Page 28 of The Dravenhearst Brides

—Excerpt, Dravenhearst Distilling Inventory Log, as maintained by Merrick Dravenhearst

Ahalf hour of silence. That was what followed his admission.

Celibate?

The word spun in Margot’s mind, round and round. Perhaps she needed a dictionary. Perhaps the word didn’t mean what she thought it did. It couldn’t. Priests were celibate. He was a thirty-one-year-old atheist. With a reputation, for Christ’s sake.

“If the gun makes you nervous, stow it in the dash,” he finally said, breaking the standoff.

She hadn’t been staring at the gun. She’d been far more focused on the crotch of his pants, actually. Wondering how on God’s green earth this was possible…

A sign for the Indiana border flashed by, startling her. “Where are we going?”

“The ‘where’ isn’t important, but I need you to give your word that when we get there, you’ll stay in the car.”

“Why?”

His grip tightened on the wheel. “Because I said so.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Really? You sure acted like one back at the house.”

Margot sucked in her lips over her teeth.

She deserved that. “If you would just tell me what you’re doing, sneaking out like this multiple times a week, I wouldn’t have to resort to hysterics.

” She spat out the final word, tasting the pain of it.

Cataloged the dozens of times it had been used against her.

Merrick gave her a fleeting side-eyed glance. His shoulders softened. “I’m sorry I said that.”

“No, you’re not.” She tipped her chin up and stared straight ahead.

“Yes, I am.” He reached over to grip her thigh. “I’m sorry, Margot.”

Three words. No excuses. Pure earnestness.

When she chanced a glance at him, his eyes were wide. Ringing with truth. They made her feel small. He was so much bigger a man than she’d ever expected. She, who had been unfairly judged all her life, had done the very same to him. A philistine, she’d called him. A rake, she’d assumed.

Celibate and an apology—one that somehow made a dent in the pain from all the times she’d never received one before? All in one night?

She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I forced myself into your car like a wayward highwayman.”

“A very pretty highwayman, at least. Nightdress and all.” One corner of his mouth hitched up, the ghost of a smile.

“Will you tell me why I need to stay in the car?”

He sighed. “Because it’s dangerous. The people I’m meeting…I’d rather not involve you.”

Margot uncrossed her legs. Began to bounce a knee. Recrossed them.

“So will you?” he asked. “Will you stay in the car?”

“Yes.”

His posture visibly relaxed once she gave her word. The remaining miles passed in silence.

Merrick brought the car to a stop on a desolate stretch of road just across the Indiana line, after pulling down a small embankment beside an underpass. There was another automobile waiting, a sleek black Duesenberg.

When Merrick shut down the engine, the Duesenberg flashed its headlights. Once, twice. Merrick flashed back.

“That’s the signal,” he murmured. “Stay put. I won’t be long.” He reached for the door, and Margot grabbed his wrist.

“You’ll be okay, won’t you?”

“I’ll be fine.” He offered a smile and tossed the revolver on his empty seat. “Look after that for me, will ya?”

She was sure he meant it to be reassuring—the implication he didn’t need the gun—but she preferred he take it. Just in case.

Merrick moved to the back of the car, opening the lid over the rumble seat. He grunted and lifted out a heavy crate. Glass bottles tinkled within. He doubled back for a second crate.

Margot could hear everything clearly in the open-top roadster.

Merrick’s stilted footfalls as he walked.

The thud and clinking of glass when he dropped the crates to the dirt.

The ominous slam of two doors from the Duesenberg.

The racking of a tommy gun—Margot both saw and heard that one.

She watched, eyes wide with terror, as a shadowed hulking form laid the deadly firearm across the hood of the Duesenberg.

Two men crossed into no-man’s-land to meet Merrick, strolling casually, hands in their trench coat pockets.

The taller one wore a fedora and shoes so shiny they gleamed bright in the light of the moon.

The squat one—Margot nicknamed him Beefy—slipped a pack of butts from his pocket and extracted one.

Cupping his hand around his mouth, he thumbed a lighter for a spark.

“Antoni.” Merrick inclined his head to the man wearing the fedora.

Margot stifled a gasp, recognition dawning. Toni. The man she’d encountered outside the rickhouses a few weeks ago. The one Julian had run off the estate.

“Evening, Merrick,” Toni drawled. His sharp gaze flicked past Merrick’s shoulder to Margot, dragging up and down her stiff form. “Out for a midnight drive with the missus, huh? How romantic.”

Beefy chuckled and blew out a long drag, smoke curling skyward.

Merrick toed the nearest crate, rattling the bottles within. His voice came out gruff, all business. “Here’s the hooch. Your usual. Cough it up.”

Toni reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick wad of scratch. He started counting—a bit theatrically, in Margot’s opinion. Her shoulders tensed, gut clenched with worry.

“So what’s her name?” Toni asked, nodding toward Margot. “Heard through the grapevine you’d finally sold out for wedded bliss. Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

Merrick said nothing.

Toni extended the wad of bills but jerked back when Merrick reached for it. “I asked you a question. Her name.”

Merrick scowled. “She’s nobody. A farm girl from the Bluegrass. Real pretty,” he emphasized the last words, as though they meant something deeper.

Margot’s breath grew shallow. Like a hunted rabbit.

Beefy laughed, blowing smoke again before speaking. “That ain’t what we heard. We heard you snagged yourself an heiress.”

“Greenbrier, I believe is her family name?” Toni added. He flicked his eyes to Margot, sharing the joke.

Merrick chuckled. “A Bluegrass heiress is no comparison to Chicago money, to the empire Capone built. I’ve been keepin’ my appointments, haven’t I? Nothing about this situation has changed. Now pay up.”

Toni fanned the money, tapping the stack of bills in his opposite palm. “I don’t think so. Seems the terms have changed.”

“This isn’t a negotiation.”

“Everything is a negotiation,” Toni said. “You don’t need our money anymore. Gone and got yourself a rich, respectable wife, you did. What you need now is our silence. And Cosa Nostra silence comes at a high price.”

Beefy cracked his knuckles.

Cosa Nostra…dear god, the Italian mafia? Margot had heard all she needed. This wasn’t going well. Terrified or not, she would have to do something.

The menfolk were focused on each other, busy posturing like the arrogant peacocks they were. Slowly, very slowly, Margot slid her left hand across the seat, fingers closing around the barrel of the revolver. The weight was solid and reassuring.

Just a Bluegrass farm girl, Merrick had called her. Why yes, in fact, she was. And every Bluegrass farm girl worth her salt knew how to shoot a gun. Her father had first handed her one when she was ten years old. The mechanics were simple—

Point, shoot.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Beefy jabbed a finger into Merrick’s chest, breathing cigarette smoke down his neck. “We could shut you down. Get you arrested…”

Margot quietly opened the car door and swung her bare feet to the ground. She was pleased to find her legs, though jittery, held strong.

Merrick whipped around. “Margot, get back in the car.”

Yeah, get back in the car, you ninny.

She was glad her legs were braver than her mind. She began to walk, keeping the revolver close, tucked into the thick folds of her nightdress.

“We’ve not been properly introduced,” she called in her best honeyed debutante drawl.

“Margot, back to the car.” Merrick’s eyes were accusatory. You promised, they told her.

She had, but that was before he needed her.

“Pleasure seeing you again, Mrs. Dravenhearst.” Toni extended his palm when Margot drew close.

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

In lieu of a handshake, she whipped out the revolver. She did it with gusto, shoving the barrel beneath her chin.

All three men stepped back in shock.

“Now that I have your attention,” she said, “I do hope we can keep this brief. Blackmail is most uncouth, but my father is a brilliant negotiator. Taught me a thing or two, so we’ll get straight to it. What’s your price?”

“If it’s intimidation you’re after, you’re pointing the barrel the wrong way, sweetheart,” Beefy said.

She snorted and jerked her head toward Merrick. “He doesn’t get a dime if I’m dead. And neither will you. My life is worth more than all three of you combined.”

Toni smiled, then nodded at the gun. “That’s a mighty fine bluff, Mrs. Dravenhearst, but somehow, I can’t imagine a sweet woman like yourself actually pullin’ the trigger. Suicide is a nasty way to go.”

“Then you obviously know nothing about the Dravenhearst women. I’d be the third to go that way. I assure you, we have the balls.”

Merrick choked.

“Now,” she continued, “you can either take me up on it—in which case, I hope you’re prepared to dispose of a body tonight—or you can name your price like civilized gentlemen. My pockets are deep, and I’m ready to negotiate.”

“Burying bodies has never been a deterrent for us.”

She was supposed to be intimidated; she wasn’t. There was something quite freeing about staring death in the eyes. She’d been afraid of it, afraid of everything, for so long.

“Perhaps not. But I assume you usually bury bodies that aren’t easily missed. You’ll find I’m an entirely different breed. People will care, and they will look.” She cocked her head. “Now, if you please, your price? A one-time lump sum to get you out of our lives for good. What’ll it be?”

Toni and Beefy exchanged glances.

“Twenty-thousand dollars,” Toni offered.

“Horsefeathers.” Margot snorted. It was far too lofty a price. “Ten.”

“Eighteen.”

“Twelve.”

Toni laughed. “Are we simply to meet in the middle then? We’ve got to come out on top, Mrs. Dravenhearst. We’ve a reputation to uphold. Sixteen thousand, final offer.”

Margot narrowed her eyes. “Fifteen thousand, and I’ll throw in tonight’s loot, all the hooch.” She kicked the box the way Merrick had, forgetting she wasn’t wearing shoes. She bit her cheek to keep from crying out. I think I broke a toe, she inwardly wailed.

“Oh, we’ll be takin’ the crates.” Toni glowered, his eyebrows low. “Make no mistake.”

Margot cocked the hammer of the gun, her mind going curiously blank. “Do we have an accord?”

The two men stared at her. She stared back. She would not break.

“Deal.”

“Splendid. Merrick, love? Help them load the hooch. You may sort out the sordid matter of payment amongst yourselves.”

She stood by, continuing to press the gun to her jaw, while the men scampered. When it was time to go, she walked backward to the roadster, keeping an eye on the mobsters. Her arm ached from holding the gun so tightly.

“Just to reiterate. This is a one-time payment. I am not a bank from which you can make unlimited withdrawals. You’ve done good business with my husband, but Prohibition will be repealed before the new year.

” She parroted Merrick’s words with feigned confidence, hoping they were true. “You’ve no more use for us.”

“Agreed,” Toni replied, swiping the tommy gun from the hood. “Pleasure doing business, Mrs. Dravenhearst.”

Margot’s answering smile was more grim than pleased. She yanked open the door and collapsed into the roadster. Lowering her voice so only Merrick could hear, she gave the directive. “Drive.”

The engine turned over as he stepped on the gas. Only once they were on the main road and Margot was confident the Duesenberg was headed the opposite direction did she drop the revolver. Her fingers trembled violently.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Merrick swiped the gun from her lap. “You cocked the blasted thing, be careful.” He pointed the gun over the door and fired a round into the dark to release the hammer.

Margot jumped in her seat.

“You startle awful easy, given the show you just put on.”

If she hadn’t been looking at him to see the mixture of awe and jest in his eyes, she might’ve thought him angry.

She let out a nervous laugh. She couldn’t believe she’d done that. Her! It was the boldest thing she’d ever done in her life. “I’m not certain what got into me. Burst of gumption, I suppose.”

She was rather proud of herself.

“That took more than gumption, Margot,” Merrick said, shaking his head. “That was insanity. You’re utterly mad.”

She’d heard the word so many times, in so many ways. Heard and thought it so often, she almost believed herself numb to it. But this time, coming from Merrick with appreciation and not condemnation, she considered it. Deeply.

You’re mad.

For most of her life, she’d thought it an insult.

Something marking her as “other.” She wished to be rid of it, her quirks and follies.

The strange way her brain sometimes worked, jumping to conclusions and making oddball connections.

Riling herself into a panic, driving her to drastic ends.

Seeing things that may or may not be there…

But who would she be without it? Truly?

Perhaps madness was in the eye of the beholder. A gift or a curse, depending on how it was used. Perhaps if she accepted it, she could learn to wield this part of herself. Like a weapon, she could sharpen it into something valuable.

“I’m not mad…” she said slowly. “I’m just a creative thinker.”

“All the best people are. That was genius, love. I’m proud of you.”

Madness and genius…

Margot tipped her chin skyward and let the wind tear through her hair. It felt like freedom.

Amazing how easily those two overlap.

When the sun came up in the morning, bathing her bedroom in an orange glow, Margot made another utterly madcap decision.

She pulled out the stack of legal documents from her father, specifically the marital addendum in the inheritance paperwork.

There was a blank line, awaiting her signature. She considered it, thinking hard.

If she wanted him all in, she would give the same in return.

What’s mine shall be yours, she thought, meaning it.

Margot placed a pen to the paper and signed.