“Aconite.”
Emily went pale.
Daniel frowned.
“Certain?”
“Certain enough that you should not touch it.”
Miriam looked at Emily.
“Twenty drops might kill a horse.”
Emily covered her mouth.
Daniel watched her.
Whatever anger remained inside him collided with another truth.
Someone had tried to turn his wife into his murderer.
“Who inherits the ranch if I die?”
Miriam looked at him strangely.
“You’re asking the wrong old woman.”
Daniel already knew the answer.
But he wanted to hear himself say it.
“My wife.”
Emily’s head snapped toward him.
Daniel stared at the fire.
“If I die without a wife, the ranch goes into the Mercer family trust until my thirtieth birthday.”
“When is that?”
Emily asked.
Daniel turned toward her.
“Tomorrow.”
The room became silent.
Doctor Bennett looked from one newlywed to the other.
Daniel understood first.
Someone had needed him married before midnight.
And then someone needed him dead.
At dawn, Daniel rode to town.
Emily refused to remain behind.
“You think I’m letting you ride alone after somebody tried to poison you?”
Daniel looked at her.
“You’re worried about me now?”
The words came out harsher than intended.
Emily absorbed them.
“I was worried about you before you knew my name.”
Daniel almost answered.
Instead, he mounted his horse.
They rode in silence.
Mercer Valley’s county office occupied two rooms above a bank.
Daniel’s father’s estate papers were stored there.
The clerk, Mr.
Whitaker, reluctantly brought them out.
Daniel found the inheritance provision.
His father had written it sixteen years earlier.
Daniel would receive unrestricted ownership of the ranch at thirty.
If he died unmarried before then, the property passed into a charitable trust.
But if he died married?
Everything passed immediately to his wife.
Emily sank into a chair.
“I had no idea.”
Daniel believed her.
He hated that he believed her.
Whitaker adjusted his spectacles.
“There’s another matter.”
Daniel looked up.
The clerk produced a second folder.
“Your father investigated selling the western ridge shortly before his death.”
“That’s impossible.
He refused every offer.”
Whitaker nodded.
“He did.”
“Then why investigate?”
“Because somebody else was trying to sell it.”
Inside the folder lay correspondence from the Western Continental Railway.
The company wanted Mercer Gap.
The proposed rail route through the mountains would shorten freight travel by nearly eighty miles.
They had offered Samuel Mercer fifty thousand dollars.
He refused.
Then another person had secretly approached them.
Daniel read the name.
Clara Whitmore.
His father’s older sister.
Aunt Clara.
The woman who had practically raised Daniel after his mother died.
Emily leaned closer.
“She doesn’t own the land.”
“No,” Daniel said.
“But she once controlled the Mercer trust.”
