The Notorious Lady Anne: A Loveswept Historical Romance

by Sharon Cullen

  Lightning flashed again, turning the world muddy purple. The purple goop spat hail. Split pea hail at first, that sounded like the first faint pops of microwave popcorn, then fist-sized hail that smashed the greenhouse panes and sent shards of glass geysering into the air. A 747 revved for takeoff inside my skull. My ears popped, my hair tried to yank itself out by the follicles, and what felt like a dozen Dustbusters sucked at my clothes. Tree branches and gutter spouts hurtled through the air, outlined by strobes of lightning. Something enormous somersaulted toward me, growing bigger and bigger, blotting out the sky. I stared in disbelief. It was a house! An enormous house was about to smack down and squash me like the Wicked Witch of the East. When the rescue workers came around searching for bodies, they’d discover my feet sticking out from beneath the foundation.

  “She really needed a pedicure,” they would say.

  I was five years old when I watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time. My parents were out and my older brothers, who were supposed to be babysitting me, had abandoned me. Alone in the house, I poured myself a glass of Kool-Aid, dribbled my way to the TV, and popped a tape into the VCR. I couldn’t read yet, but the video cover showed a girl in a blue dress, a scarecrow, a lion, and a shiny metal man. I plopped down on the sofa, my legs so short they stuck straight out over the edge of the cushions, and watched, entranced, as a girl named Dorothy balanced along a fence, singing a song about a rainbow.

  Then Almira Gulch appeared. Eyes like Raisinettes, chin like an ax blade, mouth like a rat trap. By the time she was pedaling her bike through the twister, cackling insanely and transforming into the Wicked Witch of the East, I was petrified, sobbing, and soaked.

  My mother came home, switched off the movie, changed my underpants, and put me to bed. I wasn’t allowed to watch The Wizard of Oz again until I was nine years old, presumably old enough to separate fantasy from reality, but even then I had to squeeze my eyes shut when the winged monkeys flew out of the witch’s castle.

  Escape tip #2:

  Stone walls do not a prison make,

  But electrified razor wire

  makes a damn fine substitute.

  A spatter of rain in my face woke me. Disoriented, I jerked upright, swiping water out of my eyes. Memory returned in jumbled fragments: lightning, wind, hail, a flying house. Had I actually been in the middle of a tornado?

  The eerie purple clouds had vanished as the storm roared off east. The air smelled like Christmas trees and the sky had turned that soft, heavenly blue that precedes dark. Bricks, boards, mangled metal, and glass from the shattered greenhouse lay strewn about, sparkling beneath a layer of rapidly melting hail. And there, just a few feet away, was the thing that had struck me. Not a house falling out of the sky, Mazie, you hysterical tornado-phobe—just an old roof the tornado had snatched off a garage or shed. It was lodged against the prison’s perimeter fence, half in and half out of the grounds, as though it’d tried to escape but had been snagged at the last moment.

  I took stock of my parts. No broken bones, merely a hard, painful knot about the size of a jawbreaker on my crown. Just a bump, I told myself. Walk it off, my horrible brothers would have sneered.

  Heaving myself to my feet, I eyed the fallen roof. My heart started beating the way it had the first time I’d seen Taylor Lautner take off his shirt in the Twilight movie. I felt woozy. I felt short of breath. I felt terrified that I might be contemplating something stupid.

  Shouts came from somewhere close by, puncturing my last-person-on-earth fantasy. Peering out through the jungle of tangled limbs, I glimpsed figures on the grounds. The emergency generators kicked in at that moment. Lights blazed, motors hummed, and current surged through the fence wire in a whispery buzz. I figured I had about thirty seconds before someone spotted me. The whole point of making inmates wear orange jumpsuits on work details is to make them as visible as construction barrels.

  Don’t even think about it, I warned myself.

  I have never been an impulsive person. You don’t want to be in line behind me at Baskin Robbins because I dither forever trying to choose between Peanut Butter Passion and Mississippi Mud. When I see a sweater I love in a store, I decide to wait until it goes on sale and when I go back my size is gone.

  But four years in prison changed that. In prison you don’t have time to weigh the pros and cons of a situation. In prison you listen to your gut. And my gut was telling me go for it! My gut didn’t care that if a single hair came in contact with that fence, twenty thousand volts of electricity were going to surge through my body. My gut didn’t care that I had no clue what I would do if I actually escaped from prison. My gut had become a shoot-first-ask-questions-later type of organ.

  Taking a running start, I leaped for the outthrust corner of the roof, snagged a rain-slick shingle, slung a knee up, and shimmied to the peak. I seat-of-my-pantsed down the other side and halted at the far edge. From here to the ground was a two-story drop. Heights are high on my list of phobias, with a scariness rating just below lightning, tornadoes, and those cardboard cylinders of biscuit dough that make a loud pop when you press a spoon against the seam and even though you’re expecting the noise it still makes you jump.

  Heights made me sick to my stomach. Just watching someone in a movie climbing out on a ledge gives me sweaty palms. I cursed the gut feeling that had led me into this predicament. But here’s where growing up as a Wisconsin farm girl comes in handy: deep inside my otherwise chickenshit soul there lurks a tiny flicker of derring-do-ness dating from the time when being allowed to hang with my brothers was the most important thing in my life, a time when I constantly tried to prove that possession of testicles was not the single standard for bravery. So I took all dares. Rode the bucking heifer. Climbed to the highest beam in the barn and jumped. Set off the string of firecrackers under the milk bucket.

  Unfortunately, a residue of that brainless bravado must still have lingered deep inside my lily-livered soul. Without giving myself more time to think about it, I squeezed my eyes shut, launched myself into space, and jumped.

  I landed with a bone-jarring thump on the perimeter road. I was outside! For the first time in four years I was not, technically, in prison. Digging out the gravel imbedded in my palms and using my tongue to take roll call of my teeth, I scanned the terrain. Beyond the road was no-man’s-land, a flat stretch of ground with all vegetation slashed away, as wide and exposed as an interstate highway. Expecting to hear a bullhorn-amplified voice ordering me to halt any second, I slithered commando style across the open stretch until I reached the woods opposite. Then I scrambled to my feet and ran.

  Taycheedah is located in the middle of the Kettle Moraine, the range of wooded hills that snakes across the length of eastern Wisconsin, tucking calendar-cute farms among its rolling ridges and hardwood forests. In fall, when the sugar maples are blaze orange and the scarlet maples are—well, scarlet—the Kettle Moraine makes the New England woods look like end-of-season clearance sale colors. But that great color explosion was weeks in the future. Right now the trees were still in their green, full-leafed, convict-covering phase. I would hide in the woods, I decided. I’d gather roots and berries, I’d hunt game with a bow made of saplings. I’d live in a pine bough lean-to. Swiss Family-of-one-Maguire.

  I imagined myself aiming a homemade spear at a bunny. I pictured the bunny chuckling merrily as my spear thwunked into a nearby tree and splintered into twigs. I envisioned myself showering beneath a freezing waterfall, using moss for tampons, shaving my armpits with clamshells, and attempting to skin roadkill with a chunk of sharp stone. I’d have the sky, the stars, and the great outdoors. But no toilet paper, clean underwear, or M&Ms. And if I wanted to get right down to it, I didn’t actually know how to make a fire to char my squashed squirrels. In Girl Scouts they’d tried to teach us to produce fire by rubbing two sticks together, but all I’d ever produced were blisters.

  Okay, so not the woods. So where instead?

  Where was the best place to hide a m
arble?

  Inside a bag of marbles.

  I had to find a place where a solo woman wouldn’t stick out like a nun at a strip club. I needed to put as much distance as I could between me and the prison before the man-eating dogs glommed on to my trail.

  Keeping to the cover of the woods, I began moving parallel to Taycheedah’s access road. This was a lot harder than it sounds. These weren’t nice woods. These were evil woods like the one in Snow White where she’s escaping her evil stepmother. Low-lying branches slapped me in the face, thorns shredded my arms, mosquitoes dive-bombed me. I climbed barbed wire fences set in the middle of the woods by some inconsiderate idiot. I crashed through the brush with all the stealth of a tank battalion. I cursed a lot. As the hours wore on, I became convinced that the prison authorities had set up night vision cameras in the woods and were watching my bumbling escape on screens in the control center, laughing so hard they drooled on their starched white shirts. They were purposely not swooping in and grabbing me because of my entertainment value.

  A thicket of thorny brush forced me to steer away from the access road. When I finally angled back to where the road ought to have been, I discovered that it had treacherously disappeared, leaving a bog in its place. I plunged into swamp water up to my knees. Mud sucked off my right shoe and I had to grope through oozing slime before I finally retrieved it, trying not to think about the things that might be paddling around in that gunk, itching to crawl up under my pants legs and insinuate themselves into personal parts of my body.

  By the time I climbed out of the swamp I was completely lost. For all I knew, I’d walked in a circle and would find myself back at the prison. It was now pitch-dark and raining like God’s power showerhead. Shivering from cold and shaking with muscle fatigue, I collapsed onto a mossy log and started bawling. Mouth wide open, snot drizzling from both nostrils, not caring if the hidden cameras were watching or not. What had I been thinking? Why had I even wanted to escape?

  I used to lie awake nights fantasizing about breaking out of Taycheedah, inspired by the great escape movies—Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, The Fugitive. But I knew they were fantasies; in real life most escapees are caught within a few hours. The same thing would happen to me. I was going to be caught and punished. Tossed into solitary, sentenced to a hundred years plus my life sentence. When I died, they’d lock my rotting carcass in a cell to make sure the sentence was carried out.

  Sirens warbled in the distance. The woods distorted the sound so I couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from. Emergency vehicles out for storm victims or police cars sent to chase me? At this point I didn’t care.

  All right. Here was my plan: I would sit here and wait until the bloodhounds found me. I would plead for mercy. I’d say I’d suffered a bout of tornado-induced insanity.

  Plead insanity, advised my lawyer, Sterling Habenmacher. Your husband was going to divorce you; you were going to lose him to another woman; you were going to be kicked out of your own home. So you went a little PMS and offed your hubby. Happens all the time. Plead temporary insanity and we’ll get you off with twenty-five years.

  I hadn’t listened to Sterling Habenmacher. I had refused to say I was insane. I had faith in the American justice system. I’d gotten up on the witness stand and told the jury that I hadn’t killed my husband. I had no idea how my husband’s blood had gotten on my nightgown, how my nightie had gotten stuffed behind the clothes dryer, or how the gun that killed my husband had gotten wedged in a heating duct. I didn’t even know how to operate a gun.

  So much for the American justice system. The jury hadn’t believed me. The jury had believed the sneering, swaggering, finger-stabbing prosecutor. The jury had looked at the bloody nightgown, the video, and the gun and reached a verdict of guilty. The jury had the IQs of specimen cups.

  Thinking about my expensive, inept lawyer and the barracuda prosecutor who had gotten himself elected to a judgeship off publicity from my trial, I started feeling angry all over again. The anger warmed me. I locked my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I scowled at the rain. Pull it together, Maguire!

  Doctor Richard Kimble, The Fugitive, had explained to the jury how the one-armed man had murdered his wife, but the jury hadn’t believed him, either. He’d been convicted and sentenced to death. When the bus taking him to prison crashed in front of an oncoming train, did he sit there like the stupid peanut in the song, waiting to get smashed into peanut butter? No. He’d hauled ass. He’d spent the rest of the movie jumping off dams and prescribing lifesaving treatments for accident victims while tracking down the one-armed killer. I knew every detail of his escape because The Fugitive was the most popular Friday night Rec Room movie at Taycheedah.

  Neurons were slowly firing in my frozen brain. Was I going to sit here like a chump, wasting the opportunity the tornado had plopped in my lap? Was I going to meekly return to Cellblock 23 without being able to brag about encountering a single hot young hunk out trolling the woods for some no-strings-attached convict sex? No, I was not.

  Fisting the tears out of my eyes, I wiped the snot off my face with my rain-soaked sleeve and racked my brain, trying to formulate a new plan.

  Okay, here it was:

  Step 1: Ditch the jumpsuit. Not only did it stand out like a neon traffic cone in the dark, not only was Wisconsin Correctional stamped in big black letters across the back, not only was it a garment designed for the sheer purpose of humiliating its wearer—but it made me look fat. Dress Angelina Jolie in an orange jumpsuit and I guarantee you Angelina Jolie will look fat! Jumpsuits aren’t so bad for guys—all they have to do is unzip it and whip it—but for female plumbing, jumpsuits are insane. You have to unfasten the top, slide it down your hips, and pull it under your butt every time you need to pee. When I find the sadistic male who invented this garment I am going to stun-gun him, hogtie him, and staple his equipment to the crotch of a jumpsuit. “How easy is it to pee now?” I’ll snarl.

  Step 2: Get the hell out of this swamp.

  Read on for an excerpt from Donna Kauffman’s

  Wild Rain

  ONE

  The wind screamed in his ears as a burning pain sliced across his thigh. But then, alligators weren’t known for their light touch.

  “Bloody son of a bitch!”

  The moment he’d caught sight of the dark shape hurtling at him in his peripheral vision, Reese Braedon had leapt instinctively into a diving roll. The fierce wind slowed him just enough for the alligator to snag his jeans … and his flesh. He came swiftly to his feet, ignoring the heat shooting up his thigh, not taking even a second to examine the extent of his wound. Eyes trained on his attacker, he dropped into a crouch and raised the handgun he’d palmed from his ankle strap while rolling. Needing both hands to steady the weapon in the high wind, his aim nonetheless remained dead center. Right down the throat of the alligator. A very big, very agitated, hissing alligator.

  It looked about nine feet long, but Reese was having a hard time getting past its mouth. It was wide open and lined with rows of vicious-looking teeth.

  “What’s your problem, old bugger?” he asked under his breath. He moved a slow step back. The alligator remained where it was. He took another small step. No movement. But that open mouth and the speed with which the reptile had overtaken him earlier made him more than a little wary.

  “Just a simple job,” he muttered. “Grab the tart and get her off the island.” He took another step. “No one told me she kept an overgrown suitcase with fangs as a watchdog.”

  When he was a good twenty feet away, he carefully began to straighten. His aim did not waver. “There’s a good battler,” he cajoled, knowing the alligator couldn’t possibly hear him, though he’d let the damn thing eat him alive before admitting the soothing tone was for his own benefit.

  When he’d driven over the rickety bridge from Sanibel Island to Caracoles Key, his only concern had been whether Jillian Bonner was going to fall down in gratitude and thank him for saving
her from certain death, or whether he was going to have to cart her bodily off the tiny spit of land as her mother seemed to believe would probably be the case.

  He didn’t much care how he carried out his job. Either way he’d get paid and Mrs. Ravensworth would sleep easy knowing her only child hadn’t been swept into the Gulf of Mexico by Hurricane Ivan.

  Predictions were flying fast and furious, but no one seemed to question that the storm touted as Ivan the Terrible would live up to its advance billing.

  No one except Jillian Bonner. And her damn pet.

  The alligator changed things. Now Reese was mad. And when he lost his temper, someone always paid.

  He straightened a bit further. “You don’t want me, you old codger,” he called out, keeping his tone even and grinding his teeth together in what he hoped passed for a smile. “Even the meanest crocs in Australia didn’t eat me when they had the chance.”

  He straightened his legs an inch and took another step back. The alligator maintained its aggressive stance.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a heavy weight blindsided him, driving into the side of his knees. He hit the ground hard on his chest, but quickly regained his senses. His first thought was that another gator had nailed him from behind, but those were definitely human hands gripping his thighs. A quick glance over his right shoulder showed that the alligator had backed away, as if unsure what to make of this new intruder.

  Dismissing that threat for the one literally on his back, Reese expertly flipped up and over, pinning his assailant to the ground between his thighs and leveling his gun on him in one swift move.

  Only his attacker wasn’t a him.