Annie's Song Part 7

Before Annie guessed what he meant to do, he stuffed the strop in his pocket, caught her to his chest, and exited the conveyance. Clasped in his embrace as she was, her feet dangled uselessly several inches above the ground.

She thought about giving him another sharp kick on the s.h.i.+ns or smacking him in the mouth again with her head, but she quickly discarded the idea. Now that he had her here, there was no telling what he might do to her if she made him mad.

As if she weighed no more than a rag doll stuffed with goose down, he carried her up the flight of steps to the house. Then, never turning loose of her, he somehow managed to open the door and fling it wide. After taking three long strides into the entrance hall, he drew to a stop and lowered her feet to the floor. Because he continued to hold her with one arm clamped around her ribs, Annie didn't think about trying to run. Even if she managed to get away, where might she go? He would find her if she went home.

His house was bigger than it looked from outside. Lots bigger. Oak wainscoting adorned the lower walls of the entry hall, above which rose a landscape mural done in the colors of early autumn. Midway to the opposite end of the hall, a gleaming oak staircase swept up from the rust-red tile floor to a second- and third-floor landing.

Awestruck, Annie stared up at the mural. The leaves falling from the trees looked absolutely real, as did the small stream that wove lazily through a stand of cotton-wood. The focal point was a rearing black horse, similar to those she'd seen outside in the pastures, forelegs striking the air, luxurious mane lifted by the wind, tail streaming.

Never had she seen anything so beautiful. Living in this house, one would never grow weary of the winter rain, for a feeling of suns.h.i.+ne had been brought indoors. Looking at the painting, she could almost feel a warm breeze touching her cheeks.

With a start, she realized the warmth she felt was the stranger's breath. He had leaned around to watch her expression, the pride in his own unmistakable.

"Well, do you like it?"

For a long moment, Annie stared up at his dark face, acutely aware of his height and the breadth of his shoulders. Then, with a s.h.i.+ver, she jerked her gaze from his, fighting down another surge of panic.

A tremor in his chest told her he was speaking again, and by the force of the vibration, she guessed that he was calling to someone. Like chipmunks from their holes, a butler and several uniformed household staff emerged from doorways along the hall. When they spotted Annie, they politely inclined their heads and withdrew again.

A moment later, a stoutly built woman in a black dress appeared on the second-floor landing. Annie had never seen anyone quite like her. Like a huge black crow, she swooped down the curving staircase. As she gained the first floor and walked toward them, she spread her hands in a gesture of welcome.

Annie gaped at her. The only cheerful thing about the woman was the end of her hooked nose, which was apple-red.

She wore her steel-gray hair skinned back so tightly into a chignon at the nape of her thick neck that she looked squint-eyed.

"So this is our little Annie," she said with a broad smile that showed decayed front teeth. Flicking a glance at the man, she added, "My, my. That hair of hers is certainly in a tangle, Mr.

Montgomery. Doesn't her mother ever tend it?''

Annie couldn't see the man's face to tell what he said in reply, but she felt the vibration of his voice thrumming through her shoulder blades. Mr. Montgomery, the woman called him. She filed the name away in her memory.

The woman smiled at whatever it was he said to her, "Ah, well, no matter. I'll have her set to rights in no time." Turning her attention back to Annie and stretching out a plump hand, she said, "I am Mistress Perkins, your nurse. We're going to get along wonderfully, you and I. Oh, yes."

Annie was almost grateful for the solid length of the man's body behind her as she shrank from the nurse's touch. The woman's smile was friendly enough, and she seemed nice. But there was something about her that made Annie nervous. Her eyes, she decided. With no trace of warmth, they gleamed like polished chips of black rock.

The man grasped Annie firmly by her shoulders. She felt his chest give another rumble. Then he handed her over to Mistress Perkins. Initially, Annie was relieved to escape his clutches. But not for long. The nurse's grip on her arm was biting as she pulled her up the stairs and along a corridor. At any second, Annie expected one of the closed doors to fly open and the man who had attacked her to leap out. Not being able to hear, she had only her eyes to forewarn her. At every shadow, she jumped, which made Mistress Perkins grip her arm all the harder.

The woman led her into a bedchamber that looked as if it had once served as a nursery. In one corner stood a wooden rocking horse, its paint faded and completely worn away in spots. Positioned along two of the interior walls were a battered but serviceable armoire, a matching chest of drawers, and a rice-carved four-poster bed. The third wall was taken up by a ma.s.sive rock fireplace. Only one window let in sunlight.

Before it sat a scarred pedestal table where she presumed the young occupants of the nursery had once taken their lessons.

Shortly after she and Mistress Perkins entered the room, a wiry man in work clothes arrived bearing one of Annie's trunks. A few minutes later, he reappeared, huffing and puffing from the climb, carrying another trunk balanced on his shoulder. Immediately after he left, Mistress Perkins locked the oak door, dropped the key into her skirt pocket, and began rifling through Annie's things. Once she located a brush and hair ribbon, she motioned for Annie to sit on one of two straight-backed chairs at the table.

Accustomed to doing as she was bidden, Annie sat down to have her hair brushed. After the woman dispensed with all the tangles, she set herself to the task of plaiting Annie's long tresses, pulling and twisting at the strands until Annie felt as if the hair at her temples was about to part company with her scalp.

At her beseeching look, Mistress Perkins flashed a cold smile. "We'll get along fine, missy. Just fine." Then she wagged a finger. "Just don't try me. I have no patience with nonsense."

Annie curled shaking hands over the edges of her chair.

"You sit tight. When I've finished with the unpacking, I'll ring for our lunch."

Annie didn't want any lunch. Or any dinner, either. Her only thought was to get out of this place, and to do that, she had to get skinny so her mama and papa would want her back.

She hugged her waist and watched as the older woman took all her things from the trunks and put them away in the bureau and armoire. Watching her work drove home to Annie that Mr.

Montgomery had plans to keep her here for a long, long time.

Why was the question. The possible answers made her stomach feel sick.

Her fear rekindled by the thoughts plaguing her, she glanced at the locked door and then at the window. Her heart sank when she saw there were iron bars on the opposite side of the gla.s.s. Nursery windows on upper floors were often barred to prevent little ones from accidentally falling. But she wasn't little. If Mr. Montgomery had no intention of doing anything horrid to her, why would he lock her up?

As promised, Mistress Perkins rang for lunch as soon as she finished unpacking Annie's things. Shortly after a maid delivered the food, the stout nurse took her place at the table and became so intent on her meal of sliced roast beef, vegetables, and freshly baked bread that it took several minutes before she noticed Annie wasn't eating. When she finally did, she wiped the corners of her mouth, placed her crumpled linen napkin beside her plate, and pushed up from her chair.

"What a bother. I wasn't told you couldn't feed yourself.

Trust me to land a job where I must play nursemaid to an idiot."

The woman speared a piece of meat and pushed it at Annie's mouth.

"You have to eat, missy. If you don't, you'll take sick, and that'll look bad for me. Understand? I can't be losing this position."

Normally, Annie would have felt sympathy for the lady.

The servants at her parents' house needed their jobs as well, and she knew by things they said that employment was hard to find. But in this instance, she couldn't afford to be charitable.

No matter what, she had to get skinny. And she had to do it fast.

When, after a nudge with the fork, Annie refused to open her mouth, Mistress Perkins got an unholy gleam in her eye and jabbed. Annie blinked, at first with pain, then with disbelief. One of the tines had punctured her lip. She could feel blood trickling down her chin.

"The nice thing about idiots, missy, is that they can't carry tales. If Alex Montgomery notices ought amiss, I'll tell him you did the injury to yourself." Arching a black eyebrow, she added, "You'll not be difficult. Not with me. Do you understand?"

Annie understood, all right. This woman was as vicious as she was ugly.

Rebellion was usually completely foreign to her nature, but this had been no ordinary morning. In the s.p.a.ce of two hours, she'd been tricked by her mama, betrayed by her papa, and roughly handled by a man who frightened her half to death.

And now she was being jabbed with a fork? An awful, hot feeling washed over her. Short of grabbing the other fork and jabbing the woman back, there was little she could do but take the abuse.

And take it, she would. Nothing this woman or Alex Montgomery did was going to make her eat. Nothing.

When another jab with the fork tines didn't encourage Annie to open her mouth, Mistress Perkins chose other forms of persuasion that wouldn't be quite so evident to her employer. She pulled Annie's hair, slapped her sharply on the back, and then resorted to pinching her in places where the resultant bruises would be hidden by her clothing.

Through it all, Annie sat there glaring up at the nurse with her teeth tightly clenched.

Just before dawn the next morning, Annie slipped from her bed and crept across the room on her tiptoes, wincing every time she felt a floorboard give beneath her weight. One of the disadvantages of being deaf, of which there were many, was that it could be very difficult to sneak about. She couldn't tell, with any accuracy, whether she was making noise. It was ever so bothersome, especially when she wanted very much to do something and was afraid she'd be punished if she were caught.

Like right now ...

Reaching the window, Annie carefully inched the table to one side. When there was adequate room before the double-hung panes, she unfastened the lock and braced the heels of her hands against the lower sash bars. Quietly, Annie, quietly. Momentarily forgetting her run-in with the fork yesterday, she caught her lower lip in her teeth. At the ensuing pain, she opted to bite the inside of her cheek instead. She wasn't sure why, but in her experience, to do something exactly right, she had to hold her mouth just so, and biting the inside of her cheek seemed to work best.

Slowly, she pushed the window open, almost afraid to breathe. She could only hope that Alex Montgomery was one of those fussy sorts who kept the window jambs in his house well-oiled. If not, she was probably making enough noise to wake the dead.

Not that the dead were her concern. It was Mistress Perkins she didn't want to wake up. Last night before retiring, the crazy woman had tied her to the bed, of all things, with strips of linen. From things the nurse had said, Annie knew she believed her to be hopelessly stupid. And maybe she was. But even a dummy was smart enough to untie knots.

Fresh air wafted through the iron bars, molding Annie's zephyr nightgown to her body. Before she allowed herself to relax, she "listened" for any movement coming from the room adjoining hers. Nothing. No footsteps vibrating through the floor. No tingles at the nape of her neck. Nothing. She allowed herself a satisfied smile. The fat old thing was still asleep.

Grasping the bars and letting her hands slide down their length, Annie knelt on the wooden floor. Ignoring the grit that p.r.i.c.ked one bare knee, she fastened her gaze on the heavens.

Dawn. To her, it was the most beautiful part of the day, and unless she was sick, which was hardly ever, she never missed watching it. Right now the sky looked blue-black, just as it did in the dead of night, but she knew by the lackl.u.s.ter glimmer of the stars that day was about to break.

It never ceased to amaze her when it happened. Catching her breath, she watched as a rose-pink crack zigzagged across the horizon. A few minutes later, glorious shafts of light spilled forth from it, lending everything they touched a magical luminance. When the mountains became visible, their peaks were wreathed by a low-hanging mist the color of pale pink rose petals. Then, like a smile that slowly gained radiance, the light beams streaking the sky began to turn a brilliant gold.

Awestruck, Annie tightened her hands on the iron bars, thinking that, in place of music, G.o.d had given her the sunrises. Even without her ears, she heard the song in her heart, but it was no less moving for all that. Beautiful music made of light.

Closing her eyes, Annie remembered all the sounds that usually came with first light, the crow of a rooster, the strident outbursts from little birds, the distant barking of a dog, the whisper of the morning breeze as it picked up. Those sounds were forever lost to her, and yet she had filed them away in her memory, hers to recall and enjoy whenever it pleased her.

As she opened her eyes, a movement in the yard below caught her attention. She focused on a flash of gold that rivaled that of the sunbeams: Alex Montgomery's hair. She knew with absolute certainty that it was he by the way he walked, his strides long and sure, the muscles in his thighs bunching and stretching the cloth of his biscuit-colored riding breeches.

Moving alongside the house as he was, he presented her with a frontal view. He wore a white cotton s.h.i.+rt, the sleeves rolled back over his thickly roped forearms, the front hanging open, the tails loose around his narrow hips. Annie had never seen a man's bare chest, and she stared with curious fascination. Instead of pale bubbies with pink tips like hers, he had sun-burnished ones that not only looked hard but rippled peculiarly when he moved. In the center of each was a brown splotch about the size of a copper penny. Upon closer inspection, she saw that he also had golden hair on his chest, short, furry-looking stuff that she felt sure had to itch. It ran clear to his bellyb.u.t.ton, then narrowed into a line that dived under his belt.

As he pa.s.sed beneath her window, which gave her a rear view of him, he began shrugging out of his s.h.i.+rt. Craning her neck, she stared in startled amazement as he wadded the white cotton in one fist. Across his back, under bronze skin that gleamed as if it had been rubbed with oil, muscle worked, bunching in one place, flattening out in others.

Leaving the yard, he went to a small outbuilding near the stables. Beside it stood a rusty old pump, the spout of which was positioned over a weathered washstand. After tossing his s.h.i.+rt over a nearby fence, he worked the pump handle until water spewed forth, then thrust his head and shoulders under the flow. Annie shuddered, imagining how cold it must feel.

When he straightened, he shook himself like a doused racc.o.o.n and rubbed the water from his eyes.

His hair stood out from his head as if someone had stirred it with a whisk. She couldn't help but smile at how silly he looked. He quickly remedied the situation by raking his fingers through the darkened strands. His upper torso still sparkling with droplets of water, he grabbed his s.h.i.+rt and put it back on, evidently not caring that the cotton absorbed the wetness and clung to him like a second skin.

Mesmerized, Annie watched him brace a hand on the top fence rail and vault over it without any apparent effort. There was a brown horse in the enclosure. When the beast saw him, it flung its head and repeatedly struck the earth with a front hoof. Alex approached the animal slowly. When he came within about ten feet of it, the horse pivoted on its hind legs and galloped away. Making no sudden moves, Alex followed.

As before, just when he had almost closed the distance between himself and the animal, it bolted.

Again and again, Alex made his approach. Annie's sympathies were all with the horse. While Alex wasted no energy, the animal kept breaking into a gallop, and in its panic was making unnecessary circles inside the fence. Soon its coat glistened with sweat, and its sides heaved with exhaustion.

Annie realized that Alex intended to keep approaching the animal until it no longer had the strength to run from him. The poor horse seemed to realize it as well and watched him warily, its body aquiver with overexertion.

To Annie, it seemed a cruel game, and seeing him put the animal through such an ordeal cemented in her mind that he wasn't a very nice man.

At the thought, Annie's throat tightened. She pushed to her feet with a suddenness that made her head swim. Turning her back on the window, she hugged her waist and swung her gaze to the locked door. At her back, sunlight spilled through the window, throwing the striped pattern of the iron bars across the floor. Trapped. That was how she felt.

Perhaps it was simply memories of that day at the falls getting the best of her, but she could almost see Alex Montgomery entering this room and stalking her, just as he did the horse, with that same relentless determination, until she was too spent to run anymore.

Unable to stop herself, she glanced back at the window.

Through the bars, she saw that the inevitable had finally happened. The horse stood with its rump pressed into a V of the fence line, trembling but no longer able to resist the touch of its master's hands upon its body.

Seven.

For the remainder of that day and the two following, Alex studiously avoided the upstairs nursery but met daily with Mistress Perkins to be updated on Annie's progress. Edie Trimble visited, and after a lengthy stay, she seemed satisfied with the nurse's credentials and performance.

Mistress Perkins, a kindly, middle-aged woman, had come to Montgomery Hall with glowing letters of recommendation and appeared to be the epitome of efficiency. She informed Alex that Annie was settling into her new routine quite nicely, and that he shouldn't have a moment's worry about her welfare. From now on, she said, that was her concern.

Alex was more than willing to leave the woman to it. He couldn't forget his physical reaction to Annie in the carriage, nor could he forgive himself for it. The farther he stayed away from the girl, the better.

Fortunately his was a large, rambling old house, and as Dr.

Muir had predicted, Annie's presence there could be virtually ignored. Alex went on with his usual routine, working days in the stables and fields or at the rock quarry, spending the evenings doing accounts or taking his leisure in the study.

On the third evening, he had just settled into his favorite chair with a snifter of brandy and a recent issue of the Portland Morning Oregonian when a piercing screech reverberated through the room. He shot straight up in his seat, the hair at the nape of his neck standing on end. The screech was soon followed by screams.

With a curse, Alex rushed from his study into the hall where he collided with his housekeeper Maddy, who had also been alarmed by the noise. After a bit of scrambling to regain their balance, the two of them made for the stairs, Alex gaining a considerable lead in the ascent; Maddy, plump and short of leg, huffing for breath behind him. When Alex reached the nursery door, he found it locked from the inside.

Rapping sharply on the thick panel of oak, he yelled, "Mistress Perkins! What the blazes is-"

"Help me!" the woman shrieked. "Oh, G.o.d, have mercy!

Help me, please!"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Maddy cried, and quickly crossed herself.

Alex shouldered her plump form aside. Rearing back, he gave the door a sharp kick. The thick slab of oak stood fast.

Prodded by the screams coming from the room beyond, he withdrew several steps and put all his weight into b.u.t.ting the door with his shoulder. Upon impact, he reeled backward with such force he nearly had to peel himself off the adjacent wall.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

Maddy pressed her hands to her temples. "Dear G.o.d, what's happenin' in there?"

From the sound of things, ail h.e.l.l had broken loose. Alex eyed the door, grimly determined. All his life, he'd heard stories of men kicking their way into locked rooms, and he was a larger man than most. There had to be a trick to it.

Focusing on the doork.n.o.b, he backed up as far as the opposite wall would allow, took two steps to get momentum, and planted his foot directly beneath the bra.s.s backplate. The wooden frame splintered, the door gave way, and Alex entered the nursery in a staggering rush. He swayed to a stop only a few feet shy of Mistress Perkins and Annie, who seemed to be locked in mortal combat.

Such was the confusion of writhing bodies that it took Alex a moment to figure out what was going on. When he finally did, his eyes widened in amazement. Annie, the docile little creature whom Dr. Muir had a.s.sured him would never cause any trouble, had her teeth sunk into Mistress Perkins's finger, her intent apparently to relieve the woman of the appendage.

The nurse, dancing about in agony, was slapping her charge about the head and shoulders in an attempt to get free. Before Alex could step in, the woman evidently decided mere slaps weren't going to work and resorted to using her fists.

"Say now!" Alex shouted.

He leaped into the fray, not at all certain whom he meant to save-Annie, who was being bludgeoned, or Mistress Perkins, who was in danger of being dismembered. Dimly he realized that Maddy skirted the battle, grabbing clothes here, arms and hair there, her shrill Irish brogue adding to the din. There ensued a four-person bout, Annie and Mistress Perkins in an inseparable tangle, Alex and Maddy trying, without much success, to separate them. Just as Alex was finally managing to pry Annie's clenched jaws apart, the frantic nurse missed her mark and dealt him a blinding blow to the nose.

Freed at last and holding her injured finger, she staggered backward, her black eyes blazing. "You little she-b.i.t.c.h!"

"Now, just one minute!" Alex cut in. "I'll have no talk like that." He swiped at the blood pooling on his upper lip. "What in blazes prompted the girl to bite you?'' Turning, he saw that Annie had fled to a far corner of the room, where she huddled on the floor with her back pressed to the wall. He s.h.i.+fted his gaze back to the nurse. "Well?"