Annie's Song (46 page)

From his vantage point, he had a clear frontal view of her. Bart had long since grown bored with nursing and was pacifying himself, nothing more. Halfhearted suckles, gumming the crest of her nipple. Annie just sat there, letting him rout, her small feet rhythmically pushing to keep the rocker in constant motion.

Creak—creak—creak. Alex was tempted to take the goddamned chair and throw it out the window.

Instead, he sat there, the epitome of patience, willing his wife to at least look at him.

Bart finally began to doze. Catching her nipple between index and middle fingers, Annie teased his little mouth, apparently reluctant to end the feeding and thus find herself with no excuse to ignore her husband.

Watching her, Alex bit down hard on his back teeth, not because she was ignoring him, but because seeing her naked breasts was driving him half-mad.

He pushed up from the bed and began to pace. Four weeks was a hell of a long time to abstain from touching one’s wife. He felt like the head of a match held too close to a flame, ready to ignite at any second. Between listening to the chair creak incessantly, which she couldn’t hear, and watching her fiddle with herself, he was perilously close to either strangling her or seducing her, the latter of which seemed a lot more tempting.

Now that her ordeal in childbirth had faded a bit from his mind, Alex wasn’t quite so appalled by the
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thought of siring another child. Dr. Muir had assured him the second birth wouldn’t be as difficult for Annie, and that she was perfectly made to bear children. As if such a thing were even possible. If he truly wasn’t sterile, it seemed rather fortuitous that he’d never left his calling card anywhere. Surely the vinegar-soaked sponges prostitutes used weren’t failure-free as a means of preventing pregnancy.

He strode to the window and pulled back the ivory drape to gaze out into the darkness. Staring at nothing had to be better than torturing himself. After several endless seconds, he glanced over his shoulder, hoping and praying that she had fastened her bodice. But, of course, she hadn’t. Not Annie.

She had, however, stopped enticing Bart to nurse. Alex was thankful for small blessings.

He turned and moved decisively toward her. At his approach, she raised blue eyes to his. One look from her, and his irritation vanished. His decision to send her away had hurt her deeply. Somehow, he had to make her understand that it hurt him just as badly to think about letting her go.

Bending over her, he scooped the baby from her arms and put him in his cradle. Then he hunkered beside her rocker, watching dry-mouthed as she tucked her breasts back into her chemise and tied the drawstring into a neat little bow.

“Annie ...” He caught her chin and made her look at him. “I don’t want to send you away. I know that’s what you’re thinking. Don’t deny it. I promise you, sweetheart, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

Eyes luminous with unshed tears and aching with pain, she sat there glaring at him. He had a very bad feeling.

“I love you, damn it. I’m not sending you to school to get rid of you.” Enfolding her hands in his, he listed all his reasons for having made the decision, ending with, “I don’t want to deny you those experiences, sweetheart. If I did, I’d be the most selfish bastard who ever walked.”

“What about what I want?” she finally asked.

Alex sighed. “Honey, you don’t know what you want. Can’t you understand that? How can you know if you’d rather stay here than see a play? You’ve never even seen one. And dances. It’s easy to think you don’t care about those things, but that’s only because you’ve never done any of them. I have.” He leaned down to look into her slightly downcast eyes. “I know what you’ve missed, Annie, love. And I want you to experience life at its fullest. Making friends, having fun with them. Being able to go to school, like other people. Once you’re there, you’re going to love it. I promise you that.”

She shook her head and gestured around her. “This is the life I want. To be here with you. To be your wife.”

“You only think that because you’ve never experienced anything else.” Alex took a deep breath. He needed strength. It was so tempting, so damnably tempting, to let her stay with him. “I’ll tell you what.

Let’s make a bargain, hmm? You go to school and stick it out for one whole year. If, after that long a time, you still want to come home, I—”

She sprang from the chair. After taking several steps away, she swung around to fasten tear-bright eyes on him. Lifting her hands, she cried, “You don’t want me. That’s the truth of it. And you don’t love me.

Not like I love you! If you did, you couldn’t do this.”

Alex rose to his feet. “That is not true. I love you so much it hurts. Just the thought of your leaving makes me feel sick. I don’t—”

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She cupped her hands over her eyes. “Just go away!”

He closed the distance between them and drew her hands down. “Annie, sweetheart, please, don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.”

“Go away! You don’t want me. I don’t want you. So go away!”

“I do want you.”

Her mouth twisted and the tears welling in her eyes spilled over her dark lashes onto her cheeks. “No, you don’t. You don’t even kiss me anymore.”

The accusation hit Alex like a fist in the gut. It was true; he didn’t kiss her anymore. He feared that if he did, he’d lose control and make love to her. What if he wasn’t sterile? When he was thinking rationally, which he damned well wouldn’t be if he kissed her, he knew that getting her pregnant was a risk he couldn’t take. Another baby ... She wouldn’t be able to go away to school if he got her with child again.

If Dr. Muir was right, if there was even a slight chance ...

His voice gravelly with a longing he couldn’t slake, Alex whispered, “I’d like nothing better than to kiss you, Annie, girl. But if I do, I may do more than just kiss you. If I make love to you, you could get pregnant again.”

Her eyes widened and she pressed a hand over her waist. “With a baby?”

“Of course, with a baby.”

“Making love. That’s what makes babies?”

Alex swallowed. “Well, yes. How’d you think?”

Looking stricken, she whispered something he didn’t catch.

“What?”

“Fairies,” she repeated. “Mama told me fairies brought them.”

A sudden headache was developing behind Alex’s eyes. “Fairies?” He gave a low chuckle, but there was no humor in it. “Surely you didn’t believe that, Annie. I mean, when you thought about it, surely you—” He broke off, staring down at her pale face. “I, um ... I guess, maybe, if no one ever explained, then it’s understandable that you didn’t—”

He broke off, watching her with a sinking heart as she turned an agonized gaze toward the cradle. After a long moment, she stiffened as though someone had struck her, then closed her eyes. A low, keening sound issued from her throat. Alex reached for her, but she shook him off. When she finally opened her eyes again, the look she gave him was pulverizing.

“You lied.”

The nape of Alex’s neck prickled. “Annie, no. I didn’t lie,”

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She had begun to shake. An awful, horrible shaking. “Douglas!”

“Annie...”

She whirled and ran before Alex could stop her. The door slammed behind her with a resounding crash.

The retort startled Bart awake, and he began to fuss. Alex ran out into the hall. He caught a glimpse of pink at the end of the corridor and guessed that Annie was going up to the attic, her favorite hiding place.

Hurrying to the landing, he called down for Maddy to come and tend the baby.

* * *

The attic was as dark as pitch. His mind racing, Alex held the lamp high as he made his way toward Annie’s little parlor. When he finally reached the area he sought, he expected to find her huddled in a corner crying. Instead she was sitting in the old rocker. Moving the lamp so the light played over her, he studied her face, trying to think of something, anything, he might say to soothe her. There was nothing.

Not one damned thing.

He set the lamp on her wobbly table and took a seat on one of the straight-backed chairs. For a long while, they simply gazed into each other’s eyes, his aching with regret, hers burning with unvoiced accusations. Looking at it from her side, Alex could see how it must seem, that he had deliberately kept the truth from her. The heartbreak of it was, no one had bothered to lie to her. Not him, not her parents.

They hadn’t deemed it necessary because all of them had believed they were dealing with a moron.

Later, when Alex learned the truth, the identity of the child’s biological father had seemed irrelevant. In Alex’s heart, he was the father, and that was all that seemed to matter. In his heart, it was still all that mattered.

In a throbbing voice, he said as much. Annie continued to stare at him in accusing silence. Alex sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. When he looked back at her, he said, “In the beginning, it was my intention to stay married to you only until after the baby came. Then I planned to divorce you and raise the child as my own. From the very beginning, long before I started to love you, Annie, I thought of the baby as mine. When I said as much, I wasn’t lying, I was just telling it the way I saw it.” As briefly as possible, he told her about the case of mumps he had contracted in his early twenties. “Ever since, I’ve assumed I was sterile, that I couldn’t have babies. Recently, Dr. Muir told me I may be mistaken, but that’s beside the point. On the night your father came to me to tell me you were pregnant with my brother’s child, I believed with all my heart that I could never have a child of my own. I saw your baby as the answer to a prayer, a child that would be closely related to me that I could raise as my own.”

“You were going to steal my baby?” she asked with a horrified look on her face.

Alex groaned. “I didn’t think of it as stealing. Not then. You were—I thought you were incapable of raising the child, that you were mentally disabled. When I began to realize that you were capable of feeling affection, that you might love the baby and pine for it, I decided to keep you here at Montgomery Hall.”

“And that’s why you kept me? So we could share the baby?”

“No!” Alex rubbed a hand over his face. “No... In the beginning, Annie. Only in the beginning. Then I started to fall in love with you. Everything changed after that. Everything ...” He gave a shaky laugh and gestured with a hand. “To the point that now I’m sending Bart away with you. If he was all I cared about, do you truly believe I’d do that?”

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She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked up at the rafters. When she lowered her gaze, she said, “I feel like you’re sending me away because I embarrass you, that you don’t want me around until I learn not to act like a dummy.’’

“Oh, Annie, no.” Alex shot up from his chair and crossed the room to her. Going down on one knee before her, he grasped her by the shoulders. Her eyes made him think of wet velvet. “I’m not sending you away to school because you embarrass me. I love you with all my heart, and I’d be proud to go anywhere with you on my arm. Just as you are! Embarrassed?” He shook his head. “never, not in a million years. It’s just that there are so many things you’ve missed. Fun things. Wonderful things. Because I love you so much, I want you to have a change to do all of them, and you can’t do them here. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her lips tremulous.

“Oh honey, yes, of course, I’m sure.”

Before Alex quite realized what was about, he was covering her mouth with his. The next instant she melted against him. Inside his head, his pulse sounded like a drumbeat. Don’t do this. Don’t do this, it seemed to say. But Alex was beyond warnings. Beyond being cautious. With so many other emotions pelting him, the remote possibility of pregnancy didn’t even enter his mind.

Annie … Pulling her up with him, he came to his feet. She felt like pure heaven in his arms. He ran his hands over her body familiarizing herself with her shape, which had altered since childbirth. A slim waist.

Gently flared hips. Lord, he wanted to breath right out of her. He moved his hands to her breasts, cupping their softness, reveling in their heat. At his touch, she moaned into his mouth. The sound, thick with need, drove him beyond rational thought.

He fumbled with the buttons of her bodice. As the cloth fell away, he attacked the drawstrings of her chemise. Soft, warm skin. Nipples that eagerly pushed up for the brush of his fingertips. He ran his mouth from her lips to her throat, then lower. She arched her back over his arm, offering herself to him. Alex didn’t need an engraved invitation.

As he drew her nipple into his mouth, the sweetness of her milk spilled over his tongue. Encircling her waist with his hands, he lifted her slightly, feverishly sucking first one nipple, then the other, teasing with his teeth and tongue. She cried out, a long, low wail that trailed off into a moan.

Alex peeled her clothing away as he might have the skin from a delectable piece of fruit, his lips following in the wake of his hands to taste every sweet inch of her the instant he got it uncovered. When he had her stripped, he took a moment to simply adore her with his gaze. Heavy with child, she had been precious to him beyond measure and beautiful in a way he couldn’t put into words. But now? She was every man’s dream, with full, rose-tipped breasts, a tiny waist, ample hips, and long, shapely legs, every inch of her flawless. So lovely, he was almost afraid to touch her. Yet so tempting, he couldn’t resist. He wanted her, had to have her, the devil take all the reasons why he shouldn’t.

He lowered her back into the rocker, jerked his fly open, and buried his shaft into her hot wetness. She looped her legs around his waist, meeting him thrust for thrust, the motion of the rocker heightening their rhythm. Creak—creak—creak. Vaguely, Alex was aware of the sound, but for some reason, it no longer wore on his nerves.