Page 59 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Richard,

No more avoiding me—I need to talk to you. Come see me in Hellebore House.

Yours,

Ruth

Like a fish out of water, Margot’s mouth opened and closed. Open. Close. Open.

“Margot, what are you doing with that?” Ruth pointed to the rope.

Her mouth snapped shut one final time. That looks bad. That looks really bad. Goldarn it, Eleanor.

“What are you doing here?” Margot finally managed.

“I saw the light from Hellebore House. It worried me. What are you doing in here?” Ruth’s eyes skimmed up and down, taking in the silk drape of Margot’s wedding gown. “Dressed in that?”

“I…don’t know,” Margot replied, keeping her tone careful. Neutral. “I think I was…I was sleepwalking.”

“I heard voices as I approached. Who were you talking to?” Ruth peered deeper into the rickhouse. As she did so, Margot spied Beau over her shoulder, nosing his way inside.

“Voices? I don’t recall…” Margot wrapped her arms around her middle, sick with fear. “I don’t always remember my dreams. I’d best return to the manor. Thank you for checking on me.”

As Margot moved to step around Ruth, the woman grabbed her arm. Pincer tight.

“I don’t think you should go up there at all,” she said, her voice low.

Margot tugged gently, trying to free herself. “Merrick will be worried if he wakes…”

“Margot.” Ruth’s gaze softened. “I can’t let you go back up there. Don’t you see what’s happening? What that house—that man—is doing to you?”

“I’m fine.”

“I walk in on you in this godforsaken rickhouse, in the dead of night, dressed in your wedding gown with a noose at your feet, and you expect me to believe you’re fine?” Ruth’s eyes were wide. She shook her head. “Margot, you need to leave the manor. Immediately. You’re not well.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” She thought of Merrick, sleeping soundly just up the hill.

“You’re not in your right mind,” Ruth murmured. “He’s cast a spell on you. The whole blasted family has. The same thing happened to Babette. That’s the real Dravenhearst curse. If you would just trust me—”

“Babette was leaving.” Margot yanked her arm free. “The night she was killed. She wasn’t bewitched. She didn’t love Richard, not the way I love Merrick.”

Ruth grimaced. “Margot, you don’t. You don’t love him. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do.” She’d never been more sure of anything in her life. “I love him. And I’m not leaving him.”

“You have to. Either you lose him, or you lose your life.” She kicked the noose at their feet. “Don’t you see? The whole damn bloodline is rotten to the core.”

Margot inhaled, quiet and sharp, hearing the veiled threat in Ruth’s words.

“I’ll help you.” Ruth lowered her voice. “I’ll help you get out. The way I tried to help Babette. We’ll go together, you and me.”

“You didn’t help her.” The words escaped before Margot could stop them.

The air in the rickhouse chilled.

Ruth’s jaw tightened. “What has she shown you?”

“N-n-nothing.” Margot stepped toward the door.

Ruth exhaled through her nose, the snort of a bull set to charge. “What have you seen?”

If Margot ran now, could she make it? She didn’t like her chances—Ruth was wearing pants and riding boots. She’d overtake her.

“I saw,” she breathed, “that you once loved a Dravenhearst too.”

Ruth froze.

“Loved her enough to stay.” Margot’s tone turned soft. “Loved her enough to build a life here, despite the odds. Despite what it cost. We aren’t so different, you and me.”

“You’re more right than you realize,” Ruth said, thunderclouds forming in her eyes. “You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

Margot’s breath caught in her throat.

“But you’ve got one thing wrong, the most important thing,” Ruth continued. “I didn’t love a true Dravenhearst, not at first. I didn’t know what it really meant to love a Dravenhearst until my son was born.”

What? Margot stumbled back, banging into the door. It swung open, and Beau jumped away, melting into the shadows of the night. A scampering of paws and soft footfalls on earth. The dog was running away.

“You think you love your Dravenhearst husband?” Ruth’s eyes glowed with feverish zeal. Bright blue. Glittering like sea glass in the lantern light. “That love is the faintest shade of what I feel for my son. Motherhood changes you. It changes you in ways you can’t possibly understand.”

Even through her fear, the casual cruelty of the remark stabbed deep into Margot’s chest. The loss of her baby was still preternaturally fresh, and with four words—you can’t possibly understand—Ruth ripped the wound open. Mercilessly.

Margot bled, hemorrhaged. The floodgates thrown open to every single casually cruel slight that had ever been said to her. A lifetime of brushes aside. A lifetime of being different, never good enough.

Not a good enough sister to keep her brother.

Not a good enough daughter to keep her mother.

Not a good enough mother to keep her baby.

A lifetime of losing where she’d only ever hoped to gain. To grow. To bloom where she’d once bled.

Margot’s vision swirled. She lifted a hand to her forehead, covering her eyes.

She didn’t want to watch her vision tunneling.

She didn’t want to feel the flush at her neck, the sweat pouring down her back, her legs growing weak.

How many times in her life had it gone this way?

How many times had she let the ship go down without its captain?

Because it hurt. It hurt so damn much.

But then came a memory. Merrick’s face. Listening to her words.

That thing that hurts the most, she thought faintly, the place where the pain lives…

What had she told him?

That’s also the place where healing begins.

Margot dropped to her knees, overcome.

You don’t get to bloom, to heal, until you stop bleeding.

And Margot wasn’t sure she ever had, not really.

Hers was a blistering sore, an oozing canker she couldn’t stop touching because she’d learned to love the answering throb.

The pain was protective, kept her from getting too close, from gazing directly into the abyss of the mirror to stare down the ghosts within.

From setting them free instead of holding on.

Margot’s vision crystalized. Sharp and clear.

She alone could stop her own haunting. She alone could bury these ghosts.

Ruth yanked Margot’s shoulder, trying to drag her forward. “Get up. Get up, Margot.”

She pulled back, clinging to the door. “Julian’s father…it’s Richard?”

Ruth laughed, a bittersweet cackle tinged with both longing and regret.

“I’d never slept with a man in my entire life, you know,” she breathed, remembering.

“I had dalliances, true…but Babette was an addiction, one I could never quit. After she died, this ghastly house…” Ruth shivered.

“She was so close all the time, yet so far away. And Richard was here. The last thing she touched. The last thing she loved. He was all I had left of her. We slept together, only once, about a month after the funeral. But once was all it took. That’s how it always is with those damn Dravenhearst men. ”

Against all odds, Margot smirked, thinking of herself. Of Babette. Of Eleanor. No, conception was never the problem in this house. Fruition was. Blooming.

“I tried to warn you,” Ruth cried, her eyes widening, pleading. “I told you not to sleep with him. I told you not to love him. I tried so many times, in so many ways.”

Margot gasped. “Did you…you didn’t…you wouldn’t…”

Ruth’s eyes turned to steel. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do. I think my darling, dearest Babette has already shown you that secret.”

“Did you poison Merrick?” Margot asked, mind racing. Alastair hadn’t been the only one who delivered drinks at the legislature dinner. Ruth had, at the very start of the night. Two drinks dripping with berries, purple and blue and round.

Evangeline’s garden. The unlocked gate.

“I wasn’t trying to poison Merrick,” Ruth hissed.

“I was trying to poison you. You and that blasted baby. Merrick has never been a threat to me, a threat to my son, until you came here. Merrick had promised—no more Dravenhearst brides, no more heirs. My son would have been given everything. My son’s bloodline would be the one that lived on. This is our home.”

“He’s still a Dravenhearst,” Margot said.

“He’s mine. I raised him right.”

Margot tilted her head, thinking of Julian’s dastardly charming face. His dark hair and smooth-talking lips. His sweet smile. He didn’t seem so different to her than any of the rest. No more or less deserving, certainly, than Merrick. Margot didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before.

Or how Ruth didn’t see it now. Amazing how mothers were deluded by their sons.

“What you’ve done is unforgivable,” Margot whispered. No wonder Babette, imperfect though she was, refused to rest. There was so much betrayal here.

Ruth huffed, blowing away a strand of blonde hair that had escaped her airtight chignon.

“We’ve reached an impasse, dear Margot,” she said.

“I tried to keep these secrets from you. I didn’t want it to come to this, but you’re so full of questions.

There’s only one left to answer.” She glanced over her shoulder to where the rope lay coiled on the ground.

“Are you going to come quietly, or will you go down swinging like the last Dravenhearst bride?”