Page 49 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Jean-Philippe,

I’ve had the most bewitching dream and must commission a gown.

Think…French Revolution.

Need I say more?

Yours,

Babette Dravenhearst

Afew hours later, with Julian and Xander’s assistance, Merrick was propped in bed with Dr. Smalls by his side and Beau at his feet. He was unconscious.

Margot’s head was pounding, had been since the moment she’d walked through the manor door. Her limbs were heavy. Like she was sleepwalking through a nightmare.

“What did he ingest?” Dr. Smalls asked, checking Merrick’s pulse.

“How should I know?” Margot tossed her hands up in exasperation. “I think someone slipped something into his drink. It could have been anything. I didn’t see it happen.”

“How long ago?”

She looked at the clock on the bedside table. “Perhaps three hours? Roughly. Again, I can’t be certain.”

Dr. Smalls continued his exam, unbuttoning Merrick’s shirt. A red rash flowered across his chest. The physician frowned, then produced a tongue blade. He opened Merrick’s mouth to peer inside.

“Dry,” he pronounced.

“I took him to the bathroom as soon as I realized something was wrong,” Margot explained, wringing her hands. “I forced him to vomit up as much as he could.”

Dr. Smalls paused his examination. “Clever thinking,” he murmured. “Resourceful.”

“Check his pupils.” She moved closer to Merrick’s bedside. “There’s something wrong with his eyes.”

He lifted Merrick’s lid. All black, no hint of gold. He shined a light over the dilation. No response. Dr. Smalls’s face turned grim.

“Get me a basin, Xander,” the physician instructed.

“What are you going to do?” Julian asked. He stood at the edge of the room, looking terribly out of place in the main house, with his muddy stable boots and rumpled hair.

“Purge his stomach again. He seems to be suffering from a drug-induced inhibition of his parasympathetic nervous system, leaving the sympathetic to take over unchecked. Hence the dilated pupils, dry mucous membranes, flushed skin, and exceedingly high heart rate.”

“And is that…” Margot fumbled, trying to understand. “Is it dangerous? What causes it?”

“A number of agents could do it, I’m afraid. That’s the difficulty. A bad batch of heroin or cocaine perhaps. I trust he doesn’t—”

“No.” She shook her head, shocked. “That’s not…that can’t be it.”

“Well…there’s atropine and hyoscyamine, both belladonna alkaloids. Jimsonweed or mandrake root extract could also do it.”

Her mind shuffled through his list, tripping over a single word. One she recognized with creeping dread. “Did you say…belladonna?”

“Belladonna alkaloids, yes. Atropine and hyoscyamine.” He looked closely at her. “Do you have reason to believe he’s been exposed?”

“Not to those drugs, no.” She wrapped her arms around her chest.

“The plant could do it too,” Dr. Smalls said, zeroing in on her discomfort. “Nightshade.”

A plant growing on this very estate.

Xander returned to the room with a basin. He froze in his tracks, hearing the word.

“If so…” she ventured, emphasizing the word, “could it kill him? Belladonna?” She remembered what Evangeline had said.

A high dose is deadly.

“It could,” Dr. Smalls admitted. “Hallucinogenic in small doses, fatal in high.”

Margot sank onto the bed beside Merrick. “Purge his stomach,” she commanded, gripping her husband’s clammy, limp hand. “Please. Do it now.”

“He’ll rest awhile,” Dr. Smalls said, preparing to leave. “I’ll return in the morning to check on him. I recommend you get some sleep as well. You’ve overextended yourself tonight, which is unfavorable, given your condition.”

“Thank you, I will.” Margot sighed, exhaustion creeping in. “Xander will see you out.” She dismissed the physician with a wave of her hand.

“Reckon we shouldn’t leave him alone,” Julian said as the two men departed. “Should I stay?” He loitered in the doorway, uncertain, but Margot couldn’t hold his eyes. All she could think when she looked at him was, Ruth’s son, Ruth’s son. Over and over.

She didn’t blame herself for missing the connection. As fair and elegant as Ruth was, Julian was dark and flippant. Even now, he slouched rather than stood tall, taking up as little space as possible.

“No, I’ll stay,” Margot answered, already curling up in the bed beside Merrick.

“Are you certain? Dr. Smalls said—”

“I can rest here just as easily as in my own bedroom,” she snapped. “With my husband.”

“I’ll be downstairs then. I’ll post up on a couch in case you need me.”

“There are plenty of bedrooms,” Margot murmured, her voice heavy with sleep.

Merrick’s skin was warm. His heart thundered in his chest. It sounded like the pounding hooves of a racehorse, barreling down the final stretch toward home.

Julian muttered a reply, but she didn’t hear it. She simply drifted away.

In her dreams, Margot ran. She ran and ran and ran through the dark manor. Chasing the tail of a bridal veil. Floating down hallways, whipping around corners, always just out of reach, always just—

Her sleep was torn apart by a scream. Toe-curling, hair raising. Ripping her out of the land of the dead, back to the world of the living.

Merrick.

He sat bolt upright in bed, eyes open. His pupils were still eerily black. Soulless.

“Get her down,” he said, pointing to an empty corner of the room.

“What?”

“Get her down!” His voice turned shrill.

“Merrick, what’s wrong?”

“Get her! Get her!” His shouts rang through the room. He tried to rise.

Margot braced herself against him, holding him down. His body was uncoordinated and soporific, hardly at full strength.

“She can’t breathe. Get her down!”

Margot followed the path of his eyes, seeing nothing but an empty corner.

Hallucinations, Dr. Smalls had warned.

Margot licked her lips in fear. “There’s no one there.”

“I see her. She’s there. She’s dying. We can still save her!”

Margot began to cry, big silent tears leaking out. She shook her head, climbing into his lap. “She’s not there, Merrick. She’s not. She died a long time ago.”

“No. Please…Ma!”

She couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t bear it. No child deserved to see what he’d seen. No boy deserved to grow up as he had. No man should be, decades later, so haunted. She gripped his cheeks in her hands, pressing her forehead to his and staring deep into his wild eyes. She wanted to stop his hurt.

“Merrick, I’m here. It’s Margot. I’m right here with you. What you’re seeing isn’t real.”

Not real, not real.

He stared back, his gaze that of a hunted animal. “Your hair is red. Like hers.”

“It is.” She’d tear it from her head strand by strand if she needed to, if only to make that terrible look on his face disappear.

“It hurts my eyes.”

It hurts your eyes…or it hurts your heart?

She swept her hand down his forehead, trailing gently over his lashes. “Close your eyes then. Close your eyes and go to sleep, Merrick.”

“Will I get to see my mother?”

“Yes, after you rest.” It was the most terrible and beautiful lie she’d ever told.

“She’s sitting just over there, you know.” He opened his eyes and pointed to the opposite side of the room. “Right there. She’ll still be there when I wake?”

Margot startled…because she saw. In the corner wingback, Babette. Leaning forward with a hungry glint in her eye.

She swallowed hard. Hated the words even as she forced them out. “She’s always with you, Merrick.”

Whether I like it or not.