Page 4 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Xander,

I have been delayed. Unexpected business opportunity. A few days at most.

More soon,

Merrick Dravenhearst

The next day was interminable. Margaret had tossed and turned in bed all night and risen with the sun at dawn. Time passed the way hot molasses drips in an hourglass on a winter day, tantalizingly unhurried and tainted with the sugarcoated sweetness of illicit anticipation.

He wouldn’t come. She was certain.

And yet…and yet for the briefest of moments last night—the moment when his eyes unflinchingly met her own while Alastair blustered around them—she’d thought perhaps…perhaps…just maybe…

Margaret did quite a lot of pacing. Quite a bit of feigned eating and distracted window-watching as well. She watched and waited until the sun cast long shadows across the sidewalk. Until dusk settled, yawning its jaws in a quiet gasp over Louisville.

That’s it then. She rose from her seat. He’s not coming. Whyever dare dream he might? A man like that…

The laudanum was right there on her bedside table, ready and waiting.

As familiar and comforting as a best friend, more so even.

Margaret hadn’t received any real friends at the Louisville townhouse in years.

There was shame in that. Shame in knowing when her darkest hour had struck, no one showed up for her. She wasn’t worth showing up for.

Even still, today, in the deepest, darkest, most vulnerable corner of her damaged heart, she had, perhaps, hoped…

Hope. A thing more dangerous than all the burning coal in Kentucky. A flash of Dravenhearst’s amber eyes flared in her memory, the warmth of his hand on her knee.

Margaret winced at her longing. She should have known better.

The phantom grip of the noose slithered around her neck again, cinching tight. The laudanum winked from the table. She need only take two steps and reach for it.

She knew she would in the end. She always did. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter. After Elijah’s accident at their country manor in the Bluegrass, Vivian Greenbrier hadn’t wasted any time pretending; she reached and drank, reached and drank.

Margaret didn’t reach. She buried her face in her hands, shoulders arched forward like the broken wings of a fledgling bird.

“We’re a pair of blue jays!”

Child Margaret’s shoulders shook with giggles, grown-up Margaret’s shook with restrained sobs.

“Margot, catch me!”

The thunderous pound of hoofbeats in her mind was replaced by a distant but solid sound of knocking. Her head snapped up, tears drying in their tracks, hand flying to her mouth.

Flying.

“Margot, are we flying?”

She shook her head to silence Eli’s ghostly memory as a second knock, loud as cannon fire, reverberated. The boom echoed through the silent tomb that was the Louisville townhouse, rattling her very bones. Hinges whined as the front door opened.

Margaret couldn’t help herself. She dropped to her knees and, like a child, crawled into the upstairs hallway. She inched forward until she could poke her head through the balusters of the banistered mezzanine overlooking the entry hall.

She made it just in time to spy a dark-haired, broad-shouldered gentleman cross the foyer before disappearing down a hallway. The one to her father’s office.

Dravenhearst.

Her heart stopped, disbelief and anticipation warring in her mind.

“Why, Miss Margaret, whatever are you doing?”

The voice came from behind her. Margaret knew it well—Brigita, one of two maids employed by her father. Her arms were full of linens, her brow furrowed as she gazed at Margaret on hands and knees, rear end in the air like a bobber at the end of a fishing line.

Brigita clicked her tongue. “What in tarnation are you doing on the floor? Have you taken ill?”

Margaret could nearly hear the “again” Brigita so clearly longed to tack on the end of her question.

“No, er…it’s only…” Heat rose in her cheeks. “I’ve lost an earring.”

Yes, that would do. She combed her fingers across the carpet, pretending to search.

“But, Miss…” The divot between Brigita’s brows etched deeper. “Both earrings are already in your ears, safe and secure.”

“I’ll be jiggered…are they really?” Margaret moved a hand to her right ear, smiling with feigned relief while tugging the pearl.

“Oh, Brigita, you’ve found it! You’re simply brilliant.

” She rose to her feet and squeezed the maid’s arm in gratitude.

Brigita tensed beneath her touch and withdrew, a wary look in her eye.

Crazy Margaret. Cuckoo Margaret. Mad Margaret. She’d heard it all before. Brigita didn’t need to say a single word.

“Thank you, Brigita. I best be off to find the other one now.” Margaret injected her tone with false sing-song cheer and smiled as she departed, leaving a dumbstruck Brigita in her wake.

When people think you’re mad, Margaret thought wryly, you can get away with so very much. It was as inescapable a fact as it was convenient. In truth, Margaret had grown quite used to it. So much so that, at times, she wondered who she would be without this crutch.

“Lean on broken reeds, Margaret Greenbrier, and one day, you’ll get a face full of swamp mud,” her mother had always preached.

But as she closed her bedroom door, an unvarnished laugh escaped Margaret’s lips. More of a cackle really. Witchy and wild and wanton.

Because broken reeds or not, Margaret had two earrings in her lobes, and he came.

The foolish devil actually came.

Her laughter began anew. She tipped her head back and sagged against her bedroom door, awash with relief and something that, goldarn it, felt an awful lot like hope once more.

Perhaps she was as mad as they said after all.

An hour later, Margaret drifted back to the mezzanine. She curled her fingers around the ivory balustrade and gazed into the marble foyer, waiting.

Footsteps trod in the hall, soft and steady.

Margaret tightened her grip on the rail as Dravenhearst came into the entryway.

He moved to the door with smooth purpose, glancing back only once before departing.

He did not seem surprised to see her watching overhead.

On the contrary, the left corner of his mouth lifted in amusement.

She cocked her head, her jaw open, a question hanging in the air. But her voice eluded her. Stolen from her lips along with the breath from her lungs, lost somewhere in the cavernous expanse of cold marbled space between her and this mystery of a man.

He came…but why?

Before Margaret could make sense of it, before a single word was exchanged, Dravenhearst tipped his hat and disappeared into the summer night.

Margaret blinked twice, unsettled, as the phantom of his imagined breath, his voice, whispered along the back of her neck.

Your move, Miss Greenbrier.

Pa leaned against the mahogany desk in his office with a heavy sigh. “Well, my darling, shall I start with the good news or the bad?”

Margaret shifted in the wingback chair. She imagined the imprint of Dravenhearst’s body in this very seat mere minutes ago, for she’d pounded down the stairs and strode straight into her father’s office before the cushion had even gone cold. “The bad, I suppose.”

She braced herself for a death blow, one that would squelch the tiny ember of hope burning in her chest.

“He’s unquestionably a fortune hunter, my darling. Most assuredly.” Pa tilted his head, considering. “Though I’ll say this for the man, at least he’s honest.”

“How do you reckon?”

“He didn’t dance around the fact, came right out with it. He’s a third-generation bourbon aristocrat, and Prohibition has wrung his empire plumb dry. He has barely two coins to rub together.”

Margaret swallowed. Put in those terms, it made perfect sense. She nodded. A beribboned piggybank she was to be then.

“The good news,” Pa said, crossing his arms, “is the man has a backbone made of steel. He’s kept his head above water whilst most have drowned.

And he’s been watching the tide—five states have voted to ratify the Twenty-First Amendment to overturn Prohibition.

Four more have votes scheduled next week. ”

Margaret sniffed. “Five is far from a majority. The temperance movement still grips the nation, has for more than a decade. The states are locked up tighter than a Baptist virgin. As are Dravenhearst’s coffers, no doubt.”

“A betrothal to a Dravenhearst, even a plumb broke one, is nothing to scoff at, Margaret,” Pa continued, his voice soft. “His name carries weight, and though his estate is nearly defunct today, it might not be tomorrow. Particularly if it’s combined with our assets.”

She remained silent, stubbornly so. Men spoke of matches like picking horses at the Derby—clinically detached, all genes and odds. Was she wrong to desire something more? To want to fall for more than a family name? To be given the same consideration in return?

“You’ll not ask for my opinion, but I feel obliged to give it nonetheless.

And I…” Pa trailed off, dragging one hand along his desk as he walked around it, then sank into his chair with a tired sigh.

“I only wish I could offer you more time.” He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and tossed it on the desk between them.

Margaret winced. It was streaked with blood.

The doctor had delivered his verdict almost five months ago: carcinoma of the lung, too advanced for any hope of cure. He gave Samuel his own prescription for laudanum and a projection of decline over six months, a year at most.

The physician’s parting shot had been the final nail in the coffin. Margaret could hear the words even now. “It would be prudent to get your affairs in order sooner rather than later.”