by Margaret Way
“You don’t need to know,” Rebecca replied quietly.
“Oh, yes, I do!”
“You need help, Martyn. You always did.”
He wasn’t about to listen to that. Women with the way they twisted things. “Nothing would ever have gone wrong between us except for you,” he hissed.
Their voices were pitched deliberately low but Brod caught it. His suspicions confirmed. No surprise. This was the man in Rebecca’s life.
“What is it exactly you want, Martyn?” Rebecca asked.
“Can’t you see. I want you back. Everything that happened was your fault.”
“You need to believe that,” Rebecca observed wearily. “Like I said you need help.”
“I engineered this trip out here,” he told her, a kind of triumph in his voice. “Saw in the paper some time ago you were working on a new biography. Fiona Kinross. Fate with just a little jump start from me let you fall into my hands. I knew all about our Kinross clients. Big. Very big. Next thing there’s a trip scheduled for Kimbara. Another associate was lined up to go but I’m good at manoeuvring.”
Are you indeed, Brod thought, moving ever closer.
Again Rebecca’s voice sounded inexpressibly tired of it all. “What could you hope to possibly gain? If you were the last man on earth I’d never come back to you.”
I’d never let you.
“That’s put another knife through my heart,” Osborne burst out.
“You haven’t got a heart, Martyn. You’ve just got a big inflated ego.”
“So what’s the plan?” Osborne demanded. “Kinross? Are you after him? You always were a high flier.”
Listening Brod clenched his fist.
“You mean when I settled for you.” Rebecca’s voice was icy with contempt.
“My family aren’t any ordinary family,” Osborne bragged. “We’re very well connected. That was a big inducement for you. Do you think I don’t know that?”
She tried to swallow. “Martyn, I’m going back. You still talk more rubbish than I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He caught her shoulder. “I’ll make you pay. I swear it.”
“Do your worst.” This from Rebecca, as she flung away.
“Whatever that could possibly be,” Brod suddenly appeared on the path before them. In the faint light from the verandah he looked very tall, powerfully built, very angry. “You’re a visitor here in my house, Osborne,” he grated. “It appears to me you’re harassing Rebecca. I’m here to help her.”
Osborne seemed to gasp for breath. “Harassing?” He sounded shocked, wounded. “Believe me, Mr. Kinross, that’s the last thing I would do. You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Have I? Rebecca, come over here.” Brod indicated with his arm where Rebecca should stand. Beside him. “Then I think you ought to explain. You’ve been goading Rebecca all night. I’m not a fool.”
“A fool. That’s the last thing I’d say you were.” Osborne’s confident voice wobbled. “I was shocked out of my mind when I saw Becky here. How would I ever know?”
“You’d better tell me,” Brod invited pretending he didn’t already know.
“He read I was here in the newspaper,” Rebecca supplied, not daring to look up at Brod’s steely profile. “He managed to convince Mr. Mattheson he was the best person to bring.”
“Why exactly,” Brod asked.
“If you only knew.” Osborne suddenly clutched his head with his hands giving every impression of a man driven by grief to speak out. “Is it a crime to try to get your wife back?”
“Dear God!” Rebecca burst out imploringly to an indifferent heavens. Brod, totally off guard, reeled back as if taking a king hit. The bliss of these past weeks was smashed into the ground. Trust destroyed. The madness was she had brought it all on her own head. She understood it all. One terrible mistake could change a life forever.
“I only want her back.” Osborne’s low, impassioned voice came again, an assault to Brod’s ringing ears. “I love her. I never ceased loving her.”
It rang true. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of it, Brod moved suddenly, jerking Osborne forward by the lapels of his jacket. “Wait a minute. You’re trying to tell me Rebecca is your wife? You came here to my home to this station to try to effect a reconciliation?”
“I swear I didn’t know what else to do.” Osborne’s voice broke almost in despair. “She refused to see me, answer my letters, my mother’s pleas all these years.”
“Years? What are we talking about here? She hasn’t been with you for years?” Brod sounded very, very, angry.
Rebecca knew Brod probably wouldn’t want to hear from her again still she spoke. “Martyn and I were divorced years ago. It was a very unhappy marriage. I never wanted to lay eyes on him again.”
Even with the roaring in his ears Brod heard the word divorced, the only word that pulled him back. “I can understand that,” he rasped.
“What is a man supposed to do if his wife won’t honour her sacred vows?” Osborne’s voice throbbed with raw emotion as he held up a hand as if to shield his face.
Yes, I’d like to punch you, Brod thought. I’d like to lay you out cold but I shouldn’t because I’m supposed to be a civilised man.
“Damn you for thinking you could start here.” Disgustedly Brod let his hands fall. “Let me understand something—” finally, his face grave, he turned on Rebecca “—is there some remote possibility you could go back to this guy?”
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around her. “No.” It would be like being driven back into hell.
“Did you hear that?” Brod swung back to Osborne, terse and powerful.
“I just wanted to hear it from her own lips.” In the midst of his humiliation Martyn knew a moment of pure triumph. Vengeance was sweet. If there was anything going on between Kinross and Becky—and he was sure that there was—dear little Becky had well and truly blotted her copy book. What was the old saying? Second hand goods. A man like Kinross wouldn’t want a woman with the merest hint of scandal in her background. He could beat this up for all it was worth, only chances were it could all rebound on him. Better to play the poor fool. “Can you blame me for loving her?” he asked in a quiet, defeated voice. “I’d apologise to you abjectly if it would do me any good.”
“It won’t,” Brod returned, very bluntly. “If I were you I’d go inside and reconsider your position. You came here under false pretences. Do you think I couldn’t get you sacked?”
“I’m sure you could.” Martyn hung his head. Remorse was the way to go.
“I’m half-way sure I should.” Brod cut him off, looking at him with cold suspicion. “I may even get around to it if you feel you should spread your story. It wouldn’t do anyone any good now. Rebecca has told you there’s no chance of any reconciliation. None whatsoever. You’d better accept that. For all time.”
“I know when I’m beaten,” Martyn answered. Glad, yes glad to see Becky so stricken. He wanted her to understand he could still reach out and hurt her. “But surely you can find it in your heart to forgive my coming here? For acting the way I have? Rebecca promised to marry me till death do us part. That meant everything to me. In the end it meant nothing to her.”
They stood seemingly like statues listening to Martyn’s footsteps trudge back to the house.
Brod was the first to break the highly charged silence.
“He can stick to his room tomorrow,” he said, his voice still deeply angry. “Tell Barry he’s ill. I don’t want him privy to any more of my family’s affairs. God I can’t take it all in even now. I’ll tell Barry I want someone else on the job. Someone with more seniority. Barry can think what he likes.”
“I’m sorry, Brod. So sorry.”
He caught her chin, looking down into her shocked face. “Are you? You had no intention of telling me, did you?”
There was a little shift in her shoulders. “You don’t really understand. My marriage was a time of great unhappiness. I have great difficulty thin
king about it let alone talking about it.”
“To me?” He felt cut to the heart. “To the man you’ve lain with in such intimacy for all these weeks. The man you claimed made you so happy?”
She turned her tear-blinded, shamed face away. “I was afraid to tell you.”
“Why exactly?” he demanded, filled with disbelief. “Am I some kind of an ogre?”
“You don’t trust me, Brod,” she said simply. “Underneath it all you’ve never trusted me. You’re not completely in love with me as I am with you.”
He could scarcely hear her over the thud of his heart. “Ah, don’t give me that!” he said in a contemptuous rush. “I’ve been waiting for you to speak to me. I’ve been so patient. I’ve given you plenty of time. I’m not a patient man.”
“I love you.” She stared up at him as if committing his face to memory.
He laughed, even now feeling a deep well of desire. “You’re saying this now. How long was it going to take you? Or were you waiting for me to ask you to marry me?”
“I never believed you would,” she said, profoundly fatalistic.
He grasped her by the shoulders as if to shake the life out of her, the brief surge of violence conquered by his natural gallantry towards women.
“You thought you were destined to be my mistress?” He let his hands shape her delicate bones, their strength quietened.
“I’ve come to believe bad karma might be the pattern of my life. All the agony with my mother, growing up. Praying for her to get better and she never did. My marriage to Martyn. When I look back on it I was just a kid looking for a safe home. I had no one. I visited my father maybe a couple of times a year.”
His eyes showed their bewilderment. “Is all of this so terrible you couldn’t tell me?”
She knew his effort to control his anger with her wouldn’t extend to Martyn. And Martyn was still in the house. Brod wouldn’t take her story of physical and mental abuse without confronting Martyn with it. A terrible argument would take place. Perhaps Martyn would get what he thoroughly deserved. But at what price? Fee would be terribly upset at such ugliness. Barry Mattheson and his colleagues would be made aware of it, without question.
She didn’t know how long she stood there without answering. “I can only say I’m sorry, Brod.” Maybe she could redeem herself. But it would have to be another time.
His hands finally came down in rejection. “Well, sorry, Rebecca, it’s not good enough. All this time in your own way you’ve been lying to me. To Fee. Have you really grown so close to her or is it all an act? I don’t understand you at all.”
“I don’t understand myself,” she admitted openly. “Perhaps I should have counselling.”
“Have you always concealed things, Rebecca?” He searched her face, pale as a pearl in the brilliant starlight.
“You have to believe I was going to tell you everything tonight.”
He gave a brief torn laugh. “The truth at last, only your ex-husband, Martyn, beat you to it. I can’t say I took to the pompous son of a bitch but I’m damned if I can condemn him. He said he still loves you, Rebecca, I believe him.”
“That’s because you don’t know the kind of man Martyn really is. He doesn’t know what true love means. All he knows is right of possession. As if you can ever own a human being.”
“You don’t want to be owned?” he asked quietly.
Now she was angry. “I won’t be owned.”
“You fear entering into another marriage? You think all men are mean and possessive?”
“No, not you.” Never you. There was nothing in her beautiful Brod to dread.
“Yet you thought I was totally devoid of human sympathy,” he said, in a deep, wondering voice. “Loving you and God help me, Rebecca, I do. You thought I couldn’t listen to your story. Help you fight all your perceived dark places. You talk about this Martyn, your ex-husband. Well I’ve got news for you, Rebecca, you don’t know what love means, either.”
CHAPTER NINE
BACK in Sydney, Rebecca wrote with obsessive nervous energy, virtually unreachable to her friends. She was on her third draft of Fee’s biography. The final copy. The phone rang many times. She never answered it. Who did she have anyway? She kept in touch with her father, Vivienne and the children. Vivienne had been going on about a visit. They hadn’t seen her for such a while and they longed to. What about Christmas in Hong Kong?
“I won’t give up until I’ve persuaded you,” Vivienne said.
It seemed to Rebecca an ocean separated her from the ones she loved. An ocean of sea. An ocean of desert sand. In the month since she had left Kimbara she and Fee kept in touch but her sense of isolation had deepened terribly. Even Fee hadn’t been able to persuade her not to leave. Rebecca frowned to herself, remembering…
“I despise that young man coming out here trying to make trouble.” Fee’s voice was sharp with denunciation. “Let the dust settle, Rebecca, Brod will come around. Though there’s no denying you made a big mistake not telling us, darling. It didn’t do anyone any good. You do see that?”
“Of course I do, Fee,” Rebecca answered her. “I promised you I’d tell Brod that awful night and I meant to but it was doomed never to work out.”
Fee had gazed at her for a long while. “You poor girl! If only you’d come to me for help. Heavens, darling, it’s not as though you did something dreadfully wrong. I’ve been divorced twice myself. I never kept it a secret.”
“You’re famous, Fee.”
“I wouldn’t have kept it a secret anyway. What was this Osborne? A beast? I’m sure there must be something.”
“He has problems, Fee.” What was the use of going into it now. God knows she had put it off for so long. Her secret, silent, other life. Although Brod was scrupulously polite she knew he had locked himself away from her.
How had she reacted?
She’d left with the freight plane while Brod, finding his own refuge, was staying out a full week at stock camp.
Rebecca shut off the word processor, sitting immobilised, lost in her thoughts. The book was good. It had taken on a real identity. At least she had given Fee that. The Kinross family, too. She had worked at a punishing pace. An act of atonement.
Brod!
Every time she thought of him she tried for her own survival to push his image away but her whole body remained pierced with longing and regret. She had fallen fathoms in love now the loneliness of it all. The febrile feeling in a body deprived of glorious sexual pleasure. No wonder she was so tightly strung up. But it hadn’t hurt her work. In fact it gave a little credence to the old adage an artist had to suffer before inspiration flowed. If only Brod hadn’t turned away from her. Not that she had given him much time, awash with her own bitter regrets.
For an instant Rebecca felt a sense of self-pity but she thrust it away. It was all her own fault. She had become entrapped in playing a certain role, adamant after Martyn her defences would never crumble. As a consequence she had paid the price.
Rebecca stood up determinedly. Enough writing for today. She needed a distraction. She really ought to go out and do a little shopping. It was Friday, the stores would be open until 9:00 p.m. She felt stiff from sitting too long in her chair. She placed her hands near the base of her spine, bending back gently, straightening up. She didn’t have to look in a mirror to see how much weight she had lost. She could feel it. Very soon someone was going to mention the word anorexia but that wasn’t her condition. She took care to eat the right things only sadness had shrunk her. She had always had chicken bones.
She decided to walk to the shopping village and get herself some smoked salmon, fresh fruit and vegetables. Some of those wonderful little rolls from the bakery, some dark rye bread for breakfast. Maybe a bottle of a good Riesling. It would keep for a couple of nights. She had to make a big effort to get back to normal. She had to be strong. It wasn’t beyond her. She’d made a comeback after Martyn.
An image of Brod flashed before her eyes. Before grie
f flooded her.
Ally put her foot down and her small BMW accelerated smoothly, obedient to her touch. She’d been on location in tropical North Queensland for almost a month so many, many messages were waiting for her when she got home. One was from Fee to ring her, which she had immediately, listening as Fee told her all about the dramas that had been enacted at home.
“You’re joking, Rebecca was once married?” Ally felt shocked, even a little outraged. “Why on earth didn’t she tell us? I mean what was the big deal?”
“Obviously it was to Rebecca,” Fee answered wryly. “Brod is terribly affected. He really loves her, darling. I’m sure of it.”
“Well she mustn’t love him if she can’t confide in him,” Ally countered sharply, then relented. “Heck who am I to judge? I’ve made a mess of my own life?”
“Do you think you can go and see Rebecca, darling?” Fee asked hopefully. “I can give you her address.”
“Actually I’ve got it.” Absently Ally turned up a page in her little black book. “That wouldn’t be a problem, Fee. I suppose Brod’s got very withdrawn?”
“I think he feels like murdering someone.” Fee was driven to exaggeration. “You know Brod, darling. You know men.”
“Not droves of them like you, dearest Fee.”
“How naughty!” Fee wasn’t offended. “I can’t help thinking Rebecca is still hiding something.”
“About her husband. Lord preserve us!”
“Ex-husband please, darling. He couldn’t have been in jail. He works for James. Wait he’s not with James any more. I suppose Brod had something to do with that.”
“Did you ever think Rebecca might have experienced physical abuse in her marriage?” Ally wondered aloud.
“That little thing!” Fee’s voice soared in shock. “Who would ever want to hurt such a beautiful little creature?”
“That’s what I plan to find out.”
When Ally reached Rebecca’s block of flats she went to the floodlit entrance, let her gaze slide over the names and numbers. Hunt. R. Third floor, Unit 20. She found the buzzer, pushed it. No answer. She tried again. Damn, Rebecca wasn’t at home. She should have rung first but she wanted the element of surprise. She had truly liked Rebecca from the moment she met her, a liking heightened by the knowledge her beloved brother had fallen deeply in love at last. Now Ally wanted to get to the bottom of what was keeping them apart. Was Rebecca a true enigma? A woman dangerous to love? Anything was possible.