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 doing. 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.”
The plump purple couch exhaled a great gust of perfume and incense smoke when Isabel sank into it. She imagined it was a bit like settling into the lap of a whorehouse madam. Nearby, a fringed ivory shawl had been tossed over the shade of the floor lamp for Bohemian ambiance. She had no doubt Poppy knew her best lighting and angles and how to achieve them.
“...like I said, there’s tea, but I do have tequila if you prefer, but I’ve only an centimeter or two left in the bottle.” Poppy was rummaging and clinking in the kitchenette. “When I get paid I’ll get in better booze and we’ll get properly drunk one day while you’re here, if you like.
“If you need to drown your sorrows, I’ll join you in tequila. But I’m happy with tea. No sugar, no cream.”
Poppy turned a faint puzzled frown over her shoulder. “Drown my... “ Her face cleared. “Oh! If you mean Declan, he’s a wee paper cut. He’ll sting a bit, mind you, because well, you got a look at him. He’s very ridey, isn’t he?”
“Very.” Isabel could glean from context what “ridey” meant. It was quite an explicitly descriptive word.
And all at once there flared dreamlike in her jet-lagged mind a shockingly pornographic image of her riding a bucking Malcolm Coburn like a cowgirl. She was tempted to slap her own cheek in order to get a grip.
Poppy returned with a tray rattling with a teapot and china cups sprinkled with tiny purple flowers, and settled it on a big, low table that looked like an African drum.
She plopped down next to Isabel, threw her long ripply brown hair over her shoulder as it were a cape, and leaned over to pour the tea.
“Plus Declan’s in a band, a very good and noisy one,” she continued. “And I suspect he has hidden depths, but it’s only a theory, like black holes or that rot. I thought I caught a glimpse of those depths once once but that could have been the a trick of the light.”
“My theory is that most men are like mud puddles. You never quite know how deep they are until you dive in, but you usually end up getting a little dirty. And it’s hard to resist.”
Poppy went still and dropped her jaw. Then she clapped a hand to her heart.
“Mud puddles!” Poppy breathed, delightedly. “So. Funny. Oh, Isabel, I like you.”
Isabel laughed. Despite herself, there was inside her, deep, deep inside her, like the very last doll in a series of Russian nesting dolls, a little girl who still wanted desperately to be liked. And Poppy was a character.
“Truthfully,” Poppy confessed, handing a brimming cup to Isabel, “Declan wasn’t terribly interested in me until he saw me in a transparent shirt on stage when I played Ophelia in the town square last year. My suspicion is that he had his heart horribly broken once and now he doesn’t particularly care who he’s with. And I can’t have that. I certainly would at least like the opportunity to break his heart good and proper. Men can be such drama queens, can’t they?”
This was pretty funny coming from someone who was probably literally a drama queen, but Isabel figured it was probably too soon in this friendship to point that out.
“They really are pretty fragile creatures,” Isabel agreed. It was a belief she’d adhered to up until about an hour ago, but somehow the mere existence of Malcolm Coburn made a lie of this. He seemed about as fragile as the Cliffs of Dover.
Poppy sighed. “Melodrama on stage I suppose either prepares one for melodrama off, or predisposes one to it. I haven’t yet decided. I am quite a good actress, not that it matters terribly. It’s about luck, isn’t it? My hide is tough as an old boot, which will probably serve me better in the long run.” She hiked and dropped a shoulder.
Isabel had a hunch that Poppy’s hide wasn’t as tough as all that, but she approved of bravado, since her own was what had gotten her through life so far.
“I’m a jewelry designer. And a good one. But I know how it is to make a living in a creative field. Here’s to tough women.” She clinked her teacup against Poppy’s.
They drank to that.
Poppy then brought her her miles-long legs up on the couch and propped her chin on her chin, studying Isabel with glinting, merry dark eyes.
Isabel gave a start when Poppy suddenly thrust out a hand and waved it like a windshield wiper in front of Isabel’s eyes.“Are you a Scorpio, by any chance?”
“Um...I’m a Virgo.” She’d nearly spilled her tea.
“Ohhhh, a Virgo! Still waters run very deep. I bet you’ve a little Scorpio in you. You’ve a very intense gaze.”
“Don’t we all have a little Scorpio in us?” Isabel decided to say, after a moment. She had no idea. But she intended to enjoy this conversation the way she did the log ride at a Six Flags Theme park: by just leaning into the turns.
“I haven’t a clue. I have a friend in Norwich who could tell us,” Poppy volunteered cheerfully. “She’s an astrologer and she knows everything about Feng Shui and herbal medicine.”
Isabel seized on this opportunity with shameful speed. “Funny you should mention medicine. The first person I met in Pennyroyal Green was a doctor. I accidentally tossed my phone into the street and a man named Malcolm Coburn rolled up on a motorcycle and rescued it.”
It it was an absurd relief to air his name. Like confessing to a terrible itch and finally, publicly, scratching it. If she was still in high school she would have penciled it all over her binder by now.
“Ooooh, the dark and broody doctor!” Poppy crooned, and Isabel’s heart instantly, absurdly, deliciously accelerated. “He delivered my sister’s baby in a carpark a few years ago. Lovely chap. He’s so kind but he frightens me a bit. He seems very...well, he has presence, doesn’t he? As if he’s something a girl needs to work up to.”
Isabel silently mocked herself for lapping this information up. She hadn’t read Malcolm as “broody,” though she thought she knew what Poppy meant: his charm overlaid a sort of stillness. She couldn’t quite decide if that stillness was like that of the tree in the center of town, whose roots reached deep, deep into the earth...or perhaps that of a volcano that hadn’t erupted in eons but hadn’t entirely given up the prospect.
“You mean he’s like...it’s the difference between riding Disney’s Matterhorn and attempting to climb Everest?”
Poppy laughed and touched Isabel’s knee. “Yes! Exactly! He’s single, I believe. Maybe you ought to have a run at him while you’re here, if you’re free to do that sort of thing. If you fall down off that mountain you can run away home and nurse your wounds a continent away. Have you a boyfriend?”
Ah, hell. The kinds of confidences that seemed to naturally burble forth between women—about men and periods and so forth—did not come naturally to her, thanks in part to so many years of holding her cards close to the vest.
But she was in a new place, and she intended to be new herself. She already felt new. Although that could be the jet lag. She ducked her head to her tea so she could hide a yawn before she said, “I broke up with my boyfriend—Mark—right before I came here. It wasn’t our first breakup. I think this one may take, though. He’s not why I’m here, though.” It felt important to be honest about that.
“Paper cut?” Poppy guessed, sympathetically.
Guilt twinged. “Let’s just say he won’t leave a scar.”
It suddenly seemed a terrible thing to say about someone. And to realize about herself: she’d spent a year with a man who wouldn’t leave a scar. What did that say about her?
It was just that after reading Olivia’s diary, she’d realized that whatever Olivia felt for Lyon bore no resemblance to whatever it was she had with Mark.
Suddenly, realization lit Poppy’s face up like a theater marquis. “Oh, my goodness, you’re one of thoooose Redmonds, aren’t you?” She slapped her forehead. “That’s so splendid. Forgive me. Evicting a boyfriend has scrambled my allotted portion of brains.”
“No worries. I only really learned of it myself. I didn’t know, either, really...I didn’t really know my family until...”
She faltered to a halt.
Damned jet-lag. And, truthfully, a pothole of vulnerability.
Poppy studied Isabel with a head-tip that was part sympathy, part theater, Isabel was pretty sure.
Finally Poppy said, “I so don’t know what I’d do without the lunatics to whom I’m related. I love them so. I’m so glad you found your family.”
It made Isabel feel shy, because it was genuinely kind. “Thank you. I feel fortunate, indeed.” She wasn’t in the habit of using the word ‘indeed’. England was already rubbing off on her.
“Did you know there’s a rumor that the BBC is planning a miniseries about Lyon and Olivia? They intend to call it The Legend of Lyon Redmond, after that beautiful piece of music Seamus Duggan composed all those years ago.”
“Good God!” Isabel managed faintly. “No. I had no idea.”
“It may never come to pass, of course. But I do think I could play Olivia with great noble suffering.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second.”
Poppy grinned. “If you ever acquire any pull, Isabel, as it were, would you put in a good word for me with the BBC?”
Now, that was a brazen skill she admired: asking point blank for a favor. She didn’t think she’d ever asked point blank for anything in her life.
“Well, I don’t know...I mean, if Emilia Clarke offers to get me drunk on tequila, I’ll have to flip a coin.”
Poppy gave a shout of laughter, and she sighed happily. “She’d be a wonderful for the part, damn her eyes! All right, you’ve been stifling yawns for the last few minutes, don’t pretend you haven’t, so go and have a nap. But let me see what I can tell you about Pennyroyal Green....Eversea House is closed to tours for the season, unfortunately. Sometimes you can get them by appointment. I believe the current owner—they’re something to do with the a private security firm in London?—lives in London. But the Redmond House, as far as I know, it has never been open for tours. And it hasn’t been occupied for something like a decade, but there are caretakers so isn’t falling down or anything of the sort. It’s said the very private head of Redmond Worldwide owns it but he’s rarely seen in Pennyroyal Green.”
“Intriguing. I suppose I can circle their perimeters and gawk a bit. Perhaps I’ll be able to finagle my way into one or both of them.”
“If I can help in any way with the finagling, I shall. And oh—here’s something interesting. A number of Pennyroyal natives claim to have seen a mysterious light in the upstairs library window now and again, late, late at night. Perhaps an unquiet Redmond ancestor?”
For some reason the very idea pierced Isabel to the quick. “Oh, no, I hope not. Unquiet is a terrible thing to feel.”
Those words emerged a little too fervently and felt a little too revealing.
Poppy studied her a moment, her eyes understanding. She was probably a very good actress. Then she laid a gentle hand briefly on Isabel’s arm. “Oh, it’s probably something more prosaic, like a night custodian or some such. And speaking of prosaic, you ought to visit the church. The vicar is dishy.”