These four years past he had not seen a white woman, four years without the sound of a woman’s voice or the comfort of her body. In the beginning it had worried him – the restlessness, the undirected fits of depression, and sudden bursts of temper. But gradually in the long days of hunting and riding, in the endless struggle with drought and storm, with beasts and the elements, he had brought his body under control. Women had faded into unreality, vague phantoms that plagued him only in the night so he twisted and sweated and cried out in his sleep until nature gave him release and the phantoms dispersed for a while to gather strength for their next visitation.
But this was no phantom that lay beside him now. By stretching out a hand he could stroke the faint down on her cheek and feel the blood-warm silk of her skin.
She opened her eyes, they were milky grey with sleep, slowly focusing until they levelled with his and returned his scrutiny.
Because of what she read there, she lifted her left hand from the blanket and held it out towards him. Her riding gloves were off. For the first time he noticed the slender gold ring that encircled her third finger.
‘I see,’ he muttered dully, and then in protest: ‘But you are too young – you’re too young to be married.’
‘I’m twenty-two years old,’ she told him softly.
‘Your husband – where is he?’ Perhaps the bastard was dead, his one last hope.
‘I am going to him now. When war seemed inevitable he went to Natal, to Durban, to find a job and a home for us there. I was to follow him – but the war came earlier than we expected. I was stranded.’
‘I see.’ I am taking you to another man, he thought with bitterness, and put it in different words. ‘So he is sitting in Durban waiting for you to make your own way through the lines.’
‘He is with the army of Natal. A week ago he got a message through to me. He wanted me to stay on in Johannesburg and wait until the British capture the city. He says that with so great a force they will be in Johannesburg within three months.’
‘Why didn’t you wait, then?’
She shrugged. ‘Patience is not one of my virtues,’ and then the devilment was in her eyes again. ‘Besides, I thought it would be fun to run away – it was so terribly dull in Johannesburg.’
‘Do you love him?’ he demanded suddenly. The question startled her and the smile died on her lips.
‘He’s my husband.’
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’
‘It was a question you had no right to ask.’ She was angry now.
‘You have to tell me.’
‘Do you love your wife?’ she snapped at him.
‘I did. She’s been dead five years.’ And her anger flickered out as swiftly as it had blazed.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘Forget it. Forget I ever asked.’
‘Yes, that’s best. We are getting into an awful tangle.’ Her hand with the ring upon it was still held out towards him, lying between them on the soft carpet of fallen leaves. He reached out and lifted it. It was a small hand.
‘Mr Courtney – Sean, it’s best if – we mustn’t – I think we’d better sleep now.’ And she withdrew the hand and rolled away from him.
The wind woke them in the middle of the afternoon, it roared in from the east, flattening the grass on the hills and thrashing the branches above their heads.
Sean looked up at the sky with the wind fluttering his shirt and ruffling his beard. He leaned forward against it, towering over Ruth so that suddenly she realized how big he was. He looked like a god of the storm, with long powerful legs braced apart and the muscles of his chest and arms standing out proudly beneath the white silk of his shirt.
‘Clouds building up,’ Sean shouted above the rush of the wind. ‘No moon tonight.’
She stood up quickly and a sudden violent gust threw her off balance. She staggered against him and his arms closed about her. For a moment she was pressed to his chest, could feel the lean, rubbery resilience of his body and smell the man smell of it. It was a shock for both of them, this unexpectedly intimate contact and when she broke away her eyes were wide and grey with fear of the thing she had felt stir within her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘That was an accident.’ And the wind caught her hair and streamed it across her face in a dancing, snapping black tangle.
‘We’ll upsaddle and ride with the daylight that is left,’ Sean decided. ‘We won’t be able to move tonight.’
The clouds rolled in on the wind, spreading upon themselves, changing shape and dropping closer to the earth. Clouds the colour of smoke and bruises, heavy with the rain they carried.