The Bourbon Kings

by J. R. Ward

Fantastic. The two of them were between her and the staff stairs.

  "I can't believe you surprised me like this!" The woman took a step back and posed, like she wanted him to have a good look at her. "I was just down at the pool, but came up because the tent people are here. I decided to remove myself so they could be on that part of the grounds to set up."

  Well, don't you deserve the Purple Heart, Lizzie thought. And weren't you heading to the club soon, anyway?

  Lizzie turned around to go for the main stairs to escape. Even if it was against regulation, it was better than having to pass by--

  As if on cue, Mr. Harris came up onto the landing with Mrs. Mollie, the head of housekeeping. The English butler was running his fingertip over the top of the balustrade and holding it out for her inspection, shaking his head.

  Great.

  Her only exits were either over hot coals or through a bonfire. Or ducking back into Mr. Baldwine-who-was-cheating-on-his-wife's room.

  Oh, the choices.

  She just loved her job sometimes.

  FIVE

  Bradford Bourbon Distillery, Ogden County

  Edwin "Mack" MacAllan Jr. walked along the forty-foot-tall stacks of bourbon barrels, his handmade leather boots clapping against the ancient concrete floor, the scent of a hundred thousand planks of hardwood and millions of gallons of aging bourbon as good as the perfume of a woman in his nose.

  Too bad he was too pissed off to enjoy it.

  In his fist, a memo from corporate was crushed into a trash ball, the white paper with its laser-printed words unsalvageable. He'd had to read the damn thing three times, and not just because he was severely dyslexic and written English was a largely insurmountable obstacle course for his brain.

  Talk about lighting him up. He was not a hillbilly. He'd been raised in an educated family, and he'd gone to Auburn University, and he knew everything about making bourbon from the chemical processes involved to that intangible artistry stuff.

  In fact, he was the highly respected Master Distiller of the most prestigious bourbon brand on the market, and the son of the most respected Master Distiller in the history of the commercial alcohol industry.

  But at the moment? He wanted to get in his half-ton and ram the grill of that F-150 right into the lobby of William Baldwine's office at Easterly. Then he wanted to take his hundred-year-old hunting rifle and put some holes in the desks of all those corporate idiots.

  Coming to a halt, he leaned back and looked at the racks that stretched up to the warehouse's exposed beam ceiling. The branded number codes and dates that had been burned into the fronts of the barrels had been put there on orders first by his father, and then by himself, and there was a progression of both, the precious containers resting in peace for four years, ten years, twenty years, longer. He regularly inspected them, even though he had plenty of people who worked for him who could do that. The way he saw it, though, these were the only children he was ever going to have and he wasn't going to let them get raised by the equivalent of a nanny.

  At thirty-eight, he was a loner, thanks to both choice and necessity: This job, this twenty-five-hour-a-day, eight-day-a-week job was his wife and his mistress, his family and his legacy.

  So getting this memo, which he'd found on his desk when he'd come in, was like a drunk driver ramming into the minivan that his entire life was riding in.

  The recipe for bourbon was really simple: grain mash, which by Kentucky law had to be made up of a minimum of fifty-one percent corn, and which was, here at the Bradford Bourbon Company, a further combination of rye, malted barley, and about ten percent wheat for smoother taste; water, drawn from an underground limestone aquifer; and yeast. Then, after the magic happened, the nascent bourbon was put into white oak barrels that were charred on the inside and left to grow up to be big and strong and beautiful in storage houses like this one.

  That was it. Every single bourbon maker had those five elements of grain, water, yeast, barrel and time to work with, period. But as the good Lord turned out an endless variation of people from the core elements of what made a human, so, too, did each family or company produce different shades of the same thing.

  Reaching out, he put his hand on the rounded flanks of one of the barrels he had first filled when he'd taken over as master. That had been almost ten years ago, although he had worked for the company since he was fourteen. It had always been the plan to step into his father's shoes, but Pop had died too soon, and there you had it. Mack had been left behind in classic sink or swim territory, and he sure as hell had had no intention of drowning.

  So yeah, here he was, at the top of his game and young enough still to create a dynasty of his own--supposedly working for the aristocracy of bourbon makers, the company who created The Perfect Bourbon.

  It was the tagline on everything BBC did, the tip of the spear of the company's brewing, business and marketing philosophy.

  So why in God's green earth was management expecting him to accept these proposed delays in grain delivery? It was like those idiots with the MBAs didn't understand that while they had enough product that was four years old today, if he didn't keep the sills going, they were going to run out of that kind of bourbon to sell forty-eight months from now--and that applied to every level, running out ten years from now, twenty years from now.

  He knew exactly where all this was headed. A nationwide shortage in corn, the result of global warming coming home to roost and screwing up the weather patterns last summer, meant that the bushel price was sky high right now--but it wasn't likely to stay that way. Clearly, the bean counters in the home office, a.k.a. Mr. Baldwine's estate, had decided to save a couple of bucks by halting production for the next couple of months and expecting to catch up when the corn prices self-regulated.

  Assuming that the drought that had rocked the nation the year before wasn't repeated.

  Which was not a bet he, personally, was willing to take.

  There were many faults to this "business" logic, but the core issue was that those suits and ties didn't understand that bourbon was not a widget produced on an assembly line that had an easy on/off switch. It was a process, a unique and special culmination and expression of trial-and-error choices that had been made and refined over a period of over two hundred and fifty years: You had to cultivate the bourbon's taste, coax out the flavors and the balance, guide the elements to their apex of existence--and then send it out to your customers under a label of distinction. Hell, he took as much pride in safeguarding the No. 15 brand, the company's most successful but less-expensive line, as he did the higher-cost, longer-aged products, such as Black Mountain, Bradford I, and the ultra-exclusive Family Reserve.

  If he interrupted production now? He knew damn well they were going to come back to him in six months and tell him to mislabel the barrels.

  Six months to the suits was just half a year, twenty-six weeks, two seasons.

  But to his palate, he could distinguish a nine-and-a-half-year bourbon from a ten-year and one-day bourbon. And maybe a lot of their customers couldn't tell the difference, but that wasn't the point, was it. And the fact that many of their competitors mislabeled on a regular basis? Hardly the standard to follow.

  If Edward were here, he thought, he wouldn't have to worry about it. Edward Baldwine was that rarity in the Bradford family--a true distiller, a throwback to the early era of the august lineage, a man who valued the product that was produced. But that presumptive heir to the throne was now not involved with the company anymore.

  So there was nowhere to go with this.

  And the fact that the memo had just been left on his desk to be found? It was typical of the way things had been running ever since Edward's tragedy. The pussies at the business center knew he'd have a fit over this, but they didn't have the balls to come and tell him in person. Nope. Just write a memo and throw it on top of all the other papers, like it wasn't going to fundamentally affect the core of the business.

  Mack went back to staring up at the
rafters that were made out of old-growth timber felled a century ago. This was the very oldest of the company's storage facilities, and it was used to house the very special barrels. Located by the original still site--which was now both a museum for tourists as well as where his office was housed--this place was a damn shrine.

  The soul of his father walked these corridors.

  Mack was convinced he could feel his old man at his heel right now.

  Convinced, too, that on a quiet day like today, when the only things in the warehouse with him were the sunlight that drifted in from the cloudy windows, the sound of his boots on the concrete, and the mist of the angels' share drifting in and out of those shafts of illumination . . . he was one of the very few champions of tradition left in the company.

  The new kids that were coming in--even the ones who wanted to get where he was--professed love for the rituals and the fundamentals and claimed to be committed to the process, but were really just corporate minions in khakis rather than suits. They were from a generation of special snowflakes who expected trophies for showing up, and everything to be easy, and for everybody to care about them and safeguard them as their parents would.

  They had no more depth than their Facebook posts. Than their relentless egoism. Than their soulless frivolities.

  In comparison to the forebearers of this company, who had shepherded this product through famines and wartime, disease and the Depression . . . through Prohibition, for godsakes . . . they were boys trying to do a man's job.

  They just didn't know it, and with a corporate culture like this? They never would.

  "Mack?"

  He looked over his shoulder. His secretary, Georgie O'Malley, who had run his father's office before Pops had died, had come in behind him without making a sound. At the ripe age of sixty-four, she was forty-one years with the company and showing no signs of slowing down. A self-professed farmer's wife who was without a husband or a farm, she was a kindred spirit in the war against the current climate of everything being disposable.

  "You okay, Mack?"

  Mack looked back up at the angels' share wafting in and out of the shafts of light so high above.

  The angels' share was sacred: Each white oak barrel was charred on its inside before being filled with fifty-three gallons of bourbon. Stored in a place like this, in an environment that was purposely not climate controlled, the wood of the barrels expanded and contracted seasonally, the bourbon inside becoming colored and flavored by the caramelized sugars from that burned hardwood.

  A not-insignificant portion of those gallons evaporated and was absorbed into the barrels over time.

  That was the angels' share.

  It was what his father had considered the sacrifice to the past, the serving that went to the forebearers to drink up in Heaven. It was also the pay-it-forward to your own passing . . . the hope that the next shepherd of the tradition would do the same for you when you were dead and gone.

  "There's going to be nothing left of us, Georgie," he heard himself say.

  "Whatchya'll talkin' about?"

  He just shook his head. "I want you to tell the boys to shut down the sills."

  "What."

  "You heard me." Mack lifted his fist over his shoulder so she could see what he'd wadded up. "Corporate's putting a freeze on corn orders for the next three months. Minimum. They'll let us know when we can make more mash. Any rye, barley, and wheat we got right now is to be repurposed."

  "Repurposed? What does that mean?"

  "They can't sell it to a competitor. This gets out to people like the Suttons? Or the general press? It's going to make the ten cents they save look like the most expensive fuck-up in company history."

  "We've never shut production down."

  "Nope. Not since Prohibition--and that was only for show, anyway."

  There was a long pause. "Mack . . . what are they doing?"

  "They're going to ruin this company--that's what they're doing." He walked over to the woman. "They're going to take us under on the guise of maximizing profit. Or hell, maybe they're going to do an IPO finally--every other bourbon maker except Sutton's is publicly owned now. Maybe they're trying to artificially inflate profit right before a private sale. I don't know, and I don't care. But I'm pretty damn sure Elijah Bradford is rolling in his grave."

  As he headed for the exit, she called after him, "Where are you going?"

  "To get drunk. On a whole lot of beer."

  SIX

  As Lane stood outside of his bedroom and stared down at his "wife," he thought, just like Easterly, she was the same, too.

  Chantal Blair Stowe Baldwine was, in fact, exactly the same: the whole haircut, spray tan, makeup, and expensive pink clothing routine identical to what he'd left behind. And her voice--still right out of central casting under the heading of Genteel Southern Lady of Leisure.

  She still babbled, too, words leaving her mouth in a stream with no consideration of rationing for the listener's benefit. Then again, for her, conversation was performance art, her hands moving like the wings of doves, arching up and down, that big diamond she'd wanted so badly flashing like a strobe light.

  "--Derby weekend! Of course, Samuel Theodore Lodge is coming tonight. Gin's all excited about seeing him . . ."

  Unbelievable. They had literally not seen each other or said a word to one another for nearly two years, and she was talking about who was on the guest list for dinner.

  What in the hell had he ever seen in her--

  "Oh, Lisa! Excuse me, could you please ask Newark if this Mr. Baldwine could have his car brought around? We're going to the club for lunch."

  Lisa? he thought. Then again, there had been staff turnover since he'd--

  Lane glanced over his shoulder. Lizzie was standing by his father's bedroom door, two vases of perfectly good, but no doubt freshly replaced, bouquets in her grip.

  "Mr Harris is just over there," Lizzie said stiffly.

  "I don't like to shout. It's not appropriate." Chantal leaned in the direction of the other woman, like they were two girlfriends sharing a secret. "Thank you so much, you're such a help--"

  "Are you out of your mind?" Lane demanded.

  Chantal recoiled, her head rearing back, her eyes going from ingenue to hired killer in the blink of her false, but tasteful, eyelashes.

  "I beg your pardon," Chantal whispered to him.

  Lane tried to catch Lizzie's stare while he muttered, "Go tell him yourself."

  Lizzie refused to acknowledge him. With a professionally impassive expression, she walked forward, her lithe strides taking her past him and down the long hall to the staff staircase. Meanwhile, Chantal was talking again.

  "--address me in front of the help like that," she hissed.

  "Her name's Lizzie, not Lisa." Now he was the one leaning in. "And you know that, don't you."

  "Her name is irrelevant."

  "She's been here longer than you." He smiled coldly. "And I'm willing to bet she'll be here way after you're gone."

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "You don't have to be under this roof and you know it."

  "I'm your wife."

  Lane stared down at her--and wondered why in the hell she was still anywhere near his life. The easy answer was that he'd been pretending that Charlemont didn't exist. The harder reasoning was tied to what she had done.

  I'm your wife.

  "Not for long," he said in a low voice.

  Those penciled brows of hers lifted, and instantly, that Persian-cat-dragged-through-a-toilet-bowl expression disappeared: She became as calm and smooth as a mirror. "Let's not fight, darling. Our reservation at the club is in twenty minutes--"

  "Let me make myself perfectly clear. I'm not going anywhere with you. Except to a lawyer's office."

  In his peripheral vision, he noted that Mr. Newark or Mr. Harris--whatever the butler's name was--was pulling a discreet turnaround, whisking Mrs. Mollie, the housekeeper, off in the opposite direction.

&nb
sp; "Be serious, Tulane."

  God, he hated the sound of his full name on Chantal's lips: Toooooooouulayne. For godsakes, it had two syllables, not three hundred.

  "I am," he said. "It's time to end this between us."

  Chantal took a slow, deep breath. "I know you're upset about poor old Miss Aurora and you're saying things you don't mean. I get it. She's a very good cook--and they are very, very hard to find."

  His molars ground together. "You think she's just a cook."

  "Are you saying she's your accountant?"

  God, why had he ever . . . "That woman means more to me than the one who bore me."

  "Don't be ridiculous. Besides, she's black--"

  Lane grabbed Chantal's arm and yanked her up close. "Don't you ever talk about her with that kind of attitude. I've never hit a woman before, but I guarantee I will beat the shit out of you if you disrespect her."

  "Lane, you're hurting me!"

  At that moment, he realized that a maid was frozen in the doorway of one of the guest rooms, her arms full of stacked, folded towels. As she ducked her head and hustled off, he shoved Chantal away. Jacked up his slacks. Glared at the hallway's runner.

  "It's over, Chantal. In case you haven't noticed."

  She clasped her hands together as if in prayer--and he didn't buy it for a second. The fake torture in her voice didn't sway him, either, as she whispered: "I think we should work on our relationship."

  "I agree. This marriage of ours needs to be put out of its misery. That is the work."

  "You don't mean it."

  "The hell I don't. Get yourself a good lawyer or don't--either way, you're out of here."

  Cue the tears. Big fat ones that made her blue eyes shimmer like pool water. "You can be so cruel."

  Not like she could be, he thought, not even close. And for godsake, he really should have followed through with that prenup, but too bad, so sad, whatever. The good news was that there was always going to be more money--even if she sued him for millions, he could make that up in a year or two.

  "I'm going to go speak with Mother," he said. "And then call Samuel T. Maybe he can serve you papers over dinner tonight."

  Annnnnnd just like that, the iron core came out again, those eyes growing cold. "I will ruin you and your family if you go through with this."