A Magical Affair

by Victoria Gordon

  Comfortable for him, at least. In order to join him, Ruth faced either a difficult scramble or a request for assistance, and she wasn’t at all comfortable with the choice.

  Throughout their walk, she had been astonishingly conscious of the fact that Kurtis had made no attempt, no gesture to take her hand, and she was surprised at how much she noticed the absence. Always when they had walked together it had tended to be hand in hand, and having him here with her but without that, cast as great a pall on things as did his unusually quiet mood.

  She stood looking down at the water, occasionally glancing back to where he sat, staring into space, and remembered how pleasant, how right it had always felt to be holding hands with him on their travels. And how wrong it now felt not to.

  Eventually, however, the silence became just too much; the stillness of the narrow gorge suddenly seemed oppressive, Kurtis’ immobility even more so. Ruth clambered up to a point where, if he gave her a hand, she might sit beside him.

  He did so without her having to ask, which was comforting until she realised he had barely been aware, himself, of making the gesture. And once she was seated there beside him it seemed to have no effect on the shroud of silence around him.

  ‘Are we going to talk now?’

  She asked the question after the briefest deliberation. Anything, she thought, would be better than the icy quiet that was broken only by the rushing whisper of the small waterfall.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, his voice so quiet, she barely heard. ‘I’m not sure we can talk this out, which is silly, considering I came up here with exactly that in mind.’

  Ruth didn’t reply; had no idea what to say, what he even wanted her to say. And when he continued, she nearly fell off the ledge with the shock of what he did say.

  ‘You’ve become a stranger to me, somehow,’ he said, not looking at her, not touching her. ‘You’ve never been a stranger; even the first time I met you, when you were playing at being a kitchen witch, you weren’t a stranger. It was like I’d always known you, even then. But now...’

  What to say? How to say — anything? Ruth found herself holding her breath, willing her mind to help her, trying to open a mouth that suddenly seemed glued shut.

  ‘I’m ... just me,’ she finally managed to blurt, only to stop as her mind freewheeled.

  ‘Yes, but you’ve changed, somehow,’ he replied calmly, still not looking at her. ‘Something’s quite different, and I can’t quite figure it out. Maybe I never really knew you at all. Maybe we were both fooling ourselves, have been all along.’

  A chance? A slim one, but maybe the best she’d have. Ruth didn’t dare hesitate, not now!

  ‘Maybe I’ve just finally started to grow up,’ she ventured, her voice tentative, her eyes fixed on Kurtis, trying desperately to make him look at her somehow, see her.

  And when he did, she wished he hadn’t. All the response she got was one eyebrow raised in a gesture of such cynicism that he might as well have screamed ‘liar’ in a very loud voice.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, in a tone that also cried out his doubts, and without another word he hopped down and turned to reach up and take Ruth by the waist, lifting her down from her perch to stand tucked between him and the high rock wall behind her.

  Only he didn’t, as she had expected, release her immediately. He stood, his fingers firm against her waist, looking down into her eyes with a most curious expression on his face.

  And when his lips swooped to claim her mouth, instead of responding willingly, ardently, as she desperately wanted to, Ruth found herself going stiff in his arms, her mouth rigid against his assault. Because it was wrong; all wrong! His kiss was punishing, almost cruel. It was a gesture of some kind, but not of any sort she wanted or needed. There was passion involved — she was being held close enough against him to know that — but there was no tenderness, none of the rightness she had always felt with him.

  She twisted in his grip, throwing her head sideways to get away from his mouth, shoving both hands against his chest to gain leverage.

  ‘Stop it,’ she cried, not sure if she was angry or afraid or just what, but certain she wanted him to stop, certain it was wrong, felt wrong, tasted wrong.

  ‘Of course.’ The words were muffled because he released her and turned away so quickly that he was actually speaking over his shoulder. Ruth found herself standing alone, her entire body shaking with the shock of it all.

  Kurtis stalked away down the narrow, twisting track, only to halt and turn abruptly to face her before he’d gone ten steps.

  ‘I apologise for that,’ he said brusquely. ‘I ... never mind.’ And he was turning again, walking swiftly and leaving Ruth to follow as he strode towards the car park.

  She wanted to call out to him, to make him wait for her, somehow to make him talk to her, communicate the anger she couldn’t help but see in the set of his shoulders, in the tightness of his pace, But she didn’t, couldn’t. In the end she just ... followed.

  Once in the car again, he didn’t retrace their route, but drove out of the Punchbowl by the eastern exit and thence to Penquite Road and down to Station Road and the North Esk crossing, apparently driving aimlessly, without purpose and without speech.

  Ruth sat silent beside him, her eyes drawn to the vista of flooded paddocks and swift-flowing water where the river had burst its usual banks and was spreading through the lowlands. As they crossed the bridge she could see that the water was nearly high enough to cause serious traffic problems if it rose much more.

  Kurtis turned hard into the road which formed the entry to the picnic area on the eastern shore, an area now three-quarters under water, with picnic benches sitting like islands and the shoreline willows perched far out in the flood. He turned the small car into an elevated section of the parking area, seeking a place to get turned around, then muttered an explosive curse and halted with a jerk. Ruth, who had been staring abstractly at the flooded river, looked up to see Kurtis climbing out of the car and striding angrily round to her own side, where she suddenly realised why he’d halted.

  There on the verge of the floodwaters, only inches from being swept away, was a tiny black and tan puppy, huddled and shivering despite the strong sunlight.

  Ruth had her door open by the time Kurtis had picked up the animal, and could hear him speaking soothingly to the pup, who she now realised was only about six weeks old.

  ‘You’re all right, little mate,’ he was saying as he cradled the pup in his arms and moved to hand it to Ruth. ‘There’s a bit of rag in the glove box, I think,’ he said. And the fierce anger in his eyes was belied by his gentle tones as he continued then to croon to the shivering puppy.

  It wasn’t until Ruth had the tiny animal wrapped in the cloth and could feel its trembling begin to abate that Kurtis returned to his side of the car, got in, and let his rage begin to escape.

  ‘Bastards ... bastards ... bastards,’ he growled, shaking his head, his jaw muscles taut with his anger, Ms mouth white against clenched teeth. ‘By the gods, Ruth, if I could ever catch the cowardly, rotten animal that would do a thing like that, I’d..! Just feel that pup! He’s only been there a short while. He’s not wet; he hasn’t been there through the night or anything.

  ‘He was dumped there this morning, not very damned long before we arrived. And the ... the bastard who did it didn’t even have the guts to knock the poor little beggar on the head, just left him there and hoped the water would rise enough to do the dirty work for him. Oh, damn it — I hate people sometimes.’

  He started the car again with a savage twist of the ignition key, and fifteen minutes later, after a stop at a phone box to check and get directions, they were pulling up outside the RSPCA headquarters in Mowbray.

  Throughout the journey, and all the way back to Ruth’s home, Kurtis said almost nothing, but the grinding of teeth and his obvious anger was a palpable presence in the small vehicle. It was an anger so unfocused, in some ways, that Ruth could actually feel it touching not
only the unknown person who’d dumped the puppy and the system that virtually guaranteed it would end up being put down within days, but her, himself, the world in general.

  ‘Let’s write off today as a bad joke and try again tomorrow,’ he said when they arrived at her home. ‘You look like you haven’t slept at all, and I feel about that way, so there’s no sense trying to accomplish anything with us both in that condition.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s a working day,’ she reminded him, venturing the words carefully, quietly, suddenly afraid of his anger, unsure how to deal with it.

  ‘Phone in and tell them your husband’s back after a long absence,’ he replied with a half-grin that was too tinged with sadness to carry the joke. ‘They’ll understand.’

  ‘Not likely,’ she replied. "There have to be better reasons than that to take a sickie.’

  ‘Better a plausible lie than the reality of the truth?’ he replied caustically. ‘OK, phone in and tell them you’ve got the flu or something.’

  ‘I don’t do things like that,’ Ruth replied, her own anger rising now. How dared he try to insist on such a thing?

  ‘You can do it or I can,’ he replied, and the grimness in his voice made her turn to look at him with surprise as he continued. ‘I suspect a word from me would be enough to persuade Mrs O’Connor to give you the day off — the week off, if it comes to that.’

  ‘A word from you?’

  Ruth almost had to stifle a grin despite her growing anger. If there was one man alive tough enough to stand up to the director of the nursing home, it would be Kurtis, but over the months she’d come to know Mrs O’Connor Ruth was sure it would take far more than just a word to manage it. There would literally be blood on the floor if Kurtis and ‘The Dragon’ ever locked horns.

  ‘Well, maybe more than just one, but not many,’ he replied, still grim. ‘I pay her salary, after all; that does give me some privileges.’

  Ruth stared at him in stunned silence, her fears forgotten, her anger forgotten, her mind suddenly a whirling vortex of confusion. She must have heard him wrongly. She must have! If he paid O’Connor’s salary, it meant that he owned the nursing home, and if he owned the nursing home it meant that he paid her salary as well. But that was the smallest of the implications, hardly relevant when compared to the rest.

  Ruth stared and Kurtis met her stare with a calm, level gaze that held just enough smugness to make her confusion smoulder into a growing fury.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘You ... you’ve known where I was all along.’

  It wasn’t a question, nor did Ruth really need an answer. She knew the answer, could feel it in the deep emptiness where her stomach had been.

  Kurtis didn’t bother to reply; he knew the answer too.

  He merely looked at her, and now she was certain of that smug, cat-with-the-cream expression. And she hated him for it!

  ‘You are a proper bastard,’ she hissed, shooting him with her eyes, trying to cut his throat with her tongue. Her fingers clenched and unclenched, nails digging into her palms so hard, she half expected to find blood dripping from her hands.

  Still no reply, except for the glint of satisfaction in his eyes. Unless she imagined that, but Ruth didn’t think so. She’d seen it before, often, when a deal had gone particularly well for Kurtis.

  Frustration burned like acid inside her and she spat out her words, heedless now of his anger, heedless of anything but her own feeling of rage and betrayal and confusion.

  ‘I suppose next you’ll be saying you organised it for me to get the damned job,’ she shouted. She wanted to reach out and tear the answer from him physically, but didn’t quite dare.

  The hateful raised eyebrow again, but not a word of reply. Was he deaf? Or was he simply enjoying this moment too much, taking his pleasure from her misery?

  She clenched her teeth, biting back invective so scathing she dared not even use the words, while Kurtis met her eyes, now with a grin starting to play round his lips.

  ‘You have a nerve,’ he said then. ‘Imagine going off and marrying a man you know so little about that you could even think of making an accusation like that. No, my angry little witch, you can be sure as God made little apples that you got the job purely on merit. I have my faults, but I’d never insult you by getting around your professionalism in that way or any other way.’

  ‘Except to organise a sickie for me when it happens to suit your pleasure?’ she snapped. ‘Or doesn’t that count?’

  He had the courtesy to wince, visibly, and nod his acceptance of the counter, then grinned even more widely.

  ‘Guilty as charged, your ladyship, but in my defence may I say that I consider the salvation of a marriage more important by far than anybody’s professionalism, including my own?’

  ‘It’s your story; you stick to it,’ Ruth retorted. ‘And while you’re doing so, perhaps you’d like to explain things just a bit more fully. There’s too much about this I don’t understand and don’t much like. Such as bow you got involved in owning this nursing home;, just for starters.’

  He shrugged. ‘I bought it, obviously. You would have known that, if you’d taken the slightest interest whenever I tried to explain to you how I was restructuring so that we could operate from Tasmania and I wouldn’t have to be away so much.’

  ‘Are you suggesting, then, that you didn’t know I’d come to work here; that this is all just some weird coincidence? Come on, Kurtis. I may be naive, but I’m not stupid.’

  ‘Of course I knew when you came to work here,’ he growled. ‘What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t know? I’ve known where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to from the very start. Although to be fair I never did quite understand why you chose to make the switch to geriatric nursing.’

  Ruth could only stare, her mind positive she was staring with her jaw hanging open, but unable to do anything about it. Of course he would have known! Nothing surer in this world, now that she knew this much.

  ‘But ... but why didn’t you do something, then?’ she heard herself asking. It’s been eleven months, and you knew where I was, knew what I was doing, and you never once tried even to make contact, until now.’

  ‘You told me not to, remember? You were very, very specific about that, Ruth. Besides,’ and his lips curled in a ruefully, mocking grin, ‘I didn’t think it would take anywhere near this long for you to come to your senses. I thought it was just another example of your peculiar brand of flightiness and by the time I realised the problem was much more serious than I had thought it was, well ...’

  ‘Flightiness!’ The word exploded from Ruth’s throat like a thunderbolt. ‘You thought all this was due to flightiness?’ She felt the bile rising, had to stop there because she was dead certain she was going to be sick, right there and then, and her pride leapt in to protect her from that.

  ‘Why not?’ And he looked so calm, so perfectly relaxed in saying it that she felt like slapping him. ‘You are known for being a touch flighty on occasion, my lady witch,’ he continued, and Ruth felt her insides tighten just at the sound of those too familiar words.

  ‘I think that’s ... that’s disgusting,’ she replied.

  ‘Quite likely. Especially since by the time I realised it was much, much more serious than just flightiness it seemed wiser just to let things continue until I had it properly figured out.’

  ‘Until you had it properly figured out. Without so much as speaking to me about it, without listening to my side of the story, without...’ She paused there, unable to go on, unable even to comprehend the type of reasoning behind his actions.

  ‘Without any more to go on than that damned note!’ he replied, and finally began to show irritation. ‘That note, Ruth. Your note ... the one you left for me, the one that said damn all about anything except that you couldn’t take any more.’

  The kind of note a child left when he or she was running away from home... He didn’t have to say it again; the words resounded through Ruth’s memory, stifling
her next retort.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter now,’ he was saying with what seemed to be a forced cheeriness. ‘You’re exhausted and I’m tired and I’ve had about enough of this for now. So off you go to organise tomorrow off and then get some sleep.’

  ‘The hell I will,’ she cried. ‘I want to talk about this and I want to do it now, if you don’t mind. You can’t just spring stuff like this on me and then...’

  ‘And then go off and leave you? I shouldn’t, I know, because that’s your trick. But I can and I will.’ And now his grin was pure devilry. ‘Unless, of course, you’d prefer me to come and put you to bed, which I’m equally prepared to do, although I doubt you’d be so amenable. You would, however, enjoy the experience; I can guarantee it, my lady witch.’

  Ruth couldn’t help herself; she reared back in alarm and yanked in panic at the door-handle, then had to meet his mocking laughter as she realised he’d quite deliberately manipulated the locking switch.

  ‘I suppose you think that’s funny,’ she charged, scowling at him and trying to cover up the growing sense of panic she felt. He was more than capable of doing exactly as he’d threatened, she knew. Worse, he might just take it into his head to follow through on the threat.

  And then what would she do? A part of her, the part that had suddenly made her go all soft in the tummy, the part that had her lips parted and her breath suddenly short, would welcome Kurtis and his threat with open arms. But it would be nothing short of sheer folly, and she knew that in her soul, in her mind.

  ‘Amusing, at the very least,’ he chuckled. Then, to her horror, he reached over to lay his fingertips against her neck, touching at her pulse, then shifting slightly so that he could touch her just below the nape of her neck.

  When she was older, he’d often said during love play, that spot would be her dowager’s hump, but for now it was a convenient area that he’d found would make her knees melt at the slightest touch.

  And eleven months of separation hadn’t changed a thing! Ruth knew that if she were to try and get out of the car at that moment, her legs wouldn’t have supported her. And to make matters worse he was giving her that look, the look that seemed to penetrate to the depths of her being.