression altogether unreadable. His fingers twitched within her grip, rough-hewn calluses apparent. It was wholly unexpected, such coarseness on the hands of a gentleman, but Margaret didn’t linger to investigate.

“Yes.” On her feet now, she turned away, seeking to disappear. “But I’m really no one…no one at all. I’m terribly sorry for the intrusion.”

Gripping her wounded wrist in the opposite hand, she fled.

Margaret departed the ballroom through the same archway she’d entered not ten minutes prior. Tears fell down her cheeks unchecked. She dabbed them away, careful not to smear the paint on her face. She just needed a few moments alone to compose herself before rallying to face the jackals again.

Margaret slipped into a sitting room decorated in shades of green—heavy drapes the color of sage, a chesterfield sofa in deep emerald, pistachio-papered walls, and gilt-framed abstract paintings of forested game, heavy with hunter and evergreen brushstrokes.

She moved to close the door, but a foot jammed through the gap. A very shiny, polished, masculine foot.

“You are not all right.”

For reasons most inexplicable, Merrick Dravenhearst had given chase after her panicked flight.

Margaret almost laughed because of course she wasn’t all right. But no handsome man had pursued her from a ballroom before, so she held her tongue. This was quite a novelty.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She answered automatically, but the tiniest part of her, the part positively aching to be seen, drew away from the door, allowing him to crack it open. She backed up slowly and sank into a velveteen club chair the color of a dill pickle, cradling her injured arm.

He hovered in the doorway. “You hurt your wrist.”

“It’s fine,” she repeated.

“It’s not.”

“Are you a physician?”

“No.”

“Then forgive me for disregarding your opinion on the matter.” She offered a half smile.

“Your chivalrous obligation has been met, Mr. Dravenhearst. My well-being ascertained, you may return to the party with a clear conscience. Please, go drink and dance with the other debutantes. You’ll be missed. ”

He chuckled and stepped into the room. “There’s not a single gal in there worth dancing with, and certainly nothing I want to drink, Miss Greenbrier…

hasn’t been since January 17, 1920.” With a shifty smile, he produced a hip flask from under his jacket.

“Which reminds me, physician or not, I’ve got the best cure around for that wrist.” He unscrewed the cap and offered it to her, crouching on bended knee.

It was, she was forced to admit, a rather heady sight—this self-assured man on his knees before her.

With closeness came sudden awareness of his sheer size, of the suit jacket pulling slightly at his shoulders, straining to contain the broad swell underneath.

His shirt was the same, stretched just a hair too taut, catching on ridges of muscle upstanding gentlemen had no business having.

He needed a new suit, one that fit properly.