Page 45 of The Dravenhearst Brides
Through the looking glass she came. Whole and dazed and wild and awake. Her eyes fluttered rapidly as she tried to understand. Warm arms encircled her, holding her up.
“Margot?” It was Merrick.
Merrick’s voice in her ear, his calloused hands gripping her bare arms. A strap of her nightdress slipped off her shoulder.
Her legs wobbled. She licked her lips, looking around. It was a foggy night, and she was outside Dravenhearst Manor. Outside and down the hill by the distillery. One hand scratched ferally at the wood of the sealed door to Rickhouse One. The other was wrapped in the iron chains barring the doors. All ten of her fingers, her nails, were ragged. Trickling with blood.
“Oh my God,” she cried, her voice shaking. She released her grip on the door.
“It’s all right.”
It was very muchnotall right. Margot wasn’t sure she’d ever been less all right in her entire life. “What’s happening to me?”
“We’ll get you inside and…and cleaned up,” he said weakly, eyeing her bloody hands.
But when Margot looked at the fog-shrouded manor on the hill, her gut clenched with anxiety. The roadster was pulled around front, engine idling and headlights on. He’d been sneaking out again. That was why he’d found her. She should be grateful. Who knows what she might’ve done.
Yes, grateful…
But she wasn’t sure she was.
Margot took a deep breath and pulled back. Far enough away to look directly into his amber eyes. “I think your house is haunted.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
She waited.
“Do you want to leave?” he finally asked. “You read the contracts, the will. You can go at any time.”
She swallowed. She’d read them. Before bed, as she’d promised. Her father had done something extraordinary—he’d inserted a prenuptial clause. One that could only be voided with her consent, with her signature on a blank line. She could leave right now and take everything with her. It was a surprise, highly unusual to give a woman that kind of autonomy in her marriage.
Even more unusual, Merrick had signed it, agreed to the terms.
She tilted her head, her lips parted.
“Ask me,” he said, his voice gruff. “Go ahead.”
“Why on earth did you consent to those terms?” His answer mattered to her. It mattered immensely.
His arms still gripped hers. Her eyes searched, trying desperately to understand. As much as she’d wanted to break through the glass in her dream, that was how much she wanted his answer now. To hear the words she longed for from him.
“Because I’d hoped it wouldn’t matter. Because I hope you’ll stay.”
15
July 10, 1933
Mr. Merrick Dravenhearst,
Where were you last night?
—A
Hedidn’tdenyit.
Margot paced back and forth in her bedroom the next morning. It had been a dangerous thing to say. A statement that could, conceivably, get her locked up in an asylum—talk of visions and ghosts and hauntings.
But he hadn’t denied it.
