Page 7 of The Dravenhearst Brides

Dear Diary,

A woman’s worth will never be higher than on her wedding day. She depreciates every day thereafter.

—Excerpt, the diary of Eleanor Dravenhearst

The drive to Dravenhearst Distilling began in silence.

After opening her door, Dravenhearst slipped behind the wheel of the sporty roadster himself.

The beast of an automobile roared to life, and suddenly, Margaret was waving mechanically over her shoulder to Pa as the wheels churned clouds of dust.

As her father disappeared from sight, Margaret knew a moment of panic. When would she see him again?

Would she see him again, hearty and hale?

Margaret moved her hand from its stilted wave to her head, feeling the pull of her bridal veil in the rising wind. Her other hand encircled the magnolia bouquet in a death grip as the roadster whipped around a sharp turn.

Gracious—where did this daredevil learn to drive?

She peeked leftward, stealing a glance. Dravenhearst exhaled, long and slow. The wind rumpled his black hair as the vehicle gained speed. With every passing mile, his fingers loosened on the wheel. Unclenching.

Margaret only wished she could do the same.

“How far to…” She could not bear to say home. “To your estate?”

“Not terribly far.” He flashed a wicked smile. “I drive fast.”

Yes, I can see that. They’d be lucky to survive the trip.

“The manor actually isn’t far from Greenbrier Estates.” His gaze flicked briefly to her. “It’ll take a little over an hour.”

She nodded. He lived near Frankfort then; her father had failed to mention that lovely tidbit. Margaret turned her head to watch the familiar streets of Louisville pass. She swallowed her discomfort as city faded to country.

“It’s…it’s quite hot today, is it not?” she offered weakly.

“Reckon so, midsummer Kentucky,” he grunted, his focus never leaving the road.

How foolish they were—married yet barely able to string two meaningful sentences together. Any southern debutante worth her salt excelled at small talk, could charm the morning dew straight off a honeysuckle.

But Margaret was clearly not one of them. She forcibly withheld an unhappy sigh.

Dravenhearst shed his jacket, tossing it to the backseat. The sight of his black suspenders against his white shirt was intimate, as was the relaxed, near-rakish drape of his body across the seat. Legs spread. One hand on the wheel, the other dangling in open air, catching wind in his fingers.

In contrast, Margaret sat prim as a pilgrim, her back ramrod straight, with one hand clutching the seat cushion for dear life. She began to fan herself, feeling terribly, overwhelmingly anxious.

Margaret had not left Louisville in eight years, the majority of that time spent sealed inside the four walls of the brownstone with her increasingly agoraphobic mother.

After Elijah’s accident at Greenbrier Estates, Margaret and her mother had been in agreement they wanted to leave the countryside, but once in Louisville, her mother took to the city streets less and less frequently with each passing year.

The soft hills of the Bluegrass were much as Margaret remembered from childhood, but she was surprised by the degree of both development and dilapidation that had occurred through the years.

“The road…” she began, her voice scratchy from disuse. “The condition is quite good, is it not?”

He shot her an odd look. “Indeed.”

“But many of the farms,” she continued, licking her windburned lips, “seem to be in poor straits.” She cataloged the passing of ramshackle barns and broken fences.

Several fallow fields of dried-out crops—haphazardly plowed, if at all.

Rail-thin animals grazing in empty pastures…

this was not the way she remembered it at all.

Dravenhearst’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

“I suppose inside the walls of your gilded townhome and socialite parties,” he replied, his tone measured, “the depression gripping the majority of the state within its merciless clutches has seemed a distant enemy. A monster under someone else’s bed, ne’er your own.

But I assure you, for those of us living in the Bluegrass, it is a very real adversary. ”

Margaret started as though he’d struck her. It was a rather horrible thing to say, clearly delineating her as “other” and, worse still, spoiled. Sheltered and privileged and ignorant.

How dare he!

Wealthy or not, Margaret had been born on a Kentucky farm.

That spirit ran in the blood of her veins.

She’d spent the first half of her life running amok with Elijah through the fields of Greenbrier Estates.

Milked her first cow at age seven, learned to shoot a gun by ten.

She had as much claim to the Bluegrass as this entitled goldbrick beside her.

A bourbon aristocrat he was, not some workworn farmhand or coal miner slaving deep and hard in the trenches of the backcountry.

But as she opened her mouth to say as much, Margaret remembered his roughened hands. The dire fiscal circumstances that had coaxed Dravenhearst to the altar alongside her today.

The corners of her mouth turned down, uncertainty rising in place of anger.

“Not long now,” Dravenhearst murmured, half to himself, half to her.

When the blue-green ribbon of the Kentucky River sprang up beside them, he steered the automobile off the main road.

Their course turned bumpy, winding along a narrow, heavily rutted path, passing in and out of the shadow of trees.

Dravenhearst whipped the wheel to the right, directing the roadster to an entrance hidden amongst overgrown vegetation. He cast a sidelong glance at her, his eyes flickering with something she thought might be apprehension. “Home sweet home.”

Margaret straightened in her seat, keen. The roadster passed through a crumbling brick-and-iron gate. A long straight drive lined with six towering magnolia trees stretched before them, three to a side, evenly spaced.

“Oh,” Margaret breathed. They were simply beautiful, the trees in bloom. She forgot the vestiges of her earlier anger and turned to her husband. “I see why you chose magnolias.” She lifted her bouquet and offered a tentative smile.

He nodded, fingers frozen tight on the wheel, gaze focused straight ahead.

She tried again. “It’s a beautiful arrangement. And I noticed, er, a sprig of myrtle tucked within.” It was a nice touch, thoughtful. Myrtle was reputed to herald good luck in love and marriage. She wanted him to know the gesture wasn’t lost on her.

“That was Evangeline, our groundskeeper. She made the bouquet.”

“Oh. I see.” Margaret was struck silent yet again, stymied by his curtness.

As they cleared the final pair of magnolias, the manor rose before them.

Brownstone in style, akin to the Louisville townhouse but far grander in scale.

Easily thrice as big. The length of the exterior glowed with warmth in the late afternoon sun.

The brick was crumbling and soot-stained in places, but in a rather well-loved way.

A way that implied the place had stood through a fair breadth of history and held stories worth knowing.

Flanking the western front was a magnificent square turret and to the east, a rounded rooftop cupola, complete with a beautifully carved oriel window.

A front portico stood central with a Tudor arch and a stained-glass window above the front door, a balustraded balcony overtop.

Rectangular mullioned windows, several open to air, were spaced with perfect symmetry along the manor’s length.

“Golly,” Margaret murmured, slightly slack-jawed. “It’s…it’s beautiful…splendid, even. You didn’t say—”

Dravenhearst snorted softly beside her. “Yes, if you enjoy splintered wood that warps in midsummer humidity and crumbling brick that lends to drafty winters, then splendid is precisely the word I’d choose. Not to mention the dust of centuries preserved carefully within.”

“Surely—”

“I’ll introduce you to the staff.” He swung open his door, cutting Margaret off.

“You’ll be something of a novelty, no doubt.

They, er, were hardly expecting me to return from the city with a bride.

” He rubbed the back of his neck and stole a glance at her.

His gaze swept over her wedding gown, lingering ever so slightly on the generous swell of her chest, ineffectively restrained by scraps of bridal lace.

Embarrassed, Margaret looked away, peering at the small lineup clustered before the steps of the portico. One man, two women.

Her car door opened. The moment her feet touched estate ground, a tremor rocketed outward. She wobbled and gripped the automobile, smashing her bridal bouquet against the roadster.

“Gracious!”

“Are you well?” His eyebrows raised in alarm.

The marrow of Margaret’s bones quaked, then steadied, as did the ground underfoot.

She watched the soft vibration sweep away, rippling outward through the grass.

It was subtle, so subtle she might have imagined it.

Neither her husband nor the staff seemed to notice anything amiss.

Overhead, a curtain on the second floor twitched, as though dropped from a parting hand.

Margaret squinted but saw no one within.

“Forgive me, I’m merely stiff after the drive,” she answered. She fell into step as her husband began to move.

“Down this southern hill to our right, you’ll see the distillery rickhouses.

” Dravenhearst gestured to a group of brick buildings.

“We have six, but one is sealed up, unusable. I’ll ask you not to go wandering there, consider the rickhouses off-limits.

The rest of the property, however, is at your disposal.

Down the eastern slope, just there, you’ll find the paddock and stables. I ride every morning. Do you?”

Margaret’s mouth ran dry as her gaze rolled down the hill. Several horses grazed in the distance, their tails flicking sporadically. Unsettlingly.