Page 78 of The Dravenhearst Brides
Ruth bit her lip. “Well…”
“Well, what?”
“There was a third pregnancy,” Ruth admitted. “Unplanned, mind you. Babette didn’t enjoy motherhood in practice as much as in theory. She went to great lengths to prevent additional pregnancies, but about a decade into their marriage, there was a bit of a mishap.”
“Again?Did she miscarry?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Ruth crossed her legs, uncrossed them. She plucked at a gold button on her blazer. “The day Babette told me she was expecting was the day she died. She confided in me in the morning, and she hung herself in Rickhouse One that very night.”
Margot gasped.
“I don’t think she could face it.” Ruth blinked furiously. “The house, Eleanor, even Richard—they’d all turned on her during her first two pregnancies. She wouldn’t subject herself to that again. I don’t know if she’d told Richard yet, but if she did…if she told him the same thing she told me that morning—that she wanted to leave…well, that could’ve done it as well, I suppose. That declaration would have made him rabid.”
Margot was horrified. Struck speechless.
“Not to worry.” Ruth patted the top of Margot’s hand. A bit patronizingly. “Nothing like that will happen to you. Just steer clear of Eleanorand Babette. History does have a funny way of repeating itself here at Dravenhearst Manor.” She chuckled weakly.
Margot didn’t laugh. She didn’t think she’d ever found anything less funny in her entire life.
The headboard slammed into the wall, keeping steady pace like a metronome. Tangible, auditory proof of her husband’s feverish desire for her.
“Merrick, please,” Margot gasped, arching her back, lifting her hips. Even when he was fully inside her, she wanted more of him. Always more. “I’m so close.”
His fingers slipped between her legs, putting pressure right where she wanted it,neededit.
“Fuck,” she cried, her vision blacking out. Her legs turned to jelly, her head lolling back on the pillow as she came apart. Merrick grabbed her right thigh, moving her leg over his shoulder to pull her slackened body closer. To angle deeper. Unfathomably deep. Three more strikes before he, too, found his release, crying out and collapsing forward.
“Fuck,” she repeated, blowing out the word with a long exhale. She lifted her arm, heavy as lead, and dropped it over him, pressing his cheek to her breast and running her fingers through his dark hair.
“Such a foul mouth on you, Mrs. Dravenhearst,” he teased.
“My husband is a terrible influence, I’m afraid. Positively uncouth.”
Merrick rumbled with laughter before rolling onto his back. Margot snuggled into his chest. She sighed contentedly, long and slow as her eyes grew heavy with sleep. Was there a better way to drift off at the end of the day? She didn’t think so. She wondered how she’d managed to sleep at all before Merrick.
Ah, that’s right,she recalled faintly.Laudanum.
The bottle was still on her nightstand but gathering dust. Everything was different now. Sleep came easily, a natural extension of her consciousness. Naught but a crossing, easily made when she was so very warm and safe, slackened by satiation.
“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Merrick whispered.
Margot’s eyes sprang open. The shift in his mood was evident, the words tinged with yearning and ache.
“Like what?”
“Likethis.” He gestured at the two of them, hopelessly tangled up in each other and the bed sheets. “I didn’t know what I was giving up when I decided…”
“When you decided not to wed? To be celibate?” She wanted to talk about it, wantedhimto talk about it. Desperately. She held her breath and kept her head buried in his chest. She didn’t want to spook him with eye contact.
“Well, yes,that.” His voice rankled with bitterness. “For me, the two are mutually inclusive. I’m not comfortable being vulnerable with just anyone, Margot, and I only make promises I can keep.”
“I like that about you,” she murmured into his chest. “Why do you say it like it’s a bad thing?”
“Because it’s a bit strange, isn’t it? To prefer the company of oneself instead of others?” he asked. “It’s only that…over the years, I’ve grown very comfortable being alone. Ilikebeing alone—I genuinely do. It’s familiar. Reliable.”
“You meansafe.” She completed his thought, understanding.
“Yes. Safe, you could say. People are unpredictable, and I’m a creature of habit. In bourbon making, it’s the uncontrolled variables that lead to destruction.”
