A Magical Affair Read online

  ‘You’ve made an impression, whoever you are,’ she murmured drowsily, enjoying the reflection. But it was morning before, driven awake by a rap on the door instead of the expected birdsong, she began to see just how impressive Kurtis Goodwin could really be!

  The bouquet of flowers was gigantic, sufficiently overwhelming that Ruth was almost able to ignore the fact she was accepting them — dressed in a hastily donned housecoat — from a cab driver who kept grinning at some joke she felt must be on her.

  But it was the note that knocked her flat. The note, or just the incredible weirdness of the whole situation.

  ‘Dear Ruth the witch,’ it began, in handwriting so bold as to be almost overpowering. The note apologised if it had arrived too early, suggested witches should not need vast amounts of sleep anyway, then went on to thank her for her consideration of the previous evening, commented on their ‘delightful conversation’. It went on to plead with her to join the humble writer in ‘a late breakfast, perchance?’ with an added flowery request for her to then show ‘your humble servant’ the quietest part of Hobart she knew, and was signed with a signature only his banker could recognise, though Ruth had no trouble.

  All of it, needless to say — and not one bit surprising, for some reason — in the most flowery language possible. Like something from a medieval play, considerably overdone.

  It was the little addition below the signature, however, that had her reaching for the telephone book to find the number of the Sheraton and accept before she lost her very nerve.

  ‘Warlock, apprentice grade’, he’d written, adding one of those inane, decorative parcel stickers: this one of a little horned gremlin with a ladybug on his nose.

  Ruth was still chuckling when the telephone rang in his room and she heard that gravelly voice, surprisingly free of tiredness, answer.

  ‘The quietest place I know might involve a bit of a walk,’ she said, not bothering to identify herself, certain somehow that he would know, would expect this call to be her.

  ‘I need a new pair of boots anyway,’ was the calm reply. ‘Presuming, of course, you mean what I expect you do. Meet you in the lobby in fifteen minutes?’

  ‘Half an hour,’ she found herself replying. ‘I have a ... a cauldron on the boil.’

  ‘Just go easy on the eye of newt, then,’ came the rasping reply. And he was gone, leaving her with a humming line and a strange feeling of well-being that bordered upon pure elation.

  Ruth dressed hurriedly in jeans and trainers and a warm sweatshirt, gave her hair a cursory brushing that changed virtually nothing, and was parked outside the Sheraton well within time. But when it came to actually walking into the building, she found herself suddenly strangely shy.

  All very well to play games, she found herself thinking, but I’m out of my league here. This is risky stuff! And knew, somehow, that risky was a fair description despite the apparent safety of breakfast at nine on a fine Hobart Saturday.

  This with a man who could manage in the dead hours after midnight to find a totally appropriate parcel sticker, organise flowers, and have all delivered to an address he could only have gained, she realised, from their hostess of the evening before. Kurtis Goodwin had left the party without a farewell, but he’d certainly not forgotten.

  Her curiosity won. Whatever else, Kurtis Goodwin was the most unusual male animal she’d met in recent memory; the first, indeed, to make her laugh in a very long time.

  ‘Ensorcel him, witch,’ she muttered to herself as she squared her shoulders and marched determinedly up the steps. ‘He’s sort of handsome and maybe he’s rich; maybe he’ll take you away from all of this, show you how the other half lives.’

  She entered the lobby to find the warlock, ‘apprentice grade’, now comfortably dressed in much the same style as herself, and with a welcome in those world-weary eyes that turned her trepidation into a puff of smoke.

  His courtly bow over her hand, the briefest touch of his lips to her fingers, drew a few raised eyebrows from among the morning crowd in the lobby, but Ruth scarcely noticed. She was caught in the trance he created with his eyes, which she now noticed, irrelevantly, were a sort of greeny blue with hazel flecks.

  Thankfully, he kept the performance to a minimum over breakfast, a meal that Ruth felt certain would keep her going for that day and the next. Essentially a vegetarian herself, a hangover from student days when meat was too expensive a luxury to the point where she’d actually lost the taste for it, she had no compunction about watching her host get round a healthy breakfast including the traditional steak and chops and eggs. Her brief, practised explanation for her own taste drew only a quick grin and a cheeky reply.

  ‘Rabbit food,’ he said, then added, ‘But look what they get up to.’ And, although certain she didn’t blush, Ruth felt as if she had.

  He accepted her assurances, over coffee, that he really wouldn’t need boots for the easy bush walk she had in mind from The Springs to New Town Falls.

  ‘Just remember you’re dealing with a suspected geriatric here,’ he scoffed. ‘I may have to be taken by the hand if I can’t make the grade.’

  ‘It’s only about a twenty-minute walk and there’s hardly any grade,’ she started to assure him, only to halt at the gleam in his eye, the curiously triumphant expression.

  ‘But maybe I’ll just want to be taken by the hand,’ he interrupted, reaching out to take her wrist in his fingers, holding her still with his eyes as he did so.

  Ruth sat transfixed by the intimacy of the gesture, then got all flustered by the intensity of his gaze and ended up neither saying anything nor pulling her hand away.

  It wasn’t until Kurtis himself, once again as if reading her mind, released her that Ruth realised how utterly pleasant the sensation of his touch had been.

  ‘You’ll give yourself indigestion if you keep that up,’ she countered, finally. And forced herself to meet his eyes. Not easy; the hazel tones kept flickering, their depths filled with some message she felt sure she ought to understand but didn’t. A dangerous message, no doubt, for this man already seemed so complex, so contradictory that he simply couldn’t be safe.

  Not, certainly, when he countered with comments like, ‘I rather expect you’d have some sort of spell against that thing, provided I asked nicely enough.’

  ‘No spells in daylight,’ she replied lightly, not meaning it and knowing that he knew it too. He just grinned that quirky grin, his eyes drinking her in.

  He kept almost entirely silent as they drove up Davey Street, following the road that then turned to creep along the shoulders of Mount Wellington. But his eyes were on her as much as the scenery, and she was ever aware of that. Ruth at first found herself chattering like a demented tour guide, but eventually Kurtis’ silence began to affect her, and she stopped. Which for some strange reason felt better, felt right, as if they didn’t need meaningless words between them.

  He insisted she pull over into the first significant lookout point, and she sat and watched him as he walked, panther-smooth, to the edge of the overlook, then stood like a rock to stare out over the sea and the various distant headlands. Hands on hips, hard-muscled legs tight against the fabric of his jeans, he appeared to her as solid as the mountain itself, though she found it a strange impression to consider.

  They parked at The Springs, then walked the pinnacle road to where the Lenah Valley track began. The Lenah Valley track, complete with signpost clearly stating walking time each way to New Town Falls.

  Ruth read the sign, certain in her soul she’d never seen it before, then glanced at her companion in the futile hope that he might not have noticed. He had; she was certain of it. But not a single word or gesture, not even so much as a raised eyebrow, betrayed him.

  Then the moment was past and they were starting down the gentle slope of the track itself, and it was too late for Ruth to speak. Not least because the track was so narrow, it forced them into single file, and of course Kurtis let Ruth take the lead. He did so with a broa
d, expansive and courtly gesture, but the unholy glint in his eyes made it only too clear he was starting to enjoy her discomfort.

  She stepped out strongly, wishing she could regain control of the situation, wishing indeed that she could admit she hadn’t been on this track for half a dozen years, and that she hadn’t meant to mislead him about the timing... Wishing even more that she’d worn looser jeans; she could feel his eyes with her every stride, and began to hope he’d stumble or something, just to get his mind on his own walking, not hers.

  She stepped up the pace until they reached the first place where the forest thinned to reveal views of Hobart, then halted to exclaim in her tour guide’s voice, ‘There! isn’t that beautiful?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he replied with a nod. But his eyes were on her face, not on the countryside that rolled away below them into the southern suburbs. His eyes roamed across her features as easily as their feet had trod the well-made track, and again Ruth had the sensation that he was memorising her, taking her every individual feature and storing it somewhere inside his head.

  It was a strange feeling, not tangibly unpleasant, yet mildly discomforting. There was an intensity there, almost an intimacy. Had he made to touch her, even to take her hand, Ruth felt she would have fled. But he didn’t, and the feeling left her when she started moving again.

  They paused only briefly at Junction Cabin, then headed down into the steepest part of the walk along a fire trail, now walking side by side but, for the most part, in silence. The setting almost demanded silence; their path was flanked by enormous trees, great stringy-barks and blue-gums that seemed to have erupted from the barren mud-stone soil.

  At their own level, the various native bushes thrust their spiky way through the ubiquitous ferns, some abundant with bright red flowers. Once, Ruth would have remembered all their names, but suddenly her memory had deserted her. It was, she thought, as well Kurtis didn’t ask any pertinent questions, or she’d have been mightily embarrassed.

  But he stayed silent, and, when they turned into a narrow trail leading to the falls, always behind her. She didn’t have to listen for his step, didn’t have to look around. She could feel his presence, feel his eyes. Once again she found herself over-aware of her long walking stride, of the sway of her narrow hips, and knew that awareness was only making it worse. Dared she turn around quickly, she thought, it would be to find him laughing at her discomfort.

  When they did finally reach the falls, Ruth heaved a mighty sigh of relief. Memory, she was certain, had betrayed her; it just couldn’t have taken this long the last time, she thought, and, having lost her concentration, slipped on the greasy rock where the track slithered across between the upper and lower falls, and would have fallen but for Kurtis’ hand on her arm.

  ‘Easy,’ he murmured, and it was the tone of someone settling a fractious horse, Ruth thought. Nor did he release her arm, but stood there, looking up at the top falls with its masses of rock and fallen timber, seeing the view with his eyes and seeing Ruth with his fingertips.

  No part of his touch could have been termed cheeky or crude; he merely maintained his grip on her forearm, and yet his touch, the sensation of him, seemed to inundate her entire body.

  When, after an aeon’s silence, he gently turned her to face him, when fingers like thistledown lifted her chin so that he could stare silently into her eyes as he lowered his mouth to hers, Ruth was powerless to resist even if she’d wanted to. And she didn’t do either.

  His kiss was gentle, searching, tender. His lips felt right, tasted right. And while he kissed her his fingers brushed at her cheek, wandered the column of her neck in a gesture both caressing and reassuring. Melting, she felt as if her bones had dissolved to jelly, had to hang on to him, had to let her hands know the security of his shoulders, then the touch of his neck, the feel of the crisp hair at his nape.

  All in stillness but for the plunging water, the never-silent quiet of the forest around them, all somehow connected with the magic of that place, the tightness of the situation.

  Not until he had released her mouth, not until he had physically let go of her, stepping back to put some actual distance between them, did either of them speak.

  ‘That,’ Kurtis said, ‘was indeed magic, my lady witch.’ And he grinned, a genuine, warm, if rather quirky grin that turned her tension to mist, then shredded it and blew it away with the breeze.

  Ruth could only nod agreement; it had indeed been magic, but she was damned if she’d let him realise just how magical for her. She didn’t dare! No sane person could feel such emotion with someone still a stranger, she thought, only to realise he wasn’t a stranger, hadn’t been a stranger since they’d shared a few minutes of intimacy in someone else’s kitchen. That he would never again be a stranger, perhaps, because he had touched something in her, something basic.

  It was too intimate, she thought, too intimate and too tempting. Which was probably why she made a hurried attempt at conversation without thinking it out first.

  ‘I’ll bet you didn’t know this stream runs fair in front of my unit,’ she said. ‘And I actually think it’s bigger here than it is there, although of course it couldn’t be, could it?’

  ‘Logic says not,’ he replied, ‘but streams do funny things; maybe it goes underground or something.’

  ‘It has trout in it ... where I am, I mean.’ She blurted the words, now suddenly edging into a form of panic because she knew he was going to kiss her again and knew she wanted him to kiss her but somehow, at the same time, didn’t want him to, lest it spoil the perfection of that first kiss.

  And as if sensing her concern, he turned away to walk ankle-deep into the pool at the base of the top fall, kneeling to scoop up water in his cupped hands and drink.

  ‘Want some?’

  ‘Not enough to do that,’ Ruth replied. ‘That water’s too cold for me.’

  ‘Come this way,’ he said, pointing to a series of stones which would bring her almost to him, but dry shod.

  Ruth did so, only to find that the curious intimacy of trying to drink from his hands made it practically impossible. She managed a few sips, then overbalanced and ended up as deep in the pool as he, joining in his delighted laughter at her mishap.

  ‘Now we can both walk ourselves dry,’ he said with a grin. ‘It won’t be as bad as you think, and at least now I can be assured witches can’t walk on water, which is nice to know.’

  Ruth didn’t quite share his enthusiasm for starting the trek back with soaking feet, but the alternative, staying any longer in this magic place with this curious man, had unknown dangers she preferred not to risk.

  And somehow when they made the long walk back the trail had become wider, because there were long stretches where space existed for Kurtis to take her hand and walk beside her, and he did. And she wanted him to.

  When they reached Junction Cabin, he tugged at her fingers until she paused, then turned her into his arms for another kiss, this one delivered with the same silence, the same deliberate slowness as the first. The message was clear, unmistakable. She had time to resist, time to withdraw from his embrace, if she wanted to. She didn’t.

  Nor did she when they paused — and kissed — at the tiny Rock Cabin, and again at the junction with the track to Sphinx Rock Lookout. But she could have! His intentions were clear, could hardly have been clearer! But everything in his demeanour seemed geared to ensuring her freedom of choice.

  The final bit of the track up to the road forced than once again into single file, so conversation continued to be non-existent until they had actually reached the bitumen, whereupon Kurtis made a great show of looking at his watch, the time-direction signs for the walks, and his watch again.

  ‘Well, Ruth the witch,’ he finally said with a shake of his head, ‘you may be wonderful on spells and potions, but your sense of timing leaves a great deal to be desired.’

  Ruth, who had consulted her own watch surreptitiously and who, too, had realised they’d taken almost exactly two h
ours each way, slower even than the signs had suggested, much less her ‘brief walk’ definition, had no excuse and she knew it, but she had, at least, to try.

  ‘Time is irrelevant to a witch,’ she declared haughtily, posing, shoulders back, one arm extended to the sky. ‘After all, when you’re eternal...’

  ‘And when you’re a witch, you can make time stand still anyway,’ he replied with a hint of a grin. ‘I grant you that, my lady witch, most willingly.’

  But then he dropped the performance and slid precipitously into a seriousness that struck Ruth like a blow to the stomach.

  ‘You have a rare and amazing quality of serenity about you, Ruth,’ he said. ‘I felt it when we first met last night; it was like a great wave of calm that fairly washed me off my feet.’

  ‘Piffle, sir. You were merely overwhelmed by my witchly charms,’ she replied in a frantic bid to defuse the intensity in his attitude. ‘Warlocks, and especially mere apprentice-grade types, always do. It is,’ she sighed, ‘one of my fatal charms. And besides, you were asleep on your feet in the first place. You shouldn’t have been partying; you should have been in bed.’

  ‘Last night: true,’ he admitted. ‘But how do you explain today? I’m wide awake, I had a short but reasonably good sleep, and the whole time I’ve been with you has been a sort of slow, gentle, placid dream. I haven’t felt so relaxed in years, and I mean that.’

  Damn it! she wanted to cry. Don’t do this to me. Because she had felt much the same, but lacked the words, the confidence, certainly, to say so. Being with Kurtis had involved a magic quality that made her claims to witchbreed dangerously blasphemous.

  ‘All part of the service,’ she finally replied, still desperately seeking to soften the intensity of his gaze, of his words. ‘We take our tourism responsibilities seriously here in Tasmania.’