Dr. Finlay's Courageous Bride, page 1
“You may now kiss the bride.”
Rab probably saw her panic because instead of kissing her, he started to speak. “I think we need to change this,” he said, softly. “Mia, if you wish, and only if you wish... You may now kiss the groom.”
There was a shocked hush in the tiny council chamber. Mia looked up into Rab’s face and what she saw there... No pressure, his expression said.
And suddenly Mia found herself smiling.
Mia, if you wish, you may now kiss the groom.
She was suddenly thinking of this man’s kindness and what he was doing to save her whole valley.
“Why not?” she whispered, raising herself on her tiptoes.
And she kissed him.
Dear Reader,
As someone who’s been on the fringe of a medical life—“Reader, I married him”—I’ve heard many stories of patients enduring long convalescence after severe burns injury. I’ve thought after scarring and grafts, it must take sheer grit to face the world again—and that’s what my heroine has in spades.
My Maira needed a true hero to match her zest for life, her loyalty and her courage—and I hope I’ve provided him in the form of Dr. Rab Finlay. Rab’s a gorgeous hero, with a weakness for Mole and Toad, and all Kenneth Grahame’s wonderful Wind in the Willows characters.
Dr. Finlay’s Courageous Bride is a story of bravery, loyalty and romance with a capital R. I hope you love Maira’s happy-ever-after as much as I do.
Marion
Dr. Finlay’s Courageous Bride
Marion Lennox
Marion Lennox has written over one hundred romance novels and is published in over one hundred countries and thirty languages. Her international awards include the prestigious RITA® award (twice!) and the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award for “a body of work which makes us laugh and teaches us about love.” Marion adores her family, her kayak, her dog and lying on the beach with a book someone else has written. Heaven!
Books by Marion Lennox
Harlequin Medical Romance
The Baby They Longed For
Second Chance with Her Island Doc
Rescued by the Single Dad Doc
Pregnant Midwife on His Doorstep
Mistletoe Kiss with the Heart Doctor
Falling for His Island Nurse
Healing Her Brooding Island Hero
A Rescue Dog to Heal Them
A Family to Save the Doctor’s Heart
Harlequin Romance
English Lord on Her Doorstep
Cinderella and the Billionaire
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
This book is dedicated to all those who’ve found the courage to take control again, and to all those still struggling to find a way.
Praise for Marion Lennox
“What an entertaining, fast-paced, emotionally-charged read Ms. Lennox has delivered in this book.... The way this story started had me hooked immediately.”
—Harlequin Junkie on The Baby They Longed For
Contents
PROLOGUE
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
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM MARRIAGE REUNION IN THE ER BY EMILY FORBES
PROLOGUE
Sydney Central Hospital, twelve years ago
SHE DIDN’T KNOW who he was, but she didn’t care.
She’d die without him.
Even in her head that sounded crazy, the sort of wild declaration she might have made as a twelve-year-old, swooning over pictures of rock stars in the magazines her mum brought home after cleaning Harvey’s place. Harvey’s girlfriends were always leaving magazines behind when they left, and she and her mum loved them. When Dad and Harvey were both away, her mum had sometimes seemed a kid herself, singing along with Maira’s favourite songs and grinning at Maira’s declarations of undying devotion to the gorgeous guys in the magazines.
That was so long ago now, though. The memory was like a stab of pain to the heart, adding to the pain from...everywhere.
But through the pain came his voice, soft, deep, steady.
‘“Weasels—and stoats—and foxes and so on. They’re all right in a way—I’m very good friends with them—pass the time of day when we meet, and all that—but they break out sometimes, there’s no denying it, and then—well, you can’t really trust them, and that’s the fact.”’
She wasn’t actually sure what a weasel was, or a stoat. She did know foxes—her dad used to shoot them—but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that this man, this voice, was here in the small hours, when the hospital was deeply quiet, when apart from her hourly obs, the nurses let her be. She was supposed to be sleeping.
But how could she sleep? She drifted off when the meds kicked in, when the drugs gave her oblivion, but to sleep when she wanted seemed impossible.
But this deep, steady voice said that she might. His voice drifted around the quiet room, an oasis the nightmares couldn’t touch.
Would the woman in the next bed feel the same? She must, she thought, for who wouldn’t?
She’d figured it out by now—sort of. She was in a two-bed hospital ward. The lady in the next bed was called Hilda. The nurses had introduced them, even though neither of them could speak. ‘Maira, this is Hilda who breeds champion Labradors. She was cooking dinner when she tripped over one of her puppies, knocking boiling water over herself as she fell. Her family tell us the puppy’s fine, but Hilda’s copped all the damage.’
Maira had heard the doctors talking to her—‘The swelling will go down, Hilda. You’ll be able to speak soon.’
Whereas for Maira...‘The oil’s burned your throat, Maira. It’ll take time.’
She heard the subtle difference—there were no promises.
No future? She couldn’t think of a future.
Hilda had visitors—her daughters even smuggled in the offending puppy. But Maira had no visitors, apart from the people from social services and the police.
She had nothing.
Only the sound of his voice.
Mr Toad. Ratty. Mole. Badger. She was starting to know them all.
There’d been other stories. He’d come in first a few nights ago, after a roster change. He’d been with the nurse, checking her chart, talking to her—at her?—about pain levels, describing what was happening. Then he’d come back.
‘Hi, I’m Rab, here again, but not as a doctor. I’m on meal break, but who can eat at two in the morning? If there’s drama outside I’ll need to leave, but meanwhile I thought I’d do a bit of reading. How about it?’
Then, as he received no answer from either of them—how could he?—he’d settled on a chair between the beds.
‘Okay, here we go. Sorry, guys, I know these are way beneath you, but I’ve pinched them from the kids’ ward. Let’s start with this first one—a mouse heading to sea in a stolen boat. It looks like fine literature to me, but stop me if you’ve read it. A twitch of a bandaged arm and I’ll move right on to...ooh, the next is an elephant hatching an egg. Hmm, maybe we should start with this one?’
That had been a week ago. A couple of times he’d been interrupted—the door had opened—‘Rab, you’re needed in Room Five...’
‘Excuse me, ladies, I’ll be back.’
He’d kept his promise. He’d come back. She lay still now and let herself sink into the escape of his words.
‘“The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”’
Did Hilda need this as much as she did? she wondered. Maybe so, for the older lady had been stirring and whimpering before he’d come in, but the stories seemed to work their magic on her as well.
Rab. He was Rab. Did he know how much he meant to her?
It wouldn’t last. There’d be another roster change. He’d be needed elsewhere, of course he would. But the stories themselves... There’d been few books in her childhood home, but if her eyes started working again, maybe she could read.
Could she ever again?
There it was again, a jab of terror so fierce it cut through the pain. She heard him pause.
‘Do you want me to stop?’
She managed to give her head a tiny shake, and there was a momentary pressure on her good arm.
‘That’s okay, Maira, just twitch this arm if you do. You’re in control.’
That was a joke. She’d never been in control.
But the voice disagreed.
‘From now on, Maira, the control’s all yours,’ the voice said, softly but surely. ‘When you get through this, the world’s your oyster. There are people who can hel
He went back to the river with Mole, and while he read she let herself believe.
CHAPTER ONE
Cockatoo Valley Hospital
‘I’M SORRY, BUT I believe the hospital will be sold.’
Silence. Twenty people were staring at him in horror, and Dr Rab Finlay was wishing himself anywhere but here.
Rab had asked for this meeting, but that didn’t mean he wanted it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to walk away, to tell himself this was nothing to do with him.
As indeed it wasn’t. The consequences of his grandfather’s will were dire for this little valley. Now he was facing almost the entire staff of Cockatoo Valley Hospital. They were looking sick with shock, but he couldn’t change anything.
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do,’ he told them, trying to keep his voice steady. He’d been dreading this, and he wished now that he’d let the lawyers handle it. ‘I haven’t inherited my grandfather’s land, so it’ll pass to six of my relatives in England. I’ve been in touch with them. It seems they have little to do with each other, but as a group they want the land sold. The lease of the land the hospital sits on doesn’t expire until next year, though,’ he added. ‘That may well give you time to apply for government assistance. The government may well buy it and keep the hospital running. I can help with the paperwork there, but that’s all I can do. I’m sorry.’
‘The government will never give us a grant big enough to match what the mining companies will pay. We’ll lose our hospital.’ That was Rhonda, the hospital secretary, sounding devastated.
Cockatoo Valley’s elderly doctor, Ewan Baynes, had taken Rab for a brief tour of the hospital before this meeting, introducing him to each of the staff.
‘I know you have no obligation to speak,’ the shocked doctor had said heavily. Rab had explained the consequences of the will to him, and it had hit him hard. ‘But everyone here knows how much we’ve been indebted to your family. Even though that’s over, lives have been saved because of the Finlays—many lives. I believe everyone will want to meet you and pay their respects. Let’s do that before we need to break the news.’
So Rab had endured a torturous half hour of meeting the hospital staff, being told how wonderful his forebears had been, how the hospital, the school, the church—the lifeblood of the valley—were all thanks to his family’s generosity.
Then Ewan had organised a fast staff meeting so that Rab himself could break the news. At the last minute the elderly doctor had been called to an urgent house call, and Rab had thus faced the staff alone.
To tell them their hospital, their livelihood, even their community was being taken away from them.
‘I can’t see any way of avoiding it,’ he said now. ‘My grandfather’s will is clear. The buildings on this side of the river are all on my grandfather’s land—given to the community on a ninety-nine-year lease. I gather that even though my great-grandfather donated the buildings to the community, he still wanted control. That lease expires next year.’
‘But we’ll lose everything,’ Rhonda said, sounding appalled. ‘You know they want this valley for a coal mine. Most of our houses are over the bridge, on freehold land, but if they get this side of the river... They’ll pay much more for this land than we ever could. A coal mine... Can’t you stop that?’
‘I can’t.’ There was nothing else to say. ‘My grandfather didn’t leave the land to me.’
‘Yeah, he did.’ A voice piped up from the back of the room, from a pimply-faced youth who’d been introduced as a hospital orderly. The kid stood up now and crossed his arms, belligerence personified. ‘I knew this stuff,’ he told them. ‘I saw it. Mum works at the local solicitor’s, and she says wills aren’t private. So she had a look when the old guy died. The will leaves it all to you.’
‘Contents of the house only,’ Rab told him. ‘That’s why I’m here, to take what I want and then leave.’
‘He left you the whole lot,’ the youth threw back at him. ‘All you gotta do is to be married. Mum didn’t know whether you were or not. Are you?’
Help. He so didn’t want to talk about his grandfather’s preposterous will—he’d hoped he could simply say the place had not been left to him. But the whole room was looking at him now, waiting for an answer.
The stupid stipulation in the will meant the destruction of this community, this valley. For most of the people in this room—no, for all of them—it meant not only the closure of the hospital, the loss of jobs, it also meant the end of the community of Cockatoo Valley.
‘I’m not married.’ The three words were said with harsh finality.
‘So get married.’ The kid sounded angry. ‘The will says you need to be married and settled before you’re thirty-five. Mum looked you up on the internet—she says you’re a doctor—she found you in some medical list. But Mum says you’re only thirty-four. It didn’t say if you were married or not, but she reckoned even if you weren’t, if you stand to inherit all this then you’d get married pretty damn fast.’
‘My birthday’s in six weeks,’ he told them. ‘I’m sorry, people, but even for you I can’t work that fast.’
There was another silence while they took the ramifications of that on board. The horror in the room was almost tangible.
‘Surely you can find someone. If I wasn’t already married with five kids I’d marry you myself.’ It was Rhonda again, maybe trying to make light of an impossible situation.
‘Thank you,’ he said gravely. ‘And indeed, if I had a fiancée, if there was the slightest chance of marriage, then I’d do it, but there’s no way. I’m sorry but there’s nothing more I can say.’
And then came the sound of a car, speeding along the road towards the hospital. They could hear a gunned engine, then tyres screeching as the car spun into the hospital driveway. Brakes hit hard, a voice yelling...
Four of the staff disappeared.
A hospital emergency. Rab knew the adrenalin of hearing such sounds—he’d worked in emergency departments himself, and he knew such an arrival meant total focus of the staff involved.
And for once he felt relieved. He needed the focus to be taken from him. It might sound harsh but there was nothing he could do about this mess. He didn’t even know these people, this valley. His father might have been born here, but for Rab there was no connection.
The emergency outside seemed to have marked the end of the meeting. People wanted to be out of here, either to help with the incoming drama, or more likely to talk about the appalling repercussions of what he’d just said.
There was nothing left for him to do.
And then someone re-entered, pushing through the leaving staff. One of the nurses? He’d been introduced to this woman. Ewan had introduced them briefly—‘This is our senior nurse, Mia, one of the most valuable members of our team.’ He’d met so many but he remembered her—mostly because of the scars that marred one side of her face.
She was a striking woman, tall and slim, with long black hair braided down the back. She had a gorgeous tan—maybe a hint of Mediterranean background? Her wide grey eyes had smiled as she’d been introduced, and it was a lovely smile. But marring that smile were scars, sprawling down the left side of her face, down her neck and disappearing below the neckline of her uniform.
Burns, he’d thought as he’d met her. Old scarring. She must have been lucky to keep her sight, as the scarring started right against her left eye.
It must have been an appalling accident, he’d thought. A house fire? A car accident? The scarring was obvious, but she’d greeted him with a bright, light smile that took the attention from the disfigurement.
But there was no smile now. She was pushing through the departing staff, calling to him in a voice that was both urgent and authoritative. ‘Dr Finlay?’
‘Yes?’
‘Ewan said you’re a doctor,’ she called. ‘A people doctor?’
‘I’m a surgeon.’
‘Can you help then, please? The car that just arrived. It’s a home birth gone wrong. We have a woman haemorrhaging postpartum, and she’s in a bad way. As you know, Dr Baynes is on a house call on the far side of the valley, but we need a doctor. Please, if you will... We need you now.’
