Temptation

  Grace had no idea what Temperance was talking about. “My mother-in-law was once a lady’s maid, but now her eyes are too bad to do much. But even if she could see to sew, where would she get the threads? Do you want your clothes embroidered?”

  “No,” Temperance said, her smile growing wider with each second. “You and I are going into business!”

  “We’re what? But how—?”

  But Temperance had no time to explain anything. “What do you want most in the world?” she asked.

  “My own home,” Grace shot back instantly.

  “That’s it! We’ll call it House of Grace,” she said as she gripped the brim of the hat, then started out the bedroom door.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Temperance paused with her hand on the door. “Start cutting silks that you can use for hat trims. I’ll get feathers and the rest of what you need. Alys, go tell Ramsey to saddle his fastest horse. Tell him he’s going to be riding into Edinburgh today and he’s to stay there until he can bring back what I need.” She started out the door again but turned and paused. “Grace, you said that your husband was good with numbers. Your daughter didn’t by chance inherit that ability, did she?”

  Grace put her arm around her daughter in pride. “She’s the best in the village. The McCairn has her add his accounts for him.”

  “Does he, now? Well, dear,” she said to the girl, “you can help me later, after I finish the letter to my mother.”

  In her room, Temperance pulled out the half-finished letter to her mother and added to it.

  Mother, I don’t have time to explain now, but it looks as though I’m going to help a woman here start a business, but I can’t do it without your help. Following is a list of supplies and services that I need.

  1. Hat blanks—Saratoga, Fairfax, Portland, Dresden, Raleigh

  2. Feathers—ostrich and bird of paradise, plus some stuffed birds

  3. Aigrettes of jet; rhinestone buckles; various beads and hat-decorating supplies that aren’t made of fabric, as that I have

  4. I need a selection of reading glasses of various strengths and embroidery supplies such as hoops, colored silks, and at least four yards of a fine, stiff cotton

  5. Please send me the name of the premier hat shop in Edinburgh and where the most fashionable ladies lunch

  I need all this as soon as possible. Please send it all back with Ramsey.

  Yours in love and in need,

  Temperance

  Minutes later, young Ramsey was speeding away on one of James’s prize horses, heading toward Edinburgh, and he’d been told not to return until he came back with a wagonload of supplies.

  And Temperance forgave her mother everything when, a mere two days later, Ramsey returned with a wagonload of goods for Miss Temperance O’Neil.

  “She wouldn’t tell me anything,” an obviously tired Ramsey said, “but she asked me thousands of questions and she nearly worked me to death.”

  “Be the first time for you,” one of the stablemen said.

  Ignoring the man, Ramsey smiled at Temperance. “She’s a nice lady.”

  “She is, isn’t she?” Temperance said, as she rummaged through the boxes in the back of the wagon. There were three boxes of hat supplies, a crate labeled “Books of Good Works” that was full of roller skates, a box of embroidery supplies, a dozen pair of reading glasses, and a box of white Bibles with golden angels on the cover. Another box contained oranges and a huge box of chocolates.

  There was also a letter from her mother saying that The Golden Dove restaurant in Edinburgh had been notified that Temperance and a guest would be having lunch there in three days and the meal was to be charged to Angus’s account. Her mother also said how sorry she was that she had failed so miserably with the first two women, but it was difficult trying to find the right woman.

  Scotswomen know of McCairn, her mother wrote,

  so they want no part of it; therefore I must try to persuade foreigners, mostly Americans, and that isn’t easy. Please bear with me. However, it might help if you tell me more about James so I can match him with the perfect woman.

  I am trying to find out the truth about why Angus is so desperate for James to marry, and I agree with you that there is a secret. Leave it to me, I’ll find out what it is.

  Since I assume that the skates are for children I took the liberty of including a few other things.

  Included in the letter was a card from a hat store in Edinburgh. On the back, her mother had written, The only place where fashionable women would buy their hats.

  “Hooray!” Temperance said, holding the letter aloft; then she grabbed Ramsey’s shoulders and, much to his embarrassment, heartily kissed his cheek.

  “I’d like to help celebrate whatever’s made you so happy,” one of the watching stablemen said, eyes twinkling.

  “I’m sure you would,” Temperance said as she turned away. It was her experience that the less you told men about the possibility of a woman being able to earn money, the better. Men liked women to be dependent upon them.

  By six that evening, Alys, Grace, and Temperance were hard at work using tiny embroidery scissors to cut out patterns for flowers and leaves. Temperance was introduced to Grace’s widowed mother-in-law, Sheenagh, and, with her new glasses perched on her nose, she began to embroider four large labels that would be sewn inside the hats that Temperance planned to have ready to show Edinburgh society when she and Grace went to lunch there.

  At three A.M., Temperance leaned back on her chair, exhausted. “I am going to sleep for a week,” she said. “Don’t wake me until Tuesday.”

  “Did you forget that today is Sunday,” Grace said, yawning.

  “Great. A day of rest.”

  “Not in McCairn,” Grace said softly. Alys and her mother-in-law were asleep on the bed, while she and Temperance were sitting at the table surrounded by the accoutrements of hat making.

  “It will be a day of rest for me,” Temperance said, standing, her hand at her back. On the table were four hats, finished at last. She’d worn hats for years, but she’d never had any idea of the amount of work involved in making one of the things.

  “You’re to teach a Bible class in just a few hours,” Grace said.

  “A . . . ? Oh, that. I’ll just cancel it. I’ll do it next week,” Temperance said as she started toward the door, her mind on nothing but getting into her bed.

  “Yes, of course. I’ll tell the children,” Grace said flatly.

  At the tone, Temperance paused with her hand on the doorknob. She didn’t want to turn around because she knew that if she did she’d see a long face on Grace and she’d feel guilty. Temperance wanted to go to bed; she wanted to sleep. She did not want to do one thing more for this village than she had to. She was trying to find the laird a wife, and now she was exhausted from trying to create a business for the laird’s mistress, and that was enough!

  She opened the door and took a step into the hallway. But she could feel Grace’s eyes on her back.

  Temperance gave a sigh that had tears in it, but she didn’t turn around to see Grace’s long face. “Wake me,” she said, then closed the door behind her.

  Twelve

  “Don’t these children ever have any fun?” Temperance said as she looked about the ballroom at the children standing stiffly against the walls. In the center of the room was a pile of roller skates.

  “Yes, of course they do. But they’ve never been inside a ballroom and you’re a lady,” Grace whispered. She said the last word as though Temperance were so refined she wouldn’t drink tea out of a mug but must have only the finest china.

  Temperance gave a sigh. “Alys, you and Ramsey—” She stopped when she saw the horror on the faces of these, the two oldest children. If they could have, they would have disappeared into the wooden paneling.

  “And this is what I missed sleep for,” Temperance said as she stifled a yawn. So much for her brilliant idea of giving the children of McCairn a secret da
y of fun. Maybe when the food arrived, they’d perk up. She’d had Eppie and her younger sister baking since four A.M., and there were the oranges and chocolate that her mother had sent, so maybe . . .

  But Temperance couldn’t help feeling great disappointment. Two days before, she’d had to actually meet—face-to-face —with that dreadful man, Hamish, and she’d had to be nice to him. She’d asked him to forgive her for her rude behavior of the first day and she’d quietly and demurely asked him to allow her to teach a Bible class on Sunday. She’d then shown him the Bibles that she planned to present to the children during her class.

  Of course the odious man had made her grovel. He’d demanded to know what text she planned to teach the children. With a mind full of nothing but hat shapes and thoughts of what dreadful woman her mother would dredge up next, Temperance couldn’t think of a single Bible story. Stalling for time, she opened one of the white Bibles and saw the word, “Esther.”

  “The story of Esther and King . . . And the king. I’ve always loved that story, and I think it has a good moral to it.”

  “That depends on how you interpret it,” he said suspiciously.

  “How would you interpret it?” Temperance said, then gave him the smile she reserved for men she was trying to persuade to donate money to her foundation.

  After that she’d had to listen to a forty-five-minute lecture about the morality of the story of Esther.

  “And all for nothing,” Temperance said now.

  “What?” Grace asked.

  “I said that I went through all of this for nothing. I could have fed the children in the open, but I wanted to give them something that was more fun than just eating.” But for all her persuasive powers, she’d not been able to coax the children into so much as touching the skates.

  “But they do look dangerous,” Grace said, looking at the pile on the floor.

  “No they aren’t,” Temperance said in disgust. “I spent half my childhood racing along the sidewalks of New York. I was a terror on skates, and my mother constantly received complaints about me. There wasn’t a kid in the neighborhood who could outrace me, or do more tricks.”

  “But these children don’t know you, and they’ve never even seen skates, so of course they’re a bit shy.”

  At that, Temperance had strapped a pair of skates to her shoe soles, and she’d taken a few turns around the ballroom floor, nothing fancy, just rolling about, and telling the children how easy and fun skating was. But still, the children refused to so much as try on the strange-looking contraptions.

  Temperance would have sworn that Ramsey would have jumped at the chance to do something adventurous; after all, he rode dangerous horses on a daily basis. But Ramsey had looked at her as though she were crazy and said, “A body could get hurt on them things,” and had stepped away from her. “When will the food get here?” he asked.

  So now, here she was with over a dozen children all lined up against the wall, all looking sleepy and grumpy from the boring old church service, and she could get them to do nothing.

  “Maybe if I—” she began, but at that moment the door to the ballroom flew open and in the doorway stood James.

  Everyone in the room, including Temperance, drew in their breath sharply. Even if they weren’t touching the skates, they all knew that what they weren’t doing was having a Bible class.

  “What’s going on here?” James demanded with a scowl, looking about the room. “I thought you were teaching Sunday school?”

  Temperance wasn’t absolutely, positively sure, but she thought she saw a twinkle in his eye. Was he teasing or was he serious?

  Temperance decided to take a chance. Skating to the middle of the ballroom (and the silence was so deafening a feather hitting the floor would have sounded like a crash), she picked up a pair of skates and held them out toward him.

  “Bet you can’t do it,” she said, then held her breath.

  The twinkle in James McCairn’s eyes brightened until there was a galaxy of stars in there. “Want to put money on that, woman?” he said as he took the skates from her, then sat down on a chair and started to strap the skates onto his shoes.

  But he didn’t know how to use the key Temperance handed him to widen the front piece so his big shoes would fit. Instead, he tried to twist the skate and when that didn’t work, he tried to wedge his shoe sole into the hooks.

  When Temperance heard a tiny snigger, she thought she’d better help him. He might not take kindly to having the children laugh at him. “Like this,” she said, then inserted the key and turned. Within minutes, she had the skates adjusted and strapped to his heavy work boots.

  “Now, hold my arm,” she said as she stepped back, “and I’ll help you.”

  “Ha!” James said as he stood up. “I’m the Laird of Clan McCairn, and I don’t need a woman to—Oh! Oooooooohhhhhh,” he said as he stood and the skates began to roll. James’s long arms spread out, and he began to turn them in circles as he tried to keep his balance.

  A child sniggered; then one laughed.

  James’s movements grew more exaggerated as he rolled across the floor. His legs spread wide, and when he started to roll faster, his arms turned in such big circles that he looked as though he were trying to fly.

  Two more children laughed. Not loudly, and Temperance saw that they covered their mouths with their hands, but they were laughing. Most of the others were smiling.

  James moved forward, toward Temperance, and when he reached her, he fell.

  But how he fell! His face hit her smack in the bosom, and his hands grabbed her rear end.

  Involuntarily, she gave a little squeal and started to push him off of her. But his feet kept slipping and he kept grabbing on to her for support. And each time, his hands latched on to a “forbidden” part of her. His hands held on to her thighs, her buttocks. At one point she pushed him away, but his feet flew out from under him and he would have landed on top of her with his hands clutching her breasts, but she did a quick about-face and skated away from him.

  With sounds of “Oooooooohhhhhhh” escaping from him, he tried to keep his feet under control as he slipped and rolled toward her.

  As though the Hounds of Hell were after her, Temperance skated to the other side of the huge ballroom. But James was right behind her, and his hands were outstretched toward her. If he fell, he was going to take her down with him.

  Frantically, Temperance fled from him, but his strength and ineptitude were too much for her; wherever she went, he was right behind her.

  It was in front of the windows that he caught her. She was trapped in front of the glass and he was coming fast toward her! His legs were wide open, his arms twirling rapidly, and he was going to crash into her. There was nothing she could do to escape.

  Putting her arms over her head for protection, she waited for the coming blow; she just hoped that he didn’t propel both of them through the windows to the ground below.

  But when he reached her, James’s arms encircled her, pulled her forward, and only then did she hit the wooden floor—and the landing was softened by his arms around her waist. It wasn’t so much that she fell as it was that he’d picked her up and set her on the floor. And in the next minute, he had flipped himself over and the back of his head was against her stomach and he was raising his arms as though to an audience.

  It was only then that Temperance looked up. For the last several minutes she’d been fighting for her life as this crazy man had chased her about the room, but now she saw that everyone in the room was laughing hilariously. Grace had her arms around her stomach as she bent over in laughter. Ramsey’s face was red from laughing so hard. All the children were screaming with laughter; some of them had even fallen to the floor, their legs unable to hold them up.

  “You great fake,” Temperance hissed into James McCairn’s ear. “You can skate.”

  “Never said I couldn’t,” he whispered back, smiling at the children. “I didn’t grow up in McCairn so I learned a little about the
outside world. But you’d think, what with all those sidewalks in New York, that you’d be a little better than this.”

  She looked down at him, his head on her stomach, lounging on her as though he meant to spend the rest of the day there; then she looked up at the children. They had their laughter under control now and were beginning to talk to each other. But all she could hear was McCairn this and McCairn that.

  Temperance would never have admitted to herself that what she was feeling was jealousy, but she was used to being the center of attention. After all, she gave speeches that hundreds of people paid to hear. But now she was just the buffoon in a skating melodrama, and . . . Well, maybe she wanted to have the children think highly of her. On the other hand, it was McCairn’s land and his people and Temperance would be leaving soon, so maybe she should allow him to make such a laughingstock of her that the children would remember this for the rest of their lives.

  “Like hell I will,” she said under her breath, then pushed him off of her and came to her feet.

  “How dare you treat me like that,” she said loudly, and everyone in the room instantly stopped laughing and stared at her.

  Then, with her eyes solely on James, Temperance began to skate backwards. “You think you can make a fool of me and get away with it?” she half shouted as she put up her fists as though she meant to fight him.

  There was silence in the ballroom.

  Slowly, James got to his feet. “I don’t have to make you into what you already are,” he said quietly, his dark eyes hard and angry.

  For a moment Temperance hesitated. Was he serious? But then she saw those sparkles in his eyes, and she almost smiled in relief. But she didn’t smile.

  “You think you’re man enough to take me on?” As though she were a clown in a circus, she began to make exaggerated gestures of anger, all the while backing up, her legs wide apart, her feet weaving in and out to give her momentum.

  When James stood, at first he acted as though he were doing all he could to keep his balance and his dignity. No more churning arms, but he wove about unsteadily.