‘But what brought you two together?’ he heard one of his aunts, a dragon-lady according to the younger members of the clan, ask.
‘Well, I guess you could say it was sailing,’ Maisie responded then smiled enchantingly. ‘A bit like Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Mary Donaldson, except that our Ship Inn was the Mary-Lue.’
His dragon aunt Nancy, he saw, looked gratified, and he had to award Maisie ten out of ten for an inspired response that not only had elements of truth in it, but also elevated this unknown girl he’d married to suitable heights.
On the other hand, she does think fast on her feet, he reflected, and found the thought niggled him.
‘So what are you?’ he heard his cousin Amelia, pure Dixon from her sculpted fair hair and grey eyes down to the pointed toes of her handmade Jimmy Choo shoes, enquire. ‘Do you have a career?’
‘Yes,’ he heard Maisie reply, ‘music. I taught it but now I’m studying for my Master’s Degree.’
‘Do you perform?’
‘Yes, well, I have.’
‘A chamber orchestra, a quartet?’
‘No, much livelier than that.’ Maisie bestowed a sparkling green look on Amelia. ‘Jazz, rhythm and blues, disco-that kind of thing, in a band.’
Amelia raised her eyebrows and Rafe moved forward to stop what he knew was going to be inevitable, but he was too late.
‘Do give us a tune, then,’ Amelia said, her well-bred tones just a little sceptical.
He saw Sonia zooming in from the other side of the conservatory.
But Maisie bestowed another charming, bewitching smile on his cousin, and said, ‘With pleasure! Although I’ll make it short.’
‘You don’t have to,’ he murmured, reaching her side.
‘Oh, I don’t mind. It’s about the only credential I have,’ she added for his ears only, and slipped her arm through his. ‘Lead me to it.’
Ten minutes later she’d wowed the gathering, and left some egg on the face of his cousin Amelia, with a lively, sparkling medley excerpt of well-known tunes, from a stunning “Rhapsody in Blue” through to the latest pop song that was at the top of the charts. They begged her not to stop.
‘Yes, yes, I must!’ And she got up and closed the piano. ‘Thank you for being such a lovely audience,’ she added warmly.
And as she came back to his side, he knew that Maisie Wallis had endeared herself to his family.
Snippets of conversation reinforced this.
‘A genuine ingénue…’
‘Rather refreshing, wouldn’t you say…?’
‘So lovely and natural…’
‘Well, I didn’t know what to think but I’m converted…’
‘The only thing I don’t understand is why all the secrecy…?’
He saw Maisie catch that comment, and in her only unguarded moment her eyes flew to his and he thought he saw something curiously stricken in them.
‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
They’d driven back to the apartment and Maisie was sitting on a settee, massaging her feet, having kicked off her shoes.
‘No, I suppose not,’ she said quietly.
He slung his jacket and tie over a chair and unbuttoned his shirt at the neck.
‘You say that as if you have reservations.’
She looked up at him. ‘Yes, I do. It was basically dishonest and,’ she sighed, ‘I-I don’t feel too good about myself.’
‘You certainly put on a sparkling performance.’
She grimaced. ‘A bit of that goes directly to having red hair. It seems to sort of…put you on your mettle, and I guess I thought, well, I can only be myself. But of course, that was only the tip of the iceberg.’
She reached behind her and unclasped the diamond necklace. ‘Thank you.’ She held it out to him. Then she suddenly looked directly into his eyes. ‘You say that as if you have reservations.’
‘Say what?’
‘That I put on a sparkling performance.’
He gazed down at her, still so elegant in her lovely black dress even with bare feet, but with shadows in her green eyes, then he shrugged. ‘Perhaps I only meant that it was Mairead, not Maisie, who took over tonight.’
Maisie examined the uneasy thread that lay between them she was coming to know well and she said, before she stopped to think, ‘You don’t like Mairead, do you?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ he denied, ‘but I do find her a bit-I don’t know, but it may have something to do with-it was Maisie I met first.’
Or because Mairead leads straight back to Tim Dixon? she found herself wondering, and shivered suddenly.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she murmured but wondered for a moment if she could explain that it wasn’t only redheadedness that went into Mairead. Yes, she might be able to extend that confident aura to suit the situation at times but basically it came from her music.
Once she’d discovered that “bubble” in her practical exam, it had provided what probably all performers, be they ever so different at other times, drew on. That almost spiritual affinity with their music.
But would he believe that?
‘Maisie?’
She shrugged. ‘I really am one and the same person. A bit battered now, shop-soiled, some people might even say, but if,’ she gestured, palms out, ‘all this hadn’t happened I would have lived with my mistakes and made the best of things.’
He frowned. ‘What are you saying, Maisie?’
‘I guess, that people are going to have to take me or leave me.’
‘As in me?’ he queried abruptly.
She stood up and picked up her shoes. ‘No, Rafe, not you. You’ve done enough, you’ve literally picked up the pieces-I don’t expect any more from you.’
‘Maisie,’ he said harshly, then paused because the only way he knew to defuse things between them was to take her in his arms, to kiss her and cradle her to him and tell her-what?
That Mairead both attracted him and disturbed him? Because Mairead was more enigmatic than Maisie at the same time as she was…stunning? But beneath that vivacious, on-her-mettle personality, what really lay in her mind?
Come to that, did he still feel bound up in silken strands?
Talking of silk, he mused as he studied the pearly glow of her skin beneath the unlined voile of the top of her bodice, he contemplated drawing her dress down her body so none of that smooth, lovely skin was veiled and hidden from him.
He wondered what expressions would chase through her green eyes as he did so.
On the other hand, he reminded himself, he felt real affection for Maisie, perhaps too much to put her through the mill of his indecision-and the other reason he was the way he was.
But, and it was a bit like slamming into a wall, yes, there were still moments when he could forget she was pregnant and by whom but shortly that wasn’t going to be possible. Soon, every time he looked at her he was going to be reminded of his charming, feckless cousin…
Not only that, but he was also going to be asking himself if she still loved Tim. He’d never forgotten her remark in the Tree House that had seemed to indicate she was looking for excuses for Tim.
He shut his teeth hard. ‘Maisie, let’s just get through your pregnancy, let’s take one thing at a time, in other words. We’ve done what had to be done and perhaps both of us, but you particularly, need a break.’
She swung her shoes in her hand. ‘Of course. Goodnight, Rafe.’
He watched her go and was almost unbearably tempted to stop her, to throw all caution to the wind, but he didn’t.
He made a savage little sound in his throat and crossed the room to pour himself a nightcap. He swirled the brandy and gazed into its amber depths.
It couldn’t work, he told himself. Maybe if it had been anyone but Tim, who will no doubt think it was a nice revenge to have foisted his baby on me, maybe…
But it wasn’t only Tim Dixon who held him back, it was the fact that he well knew how destructive a love-ha
te relationship could be. After all, he’d lived through one.
Maisie fell asleep with relative ease.
It was as if she’d made a statement about herself she’d needed to make. It was as if she’d finally closed the door on her feelings for Rafe Sanderson.
Three days later they were both installed in the house although the apartment was to be maintained.
Two months later, despite her ongoing love affair with the house, Maisie dropped her head into her hands as she sat at her piano, and tears trickled through her fingers.
The dog curled up on the floor beside her sat up and put a paw on her lap.
She fondled its silky head and pulled a hanky from her pocket to blow her nose.
The dog, a present from Rafe, was a six-month-old border collie that she’d christened Wesley, Wes for short. And it was a living example of everything her husband had done for her to make her life pleasant and bearable over the last months, but there was so much more.
He’d installed a live-in housekeeper-there was a small service flat over the garage-so she would never be alone. Grace Hardy, in her forties and a spinster with a childcare background, was unobtrusive but they’d become friends when they’d discovered two common interests-Grace loved to cook and she belonged to a choral society.
Maisie had also become friends with the gardener, who’d been delighted when his role of simply a maintenance gardener had been expanded, and together they’d planned and planted a summer garden.
The Mary-Lue was now tied up to the jetty on the canal and they’d taken her out for some glorious sails, although never alone, always with Sonia and the children.
Sonia-and Maisie believed it was not because she was jumping to her brother’s tune but out of genuine affection-had become a good friend.
They shopped together, they lunched together at Cleveland’s trendy pavement cafés, they went to the movies and concerts. They popped in and out of each other’s houses when the whim took them and Maisie was giving Cecelia piano lessons. She often babysat the kids for Sonia, not that they were babies, but she loved it when the stone house with its blue shutters rang with young voices and laughter.
She’d met Liam, Sonia’s husband, and liked him as well as pondering what had separated Sonia from him. Rafe had never gone on to explain further.
Thanks, she had no doubt, to the influence Rafe exercised over his family, even on this occasion his cousin Amelia and his aunt Nancy, the news of her pregnancy was well-received.
She often thought to ask him if they knew who the baby’s father was but, since no one ever mentioned Tim Dixon to her, she gathered that Rafe had kept his own counsel on the subject, so she decided she would do the same. To be honest, it gave her a headache even to think of how that bit of news could be explained.
The Tonga story and its potentially disastrous consequences for Maisie Wallis had never surfaced. As Rafe had predicted, once their marriage had been announced, there was little newsworthiness in it.
In fact, she’d often thought that Maisie Wallis had disappeared, been swallowed up in her new life. She’d even contributed to it-for some reason, she’d never visited Manly, she’d never gone back to see the Amelie or her parents’ house. She’d left it all in Jack’s hands.
She had a music tutor and she’d embarked on her Master’s Degree with enthusiasm.
But now, sitting in front of her piano at seven and a half months pregnant, there was not an ounce of enthusiasm in her for anyone or anything, least of all herself, and she knew precisely why.
It all came under one heading-Rafe. And the fact that that it had been a vain assumption that she’d closed the door on how she felt about him.
He was kind, he took an interest in her interests but she sensed a brick wall between them below the surface and, as she’d once feared, it was hurting her almost unbearably.
He was rarely home, but even when he was in Brisbane he didn’t always sleep at the house, he used the apartment, and that added another torment for Maisie. Did he have a mistress, and if so, could she blame him?
He certainly wasn’t going to want her now that she was heavy, swollen and slow. Who would?
And when she couldn’t control her imagination, she had a mental cast of potential lovers he might chose from, from statuesque brunettes through to creamy, glorious blondes.
If you added to all that blotches of brown pigment on your skin, heartburn that interfered with your sleep and the conviction that this pregnancy was never going to end, it wasn’t easy to feel chipper.
Not even the nursery she and Sonia had decorated, the shopping they’d done for the baby, not even the thought of her child, the lifeline she’d clung to for so long, was helping her because she’d started to question her suitability as a mother.
Who wouldn’t, she thought, when you couldn’t give your baby a father because you’d ignored all the conventions and good sense you’d been brought up with and allowed yourself to be swept off your feet and, if that wasn’t bad enough, when you’d fallen in love with another man not long afterwards?
Was it any wonder Rafe Sanderson viewed her as foolish, if not worse? She was…Although she still hoped and prayed that she hadn’t given away what she felt for him.
She’d also come to the growing realisation that being a single parent was extremely lonely on a mental plane, even leading the cushioned, want-for-nothing life she was living.
Yes, she could talk to Sonia about anything to do with babies and birth but nothing could replace the link she was missing, the spiritual link she needed with the other half of her baby’s creator. Not that Tim Dixon could have ever given her that, she knew; no one could now-that was what made it so lonely.
‘Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?’
Maisie scrubbed her face urgently as Wes stood up and barked once then wagged his tail.
It was Sonia, but despite her bright greeting she looked unwell, even unusually haggard, as she walked into the den that had been converted into a music room.
‘What’s wrong?’ Maisie asked.
‘Nothing! I’m as right as rain.’ She patted Wes then she added rigidly, ‘What I need is a good, stiff drink.’
Maisie opened her mouth, closed it and said, ‘Sit down, I’ll get you one.’
And she did so as fast as she could.
‘Now,’ she handed Sonia a crystal tumbler with a generous tot of brandy in it, ‘what’s wrong?’
Sonia accepted the glass, sipped and choked. ‘Liam’s asked for a divorce,’ she said with tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘And it’s all my fault.’
‘Why?’ Maisie queried gently.
‘Because I’m a fool,’ Sonia said tragically. ‘It’s taken this to make me realise that I drove him away because I’m really cynical about letting anyone get too close to me. I thought I could have Liam yet keep him at arm’s length. I was even convinced,’ she laughed hollowly, ‘that he’d come back after he asked for a separation, it just needed a little time.’
She breathed raggedly then continued, ‘I thought I should always be in command of myself but that led to wanting to be in command of him too on top of,’ she paused and pressed her fingers to her temples, ‘a natural tendency to bossiness anyway,’ she said with bleak honesty.
Maisie sat down on a cushioned footstool in front of her sister-in-law. ‘Oh, Sonia, I’m so sorry. But-why? What made you like that?’
It was Sonia’s turn to scrub her face. ‘When you grow up in a war zone you tend not to allow yourself to feel anything too deeply.’
Maisie’s eyes widened. ‘A war zone? I don’t understand.’
‘My parents had a love-hate relationship that was,’ Sonia shook her head, ‘deeply disturbing, sometimes terrifying as a child living through it. I suppose I took my mother’s side instinctively and subconsciously decided never to put myself in a position as painful as hers.’
She pleated her skirt and shrugged. ‘But, you know, you grow up and you think you’ve put it all behind you-until one day you wake up and
realise it caused you to build a fence around your emotions that you can’t seem to break through. Or couldn’t.’ New tears welled. ‘And now it’s too late.’
Maisie put her arms around her.
And she sat deep in thought after Sonia had left.
Were daughters more vulnerable in that kind of situation? In other words, how had his parents’ turbulent relationship affected Rafe? Was he just as cynical in his own way as Sonia?
Did that explain why a man who had so much to offer, you would have thought, had no time for a wife and family?
What had he said to her once? Something about neither of them, for reasons of their own, viewing love and all the trimmings through rose-coloured glasses…
‘The evidence,’ she murmured aloud, ‘seems to be piling up against him ever falling in love with you, Maisie, if that’s what’s in your secret heart-and of course it is! Not that this makes any difference. Tim Dixon was always going to effectively scotch that possibility but why does this news disturb me so much?’
It was a question she couldn’t answer, she could only acknowledge that it lay heavily on her mind.
It was to be a day of bad news.
Rafe came home earlier than he usually did on a weekday, and found her in the kitchen making dinner.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked as he pulled off his tie and flicked open the top button of his shirt.
‘I am concocting,’ she said brightly-she’d perfected a bright, breezy manner with him, ‘a chicken casserole with Marsala, mushrooms, parsley, capsicum, shallots and that’s about it.’ She waved a hand over the series of bowls containing her colourful ingredients. ‘Oh, and bacon.’
‘Where’s Grace?’ He opened the fridge and took out a can of beer and a bottle of unsweetened apple juice, which happened to be Maisie’s favourite drink of the moment.
‘She’s gone to a choir rehearsal. Anyway, I felt like cooking.’
He poured the beer into a long glass and the apple juice into a shorter one. ‘Come out onto the patio, I need to talk to you.’
From Waif To His Wife Page 13
