He would be coming to Hobart, he said, within the week. Which would give her time to finish whatever ghastly brew she might be stewing, polish her gap teeth and please, please, please to do something about that hair.
He might, the gods and Telecom permit it, even go so far as to telephone her beforehand, he suggested, humbly begging her pardon for not doing so already.
And on the Thursday night he did phone, from some place Ruth had never heard of in a far-flung corner of western Queensland. She had a second letter by then, just as flowery as the first and even more astonishing in that, like the first, it had no return address, but somehow assumed she had replied to the first letter, and proceeded to answer her never-written reply.
And such a reply it must have been! Her new-found warlock — with the greatest of humility, of course — professed to have been thoroughly smitten by it, and went on from there. Combined with the first letter, it was sufficient to have her quite thoroughly confused when his voice rasped over the telephone, ‘Art well, my lady witch?’
‘Well enough to be satisfied with my hair the way it is,’ she replied, grasping at the first thing which came to mind, then wishing she hadn’t, because the sniping comment brought with it an involuntary vision of Rosemary’s shimmering, ever-so-neat cap of nut-brown hair. ‘What are you trying to do anyway, convert me to a mere human?’
‘I? With my puny and minuscule apprentice powers? Oh, you wrong me, my lady. I did but suggest…’
‘You’re lucky I don’t turn you into a ... a...’ His laughter made it impossible to continue.
‘Can you wait until tomorrow night?’
‘If I must. Where are you this time, or shouldn’t I ask?’
‘Melbourne. Can you make us a dinner booking somewhere posh for about ten? Leave it flexible, in case the airlines don’t recognise your powers and I’m a bit late.’
‘All right,’ she said, not at all sure that it really was. ‘But perhaps you could be a bit more specific about what you consider “posh.” ’
‘Somewhere that will feed you your rabbit food and still be fancy enough to demand that you wear legs,’ he replied. ‘If possible, somewhere we can dance, my lady witch, for I’ve an almost indecent desire to take you in my arms and whirl us both to the stars.’
‘I don’t dance.’ An impulsive admission, but one best made now, she decided.
‘Don’t, won’t or can’t?’ he asked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much you couldn’t do, somehow.’
‘I never learned and I’ve got horrible co-ordination,’ Ruth replied, then hurried on, trying to both change the subject and ask before she forgot, ‘Do you want me to pick you up at the airport?’
‘Waiting at airports is among the most fruitless occupations in the world,’ he said. ‘Wait for me at home, where you can curl up with a good book or do something useful.’
‘I quite like airports,’ she replied. Her first lie, and quickly regretted, but only because she suddenly realised how eager it must make her sound. What would he think — that she was so impatient for his company she couldn’t wait? ‘I ... I enjoy the opportunity for people-watching,’ she hurriedly added.
‘Then pander to your enjoyment by all means,’ he replied with a laugh. ‘I’ll be there about nine, flying Ansett. You’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘I wouldn’t have offered if I did,’ Ruth replied. ‘But I do wonder if you want to be raging about at that late an hour when you’ve been travelling so much.’
‘I’ve told you before,’ he growled, ‘I’m not a geriatric. But I am open to reasonable offers. What do you suggest — tea and bikkies beside a bubbling cauldron? Followed by ... ?’
And his voice was so, so suggestive that Ruth found herself unable to reply until after a noticeable and revealing pause.
‘Too fast? Ah, well, it’s one of my failings, dear lady witch. One of many, indeed. I shall probably settle down as I get older. See you at the airport.’
And he was gone, abruptly as usual but somehow without seeming discourteous in the process. Ruth found herself holding a silent telephone and staring off into space.
She arrived at the airport the next evening with a sudden, terrifying thought that she might not recognise him, and had to shake herself at the sheer idiocy of the idea. It seemed quite strange, however, to be waiting in the arrivals lounge all dressed up for an evening out.
But it was worth it to see the light in his eyes as he stalked into the lounge and swept his gaze over her before setting down his luggage and bowing over her hand.
‘My lady witch,’ he murmured formally. But his eyes said volumes and his touch even more. It was as if they’d never been apart; he took her hand and the thrill of it shot through her body like a lightning bolt.
Kurtis looked both exhausted and elated, as if he’d been running on his nerves for far, far too long. But Ruth said nothing, certain be would ignore her concerns. Or, worse, misinterpret them.
He left her in the Sheraton’s Atrium bar while he went to shower and change, returning with damp hair and a fresh shave.
‘Right! Now I’m ready for anything ... or almost anything,’ he said. ‘Shall we away, my lady?’
Ruth learned that evening that she could dance, and, more important, that her feeling of contentment in Kurtis’ company hadn’t been just an illusion. Throughout the evening she found herself more and more drawn to him, more and more comfortable with him, more and more delighted with his zany sense of humour, his sardonic wit. Even his intensity seemed muted in the magic of the night. Until the witching hour struck, and with it Ruth’s punishment for her temerity at calling herself a witch.
‘Will you have a waterfall for me tomorrow?’ he asked out of a long silence in which she had been floating in his arms and dreaming of waterfalls.
‘I ... you’ve got a nerve calling me, a witch,’ she said with a start. ‘Sometimes I think you read my mind.’
‘I can but try,’ he grinned, easing the distance between them so that he could meet her eyes. ‘But actually it’s your body I read; a very expressive body it is, too. But you haven’t answered my question.’
‘I could find one, I suppose,’ she finally said, finding it difficult to speak, even to think, under the mesmerising intensity of his gaze.
‘I don’t suppose there’s one relatively handy that you haven’t already seen yourself,’ he said. ‘It would be nice for both of us to see something new.’
‘I’ll sleep on it,’ she promised.
‘Hardly fair,’ was the smiling, teasing response. ‘I sleep and dream of you, and you dream of waterfalls. How am I going to get you to the altar with that attitude?’
‘Witches don’t marry; you should know that,’ she replied lightly, hoping he hadn’t felt the curious little lurch in her heart just at having him jest about marriage. Too soon, too soon. ‘Besides,’ she heard herself adding, ‘the way you live you don’t have time to be married.’
It was supposed to be a light-hearted remark; Kurtis’ response was anything but.
‘Well, it certainly wouldn’t be anything like conventional marriages I’ve seen. I can tell you that from past experience,’ he said. ‘Also, from past experience, I’d about decided to finish my life without trying marriage again. It must be the spell you’ve cast on me, Ruth, because I’ve been thinking more than seriously about it just lately.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t be,’ she replied staunchly. ‘An apprentice-grade warlock has no business with such thoughts. Think of your career, of how many centuries of study and toil lie ahead.’
Kurtis was silent; he swirled her back into his arms and spent the next several minutes blending her with the music, his fingers at her back guiding her in the dance and making love to her at the same time. Ruth could only flow with his movements, her mind drunk with his touch, intoxicated by the smoothness of his movements, the way his body seemed to merge into her own as the music carried them.
Shortly afterwards, they left, and after Kurtis
had handed her into the car and slid himself into the passenger seat he reached out to take her hand, drawing her round to face him.
‘Take me home with you, Ruth,’ he said. ‘I want to see where you live, how you live. My only mental pictures of you are beside refrigerators and waterfalls, and I need more to sustain me in my wanderings.’
‘I...’ she began, then halted, could only stare at him, her body singing to his touch but her mind screaming untold dangers.
‘Surely you can’t fear a mere apprentice-grade warlock,’ he whispered, his fingers sliding up her wrist to touch like velvet in the crook of her elbow. His eyes seemed to glow in the half-light, reaching out to touch at her throat, at her lips, pleading and demanding as one.
‘Coffee,’ she whispered in reply, half of her hating even that much surrender. ‘I’ll give you coffee, but you can’t ... stay.’
‘Oh, my lady witch. Nothing could be further from my mind,’ he denied, sliding into his warlock role but never removing the brand of his eyes and his touch. ‘Even had I the temerity to suggest such a thing, would a humble warlock dare risk being turned to a...?’
‘A cane toad,’ she muttered, finally summoning the strength to turn from him and start the car. ‘And don’t you forget it!’
‘Upon my honour,’ he swore. And stuck to it. They drove to her flat, which was duly admired, she made coffee and they drank it in an atmosphere so thick with sexual tension, Ruth could hardly breathe. His every move, his every gesture, his every look was a declaration of intent. He didn’t have to say he wanted her body; she knew it, almost welcomed it. Did welcome it, but feared it more, and he seemed to know that, seemed almost to delight in making his declaration both a statement of safety and a promise for later.
‘It isn’t the time, Ruth. Yet. But the time will come, and when it does...’ he said, then he had her call him a taxi and returned to his hotel. Her only danger was the lingering after-effects of a goodnight kiss that promised heaven and hell and everything between.
He returned promptly at eight in a hire car and they had breakfast en route to National Park, where they visited the ever-popular Russell Falls, then moved on towards Maydena and the walk up to the base of Marriotts Falls, which was equally spectacular in its own way, buried as it was in a dense rainforest gully.
Ruth had chosen to wear shorts and an oversized T-shirt, with no need for a bra because of the warmth of the day, and once again was only too aware of Kurtis’ eyes as she walked ahead of him through the tall ferns and taller trees. Only now it was a pleasing sensation, and she made no move to stilt her long, free stride, only took pleasure in his obvious admiration. It was just … good.
And at the end of their journey, this one only an hour’s return walk, was the most idyllic setting.
Water streamed down enormous black rock cliffs, spreading in a million tiny rivulets as it did so, then landing in a small pond formed by boulders from when part of the cliff had fallen away in the distant past. Ruth had her boots off in an instant; she just had to wade in the pool, had to experience the spray of the water as it tumbled down the glistening faces of the rock.
So entranced was she by the setting that she didn’t even notice Kurtis taking pictures. Hadn’t noticed him with a camera, for that matter, until she turned back to grin at him with her eyes shining and her hands outstretched in a gesture of wonder at the beauty of the place.
Then, apprehensive of having her photo taken, she lost the spontaneity of the moment, and he responded by putting the small camera back in his pocket.
‘Are you going to be my lady witch, or perhaps my lady of the waterfalls?’ he asked her when she returned, almost shyly now, to join him where he sat on a huge boulder.
‘Oh, definitely your witch,’ she replied. ‘Although I do like waterfalls. But only a witch can cast spells.’
‘Don’t you believe it. If it comes out, I’ll have a picture that proves waterfalls can put spells upon witches. Just you wait and see.’
‘Nobody’s ever taken a decent picture of me in my entire life,’ she said, thinking as she did so that it wasn’t only waterfalls that could cast spells on her. Kurtis was doing a fair job of it all by himself.
‘Ah, but maybe nobody’s ever seen you the way I do,’ he said. And his eyes fairly glowed as they toured her face, her body. ‘In this picture, you’ll emerge as a water-witch, captured by the camera at worship. It will be beautiful, you’ll see.’
Which perhaps she would, but just at that moment her mind was captured more by the way he looked at her, the way he seemed to see through her defences, to see the way she was feeling. He stripped her with his eyes, but it was a slow, sensuous, delicate process that seemed, if anything, too slow, too tantalising.
As was his kiss, when he lifted her from the pool with her clothes and hair and skin all a-glisten with tiny droplets of spray. His lips touched her mouth, then traversed her face, mopping up the droplets, it seemed, one by one.
Beneath the T-shirt her breasts thrust against him, teased firm by the enchantment of the waterfall and the sudden warmth of his body after the coolness of the spray. As his lips returned to her mouth, his kiss deepening, he moved his fingers into her dampened, rowdy hair, pulling her against him as he drank from her mouth, as their bodies merged in this primeval glade with a sudden, primitive passion.
‘Witch or water-witch; it’s all the same,’ he gasped some centuries later, lifting his head from where his lips had sipped her breasts to throbbing, lifting one hand from where it had been lazily tracing patterns of ecstasy along the lengths of her bare thighs as she lay across his lap where he sprawled atop a gigantic boulder.
Ruth’s mind at that moment had been barely able to comprehend his words; it had merged with her body in a foaming waterfall of unheralded delight and wonder at his kisses, his touch...
She squirmed in her chair, lulled by memory and the fire’s warmth into forgetting that she didn’t want memories like that, didn’t want anything of Kurtis, didn’t want him, couldn’t handle him, couldn’t stop loving him ... and hating him...
~~~
The knock at her door had to be repeated before she heard and comprehended it, so lost was she in her head. Ruth leapt to her feet, threw a fearful glance at the witch in the mirror as she swept past, and flung open the door to recoil just as precipitately, eyes widened with shock, her body poised for flight but with nowhere to go.
Kurtis met her startled eyes, standing comfortably, one dark eyebrow raised as his searching eyes roamed over her, taking in her dishevelled hair, her wide, staring eyes, the housecoat that gaped to reveal more breast than it concealed.
‘Afraid, my lady witch?’ he asked in that ever-familiar gravelly voice. ‘Surely not, and for what possible reason? I’ve only come to talk to you, or have you been reading things into my letters again that were never existent?’
Then his hand was on her elbow, and she was being turned through the doorway, led into the hallway of her own home like a stranger. Ruth heard the door snick behind them, but her attention was focused entirely on the man whose touch burned at her arm like a torch. As they passed the hall mirror she caught a fleeting glimpse of herself, wild-eyed, wild-haired, truly witch-like, and of Kurtis, urbane, sophisticated, totally self-contained as always.
She yanked her arm free as they reached the doorway to the living-room, flinging herself ahead of him and standing—harridan-like and not caring a whit—to defy him, to deny him entry if she could; knowing she couldn’t.
‘I haven’t read anything into your letter!’ she cried. ‘I haven’t even read your letter. And I don’t want to, either. I was going to just burn it; I almost did.’
He merely shrugged, shaking his head in a gesture that conveyed sadness rather than anger.
‘Well, how about you point me at the kitchen and I’ll make us some coffee while you do read the damned thing?’ he finally asked.
Anything! she thought. Anything but having to stand there with Kurtis looking at her from th
ose sad, knowing eyes, looking into her, through her.
She pointed mutely towards the kitchen and spun away from him, scurrying to her chair and hustling to close up her robe securely before she curled up with her legs tucked beneath her.
Read the letter! Damn the letter ... and then double-damn Kurtis Goodwin for writing it, for sending it, for ... everything, she thought. And she picked up the single sheet of paper.
‘Dear my lady witch...’ The words swam before her eyes, and she reached absently for her glasses, the ones he always said gave her the look of a myopic owl.
The time has come to stop running, Ruth. If you want to be free, I’ll let you go, but unless you’re ready to face up to what’s going wrong between us you never will be free. You’ll just be running.
I can’t let you do that. I love you too much, difficult though it may be for you to believe...
Ruth spun her head round to glare at him as Kurtis silently placed a cup of coffee beside her.
‘You can’t stop me. You can’t and you know it,’ she hissed. ‘There is nothing you can do to stop me. Nothing!’
‘Just finish the letter,’ Kurtis replied wearily, taking his own coffee and going to sit across the room on the shabby sofa.
Ruth followed him with her eyes, willing him to sit as far from her as possible, willing him not to look at her, not watch her as she returned to the letter.
‘We have to talk about this — not in fancy, flowery words like I’ve always used to write to you, but in real words to deal with a real problem…
‘I will be there Friday, by which time you should have this letter. And if I’m allowed any choice in the matter, we will talk about this, talk about it until we can’t talk any more, if necessary.
‘For your own sake if not mine, ours, please talk to me, Ruth. Please just give us one last try at actually communicating like adults.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about!’ Ruth fairly spat that remark at him, unnerved by the simplicity of the letter, by how much it said, and yet how little. But mostly by his stark declaration of love. ‘And I’m not running, either,’ she insisted, forcing herself to meet his raised eyebrow, the downturned quirk of his lips that silently shouted back her lie.
A Magical Affair Page 6