Malcolm & Isabel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Author

  MALCOLM AND ISABEL

  by Julie Anne Long

  DEDICATION

  To all the warm, wonderful readers who wrote to tell me how much they wanted to read Malcolm’s and Isabel’s story. I’m so touched and honored you want to spend more time in Pennyroyal Green.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dear Lovely Readers,

  Our story begins right where the Epilogue of The Legend of Lyon Redmond ends....

  MALCOLM COBURN SURRENDERED Isabel to the tender care of his friend Geoff Hawthorne and his sister Catriona at the Pig & Thistle, and then left, albeit with flattering and obvious reluctance.

  As she watched him roar off on his motorcycle, she was half-tempted to throw her phone into the road again to see if he’d turn around.

  But Cat and Geoff settled her in by the fire, near a framed dartboard said to have been punctured a thousand times over by her ancestor Jonathan Redmond, and lavished her with kindness, tea and a pot pie. Soon the warmth of the room and the welcome wrapped her like an angora cocoon, and just as the pub began to fill with the dinner crowd, her eyelids drifted closed and her chin banged against her clavicle, startling her awake again. As she was probably seconds away from splaying her limbs and throwing her head back and snoring, much like the gentleman in the chair on the opposite side of the fire, across from a chessboard, Isabel decided she’d better walk back to her flat.

  The plunge into the cool air—through a thicket of what appeared to be a rugby team tumbling and wrestling and cheerily shouting their way through the doorway—was bracing, and sunset had hung the sky with glowing, apricot-colored streamers.

  She came to an abrupt halt outside her building when she heard voices raised.

  “Come on, darling, not my vintage Moody Blues rec—”

  A square LP hurtled out of the upstairs window of her building like a Chinese throwing star.

  More astonishing: the guy standing below the window actually deftly caught it.

  If Isabel had to guess, it wasn’t the first time he’d needed to catch something thrown from a second story window.

  He gave a start when he noticed her.

  “Oh, hello.” He turned a piratically dazzling smile on Isabel. “I didn’t see you there. If you’ll excuse me a moment.” He aimed his face up at the window again “Look at that, Poppy, I’ve already met someone new. See how easy it is to forget you?”

  A woman’s face appeared into the window. She glared down at him. Her glare transformed into a grin when she saw Isabel.

  “Oh, hello! I saw you as you were just getting settled in! I’m Poppy Allgood. Welcome to the building. Don’t mind me, I’m having a bit of a clear-out.” She hurled a balled pair of man’s socks out the window with the verve of a softball pitcher.

  Isabel was no stranger to drama. She’d already sussed out exactly what was going on here.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Poppy. I’m Isabel Redmond,” she called up.

  “Likewise, Isabel. Might want to step back a bit. Clear of that man,” she gave the word ‘man’ a disdainful snarl, “as well as this”— she hurled a leather jacket out the window —“coat.”

  “What can I say? Women simply love to shower me with gifts.” The man adroitly caught the coat with his other hand.

  “Lies!” Poppy incanted with Shakespearean melodrama. And hurled a shoe.

  The man dodged it nimbly. It thumped to earth and rolled a few feet.

  A good-looking vintage man’s boot. A thrift store find, if Isabel had to guess.

  “Nice boot,” Isabel couldn’t help remarking.

  “I picked it out for the blighter!” Poppy called cheerily. “Come in Isabel, I’ve just made a pot of tea, we’ll have a cuppa, get to know one another before I head off to work. And you, off with you now, Declan. Shoo! Don’t bother her, she seems a nice girl.”

  “Are you bothered, love?” Declan purred, as he nimbly dodged the mate of that boot even though he hadn’t seen it coming.

  He was clearly a pro at whatever this kind of eviction was.

  In truth, she rather liked Poppy’s insouciance, and she had a hunch this man would have no trouble finding new “friends”, or trouble finding trouble, for that matter. She knew the type. She’d sampled the type. She’d outgrown the type.

  And she quite liked the idea of having a new friend in the building.

  She smiled at Declan, nevertheless, because he was a handsome devil, who despite his predicament was maintaining a certain admirable panache.

  “Good luck...Declan, is it? I find I’m in the mood for a cup of tea with my neighbor, Poppy.”

  Poppy beamed down at her. “Excellent judgement, Isabel. I knew I’d like you.”

  He turned to Isabel. “Declan Duggan, Isabel, love. The man, the band. You won’t want to forget my name.”

  “Oh, she’ll want to forget the name!” Poppy shouted merrily down. She produced a black wallet and gave it a shake; its two sides flapped like wings. “Just want to give the moths one last chance to escape out before I hurl them to their doom,” she called, as Isabel went up the stairs.

  * * * * *

  “Malcolm, darling, I feel I’ve been monologuing, when arguably a candlelight dinner for two should in fact be a dialogue.”

  Jemima was taking theater classes. She’d toyed with the idea of becoming an actress ever since she’d seen Poppy Allgood entrance an audience packed with men as Ophelia in a tiny production of Hamlet in the town square last summer. She also thought she’d like to be a sort of ad hoc Goodwill Ambassador a la Princess Kate or Meghan Markle or Princess Diana before her. Something, anything, that resulted in being lavished with soulful admiration and her photo being taken quite a bit. The world was her oyster as granddaughter of the staggeringly wealthy Duke of Falconbridge and she could be all of those things or nothing at all if she chose.

  Malcolm knew the duke, a widower, was nobody’s fool and suspected he’d prefer his granddaughter to have an actual profession. Jemima considered this notion droll.

  She was generally good company, regardless—intelligent and well-read and dryly witty—and looking across the table at her was not even a little hard-going. The genetics at play in that family were magnificent. She gleamed like the candlesticks, polished and lean, and, thanks to a fresh blow-out, her blonde hair was nearly metallic.

  And as if that smooth sheet of hair was a crystal ball, across his mind’s eye floated an image of blonde hair spiraling from the confines of a chignon and a singular pair of blue eyes.

  For the past hour Malcolm’s responses to Jemima had been abstracted, a little delayed, filtered through a haze comprised of Isabel Redmond.

  Mind if I have a run at Isabel? Geoff Hawthorne had texted from the Pig & Thistle just as Malcolm had arrived in front of Jemima’s flat at the edge of town.

  As his grandfather used to bellow when his stocks took a dive or the voles got into his garden:

  Fecking Hell.

  But seconds later Geoff texted a row of uproariously laughing emojis:

  You know I’m messing with you, right, Coburn? Your glowering possessiveness rather made your point. She was only here 45 mins. Hope you know what you’re d
oing. She’s hot. And looks risky.

  Malcolm was impressed with the “glowering possessiveness.” He’d known Geoff for most of his life and he’d never get all the ‘s’s in the right places in that word unless he’d dictated it into his phone. He texted back:

  Haven’t a clue what I’m doing.

  Geoff rang in seconds later:

  So all is status quo.

  Malcolm laughed. He paused. Then began typing: She’s not as tough as she loo–

  He stopped. And then backed it up and deleted that, one letter at a time.

  Because the only thing he actually, fundamentally knew about Isabel Redmond was that she’d tipped his world ever so slightly on its axis. Just enough to dislodge any certainty he’d felt about his satisfaction with his existence prior to meeting her.

  “Malcolm, you’re frowning. Am I...boring...you?” Jemima sounded amused, even a little fascinated, by the very idea.

  He gave a short, rueful laugh. “Forgive me for being poor company, Jemima. I was thinking about work. I know how you love it when I do that.”

  He tried to make this sound wry, rather than cynical.

  “Trouble patching up the villagers?” She made it sound as if he’d been trimming shrubbery or some such in order to keep the town square picturesque, as if he were a gardener at a theme park.

  There were a million things he could say about his work. That he was worried about the Pitney twins, for instance, because they were underweight and their mother was poor and overwhelmed and possessed terrible judgment in men and it was only a matter of time before they had even more siblings, and that he wished Angus Lemworth would be less stubborn about seeing a specialist for his lungs, and...

  “Yes,” he said finally. “But Finn and I are doing our best to keep them from coming apart at the seams. How’s your mother?”

  “Vague yet demanding, as always. She’ll be in town for the meeting of the Falconbridge Trust. I know she’d like to see you.”

  Malcolm was much less certain of this. On the few occasions he’d met Jemima’s mother she’d always eyed him with a sort of critical wistfulness, as though he were a once-grand building damaged in the blitz. He liked her, though, perversely enough. She was slyly acerbic, and he suspected her vagueness was really a ruse that allowed her to subtly maneuver everyone into doing her bidding. He supposed that when one had gigantic piles of money, one’s diversions necessarily got more subtle.

  “Speaking of work, Jem...Finn and I have been approved for a mortgage. We’d like to buy the Sneath Building, as you know.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “How lovely for you,” Jemima said brightly.

  She knew what was coming.

  He pressed on. “I’m hoping to speak to the Falconbridge Trust Board of Directors about purchasing this building during your meeting next weekend. I’m certain I can persuade them of the worthiness of our work and our contribution to Pennyroyal Green and the community at large. Do you think they’d be amenable?”

  “Oh, Mal,” she sighed. “If only it were up to me. Unfortunately, the land your rickety building sits upon is absurdly valuable. And some members of my family do love money above all else. There are an awful lot of us so we must keep the money growing, you know, to make sure we all have enough of it. And think of the marvelous ways we can use the extra money to do good. Argosy has a lot of ideas.”

  I’ll just bet he does, Malcolm thought grimly.

  “It isn’t rickety,” he said stoutly. “It just needs a few repairs.”

  The building in truth could be charitably described as a drafty box. It had survived a World War, but it wasn’t a landmark by any stretch of the imagination. It leaked and creaked and emitted musty odors, a bit like Malcolm’s grandfather. But he and Finn loved it with a stubborn, irrational passion. Malcolm lived in an apartments upstairs; Finn lived on the ancient O’Flaherty family homestead on the outskirts of town. All the building needed was a bit of the same skilled, no-bullshit-yet-tender care the two of them gave to their patients. Which, unfortunately, was going to cost a lot more than they charged their patients. They’d have to do it a little at a time, and likely they’d have to do the work themselves.

  “Well, if it doesn’t work out, there’s always London,” Jemima said soothingly. You could go in with an established practice. Just think! Daddy is on so many boards, I’m certain he could call in some markers and—”

  “Jemima.”

  Her eyes widened.

  He must have said her name a little too tersely.

  He paused to calibrate his tone to his soothing, confident doctor cadences.

  “I’m committed to the work and to the people in Pennyroyal Green. That building is my home. Pennyroyal Green is my home.”

  He realized he was repeating the word the way his long-suffering French tutor had once drilled him in verb tenses. Jemima had flitted between sunny islands and yachts and grand house on nearly every continent since she was a child. Nothing in her experience had ever hinted that the whole world might be anything but comfortable and welcoming. There wasn’t a thing wrong with that. But Malcolm had been to dozens of places in the world, too, and he’d witnessed beauty and horror in myriad gradations. The word “home” was now as visceral to him as “heart” or “blood.” It was a place, and a feeling, like no other.

  Jemima would likely make appropriate compassionate noises if he tried to explain all of this. But he knew the deeper truth—even if he could put it into the right words— would slide from her like the condensation on his wine glass.

  “But if the board votes in favor of selling, Malcolm, despite the wonderful work you do here at the clinic,” Jemima said gently. “That’s all I’m saying. You’ll still land on your feet. The people here will get on without you, you know. And you don’t hate London. It wouldn’t be the worst thing. We’d have such fun!”

  He said nothing.

  She launched her eyebrows coaxingly.

  “No. It wouldn’t be the worst thing,” He said finally. He certainly knew of worse things.

  She smiled at him, clearly relieved at their apparent accord.

  “Any chance you’d speak to the board and ask them if I might present our case for purchasing the building? If they balk, you can tell them I have a riveting powerpoint presentation.”

  It was funny because it was true.

  She laughed politely.

  He also had spreadsheets. Bullet points. Statistics. Steely, unflinching determination. Charisma. A large and nimble vocabulary. And a muscular and perhaps quixotic sense of integrity that prevented him from embarking on a campaign of charm and seduction so irresistible that Jemima would, in a haze of gratitude and sexual satisfaction, persuade the board to present the building to him as a gift.

  “It’s worth a shot, Coburn,” his clinic partner, Finn O’Flaherty, had laid out this last plan to Malcolm at the Pig & Thistle a few weeks ago. They’d had quite a few pints at that point.

  “I think you over-estimate my charms, O’Flaherty. Not by much, mind you.”

  “No, no, you have it wrong. I’m mystified by what she sees in you at all. So I figure anything’s possible,” Finn had explained.

  This was why he and Finn got on so well. Theirs was a simple relationship comprised of taking the piss out of each other whenever possible and having each other’s backs all the time.

  But Jemima unnerved Finn. “She’s much too...shiny,” he’d once said, brow furrowed. Suspicion of the aristocratic classes was in the O’Flaherty DNA.

  “Of course I’ll tell the board you’d like to speak to them,” Jemima said graciously.

  “Thank you.”

  A little silence fell.

  During which he finished his excellent wine. He was gentleman enough to feel a little chagrined for being such poor company.

  “Do you have clinic hours tonight? Or is it Finn’s night on?” She made it sound like an idle question. But one room room away was the big, comfortable bed in which they’d more
than once concluded nights spent together.

  It had been months since he’d rolled about in it with Jemima.

  Just yesterday he’d been anticipating doing just that. Something had fundamentally shifted. He could trace the origins of this to the moment he’d handed a phone back to a blue-eyed blonde.

  “I’m afraid I do. In ten minutes, in fact. ”

  He was also gentleman enough to imbue the lie with convincing regret.

  * * * * *

  Isabel discovered that Poppy’s little apartment was dominated by a voluptuous purple velvet sofa and a gigantic, framed black-and-white photo over the mantel featuring a nude Poppy standing on what on what appeared to be a windswept moor, gazing moodily off toward some horizon, her hair artfully whipped into a cloud around her by an apparent breeze.

  Isabel figured there could really only be one explanation.

  “Are you an actress, by any chance, Poppy?”

  “Oh, why do you ask? Have you seen me in anything?” Poppy’s face, round and luminous as a china plate, went brilliant with surprised pleasure. She had a vast sweep of pale forehead and a wide soft pink mouth. She was nearly six feet tall if Isabel had to guess, and slim. A gigantic green knit sweater was slipping from one shoulder. She wore it over leggings and her feet were bare.

  “Only just now in the photo over your mantel. But I’ve known a few actresses in San Francisco and they don’t shy away from...” she sought the diplomatic word. “...statements.”

  Poppy laughed delightedly. “I find that photo instantly separates the men from the boys and the dull from the interesting, and you are clearly the latter, Isabel, because the former are usually stammering by now.” She whipped her hair back with one hand. It hung in ripples down to her butt.

  “I won’t argue with that. It’s a great photo, regardless. Fearless. And really very large.”

  “Thank you,” Poppy said graciously. “I like it, too. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll get our tea.”