Temptation

by Jude Deveraux

  Charmaine opened her mouth to speak.

  “She loves the history of the clans,” Temperance said loudly. “But then, so do I. Maybe tomorrow the three of us can go walking, and you can show us where the battles took place.”

  James turned to look at Temperance as though she were crazy. “What battles are you talking about?”

  “I thought there were battles all over Scotland. Clan against clan, that sort of thing. Didn’t Bonnie Prince Charlie do something here? Wasn’t the Norman Conquest near here?”

  “No,” James said quietly, “Bonnie Prince Charlie didn’t do anything here.” His voice was rising. “Nor were the Normans conquered here. In fact, Miss O’Neil”—he was nearly shouting now—“the Norman Conquest was in England!”

  “Oh,” Temperance said, but when she saw that Charmaine was about to speak, she said quickly, “I bet Miss Edelsten knew that. She’s really a great history person, aren’t you, Miss Edelsten?” But she didn’t give Charmaine time to answer. “I think that tomorrow you, as the laird, should teach us all about whatever did happen in this part of Scotland, and—”

  “Miss O’Neil,” James said quietly, “if you don’t let this young lady talk, I will put you on a horse and send you back to my uncle. Tonight. Do I make myself clear?”

  At that Temperance took a deep breath and sat down at the table, then gave James a weak smile.

  He turned back to Charmaine. “Now, Miss Edelsten, tell me about yourself.”

  “Oh no one calls me Miss anything because I’m Charmaine to everyone and my mother says that I’m well named because I could charm the birds out of the trees if I wanted to but I don’t know if I’d want to do that because birds can be really frightening things can’t they and I don’t know anything about history so I don’t know why Temperance made that up because I want to represent myself to you as I am because what with you being a lord and all I know you’ll see right through me and I mean see through my mind that is and not my clothes and oh I made a joke but I can’t laugh or I’ll get lines like Temperance has and I can’t do that because—”

  James turned to look at Temperance for a moment, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. Of course he didn’t know that it was Temperance who’d asked for this young lady and that it was Temperance’s mother who had sent her, but his lack of knowledge didn’t clear Temperance’s conscience. I’d never make a good cardplayer, she thought while looking straight ahead at the darkened windows and not looking at either person at the table.

  “—and I really would like to see all of this place and especially meet this prince because I wonder what it means when you call him bonny because does he wear a bonnet but oh my I made another joke so you can see that it’s sometimes difficult for me not to laugh when I have such a sense of humor and my mother says that I should write what I say down because I make so many jokes but—”

  Temperance turned when James got up from the table. He’s going to leave the room; she thought, but instead, he went to the window and opened it wide. It was a bit stuffy in the room, but maybe that was because she was having difficulty breathing.

  “—do your servants call you lord and I was wondering that because I wondered what your wife would be called by the servants who work in the castle but then this isn’t a castle is it but then I’ve never been in a castle that anyone lived in before but do you think they would call your wife Mrs. Lord or do you think she’d be called oh my goodness you are in love with me aren’t you your highness but then lots of men react to me like this and—”

  In openmouthed astonishment, Temperance saw James McCairn bend over and swoop Miss Charmaine Edelsten into his arms, then carry her toward the open window. To give her her due, Charmaine didn’t so much as pause for breath. Maybe men picked her up every day and it was a common occurrence to her, Temperance thought.

  “—but my mother says that a man can’t help falling in love with me because I’m so charming that all I have to do is open my mouth and men will love me so much so she said that I might as well become a Mrs. Lord or a Lady Lord or whatever your wife would be called because—”

  James tossed Charmaine out the window with exactly the same heed that he would have given to a sack of potatoes. She landed with a surprisingly heavy thud for so small a person.

  James then shut the window and pulled the heavy red damask curtains closed, making dust fly up into the room.

  As though nothing had happened, he sat back down at the table and looked at Temperance, his dark eyes daring her to say anything.

  “I think those curtains need to be washed, don’t you?”

  For a moment he turned away, and Temperance saw a tiny smile play at his lips. When he looked back at her, she said, “Do you want your pie warm or cold?”

  “I want it quiet,” he said, and they both burst into laughter.

  Dear Mother,

  The charming Charmaine didn’t work out. Perhaps you could send someone just as pretty but not quite so unintelligent, and maybe she should have a little education. And it might be better if she were a bit older.

  Yours in love,

  Temperance

  Eight

  It must have been at six the next morning that Temperance awoke with a start and thought, I should ask him what he wants in a wife.

  It didn’t seem like a thought that was going to set the world on fire, but in its small way, it was revolutionary. Her experience had been in trying to get men away from women. She dealt with men who drank away their meager earnings, leaving a wife and children destitute. She tried to find work for women who had been beaten and abused, then abandoned by the man in their life.

  It had never crossed Temperance’s mind to try to get a man and woman together.

  As she dressed, she kept her eyes focused on the clothes in her trunks, refusing to look at the room. Last night she’d heard noises that sounded suspiciously like mice gnawing. She was not going to think of the word “rats.”

  At least now I can face the women in the tenements, she thought, because what was this place but a huge tenement?

  She put on a wool skirt that reached only to her ankles (“Scandalous!” her mother had declared it), a long-sleeved cotton blouse, a wide leather belt, and sturdy ankle boots, then went downstairs.

  “So where does he spend his days?” Temperance asked as soon as she entered the kitchen. Now that she, Temperance, had cleaned the room, it was amazing how it had become a center of activity. She couldn’t walk into the kitchen without finding one or both of the old women in it and, usually, at least one of the men. Ramsey had started feeding the lamb with a huge baby bottle; he’d even named it, calling it Isaac after the story in the Bible of the child who wasn’t slaughtered.

  Today, two women, two men, and one boy opened their mouths to answer Temperance’s question.

  “If one of you says the word ‘Grace,’ there’ll be no dinner tonight.”

  All five of them put their heads down and closed their mouths.

  Temperance silently counted to ten, then said slowly. “He said that he herds sheep and fishes. Where does he do those things?”

  Five faces full of relief turned back toward her. Ramsey, sitting at the kitchen table, holding the wriggling lamb while it ate, said, “Top of the mountain. He’ll be up there all day. But you can’t go up there, if that’s what you mean to do.”

  “Why not?” she asked, and dreaded hearing the answer. Since “the” McCairn, as they called him, seemed to have absolute rights in this place, did he hold orgies up there? He and Grace?

  “Walkin’s too tough for a city lady,” Aleck said.

  At that, Temperance threw up her hands in disbelief. She had never in her life met such snobs as these people. They believed that if a woman had grown up in a city, she was utterly useless.

  She smiled at the lot of them. “I’m sure you’re right, but if you’ll point me in the right direction, I think I’ll take a leisurely, citylike stroll that way. After I make something for lunch,” she said.
<
br />   An hour later she had filled a canvas rucksack with Cornish pasties and oranges and an earthenware bottle of watered wine. While she’d chopped meat and vegetables and rolled out dough, all the people in the kitchen had watched her with interest that they tried to hide.

  At seven A.M. she said, “Ramsey, I’m ready,” then put her arms through the straps of the rucksack so it rested on her back.

  Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to walk outside and see a big, nervous-seeming horse saddled and prancing about. Even though not one person had entered or left the kitchen, they all seemed to know everything that she did or planned to do before she did it.

  Temperance thought she’d choke before she asked how they’d signaled for the horse to be ready. Instead, she waited until Ramsey mounted, then took his arm as he helped her climb on behind him; then she held on to the saddle as they rode.

  Since she’d arrived in the night to this land of Clan McCairn, she’d not been but a few feet outside the house, so now she looked with interest at the countryside. When Ramsey led the big, skittish horse up a narrow, rocky path that had a steep hill on one side and absolutely nothing on the left, Temperance had to fight the temptation to scream that she wanted off!

  Ramsey must have felt her fear because he twisted about in the saddle and smiled at her. “Nothing like this in the city, is there?”

  “There are a few tall buildings,” she said, trying to sound as though she weren’t scared half to death. One false step of the horse and they’d fall to their deaths. But even though her hands on the saddle were white-knuckled, she kept her face turned toward the solid hillside on their right and refused to allow the fear to overtake her.

  “There, that’s McCairn,” Ramsey said softly; then, to Temperance’s horror, he halted the horse.

  She had to take a deep breath before she could turn and look to her left, and when she did, the beauty of what she saw overrode her fear.

  Below her, spread out like a picture in a children’s fairy story, was a beautiful little village. There weren’t more than twenty houses, all arranged on both sides of a narrow road that meandered up toward the base of the mountain they were now on. The houses were whitewashed, with thatch roofs. Smoke twirled from out of a few chimneys; chickens wandered about in the road. She could see a few people, women carrying baskets; children played in the street.

  Each house had what looked to be a garden in the back, and she could see a few barns and a couple of fenced animal enclosures.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered; then she looked farther out and saw that there was only a narrow strip of land that connected this little village to the mainland. Actually, the place was little more than a mountain on what was almost an island. On one side were the village houses and on the other side was James McCairn’s rotting old stone house, and in the middle was the mountain.

  “It’s so isolated,” she said. “Do the children leave this place when they grow up?”

  “Oh, aye, they do,” Ramsey said as he urged the horse to move again, and there was great sadness in his voice.

  “But not you?” she asked.

  For some reason, this seemed to amuse the boy. “No, not me,” he said as though that were a joke. “You’re not like the other ones,” he said after a minute.

  “Can I take that as a compliment?”

  In answer the boy just shrugged and urged the horse forward, and Temperance gritted her teeth as she held on to the saddle. Heaven forbid that she’d get a compliment out of these people. Never mind that they so liked the cleanliness of the kitchen that now they wouldn’t leave it, but she was sure that each of them would die before saying, “Good show, old girl,” or whatever they would say in Scotland.

  After what seemed to be hours, they reached what looked like the top of the mountain, and the boy halted the horse.

  “You have to get down here,” he said as he turned to help her down. “The McCairn can’t see the horse up here.”

  As her wobbly legs tried to hold her up on the rocky ground, she looked up at him. “Why not?”

  At that the boy smiled as he reined the horse around to go back down the path. “Too dangerous for his prize horses. They could fall; then what would he race against the other lairds? We don’t have much, but we win the races,” the boy said; then, with a wicked glint in his eyes, he kicked the horse and tore down the steep, extremely narrow path at a speed that took Temperance’s breath away.

  “If he were my son, I’d . . .” She trailed off at that thought because how did one control a boy as big as Ramsey?

  For a moment Temperance stood still as she looked about her at the meadow with its spring flowers and listened to the call of birds and smelled the fresh, pure air.

  “Not like the city, is it?”

  Temperance nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice behind her, then turned and saw James standing not four feet from her. With her hand to her heart to still it, she said, “No it’s not like the city, but then the city has its own merits. We have the ballet and the opera and—”

  James turned on his heel and walked away from her.

  Temperance, tripping over rocks and clumps of grass, tried to keep up with him. “So tell me, Mr. McCairn, are all Scotsmen rude, or is it just the people on this island?”

  “We’re not an island. Not yet,” he said over his shoulder. “And which horse did that boy use?”

  “Horse?” Temperance said, not wanting to get Ramsey into trouble.

  “Are you going to try to make me think you walked up here?”

  “I don’t see why all of you think—”

  Halting, James turned to glare at her. There was no use trying to lie. “Big one, reddish coat, white spot on its back right leg.”

  After a quick nod, James started walking again, and Temperance hurried after him.

  “So why did you come up here today?” he asked. “What do you want from me?”

  What could she say? I want to know what kind of woman would make you ask her to marry you so I can mail-order her from my mother so I can get out of this place? Not quite.

  “Oh, just bored,” she said. “Thought I’d see the place.”

  “Hmph!” James snorted. “And do all you Americans think we Scots are stupid?”

  “Just me hoping,” she said before she thought, but when she heard his laughter, she smiled. “What do you do all day? Are you alone up here?”

  At the last question, he stopped and turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised. “Is that why you came up here? To be alone with me?”

  “You can only wish,” she said; then he smiled and started walking again.

  Following him, she walked down a little valley, then up again, and at the top she could hear sheep. When he stopped, she looked around him to see that the southern side of the mountain was covered with what looked to be hundreds of sheep. Here and there she could see a dog running about, snapping at the heels of the sheep, and there were a few men walking on the steep side of the mountain.

  “Alas, we’re not alone,” she said, sounding very unhappy. “No ravishment today.”

  For a second James looked at her in astonishment, then he threw back his head and laughed so hard she could see the veins in his neck standing out. He was certainly beautiful, she thought, and if she were the kind of woman to indulge in affairs, he’d be the first one she’d run to.

  Below them, two of the men heard the laughter and stopped to look up. Temperance raised her arm and waved to them, and that seemed to make them freeze.

  “Bet they can’t believe I’m not Grace,” she said. When James said nothing to that, she turned to look at him and he was staring at her with a frown.

  “They gossip too much.”

  “If you mean that lazy bunch of louts you have sitting around your stables and your house, about all they do is gossip. Is it legal for a laird to flog people?”

  James laughed again. “You Americans,” he said. “What ideas you have about us. Well, now that you’re here, what do you plan
to do?”

  “Not clean anything!” she said emphatically.

  “All right, then how about helping me with this?” he said as he led the way further down the path.

  Behind a little hedge of bushes was lying a huge sheep and she was panting.

  “Is she dying?” Temperance asked, looking up at him.

  “Not if I can help it. Now you get at that end, and I’ll take the business end, and we’ll help her out.”

  It took Temperance several moments before she understood what he meant; then it dawned on her that the sheep was giving birth. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. I see. Maybe we should call a veterinarian.”

  “Oh, aye. And he’ll send us a bill. No, here it’s the McCairn who’s the vet. Ready? Hold her. This baby is breech, and I need to turn it.”

  What happened in the next hour of Temperance’s life she would never have believed. When James tried to put his arm up the birth canal of the ewe, he found that there were twins inside and there wasn’t room for him to get his huge arm inside.

  Sitting back on his heels, he looked at Temperance. “Not enough room for me. You’ll have to do it.”

  “Me?” Temperance said. “I can’t—”

  “Take off your fancy shirt so it won’t get dirty and put your arm up inside her and get those lambs out. If you don’t all three of them will die.”

  “Take off my—”

  “Come on, woman, get busy. There’s no one about to see you.”

  “There’s you,” Temperance said, blinking at him over the panting sheep.

  “And you think I’ve never before seen all that a woman has?” He gave her a look of disgust. “Have it your way then. Get the blood and birth all over your shirt, but come on, girl, and do it.”

  Maybe it was the way he’d called her “girl” that made her obey him. After Charming Charmaine from last night, Temperance needed to think of herself as younger than a mother to an eighteen-year-old.

  As quick as she could, Temperance unbuttoned her blouse, pulled it out of her skirt, and tossed it on top of the bushes. She had a quick thought that she was glad she’d charged so much to that odious Angus McCairn and she now had on a lovely little camisole. It was all white, but it was pin-tucked and had an exquisite little design of hand-sewn eyelet flowers all across the top.