Annie's Song (3 page)

Folks in Hooperville claimed Alex and his brother were almost exact lookalikes. It was a resemblance Alex had always taken pride in. Now all he wanted to do was note the differences between them and shout to the world that they were only half brothers, sired by Bartholomew Montgomery but born of different mothers. Alex’s own mother, Sarah, had died of food poisoning shortly after Alex’s third birthday. As a renowned breeder of thoroughbred horses, Alex had always placed a lot of stock in bloodlines and grasped at that now as an excuse, assuring himself that Douglas must have inherited a bad strain from Alicia, Alex’s stepmother.

The bitter taste of shame rose up his throat. Rape. It was an ugly word, and one that he had never dreamed might be connected to him. His own brother? He couldn’t credit it, yet there Douglas lay, his every action testimony to his guilt.

“How could you?” Alex drove shaking fingers into his hair, started to pace, and then swung back around to stare. “What kind of monster are you? To harm a helpless little girl like Annie Trimble?”

“She isn’t a little girl.” Gingerly touching a scratch along his neck, which Alex had failed to notice until now, Douglas added, “And not helpless, either.”

Alex dropped his arms to his sides and knotted his hands into throbbing fists. “Yet you claim you didn’t force her? From the looks of that scratch, I’d say she fought you with all her might.”

Giving his head a shake as if to clear it, Douglas pushed to a sitting position, yawned lazily, and draped his arms over his bent knees. His white dress shirt was smeared with reddish dirt. Like most of the earth in the foothills around Hooperville, the earth near Misty Falls was a rust-red clay. Alex felt sick. And defeated. Since the accidental deaths of his father and stepmother fourteen years ago, for which he had always blamed himself, he had done everything he knew to atone for the loss and give his little brother a decent upbringing, to instill in him the values and morals that their sire would have taught him had he lived.

His efforts had gone for naught. Under that handsome exterior, Douglas was as rotten as a week-old
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string of fish, and nothing Alex ever did was going to change him.

“What a miserable excuse for a man you’ve turned out to be,” Alex whispered. “Thank God our father isn’t alive to see it.”

Narrowing his eyes against the light, Douglas met Alex’s accusing gaze. “Would you listen to yourself?

Annie Trimble is a moron, for Christ’s sake. So I had a little fun. You can bet she doesn’t even remember it now. I don’t see what the big fuss is about.”

Alex didn’t feel himself move. The next thing he knew, he had his brother by the throat and pinned against the wall. Though tall and well-developed, Douglas had never turned his hand to an honest day’s work. His frantic efforts to dislodge Alex’s grip were in vain. His face went from breathless red to purple before Alex realized what he was doing and relaxed his stranglehold.

“God help me, I could throttle you. My own flesh and blood, and I could kill you without a second’s hesitation.”

Douglas squirmed between Alex’s work-hardened body and the rough planks of the wall, his thighs hugging Alex’s knee where it was lodged threateningly against his groin.

“You’re crazy!” Douglas croaked.

Wanting to do far worse but holding himself in check, Alex settled for giving his brother a hard shove.

Douglas’s shoulders hit the wood with a jarring impact. Whiskey breath gone sour from sleep blasted Alex in the face and drove home the point that this young man, whom he’d loved so dearly and singularly, had become a rowdy, conscienceless drunk. “Not crazy, Douglas. The way I see it, I’ve just regained my sanity. I’ve made excuses for you and bailed you out of trouble all your life. But not this time. If they hang you for this, I’ll be in the crowd to watch the trap fall.”

“I just had a little fun, I tell you.”

“At poor Annie’s expense.”

Alex released his brother as though the touch of him was contaminating. Never had he come so close to killing a man. Though he had glimpsed Annie Trimble only a few times and always from a distance, he kept picturing her, small and fragilely built, a fey, harmless creature who frequented the surrounding forests, more shadow than substance, always skittering into the trees to hide when she encountered strangers. How must her parents be feeling tonight, knowing that she had been so cruelly attacked? And not by just anyone, but by Douglas Montgomery, whose brother’s wealth had always made him invulnerable to the law.

Oh, yes. Alex had become adept at doling out bribes. Over the years, he had learned that nearly anyone could be bought if the offer was substantial enough, and he had gotten Douglas’s ass out of a sling more than once by crossing palms with money. But not this time. This time Douglas had gone beyond the boundaries of decency. His offense was one that not even Alex could excuse, the brutal rape of a girl who couldn’t even comprehend the meaning of the word.

The rage within Alex was frightening in its intensity, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if Douglas didn’t get the hell away from him, his life would be forfeit.

“Get out,” he said softly. “Go to the house, get some money from the safe and what clothing you want.

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Then get out. If I ever lay eyes on you again, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

“Out?” Douglas echoed. “You’re kicking me out of the house? Don’t be absurd, Alex. I’m your brother.”

His brother. Alex gazed at Douglas’s sharply chiseled features, so very like his own, at his tawny hair and burnished skin, at the broad set of his shoulders. How could two people be so much alike on the outside and so wholly different within?

“I don’t have a brother,” Alex said succinctly. “As of now, my brother is dead to me. Get out of my sight before I make that sentiment a reality.”

For the first time in Alex’s memory, Douglas’s cocky attitude deserted him. His face twisted with an emotion that could only be panic. “You don’t mean it.” He pushed from the wall and shrugged to straighten his shirt. “Where will I go? What will I do?”

“I don’t care.”

“But I—” Douglas broke off and gave a shaky laugh. “Come on, Alex. Give me a chance to make things right. Everybody gets a second chance.”

“You’re out of chances.”

Slack-jawed, Douglas just stood there gaping. “For Christ’s sake. Take away my allowance for a month! Confine me to the house! Do anything you want, but don’t kick me out.”

“Those are punishments for children, Douglas,” Alex said tiredly. “You didn’t take a club to some farmer’s pumpkin patch this time or set fire to an outbuilding.” In a twinkling, Alex recalled the many pranks his brother had perpetrated over the years, most of them harmless but always with an underlying viciousness he had refused to recognize. Kerosene-soaked sacks of shit placed on people’s front porches and set aflame so the unsuspecting inhabitants would run outside to stomp out the fire.

Outhouses moved after dark to sit directly behind their sewage pits so visitors would step off into the putrid sludge. Harmless pranks, Alex had always told himself, but in truth, he had known differently.

“The damage you wrought today can’t be recompensed with money, Douglas. Can’t you comprehend that?”

The muscles around his brother’s mouth began to twitch. “But it can be fixed.” He lifted his hands in supplication. Yesterday, Alex might have pitied him, but now he felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. “To make things right, I’ll even marry the little idiot, Alex. Just say the word.”

“Marry her? I wouldn’t wish that fate on a dog, let alone a retarded girl.”

With that, Alex spun and left the tack room. As he gained the alley, he paused only long enough to say,

“If you’re not out of here before I return from the Trimbles’ house, I’ll hand you over to the law myself.”

“The Trimbles’ house? Why in hell are you going there?’’

Why, indeed. “To try and make amends,” Alex said softly, “though God only knows how. Being a Montgomery doesn’t give you license to destroy other people’s lives, Douglas. You’re finished in these parts. Clear out before they set the hounds on you.”

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The lee of the high porch steps protecting her from the chilly night breeze, Annie huddled behind the holly bush, her back pressed firmly against the brick foundation of the house. Safe here. No one could sneak up on her from behind. Hands couldn’t grab her unexpectedly. The only way anyone could approach her was from the front.

She tried to see through scalding tears as she scrubbed compulsively at her legs with the hem of her white nightgown. Dirty, sticky, ugly. She couldn’t bear to have anyone look at her, not her mother with that aching sadness in her eyes, or her father with that burning anger. She had done nothing wrong, nothing. Yet the way they stared at her made her feel as though she had. Here, in the darkness, she didn’t have to endure the accusing expressions on their faces. She took a shuddering breath and held it trapped at the base of her throat to prevent herself from sobbing.

The branches of the holly bush swayed in the breeze. The muscles in Annie’s arms and back twitched and knotted with relentless tension. Moonlight frosted the front yard with silver, lending the shadows eerie outlines and making the harmless seem threatening. When the airless pounding inside her head finally forced her to breathe, she did so with a frantic gulp to swallow back any sound she might accidentally make. Someone might hear, and then Papa would come with the strap to make her be quiet. Her whole body already ached. She didn’t think she could bear to get a licking, not tonight.

Even the air around Annie seemed filled with menace. Though she knew it was silly, she kept looking up, half afraid the bad man who had hurt her might swoop down from out of nowhere. That was how it had seemed to happen this morning. She had stopped to gaze at her reflection in the water, and suddenly his face had appeared beside hers.

She should have left her shawl and run. She realized that now. Stupid, stupid Annie. Perhaps that was why her parents looked at her the way they did. They were angry because she had lingered there to fetch her wrap. At the time, that had seemed the thing to do. Alan had been there, after all. Because his mama visited hers all the time, she had felt safe. There had been no reason not to. People tormented her a lot, but no one had ever really hurt her.

Not until this morning.

Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, Annie trembled at the remembered pain. That man. She had seen him before. He lived in a house even bigger than hers, the one on the hill with all the horses in its fields.

From a distance, she had seen him out riding. He didn’t look mean. She’d had no reason to think he might hurt her.

He could be out there in the darkness somewhere. Annie yearned to close her eyes against the memories that swamped her, but she didn’t dare. Her eyes were her only defense.

Why had he hurt her like that? The question had bedeviled her all day and evening, and there was no answer for it. She had done nothing wrong, nothing to make him mad at her. She remembered the glitter in his eyes. Pretty eyes, the color of Mama’s Christmas toffee. He had laughed as he hurt her. Annie didn’t think she’d ever be able to get the pictures out of her mind.

She locked her arms around her bent knees. Her stomach ached, and she felt raw and torn inside.

Though Mama had helped her bathe away the stickiness, she still felt so dirty, as if his touch had left a stain that could never be washed away. When she thought of the things he’d done to her, she wanted to vomit.

A movement in the darkness caught Annie’s attention. She leaned forward to peer through the prickly
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leaves. The shadowy figure of a man on horseback was coming up the driveway. As he drew nearer, a litany resounded inside her head. Don’t let it be him. Please, God. Please, please, please. She tried frantically to recall the words to the prayers her mother had taught her when she was little, but they all jumbled in her mind. As if prayers would help. They hadn’t this morning.

The man drew his horse to a stop near the hitching rail and swung from the saddle, the toe of one suede boot gaining purchase on the ground as he caught his balance and drew his left foot from the stirrup.

Dressed in tan corduroy knee breeches and a gray serge suit coat, his face concealed by the brim of a matching felt fedora, he wasn’t immediately identifiable. Tall and heavily muscled across the shoulders, he had a similar build to that of the man who had hurt her but was outfitted much more casually. The cuffs of his knee breeches were red-plaid flannel, the black stockings that skimmed his muscular calves were common ribbed cotton.

He looped his horse’s reins over the rail and swatted away the horsehair that clung to his pant legs as he strode toward the porch. At the bottom step, he paused. Annie saw his chest expand as he drew a deep breath and straightened his shoulders, a gesture that hinted at nervousness. Then he swept off his hat.

The tawny glint of his hair in the moonlight was unmistakable. Panic chased all rational thought from her mind. One look at that face, which would haunt her nightmares for years to come, and Annie forgot all her well-conceived plans to remain hidden with her back protected on all sides. It was he! She had to get away. But if she moved, she was afraid he might see her.

As though he sensed her eyes on him, he squinted against the light that spilled out the windows and across the porch. His toffee-colored gaze routed through the darkness that shrouded her, and he leaned forward slightly to peer through the holly leaves. His face was partially in shadow, and when he spoke, Annie had difficulty making out the words. As if he realized she didn’t understand, he inched closer and repeated himself. With his movement, light from the house played across his face so she could see his lips.