Page 35 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Reopened the stillhouse and began making mash.

Three more states voted for repeal this week, twenty-five total so far. It’s finally happening! Barrel filling to begin within the month.

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

The infamous Kentucky heat didn’t break until early October.

Hot days and even hotter nights slipped into the crisp relief of fall.

Alastair’s first grain shipment showed up contaminated with weevils (“He’s screwing with me,” Merrick roared.

“Trying to fleece me!”), and the second took an ungodly amount of time to arrive (“He’s dragging his heels on purpose, the spiteful bastard!

” “Yes, dear.”). By the time Merrick was able to start making bourbon mash, twenty-five states had ratified the Twenty-First Amendment, seeking to repeal Prohibition.

“Mark my words,” Merrick said as he and Margot walked down the hill together, “Kentucky will fall in line soon enough.”

“They’d better…” Margot mused, leaves crunching underfoot. The trees behind Hellebore House were burnished with russet and gold. “Since you’ve gone and turned our estate into a bootlegging operation.” She rolled her eyes. “Again.”

“You’ll feel differently in about ten minutes. That’s why I’m bringing you down here.” He smiled, full teeth and dimples. “Today, Mrs. Dravenhearst, is the day you fall in love.”

“Really?” Margot replied, suddenly breathless, heart fluttering.

“With bourbon,” Merrick clarified.

Was it her imagination or was there a teasing twinkle in his eye?

Merrick stopped outside a rather squat building at the outskirts of the distillery. He pushed the door open. “Welcome to the stillhouse.”

The first thing she noticed was the smell, an overpowering mix of sweet and sulfuric, sharp on every inhale. A little yeasty and warm too, like sourdough coming out of the oven.

Then there were the vats, massive copper drums two stories high, and exposed pipes running every which way.

Dominating the far corner stood a magnificent column still; its copper tower stretched to the ceiling with clear, churning distillate visible through small porthole windows running up its length.

“It’s humid,” she observed as Merrick pulled the door closed.

“That’s the fermentation tanks.” He rapped a knuckle on the nearest copper vat. “We’ll start there. Come on.” He vaulted up a set of rickety stairs to the second-story catwalk.

The pungent smell was even stronger on the second level.

“Bourbon mash,” Merrick said, gesturing inside the nearest tank. “This batch is two days into fermentation.”

Margot leaned over the rim. Inside, a golden mustard-brown mix of grainy soup bubbled softly.

“All bourbon mash has to contain at least fifty-one percent corn,” he explained.

“Every distillery has its own unique recipe. Corn adds sweetness, rye adds spice—that’s a Dravenhearst family secret, most other distilleries use wheat—and barley acts as the chemical stabilizer.

During fermentation, yeast converts grain sugars into alcohol.

” He reached for her hand, pulling it over the crust of the fizzing mash. “Feel that heat?”

Yes. Warmth radiated from the surface. She was mesmerized, staring into the vat. It looked alive. Bubbling like stew on a stove.

“Heat is a byproduct of the chemical reaction happening under the surface. The mash takes three days to ferment. And then…”

He dragged her back downstairs, pointing out the well draining the alcohol from the fermentation tanks, then the pipes straining and transferring the distillate to the copper still.

His mouth moved a mile a minute as he explained the minutiae of the process.

Tripping over himself, hardly able to get the words out fast enough.

So much knowledge, Margot thought, watching the glow in his eyes, the vigor with which his hands moved. So much passion and precision and skill that’s gone unused for so many years.

It seemed, suddenly, a terrible waste.

Margot had never given much thought to the temperance movement. She grew up in a world of wets and drys, a world where Prohibition was the accepted reality. But here, standing in this stillhouse with Merrick, for the first time, she critically questioned that reality.

Thousands of lost jobs, he’d told her. Family businesses shuttered. Trade secrets forgotten. Decreased taxable revenue to the state.

It wasn’t as simple as mere morality, the drys be damned. This was a business. A lifeblood and a lifeline. One Merrick had every right to stake his livelihood on.

Her husband didn’t pause for breath until they settled before the column still. He exhaled slowly, eyes tracing the flow of the distillate as it moved up and down the tower. Turning to vapor and back, concentrating and purifying, readying itself for the barrel.

“I haven’t seen anything distilling in here for thirteen years,” he whispered.

“It looks like water,” Margot murmured, just as riveted.

In silence, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

They stayed like that for a long time, watching the ebb and flow of the still. Mesmerized.

“That’s my last name in there,” Merrick finally said, pointing. “This is what it means. It’s yours now too. For better or worse.”

Margot nodded, understanding. It was profound, the way his sharing cracked open entire valleys inside her. Gorges. Eager to be filled, poured into, with more of him. She would never be full. Never tire. She wanted it all.

“You might not love it yet,” Merrick continued, peeking sideways at her, “but you will.”

Margot didn’t reply.

She didn’t need to. She was a hell of a lot closer to love than he’d ever know.

Anticipation was their bedfellow. Every day, they scoured the papers for news of repeal, for signs of weakening resolve amongst the Kentucky policymakers. Merrick stayed up late every night, making telephone calls to friends in the industry, rallying the troops.

“Last night, Colonel Blanton heard whiff of a state legislative hearing,” Merrick said as Margot slipped into her bedroom to dress for church. “He’s asked me to be there when the time comes. Together, we can talk some sense into those congressional bluenoses and put this ghastly decade behind us.”

“Mm-hmm,” Margot tossed back, distracted.

She glanced nervously over her shoulder, having left the adjoining door open.

Foolish. She rose on tiptoes to yank her wedding gown away from the doors to the balcony.

The knots of the noose seemed especially tight this morning.

Her fingers fumbled frantically. Merrick was still chattering away while he dressed, unaware.

“Come on,” she muttered under her breath, nails picking at the rope. She sighed with relief when the bonds gave, releasing the dress into her arms. She clutched the gown to her chest and closed her eyes. “Babette,” she whisper-hissed. “This little game is starting to get old.”

Third time this week.

A chill at her shoulder. “Who says it’s me?”

Margot whirled, expecting to see the socialite’s specter lounging on the corner chaise, eyebrow raised. The picture was so strong in her mind, she was convinced for half a second she really did see her, but in a single blink, the image vanished. The chaise was empty.

Merrick’s footsteps were on the move, approaching the door. Hurriedly, Margot balled up the wedding gown and stashed it behind her back.

Merrick leaned in the doorway, head tilted and arms folded, the buttons on his shirt only half done. “Well, what do you say?” he asked, smiling impishly.

“To…what?”

“To playing hooky from church today. So I can get the mash bill working first thing.” His expression turned from playful to sinful, his gaze dragging up Margot’s nightdress-clad body. “Although, I could be convinced to delay a few hours for a lazy morning in bed with you.”

She laughed. “If you can delay your precious mash for a morning with me, you can delay for an hour of prayer. God doesn’t ask much of us, Merrick.”

He chuckled and raised his hands in surrender. Margot held the smile on her face until he moved out of sight. She strode quickly to the closet and strung up the wedding dress, then tucked it into the farthest back corner. Same as always, to no avail.

“This game is getting tiresome,” she murmured again to Babette.

Tinkling spectral laughter answered, raising gooseflesh on her arms.

“I’m serious,” she hissed, stomping a foot. “Leave it alone this time, goldarn it.”

“Margot? Who’re you talking to?” Merrick called.

“Go on,” Babette whispered. “Tell him who haunts you, Margot dear. And in broad daylight? Tsk, tsk.”

Margot swallowed hard. Closed her eyes again.

She was going mad, wasn’t she? All of this was only happening in her head, wasn’t it?

Not real, not real.

“No one, love,” she called back. “No one at all.”

The windows were open in the church house to let in the cool October breeze, but even still, Margot felt stifled. She’d worn a high-collared dress, and it scratched terribly at her skin. Tight and constricting.

Father Simmons was preaching, droning on and on, up at the lectern. “And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, ‘Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?’”

Merrick’s eyes glazed over where he stood. Just beyond him, in the pew across the aisle, lurked Alastair. He was staring intently at Margot.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Her mind tolled like a church bell. A funereal echo.

Her fingers tightened on the wooden pew. Margot imagined her pallor turning green, tasted copper pennies in her mouth, the way she always did when a wave of morning sickness was coming.

Not now.

“And he saith unto them, ‘Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.’”

Margot’s vision grew spotty. She couldn’t tell if she was going to faint or be horrendously, embarrassingly sick.