Heroes Are My Weakness, Page 2

  She waited until she’d located Mariah’s old scarlet woolen cloak and a pair of heavy socks before she got rid of her own clothes. After she’d piled every blanket she could find on her mother’s bed, she climbed under the musty sheets, turned out the flashlight, and went to sleep.

  ANNIE HADN’T THOUGHT SHE’D EVER be warm again, but she was sweating when a coughing fit awakened her sometime around two in the morning. Her ribs felt as if they’d been crushed, her head pounded, and her throat was raw. She also had to pee, another setback in a house with no water. When the coughing finally eased, she struggled out from under the blankets. Wrapped in the scarlet cloak, she turned on the flashlight and, grabbing the wall to support herself, made her way to the bathroom.

  She kept the flashlight pointed down so she couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror that hung over the old-fashioned sink. She knew what she’d see. A long, pale face shadowed by illness; a sharply pointed chin; big, hazel eyes; and a runaway mane of light brown hair that kinked and curled wherever it wanted. She had a face children liked, but that most men found quirky instead of seductive. Her hair and face came from her unknown father—“A married man. He wanted nothing to do with you. Dead now, thank God.” Her shape came from Mariah: tall, thin, with knobby wrists and elbows, big feet, and long-fingered hands.

  “To be a successful actress, you need to be either exceptionally beautiful or exceptionally talented,” Mariah had said. “You’re pretty enough, Antoinette, and you’re a talented mimic, but we have to be realistic . . .”

  Your mother wasn’t exactly your cheerleader. Dilly stated the obvious.

  I’ll be your cheerleader, Peter proclaimed. I’ll take care of you and love you forever.

  Peter’s heroic proclamations usually made Annie smile, but tonight she could think only of the emotional chasm between the men she’d chosen to give her heart to and the fictional heroes she loved. And the other chasm—the one between the life she’d imagined for herself and the one she was living.

  Despite Mariah’s objections, Annie had gotten her degree in theater arts and spent the next ten years plodding to auditions. She’d done showcases, community theater, and even landed a few character roles in off-off-Broadway plays. Too few. Over the past summer, she’d finally faced the truth that Mariah was right. Annie was a better ventriloquist than she’d ever be an actress. Which left her absolutely nowhere.

  She found a bottle of ginseng-flavored water that had somehow escaped freezing. It hurt to swallow even a sip. Taking the water with her, she made her way back into the living room.

  Mariah hadn’t been to the cottage since summer, just before her cancer diagnosis, but Annie didn’t see a lot of dust. The caretaker must have done at least part of his job. If only he’d done the rest.

  Her dummies lay on the hot pink Victorian sofa. The puppets and her car were all she had left.

  Not quite all, Dilly said.

  Right. There was the staggering load of debt Annie had no way of repaying, the debt she’d picked up in the last six months of her mother’s life by trying to satisfy Mariah’s every need.

  And finally get Mummy’s approval, Leo sneered.

  She began removing the puppets’ protective plastic. Each figure was about two and a half feet long, with movable eyes and mouth and detachable legs. She picked up Peter and slipped her hand under his T-shirt.

  “How beautiful you are, my darling Dilly,” he said in his most manly voice. “The woman of my dreams.”

  “And you are the best of men.” Dilly sighed. “Brave and fearless.”

  “Only in Annie’s imagination,” Scamp said with uncharacteristic rancor. “Otherwise, you’re as useless as her exes.”

  “There are only two exes, Scamp,” Dilly admonished her friend. “And you really mustn’t take out your bitterness against men on Peter. I’m sure you don’t mean to, but you’re starting to sound like a bully, and you know how we feel about bullies.”

  Annie specialized in issue-oriented puppet shows, several of which focused on bullying. She set Peter down and moved Leo off by himself, where he whispered his sneer inside her head. You’re still afraid of me.

  Sometimes it felt as if the puppets had minds of their own.

  Pulling the scarlet cloak tighter around her, she wandered to the front bay window. The storm had eased and moonlight shone through the panes. She looked out at the bleak winter landscape—the inky shadows of spruce, the desolate sheet of marsh. Then she lifted her gaze.

  Harp House loomed above her in the distance, sitting at the very top of a barren cliff. The murky light of a half-moon outlined its angular roofs and dramatic turret. Except for a faint yellow light visible from high in the turret, the house was dark. The scene reminded her of the covers on the old paperback gothic novels she could still sometimes find in used-book stores. It didn’t take much imagination for her to envision a barefoot heroine fleeing that ghostly house in nothing more than a filmy negligee, the menacing turret light glowing behind her. Those books were quaint compared with today’s erotically charged vampires, werewolves, and shape-shifters, but she’d always loved them. They’d nourished her daydreams.

  Above the jagged roofline of Harp House, storm clouds raced across the moon, their journey as wild as the flight of the horse and rider who’d charged across the road. Her skin turned to gooseflesh, not from the cold but from her own imagination. She turned away from the window and glanced over at Leo.

  Heavy-lidded eyes . . . Thin-lipped sneer . . . The perfect villain. She could have avoided so much pain if she hadn’t romanticized those brooding men she’d fallen in love with, imagining them as fantasy heroes instead of realizing one was a cheater and the other a narcissist. Leo, however, was a different story. She’d created him herself out of cloth and yarn. She controlled him.

  That’s what you think, he whispered.

  She shivered and retreated to the bedroom. But even as she slipped back under the covers, she couldn’t shake off the dark vision of the house on the cliff.

  Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .

  SHE WASN’T HUNGRY WHEN SHE awakened the next morning, but she made herself eat a handful of stale granola. The cottage was frigid, the day gloomy, and all she wanted to do was go back to bed. But she couldn’t live in the cottage without heat or running water, and the more she thought about her absent caretaker, the angrier she grew. She dug out the only phone number she had, one for the island’s combination town hall, post office, and library, but although her phone was charged, she couldn’t get a signal. She sank down on the pink velvet couch and dropped her head in her hands. She’d have to go after Will Shaw herself, and that meant making the climb to Harp House. Back to the place she’d sworn she’d never again go near.

  She pulled on as many layers of warm clothes as she could find, then wrapped herself in her mother’s red cloak and knotted an ancient Hermès scarf under her chin. Summoning all her energy and willpower, she set out. The day was as gray as her future, the salt air frigid, and the distance between the cottage and the house at the top of the cliff insurmountable.

  I’ll carry you every step of the way, Peter announced.

  Scamp blew him a raspberry.

  It was low tide, but the icy rocks along the shoreline were too hazardous to walk on at this time of year, so she had to take the longer route around the saltwater marsh. But it wasn’t just the distance that filled her with dread.

  Dilly tried to give her courage. It’s been eighteen years since you made the climb to Harp House. The ghosts and goblins are long gone.

  Annie pressed the edge of the cloak over her nose and mouth.

  Don’t worry, Peter said. I’ll watch out for you.

  Peter and Dilly were doing their jobs. They were the ones responsible for untangling Scamp’s scrapes and stepping in when Leo bullied. They were the ones who delivered antidrug messages, reminded kids to eat their vegetables, take care of their teeth, and not let anyone touch their private parts.

&n
bsp; But it’ll feel so good, Leo sneered, then snickered.

  Sometimes she wished she’d never created him, but he was such a perfect villain. He was the bully, the drug pusher, the junk food king, and the stranger who tried to lure children away from playgrounds.

  Come with me, little kiddies, and I’ll give you all the candy you want.

  Stop it, Annie, Dilly said. No one in the Harp family ever comes to the island until summer. Only the caretaker lives there.

  Leo refused to leave Annie alone. I have Skittles, M&M’s, Twizzlers . . . and reminders of all your failures. How’s that precious acting career working out?

  She hunched into her shoulders. She needed to start meditating or practicing yoga, doing something that would teach her to discipline her mind instead of letting it wander wherever it wanted—or didn’t want—to go. So what if her acting dreams hadn’t worked out the way she’d intended. Kids loved her puppet shows.

  Her boots crunched in the snow. Dead cattails and hollow reeds poked their battered heads through the frozen crust of the sleeping marsh. In summer, the marsh teemed with life, but now all was bleak, gray, and as quiet as her hopes.

  She stopped to rest once again as she neared the bottom of the freshly plowed gravel drive that led up the cliff to Harp House. If Shaw could plow, he could get her car out. She dragged herself on. Before the pneumonia, she could have charged uphill, but by the time she finally reached the top, her lungs were on fire and she’d started to wheeze. Far below, the cottage looked like a neglected toy left to fend for itself against the pounding sea and rugged Maine shoreline. Dragging more fire into her lungs, she made herself lift her head.

  Harp House rose before her, silhouetted against the pewter sky. Rooted in granite, exposed to summer squalls and winter gales, it dared the elements to take it down. The island’s other summer homes had been built on the more protected eastern side of the island, but Harp House scorned the easy way. Instead it grew from the rocky western headlands far above the sea, a shingle-sided, forbidding, brown wooden fortress with an unwelcoming turret at one end.

  Everything was sharp angles: the peaked roofs, shadowed eaves, and foreboding gables. How she’d loved this Gothic gloom when she’d come to live here the summer her mother had married Elliott Harp. She’d imagined herself clad in a mousy gray dress and clutching a portmanteau—gently born, but penniless and desperate, forced to take the humble position of governess. Chin up and shoulders back, she’d confront the brutish (but exceptionally handsome) master of the house with so much courage that he would eventually fall hopelessly in love with her. They’d marry, and then she’d redecorate.

  It hadn’t taken long before the romantic dreams of a homely fifteen-year-old who read too much and experienced too little had met a harsher reality.

  Now the swimming pool was an eerie, empty maw, and the simple sets of wooden stairs that led to the back and side entrances had been replaced with stone steps guarded by gargoyles.

  She passed the stable and followed a roughly shoveled path to the back door. Shaw had better be here instead of galloping off on one of Elliott Harp’s horses. She pressed the bell but couldn’t hear it ring inside. The house was too big. She waited, then rang again, but no one answered. The doormat looked as though it had been recently used to stamp off snow. She rapped hard.

  The door creaked open.

  She was so cold that she stepped into the mudroom without hesitating. Miscellaneous pieces of outerwear, along with assorted mops and brooms, hung from a set of hooks. She rounded the corner that opened into the main kitchen and stopped.

  Everything was different. The kitchen no longer held the walnut cabinets and stainless steel appliances she remembered from eighteen years ago. Instead the place looked as though it had been squeezed through a time warp back to the nineteenth century.

  The wall between the kitchen and what had once been a breakfast room was gone, leaving the space twice as large as it had once been. High, horizontal windows let in light, but since the windows were now set at least six feet from the floor, only the tallest person could see through them. Rough plaster covered the top half of the walls, while the bottom was faced with four-inch-square once-white tiles, some chipped at the corners, others cracked with age. The floor was old stone, the fireplace a sooty cavern large enough to roast a wild boar . . . or a man unwise enough to have been caught poaching on his master’s land.

  Instead of kitchen cabinets, rough shelves held stoneware bowls and crocks. Tall, freestanding dark wood cupboards rose on each side of a dull black industrial-size AGA stove. A stone farmhouse sink held a messy stack of dirty dishes. Copper stockpots and saucepans—not shiny and polished, but dented and worn—hung above a long, scarred wooden prep table designed to chop off chicken heads, butcher mutton chops, or whip up a syllabub for his lordship’s dinner.

  The kitchen had to be a renovation, but what kind of renovation regressed two centuries. And why?

  Run! Crumpet shrieked. Something’s very wrong here!

  Whenever Crumpet got hysterical, Annie counted on Dilly’s no-nonsense manner to provide perspective, but Dilly remained silent, and not even Scamp could come up with a wisecrack.

  “Mr. Shaw?” Annie’s voice lacked its normal powers of projection.

  When there was no reply, she moved deeper into the kitchen, leaving wet tracks on the stone floor. But no way was she taking off her boots. If she had to run, she wasn’t doing it in socks. “Will?”

  Not a sound.

  She passed the pantry, crossed a narrow back hallway, detoured around the dining room, and stepped through the arched entry into the foyer. Only the dimmest gray light penetrated the six square panes above the front door. The heavy mahogany staircase still led to a landing with a murky stained-glass window, but the staircase carpet was now a depressing maroon instead of the multicolored floral from the past. The furniture bore a dusty film, and a cobweb hung in the corner. The walls had been paneled over in heavy, dark wood, and the seascape paintings had been replaced with gloomy oil portraits of prosperous men and women in nineteenth-century dress, none of whom could possibly have been Elliott Harp’s Irish peasant ancestors. All that was missing to make the entryway even more depressing was a suit of armor and a stuffed raven.

  She heard footsteps above her and moved closer to the staircase. “Mr. Shaw? It’s Annie Hewitt. The door was open, so I let myself in.” She looked up. “I’m going to need—” The words died on her tongue.

  The master of the house stood at the top of the stairs.

  Chapter Two

  HE DESCENDED SLOWLY. A GOTHIC hero come to life in a pearl gray waistcoat, snowy white cravat, and dark trousers tucked into calf-hugging black leather riding boots. Hanging languidly at his side was a steel-barreled dueling pistol.

  An icy finger slithered down her spine. She briefly considered the possibility that her fever had come back—or her imagination had finally shoved her over the cliff of reality. But he wasn’t a hallucination. He was all too real.

  Only slowly did she tear her gaze away from the pistol, the boots, and the waistcoat to see the man himself.

  In the dim gray light, his hair was raven black; his eyes a pale, imperial blue; his face chiseled and unsmiling—everything about him the embodiment of nineteenth-century haughtiness. She wanted to curtsy. To run. To tell him she didn’t really need that governess job after all.

  He came to the bottom of the stairs, and that was when she saw it. The pale white scar at the corner of his eyebrow. The scar she’d given him.

  Theo Harp.

  Eighteen years had passed since she’d last seen him. Eighteen years of trying to bury the memories of that ugly summer.

  Run! Run as fast as you can! This time it wasn’t Crumpet she heard in her head but sensible, practical Dilly.

  And someone else . . .

  So . . . We finally meet. Leo’s perpetual disdain was gone, replaced by awe.

  Harp’s wintry, masculine beauty was a perfect match for these Go
thic surroundings. He was tall, lean, and elegantly dissolute. His white cravat emphasized the dark complexion he’d inherited from his Andalusian mother, and his teenage scrawniness was a distant memory. But his air of trust fund entitlement hadn’t changed. He regarded her coldly. “What do you want?”

  She’d given her name—he knew exactly who she was—but he acted as though a stranger had stepped into his house.

  “I’m looking for Will Shaw,” she said, hating the slight tremor in her voice.

  He stepped down onto the marble floor, which was inset with black, diamond-shaped onyx. “Shaw doesn’t work here any longer.”

  “Then who’s taking care of the cottage?”

  “You’d have to ask my father that.”

  As if Annie could simply dial up Elliott Harp, a man who spent winters in the South of France with his third wife, a woman who couldn’t have been more different from Mariah. Her mother’s vivid personality and eccentric, gender-bending style—pipe stem trousers, white men’s shirts, beautiful scarves—had attracted half a dozen lovers as well as Elliott Harp. Marrying Mariah had been the answer to his midlife rebellion against an ultraconservative life. And Elliott had provided the sense of security Mariah had never been able to achieve for herself. They’d been doomed from the beginning.

  Annie curled her toes inside her boots, ordering herself to stand her ground. “Do you know where I can find Shaw?”

  His shoulder barely rose—too bored to waste energy on a real shrug. “No idea.”

  The ring of a very modern cell phone intruded. Unnoticed by her, he’d been cradling a sleek black smartphone in his opposite hand—the one not caressing the dueling pistol. As he glanced at the display, she realized he was the one she’d seen last night galloping across the road with no regard for the beautiful animal he’d been riding. But then, Theo Harp had a dark history when it came to the welfare of other living creatures, animal and human.