Annie's Song (30 page)

“Easy, girl. Easy.”

Behind Alex, Deiter, the stable master, was wrestling frantically with some sort of pulley contraption that had been attached to the rafters. Annie guessed, by the mechanism’s design, that the canvas straps would be fitted around the mare’s body so she could be hoisted to her feet.

Her heart aching for the poor mare, Annie drew closer so she could see better. The mare chose that moment to give a powerful lunge, throwing Alex aside as she pushed to her knees. At a shout from
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Alex—Annie knew he shouted by the way the muscles along his throat grew distended—Deiter abandoned what he was doing and ran to help. With the assistance of both men, the horse staggered to her feet.

Frantic—probably with pain—the mare seemed not to appreciate the help of the men and wheeled about, throwing her head and lashing out at Alex with a forehoof. The stable master, trying to dodge her feet, grabbed for her harness but missed. The animal, in her frenzy to escape, came about yet again, this time turning her hindquarters toward the open stall door.

Annie nearly fainted. The mare’s backside was dilated and streaming blood, and from it protruded miniature horse legs, the hooves of which were covered with white stuff that resembled clumps of clabbered milk. A baby ... The mare was giving birth.

Annie stood paralyzed, her gaze riveted. The mare’s sides were heaving and lathered in sweat. Alex grabbed one of the straps hanging from the ceiling and quickly looped it around her girth. When he got the band fastened, he ran to the wall, unhooked a pulley rope, and, leaping high into the air, pulled on it with his entire weight.

As he tied off the hoist, he glanced over his shoulder at Deiter. “Get the foal turned! Hurry, Deiter, or we’re going to lose her, goddamn it!”

Provided with a perfect view of the mare’s backside, Annie watched in horror as Deiter shoved his arm, clear to the elbow, up inside the mare. Inside of her! Black spots swam before Annie’s eyes. An awful, rubbery feeling attacked her legs. A baby, the mare was having a baby. A baby that had been growing inside her in a special place. Only it wasn’t wonderful, as Alex had told her. It was horrible. More horrible than anything Annie might have imagined. The mare was suffering, suffering terribly. And if Alex and Deiter couldn’t do something to help her, she was obviously going to die.

A strong hand clamped over Annie’s elbow. Blinking to see through the spots that swam in her vision, she looked up into the concerned face of a man she’d never seen. He said something to her, but she was in such a state, she couldn’t focus on his mouth.

All she wanted was to get away. From the man. From the stable. From Alex, who had lied to her. Away to someplace safe—someplace where she could hide— someplace where the screams welling within her could be released without anyone hearing.

She whirled and ran, blindly and in a panic, the thought going through her head that maybe, if she ran fast enough, she could escape the fate that nature held in store for her. As she exited the stables, however, all thought of running fled her mind. Her legs felt like melted rubber, wobbly and incapable of bearing her weight. The world around her seemed to be doing a slow, undulating turn, vertically one minute, then shifting on its axis, making her feel as if she were being flipped upside down and then sideways.

And she felt sick, so awfully sick. In the blur of her vision, she saw the house, and she broke into a staggering run toward it. There was a hiding place there. A safe place.

Alex had just finished washing up and was drying his arms when Maddy came tearing into the stable, her green eyes bugged, her face blanched. As she skidded to a stop before him, she began working her mouth, but several seconds passed before any sound came out.

“Annie,” she finally managed to cry. “Up in the attic! She’s screamin’ and carry in’ on somethin’ awful.

Come, Master Alex. Come quick!”

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One of the hands, who had washed up just before Alex and stood nearby rebuttoning his shirt, said,

“Oh, damn.”

Both Maddy and Alex whirled toward him. At their questioning stares, he shrugged. “The missus was in here a little bit ago,” he explained, looking shamefaced. “She seemed purty upset when she ran out.”

“In here?” Alex barked. “What d’you mean, in here, Parkins? You mean she saw the mare?” At the man’s nod, Alex nearly snarled. “Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, you was busy. With the mare and all. If I’d’ve bothered you, we would’ve lost her for sure.”

Alex had an unholy urge to knock the man’s teeth down his throat. “My wife is far more important to me than a damned horse, Parkins. She shouldn’t have been in here. The minute you saw her, you should have—”

Alex broke off, realizing how futile it was to jump all over the fellow. The damage had already been done. Tossing down the towel he’d been using, he pushed by Maddy and broke into a run for the house.

The instant he entered the hall, Alex heard the screaming. It was like nothing he had ever heard in his life, a horrible, demented wailing that reverberated eerily along the landing arid down the stairway. Grasping the banister rail, he swung onto the first step and took the others in flying leaps, his heart slamming like a sledge against his ribs. When he reached the second flight of stairs, the screams seemed louder, more frightening, shrieks one moment, guttural moans the next, the intermittent sobs so deep and tearing that he began to fear Annie might do some serious harm to herself.

Tearing along the third-floor corridor to the west wing. Hitting the narrow, dangerously steep staircase.

Falling to one knee. Scrabbling to regain his feet. Alex moved in a blur, scarcely conscious of anything but the screams and his sense of urgency to reach his wife.

He hit the closed attic door as though the barrier of wood wasn’t there. Darkness. Objects in his path.

What he couldn’t leap over, he plowed through, scarcely noticing the pain as sharp projections barked his shins and slammed into his thighs. Annie ... Dear God. The panic and pain he heard in her cries nearly dropped him to his knees. The mare, he thought wildly. She had seen the mare giving birth. That she had come into the stable, that she had witnessed something so awful, made him feel sick. Physically sick. No pregnant woman should see something like that, least of all someone like Annie.

Alex finally reached the dividing wall that separated her small parlor from the rest of the attic. As he staggered around the partition, Annie’s screams came to a sudden stop. The silence was so absolute it seemed deafening, crashing against his ears, resounding. Dimly, he was aware of the rasp of his own breathing.

The fading light of the late autumn afternoon spilled anemically through the dormer windows, doing little to illuminate the room. Alex searched the gloom, trying frantically to locate her. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he finally spotted her pale oval face. Stepping closer, straining to see, he began to make out her features.

Thinking only to comfort her, he ate up the distance with three strides to where she sat huddled in a corner. “Annie, sweetheart.” He grasped her violently shaking shoulders. “Honey ...”

It hit Alex then. The silence. The sudden and awful silence. Dear God, she was holding her breath. To
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stop herself from screaming. She was afraid. Of him. She had broken the rule of silence, and now she thought he might punish her.

“Annie, no. Sweetheart, go ahead and cry. I don’t care.”

In her panicked state, Alex didn’t think she was registering anything he said. Her slender body jerked fiercely with suppressed sobs. He stared down at her, helpless to breach the chasm that stretched between them. Deafness. A lifetime of observing rules and being harshly reprimanded when she broke them. Even in the dimness, he could see her pinched little face turning a frightening, dull red. The veins at her temples and along her throat bulged, bluish purple beneath her skin, throbbing and swelling with pressure.

Impotent rage exploded within Alex. He shoved to his feet with such suddenness that his head spun.

James Trimble. The goddamned razor strop.

He turned and ran from the attic, taking the narrow, steep staircase as though it weren’t there. Almost immediately after his departure from the attic, Annie began to cry again. Bless her heart, she had no way of knowing how loud her screams were.

Nearly blind with tears, he passed through the house, feeling as if he were slogging through waist high molasses, each step an effort, every movement agonizingly slow. Alex hit his study like a man gone mad.

The strop.

That damned strop. He couldn’t remember where he had put it.

When he reached his desk, he began jerking drawers open with such force that they departed from their runners, spilling the contents onto the floor. Dimly, Alex realized that Maddy had run into the study. As if from a distance, he heard her talking, but he couldn’t make out the words. What she was saying didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to him at that moment but the girl upstairs.

He finally found the razor strop in the bottom right drawer of the desk. He closed his fist around it and raced past Maddy, never sparing her a glance. Retracing his steps, he returned to the attic. He knew now that Annie would quiet the minute she saw him. That was the rule.

Well, he had had it with the Trimbles’ idiotic rules, and he was going to show Annie that, once and for all.

When he stepped into her parlor again, she reacted just as she had before, gasping and then holding her breath to stifle any sounds that tried to erupt. Alex strode directly to her wobbly three-legged table. With a violent sweep of his arm, he sent her mismatched collection of china flying. Cups and saucers hit the wall, shattering upon impact, particles and shards ricocheting. He didn’t care. He could buy her more china, a whole houseful of it if that would make her happy. But he couldn’t buy her another chance at life!

Shaking with rage, Alex slapped the strop across the table’s surface. Then he fished his pocketknife from his trousers. With jerky movements, he unfolded the blade, and then he set upon the length of leather in a frenzy, hacking it into pieces, then hacking the pieces into pieces.

“Scream!” he roared at her. “Scream, yell, cry! I don’t care, Annie! Do you understand me? I won’t punish you for making noise. I will never punish you. Never!”

Hack, hack, hack! In his frenzy, Alex mutilated the length of leather until it lay before him in minuscule
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bits. Then, and only then, did he stop. Tossing down the knife, he planted his hands on the tabletop and hung his head, breathing as though he had run a mile. When he finally looked up, he saw that Annie was still huddled in the corner, her slender arms locked around her knees. Against her breathlessly red face, her gigantic, tear-filled eyes were inky splashes of blue.

Alex held her gaze. “I love you, Annie,” he whispered hoarsely, and then he opened his arms to her.

For a moment that seemed to last an eternity, Alex waited, silently praying for a miracle as he hadn’t since childhood. Just one little miracle.

“Please ...” he whispered raggedly. “Come here, Annie love.”

With a low, broken cry, she pushed up so suddenly from the floor that she seemed to move in a blur.

Then she launched herself at him, plowing into him with the foremost part of her small body, which at this stage of pregnancy happened to be her belly. Afraid she might hurt herself, Alex gave with her weight to lessen the impact and nearly lost his balance in the attempt. Catching her against him, he staggered back a step, then managed to regain his footing.

Annie . . . Her slender arms were hooked around his neck, clinging to him as though she hung off a cliff and he were her only purchase. Her deep, shuddering sobs, which she still stifled against his shoulder, weren’t that loud, but they jolted through him. He was just glad she no longer held her breath.

“Oh, God, Annie...” Gently, Alex gathered her closer, if indeed that was possible, for she had melted against him like a pat of butter on a hot griddle cake.

“Forgive me, sweetheart. Forgive me.”

With her face buried in his shoulder, Alex knew she couldn’t know what he was saying, and perhaps that was just as well. Before he could hope to soothe her, he had to calm down himself, and right now, he was far from calm. This was all his fault. He’d had an opportunity to sit down with her once and explain the birth process, and out of some misguided sense of chivalry, he’d shirked the responsibility, telling himself ignorance was bliss.

How wrong he had been. By avoiding the issue, he’d left her vulnerable in a way that no woman should be. Because of him and his stupidity, she was terrified now and in a panic. Senseless and totally unnecessary. If he had only talked to her. All it would have taken to avoid this mess was a little honesty.

Nearly frantic in her attempt to get close to him, she stepped up on the toes of his boots and clung more tightly to his neck. Her weight was so slight that Alex scarcely felt the pressure on his feet. Angling an arm under her rump, he lifted her against him, smiling through tears at how sweet she felt. Annie, big belly and all, was the most precious armful he’d ever held. As he pressed his face against her hair, she let loose with a wail. A terrible, tearing cry that came jaggedly from her chest.

To Alex, the sound was heartbreaking, not a practiced cry designed to gain sympathy, not a delicate sob, carefully measured to seem feminine. This cry came from her soul, raw with pain, ugly in its honesty.

Nothing was held back or modulated. Even so, to Alex, it was the most beautiful sound on earth. The very fact that she had dared to utter it was a gift of trust.

That realization brought fresh tears to his eyes. Forgetting her delicate condition, forgetting everything, he tightened his arms around her, acutely conscious of the fragile ladder of her ribs beneath one of his palms, of the narrow span of her shoulders, of her lightness. There wasn’t much of her, but somehow, she had
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