Temptation

by Jude Deveraux

  But Temperance was like her father, and she’d always had one-year goals and five-year and ten-year goals. And, what’s more important, she’d stuck to them.

  But now, in the short time she’d been in McCairn, it seemed that her very foundation had been shaken. For the first time in her life she didn’t know what to do about anything.

  Part of her wanted James to act like a hero in a novel and sweep her off her feet. She wanted him to declare undying love for her and tell her that she had to remain in McCairn forever and be his wife. Temperance could see herself living in that big stone house and producing babies, all of whom grew up to wear kilts and play bagpipes.

  The other part of her wanted to run away from this place and never see it again. She remembered how she had been in New York, always sure that what she was doing was right, always moving toward a goal, a big goal, something that she was sure was going to change the earth.

  “Do other women have this dichotomy inside them?” Temperance had asked Grace last night.

  “No,” Grace had said sleepily. “Most women know exactly what awaits them: a man and a lot of children. If they’re lucky, the man is good and he supports all of you and he lives a long time. If the woman is unlucky, he drinks or beats her. Or he dies,” she added softly.

  “But that’s just it,” Temperance said with passion. “When I was in New York, I felt that I was giving women a choice.”

  “No, you gave them a place to stay when the men ran out on them,” Grace said with a yawn. “You were a landlord.”

  At that Temperance had sat back on her chair and stared in openmouthed astonishment at Grace, for Grace had just reduced years of Temperance’s do-gooder work to one word, “landlord.”

  “Is that all I was?” Temperance had whispered.

  Grace gave her a weak smile. “What do I know? I wasn’t there, so I can’t be a judge. I only know what you’ve told me. It just seems to me that here on McCairn you’ve done more. You’ve given women a way to help themselves. I can buy my own house someday even though there’s no man in my life, and Alys can go to school. Now, if you don’t mind, I must get some sleep. Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  “Yes,” Temperance said softly, then got up and went to her own bedroom. Tomorrow was the big day, her last chance. Tomorrow she had to do something or she was going to lose . . . What? she asked herself. What was she going to lose? It wasn’t as though the McCairn was begging her to marry him. She’d hinted to him three days ago that if he did ask, maybe she would remain here in McCairn. But James hadn’t taken the hint. In fact, he’d told her that he was going to marry Kenna, so that was the end of it.

  For the three days before the wedding, Temperance had lost herself in work. James’s relatives had started arriving, and it had been up to Temperance to welcome them. She’d started to apologize for the state of the rooms, but they had laughed at her. They well knew the state of the finances of the head of Clan McCairn.

  Three times Temperance had tried to talk to Kenna about the coming nuptials, but she never had “time” to discuss anything. “Do what you want,” she’d said over her shoulder, then run off to some other part of the house.

  “Ain’t found nothin’ yet,” Eppie would inform Temperance twice a day, meaning Kenna’s quest for the treasure.

  “Why doesn’t she at least try to be discreet?” Temperance had asked in frustration after she’d had a fight with the butcher. Wasn’t it Kenna’s job to deal with her own wedding?

  The kitchen had been full of people, but no one had answered her. Ramsey was, as always, holding a bottle for a lamb. He’d looked up at Temperance and said, “Maybe she hopes she’ll find the treasure before the wedding so she won’t have to marry my father.”

  For a few moments Temperance stood there blinking at him. “Father? James McCairn is your father?”

  “Aye,” he said. “No one told you?”

  “No,” she said softly. “No one told me.”

  Temperance found James at the top of the mountain. For once he wasn’t doing something to a sheep but was sitting with his back against the stone wall of the cottage where they had . . .

  Anyway, he was smoking a pipe.

  “I saw you,” he said. “Do you realize that when you first came here, you were out of breath at that climb, but now you can run all the way up?”

  Putting her hands on her hips, she glared down at him. “Why didn’t you tell me that Ramsey was your son?”

  For a moment James blinked at her. “It’s not a secret. Why didn’t you know?”

  “That’s not an answer. Who is his mother?”

  “A girl I met in London. Long time ago.” He took the pipe out of his mouth, looked at it, then put it back between his lips. “What’s that all over the front of you?”

  Temperance didn’t bother to glance down. “Flour and blood. I’ve been in the kitchen. Are you going to tell me about this or not?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Have you provided for the boy? Is he to inherit the title, the land? What have you done to see to him? Not much, if his living accommodations are any indication of what you’ve done for him. I thought he was a stableboy!”

  “An honorable position, if you ask me.”

  Temperance glared at him harder.

  “All right,” James said with a sigh. “What do they teach you women in America that you’re always concerned with money? Did you know that the women in McCairn now earn more than the men? Last week Lilias told Hamish that he couldn’t have his nightly draft because she was now selling all the tonic that she made. And Blind Brenda—”

  “You are not answering me.”

  “I haven’t done anything about anything, if that’s what you want to know. The girl and I were together one night; I didn’t even know her. Two years later her mother came to me and told me the girl had died of consumption, then shoved a scrawny boy at me. I brought him back here to live with me. As for the rest of it, I guess my legitimate son will inherit, if I have any, that is.”

  At that he looked at her waist.

  “Tomorrow you’re marrying Kenna, remember?”

  “Yes. So where’s she looking now? The attics?”

  Temperance threw up her hands in disgust at him and his whole clan, then turned and walked down the mountain.

  So today she was putting flowers in the church and trying not to think too hard about anything. This time tomorrow everything would be finished and she’d be free to return to New York and . . . and . . .

  What? Fight Deborah Madison for the title of who would go into the history books? At the thought she gave a shudder.

  “Are you all right?” Grace asked.

  Temperance started to say that she was fine, but instead, she straightened. “No,” she said at last. “I’m not fine. I’m . . . Actually, I’m not sure what I am, but it’s not fine.”

  At that she turned and left the church. If the flowers didn’t get put in the right place, what did it matter to her? If it didn’t matter to the bride or the groom, who was she to care?

  Twenty-three

  It was when she was introduced to Colin that everything began to whirl about in Temperance’s head so fast that she thought she was going to faint.

  With her hand to her forehead, she swayed back against the paneled wall of the entrance hall. Grace caught her before she fell.

  “Is she all right?” asked a voice that was identical to James’s. In fact, everything about Colin was identical to James.

  Before Temperance could reply, Colin had picked her up and carried her into the drawing room. “Out!” he ordered the people who’d filed in behind him, and it was the same way that James ordered people about.

  “Here,” Grace said as she handed Temperance a glass of brandy.

  “Wrong glass,” Colin said with a frown. “You can’t serve brandy in a water glass.”

  At that Temperance, lying on the sofa, her eyes closed, smiled. They might look alike, but they certainly weren’t alike in
personality, she thought. James drank brandy from a sheepskin flask. “I’m sorry to have caused such a fuss,” Temperance said as she sat up. “But it was such a shock seeing you. I knew you were twins, but it was still a shock.”

  At that Colin looked down at her, one eyebrow raised in speculation. “You’re not Kenna, but you’re in love with my brother,” he said, as a statement of fact, not a question.

  “I most certainly am not!” she said quickly, then got off the couch. The contents of the will came to her mind, a mind that was already filled with too many other thoughts. She took the glass from Grace and drained it. Unfortunately, the brandy had the effect of making her feel sick, but she swallowed hard and regained her composure. “James is in love with Kenna, and Kenna is in love with him. This is a love match,” she said while looking Colin hard in the eyes.

  Now that she was over her initial shock, she could see many differences between the two men. Years of being outside had weathered James’s skin, but Colin looked as though he’d lived in nothing but candlelight. Probably at the gambling tables, she thought.

  “This is a love match,” she said again, in case he hadn’t heard her the first time.

  “I see,” Colin said, looking her up and down in speculation. “And who, exactly, are you?”

  “The housekeeper.”

  For a moment Colin stared at her, then he threw back his head exactly as James did and laughed. “Yes, and I’m the head gardener.”

  “She is,” Grace said softly from behind them. “She does everything in McCairn. She gets jobs for the women, and she runs the house, and she’s done everything for the wedding.”

  “I see,” Colin said, again looking Temperance up and down. “But why? That’s the question, isn’t it? I can’t believe that my brother pays you enough to buy a dress like that. And those shoes . . .”

  “Your uncle Angus purchased my wardrobe,” Temperance said stiffly. She didn’t like this man, didn’t like him at all. He looked like James but only superficially. There was a cold, calculating look in his eyes that she’d never seen in James’s. Temperance had to hold herself back from running out of the room to find James to warn him. But he didn’t need warning, did he? All of Clan McCairn knew about this man, knew of his gambling and how he was going to try to take McCairn away from James.

  “I do think you’ve heard about me,” Colin said, then gave Temperance a smile that she was sure was meant to make her like him. He put out his hand to shake hers, but she turned and acted as though she hadn’t seen his gesture.

  “I have so much work to do,” she said, then hurried out the door and nearly ran up the stairs. Only when she was in her bedroom did she breathe again. She shut the door, leaned against it, and let out her pent up breath. Whatever happened, someone must marry James today, she thought. Today was his thirty-fifth birthday, and if he didn’t marry for love today, then everything would be turned over to that dreadful man. That they were twins made Temperance’s flesh crawl. Were they the epitome of the old story of the good and bad twins? One evil, one good?

  “And he thought I was in love with James,” she said aloud. But Temperance knew that wasn’t true. She couldn’t possibly be in love with any man who wasn’t in love with her in return, could she?

  Suddenly, Temperance had an overwhelming urge to find Kenna. By now she should be in a room with some of the village women who had volunteered to “dress the bride.” Temperance had excused herself from that. For some reason that she didn’t want to think about, she didn’t want to see Kenna in the beautiful dress that Finola had designed until she absolutely had to.

  But after a search of the house, which took over an hour because Temperance was constantly stopped by one McCairn relative after another who wanted to ask her a question (“Where’s the whiskey?” “Is there any soap in the house?” “Where’s the whiskey?” “Will there be races this afternoon?” and “Where’s the whiskey?”) Temperance still hadn’t found Kenna.

  “Eppie,” she said to herself, then went in search of the little old woman. Eppie was sitting on a bale of hay outside the stables, watching Aleck soap one of the McCairn’s gorgeous racehorses. The man was wearing only his kilt, with his shirt, shoes, and tall socks off.

  Already in a bad temper, Temperance couldn’t resist snapping at Eppie. “There isn’t enough for you to do inside the house?”

  Eppie picked her teeth with a straw. “You haven’t met the McCairn’s branch of the family from over on the east, have you?” Eppie said as though that were an answer.

  “No,” Temperance said, then let out a sigh and sat down beside Eppie to enjoy the view of Aleck with his shirt off. “Take over, do they?” Temperance asked. She looked at the watch pinned to her shirt. Colin had specifically noticed that watch, and now Temperance remembered with a wince of regret how much she’d charged to Angus’s account when she’d bought it. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been quite so hard on him.

  “I can’t find the bride,” Temperance said at last. The sun glistened off Aleck’s skin, and the shadows played on muscles as he dipped a big sponge into a bucket of soapy water and washed the hindquarters of the horse.

  “Back up in the attics, last I heard.”

  “But she’s to get into her wedding dress,” Temperance said.

  “Did that. Right pretty it is too. They say that Finola drew up the pattern. You plannin’ to put her into business?”

  “Maybe Kenna can. I’m going back to New York, remember?” Aleck now had the horse’s foot between his heavy thighs and was soaping the ankles. His kilt was hiked up so that the curve of his buttocks showed. Neither Eppie nor Temperance had taken their eyes off of him during their conversation.

  Eppie gave a little snort of derision. “Kenna ain’t doin’ nothin’ that ain’t for Kenna.”

  It took Temperance a moment to understand what the old woman was saying; then slowly, she turned to look at her. “I thought that everyone in this village believed Kenna was an angel. All I’ve heard about is what a lovely child she was.”

  “And you believed it?” Eppie said, then nudged Temperance with her elbow to look back at Aleck. He’d bent over to wring out his sponge, and his kilt was folded on one edge in a way that exposed the side of him from waist to knee.

  For a moment, Temperance forgot what she was saying. Right. Kenna. “I thought that all of you—”

  “Ask Grace, if you want to hear the truth,” Eppie said. “I bet she ain’t said nothin’ good about Kenna. And you ain’t seen the McCairn with her much, have you?”

  As Temperance was thinking about this, Aleck finished with the horse; then with twinkling eyes, he turned to the two women and gave them a bow, as though he were an actor who’d just finished a performance. Temperance turned red and wanted to pretend that she’d not been watching and admiring him, but Eppie began applauding; then Temperance thought, What the hell, and applauded too.

  Smiling, Aleck went back into the stables with his bucket. Temperance got off the bale of hay. “You know which attic Kenna is in now?”

  “Looks like that one,” Eppie said, nodding upward toward a window where Temperance could see what looked like a candle flame flickering.

  Temperance turned on her heel and went inside the house. She had to sneak up the back stairs before anyone saw her and started asking about the whiskey again, but as she reached the top floor and put her hand on the door into the attic, she drew back. What was she going to say to Kenna? Would it be news to Kenna that everyone in the house knew that she was looking for the McCairn treasure?

  For a moment Temperance sat down on a chair outside the door and tried to think about what was going on, but the truth was, she couldn’t figure out anything. McCairn wasn’t in love with Kenna; Kenna was only after treasure. If everyone knew that, then how could they pull off a deception of the king? And what was this about Grace and Kenna, and about Saint Kenna not being loved by the village?

  It was while she was sitting there that she heard voices. Right away she recogni
zed the voice of James and knew that he was in the attic with Kenna. When a pang of what had to be jealousy shot through Temperance, she had to hold herself back from throwing open the door and demanding to know what they were doing in there together. Alone.

  But as she put her hand on the doorknob, Temperance reminded herself that tonight James was going to be in bed with Kenna and that forever after . . .

  She did open the door, but only slowly. Maybe if she saw that James was actually in love with Kenna, it would cure this indecision that was eating at Temperance’s stomach.

  “Once you find the treasure,” came a voice that was like James’s, but there was a smooth, slick quality to it that was not like his, “we can kill him.”

  Temperance froze in the doorway. Every muscle of her body was alert.

  “You’ll be his widow, so you’ll own everything. It will all be yours.”

  “And yours,” came Kenna’s voice in reply.

  Very slowly, so she made no sound at all, Temperance turned and left the attic and went downstairs.

  James was in his bedroom getting dressed for his wedding; his only attendant, Ramsey. Fitting, Temperance thought, since Ramsey was the McCairn’s son. There was bile in her throat as she thought of this and wondered how many other great secrets were being kept from her. But what she had to tell James, she wanted to say to him in private.

  “I want to see you in the library immediately,” she said to James, then turned to Ramsey. “In the attic are . . . two people.” She couldn’t bear to say their names. “I want them in the library now,” she said, then shut the door.

  She found Alys on the stairs and told her to go get Grace and send her to the library. Downstairs in the library, Temperance had to shoo eight half-drunken relatives out of the room. She was able to do this by picking up the drinks tray and setting it on the buffet in the hallway. They followed docilely, still laughing and enjoying themselves, seemingly unaware of the change of room.