Anna moved to a dark corner and removed her clothes. Every night she wore a soft gown that had been washed so many times it looked little more than a rag. She climbed onto the bed beside him, curling into her ball next to him, almost touching him. Since the night she’d cried on his chest, she hadn’t come so close to him. He knew she wasn’t afraid of him as she was of Ramon, but she still didn’t trust him completely.
He moved so that he could whisper near her ear. “Ramon said you came here more than six years ago. He said he heard you were six or seven at the time. How old were you, Anna, when you came to stay?”
She sat up on her legs and looked at him as if no one had asked her such a question or expected her to respond. Slowly, she lifted her hands and held out all her fingers, then closed one fist and held two up on the other hand.
“You were twelve?” He found it hard to believe that even with her small build, the old woman had missed her age by five years.
She nodded.
“That would make you about eighteen now.”
She shook her head.
“Nineteen?” he guessed again.
She nodded, and he thought she was brilliant to be able to pull childhood off for so long.
“Why didn’t you, or did you try to run away?” He thought he remembered Ramon telling him one night that Anna had tried to run once and she’d almost died from the punishment.
She turned her back to him, then unbuttoned a few buttons of her gown. Holding it in the front, she let the garment slip free at her shoulder and showed him the thin long scars on her back from the years-ago beating. There were fresh bruises as well along her arms, as if some hand had jerked her suddenly.
Duncan got the picture. It wasn’t all that hard to break a twelve-year-old; a few beatings, but as she got older, Toledo must have begun locking her in. It crossed his mind that maybe the old woman knew or suspected that Anna, though small, was fully grown. Duncan wouldn’t put it past the old witch to make Ramon wait for his prize as long as possible, but Duncan had no doubt that one day she would turn her great-niece over to the man. Toledo had plans for Anna, and they were too horrible for him to imagine.
When she started to pull her gown up, he stopped her with a gentle touch. “No,” he whispered. “Let me see them all. I don’t ever want to forget what the old woman did to you.”
She didn’t move, but sat with her back perfectly straight for a few minutes, then slowly pulled button after button free until the gown fell to her waist. The thin scars, some layered on one another, ran to her waist and beyond, he guessed.
“No one should be beaten like this. No one,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. He brushed his hand over the scars, wishing he could brush away the memory of the pain she must have suffered. “Anna, tell me, how did you survive?”
She looked at him over her shoulder, but she didn’t say a word as she buttoned up her gown. Somewhere along the way she’d been trained too well not to talk, even to someone she trusted.
When he raised his arm, she moved into his hug. For a long while he held her, his hands spread across the damage that had been done to her so many years ago.
CHAPTER 26
A LITTLE BEFORE DAWN EM, LEWT, SUMNER, AND Wyatt crossed the Rio. No one said a word. They had no idea what they faced, but Wyatt swore that the gambler he’d talked to several nights ago at the border had said the roadhouse where outlaws came to drink and gamble wasn’t more than a day’s ride from the river.
Em believed the ranger, Wyatt Platt. He might be a man of few words, but he was proving to be a true friend to Duncan. No one else had bothered to tell them her cousin was missing. Maybe the ranger thought he’d eventually make it back, or maybe none wanted to face Duncan’s father, Travis McMurray.
Once on the other side, Wyatt rode ahead scouting and they followed at a slower pace. The idea, though Em didn’t think it was a particularly good one, was that if