Lindsay Armstrong - From Waif To His Wife

A book in the Innocent Mistress, Virgin Bride series, 2007

M AISIE W ALLISseldom admitted defeat but on a late winter’s day, not long after her twenty-second birthday, she came close to it.

She was a petite redhead with green eyes, but she presented to the world two rather different personae. Her real name was Mairead, although she’d been Maisie for as long as she could remember.

It was as the unexceptional Maisie Wallis that she taught music at a strict private school. She wasn’t greatly experienced as a teacher yet, but she was passionate about music and she loved children.

It was as Mairead Wallis, with her cloud of red curls released and teased out, in stage make-up and a glitzy dress, that she pursued her second job, back-up pianist on weekends for a band that performed at upmarket receptions.

Of course, within, she was the same person. The only child of doting parents, she was a little strait-laced, she was a little unworldly, she had to acknowledge with the painful help of hindsight, although as Mairead Wallis she mightn’t look it.

Then she’d lost those doting parents in a freak accident six months ago, and now she was on her own.

Well, almost, she thought as she flagged down a taxi because her car had developed a mysterious knock overnight and was in for a service; because the thought of taking a bus was nauseating and her feet were killing her, anyway.

But, as he drove her home, the taxi driver must have caught her air of despair and, as he dropped her off, he said, ‘Cheer up, love! Things can’t be that bad.’

She handed over the fare and was about to say that they couldn’t, actually, be worse. But she stopped as she noticed a blind man walking along the pavement with a white stick and a seeing-eye dog, and she grimaced. Of course they could.

And maybe it was time to get mad, maybe the time for tears and recriminations and despair was past. She wasn’t, after all, a redhead for nothing.

Moreover, Rafael Sanderson might be a high-flying, multimillionaire with the means to keep outsiders at bay, she might have pounded the pavements in search of him today to no avail, but she refused to be treated like this.

Home was an old wooden Queenslander in Manly, a bay-side suburb of Brisbane. But it had only become home fairly recently. Her father had been in the army, so a lot of Maisie’s life had been lived on the move on a variety of bases, including some overseas postings.

She’d done her music degree in Melbourne while her father had been based at Puckapunyal. Then he’d retired and her parents had fulfilled a dream; they’d moved to Queensland, the Sunshine State, they’d bought a house and a boat.

Maisie had come north as well, quite happy to move back home and be able to help her mother, who had suffered from arthritis.

The one downside, though, to being the only child of only-children parents and having moved around so much was the lack of really good friends. Not that she didn’t have friends but they were scattered far and wide and when her parents died she hadn’t been in Brisbane long enough to make the kind of friends one could really confide in.

The house itself was comfortable although her father had had great plans to renovate it. It also had lovely views down to the foreshore and out over Moreton Bay to its twin guardians of Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands. And it had a garden Maisie loved pottering about in-she’d inherited her mother’s green fingers plus a cooking gene from her father.

She made herself a snack and a cup of tea. She took them to the veranda, determined to hammer out her new resolution, but the view captured her for a few minutes as she watched the forest of masts in Manly Harbour, one of which belonged to her parents’ yacht, the Amelie , still moored in the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron marina.

Then she looked out over the bay and the setting sun was laying a living carnation pink with misty violet shadows on the steely-still waters, and it was all so lovely it brought tears to her eyes.

She dashed them away impatiently and remembered her resolve in the taxi. No more tears and, somehow, she would track Rafael Sanderson down.

Starting work on her computer again recalled her extreme surprise when she’d first started her searches, and discovered that he was one of the richest men in Australia as CEO of Sanderson Minerals and had inherited the Dixon pastoralist empire.

It can’t be the same one, had been her immediate reaction. Yes, the man she was looking for had had an aura of background and substance, and the Dixon pastoralist side could match that, but Sanderson Minerals was a giant corporation, she discovered. Then she’d come up with a birth date that made him roughly the same age as the man she was looking for, plus some information in his curriculum vitae had made her sure he was the one…

But she couldn’t help wondering why she’d never heard of him until she checked further and discovered that he was extremely reclusive. She could find business reports and articles on Sanderson Minerals and Dixon Pastoral Inc, but apart from that very potted life history, even although it had yielded gold, there was very little of a personal nature.

And images of Rafe Sanderson, she found, were as rare as hen’s teeth, as her father had used to say, as well as frustratingly inconclusive. They certainly rang a bell, but there were differences that made her ponder again whether it was the same man…

Perhaps, she’d reasoned, the images she’d found were slightly misleading because they looked like press releases; they were very formal. Whereas the Rafe Sanderson she’d met had been more casual.

She’d shaken her head and decided there was just one way to find out…

It had only been by resorting to the electoral roll that she’d found a residential address. He wasn’t listed in the phone book.

Sanderson Minerals did have their head office in Brisbane, but after she’d phoned, then called in person, she’d come away in no doubt whatsoever that without stating her business she had no hope of an appointment with Mr Sanderson; anyway, he was away.

She’d buzzed the address she’d gleaned from the electoral roll, a luxurious apartment block on the Brisbane River, only to receive the same disembodied message via the intercom.

That was when she’d thought to use the Dixon connection, he was a Dixon on his mother’s side and the Dixons were a very old, wealthy family. One of the reasons she was so footsore today was that she’d visited several residences she’d found in the phone book in expensive suburbs like Ascot, Clayfield and Hamilton that might be the home of the very exclusive Dixon family.

One of them had, indeed, but she’d had the door shut in her face when she’d requested help in getting in touch with Rafe Sanderson.

She gritted her teeth at the memory and stiffened her spine. She would continue trawling the web until she found something that led her to him.

Fortunately the school holidays had just started, so it didn’t matter if she burnt the candle at both ends. All the same, she nearly missed it. An article in an online yachting magazine that just happened to mention Rafe Sanderson’s Mary-Lue taking line honours in an ocean race.

She blinked as the words on the screen danced before her eyes. That was all there was, although she scrolled through the article several times, noting that it was about six months old, but her mind was jumping and her fingers were suddenly shaky.