Temptation

  Anyway, all of McCairn was inside the house waiting for us.

  Mother, you have to understand this. For three days, Grace and her mother-in-law and Alys, Grace’s daughter, and I have been making hats in secret. Total secret. We’ve let no one know what we were doing. But, somehow, everyone in the village knew and they were all waiting for us when we returned to McCairn.

  You should have seen it! All the children were there, even the newborn daughter of Grace’s husband’s second cousin was sleeping in her mother’s arms. Everyone, even Horrible Hamish, the tyrannical pastor, was there, all waiting for us to return and tell them how it had gone with Grace’s hats in Edinburgh.

  So much for secrecy in McCairn! I’d like to think that the pastor didn’t know the full details of the way I skated between James’s legs on Sunday afternoon, but I bet he knows enough to draw pictures!

  Anyway, you know what a ham I am when I have an audience. You always said, Like father, like daughter, and I guess I am. I was very tired from the long day, actually, I was tired from several long days of skating and looking for treasure with James, but as soon as I saw those faces so very eager for a story, I lost my tiredness and started spinning the tale.

  And what a story it is!!

  Grace and I told no one what we were doing or the real reason we were going into Edinburgh because we were so afraid we’d fail. Now, knowing that everyone knew what we were up to, I see that they must have had a great laugh at all our elaborate attempts at secrecy.

  Since we’d told people we were going shopping for household essentials, we set off in our everyday clothes. But once we were within a mile of the city, we stopped and changed into my two best outfits. Grace is a bit thinner than I am, but the clothes fit well enough. And of course we were wearing hats trimmed so beautifully by Grace.

  We had lunch at The Golden Dove, just as you had arranged for us, and within thirty minutes of our entry, a woman came up to me and asked where I’d bought my hat. I said, “I can’t tell you. If I told, my milliner would be inundated with orders, then I’d never get my hats, would I?”

  When the woman walked away in a huff, I thought Grace was going to die. It took me a while to calm her down, but she was still so jittery that she ate little of the exquisite luncheon.

  But I knew what I was doing. That woman wasn’t going to give up, and if she did, then she didn’t deserve one of Grace’s hats.

  At the end of the luncheon, a waitress dropped a very messy batch of cakes onto my hat, and before I could say a word, she’d snatched it off my head. (Thankfully, I had thought to remove the pins earlier, which meant that I couldn’t so much as bend my neck during the entire meal.) The waitress took the hat away, insisting that she had to clean it for me. Ten minutes later, she returned the hat with a thousand apologies.

  Grace was more nervous than ever, but I told her to calm down and eat her eclair. Minutes later, we saw the waitress hand a piece of paper to the woman who’d asked me for the name of my hatmaker.

  I knew it was the name and address from the label inside my hat. We had made the label big enough that the most nearsighted woman could read it without her glasses.

  After we saw that exchange of information, Grace and I could hardly contain ourselves. We ran outside where we could release our laughter in a great explosion.

  After luncheon, we spent an hour wandering about the city (I had some things to purchase for James), then we took a leisurely stroll by the hat shop whose name you had given us. Since the silly proprietor didn’t come out to us, we had to go inside to “look around.” Since three women had already been there to ask about hats from the House of Grace, it took only thirty minutes to reach an agreement with the woman to produce hats for her shop and hers alone.

  During the entire negotiations, Grace didn’t say a word, just sat there and looked at me and wrung her hands. The shop proprietor said, “All artists are like that,” and I thought Grace was going to faint from the praise. An artist!

  So now Grace is established as an exclusive designer of women’s hats. I’m to do the accounting and establish the prices for the hats for as long as I’m here. After that . . . Well, we’ll find someone who can do my job later.

  So when we got home, the house was lit up and all the people of the village were waiting to hear what had happened. James said that any business in the village benefitted everyone, so Grace’s hats were everyone’s business.

  This is certainly different from New York where people can live next door to each other for twenty years and never know each other’s names!

  Anyway, we ate and drank—all at James’s expense—and I told them all about the day. And, yes, dear Mother, I did enjoy myself immensely. They were an attentive, appreciative audience, and I had a good story to tell.

  Oh! But it was all so wonderful to watch! I got to see Grace become a woman of major importance! Something that I hadn’t considered in all this was that Grace would get to choose her employees. I could have burst my buttons in pride when she stood up in front of the fire that James had lit to take the chill off the big stone dining room, and looked at all those eager eyes as she thought about whom she was going to choose.

  Oh, Mother, I was so very, very proud of her. She chose four women from the village who have no men to support them. At the time I didn’t know who the women were, but later James told me everything. And now Grace has changed the fortunes of four families in McCairn, and if her hats take off, as I think they will, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than four families’ fortunes were bettered.

  After we told all about the day—oh, but this is hard to believe!—it was Horrible Hamish who made us all laugh the hardest. He said that the real House of Grace was a sorry place to house a business.

  When he said this, everyone looked at James because he owns the house where Grace was living. He keeps it repaired, but, still, it is little more than a sheepherder’s shack.

  James said that there was room in his old house for a hat business, but when young Ramsey made a rude remark about James living with so many unmarried women, the village decided that James should pay for the renovation of what was once a warehouse for sheepskins. I’m told that it’s huge but now it’s derelict, so it’s going to take some time and money to fix up, but James is going to pay for everything.

  Of course James protested that he had no money or time to do anything like that, but he was booed down by all the village. It looks as though they may know enough about his finances to know what he can and cannot afford. As James has asked me to start doing his accounting for him, I’ll let you know what I find out about him. All I know for sure is that he couldn’t possibly be as poor as he says he is.

  We desperately need sewing machines and supplies for Grace’s business, so James said that, this year, he’d donate all the prize money he won from some big horse race he goes to every year to the House of Grace. At this the cheers were so loud that I feared the roof might collapse, so I think the prize money must be significant.

  James clapped Ramsey on the back and said he was going to make the boy run up and down the mountain every day to get him in shape as a jockey for the race. Then HH (Horrible Hamish) said that from the way I had driven the wagon home, I should be the jockey. He then further shocked me by saying that if there was a race for roller-skating, we could enter me and I’d win so much prize money that we could buy all the sewing machines in the world.

  I was so shocked by these statements and by the general joviality of the man that I couldn’t get my mouth closed. Grace whispered to me, “Lilias is his wife and he won’t remember any of this tomorrow.” It took me several minutes to figure out what she was talking about. Then I remembered that she’d told me that Lilias made a delicious liqueur out of seaweed. My goodness! But it seems that the woman gets her husband drunk every night!

  Mother, do you think you could find me some information on the bottling and selling of liqueur? I haven’t tasted Lilias’s product yet, but I’m sure there’s a market for i
t. If it can turn HH into a man who makes jokes, I may have found the Elixir of Life. Elixir of Humor, anyway.

  So, that’s about it. I must go to bed, as there is a lot to do tomorrow. James is going to start me on his account books, and I want to look at James’s cards to see what I can find out about the treasure. I’ll tell you all about that in the next letter.

  Oh, yes, could you send about a hundred pounds of sheep-dip? It seems that I picked up lime. James made some unpleasant remarks about how he could use the lime and said I was better with ladies’ hats than with sheep. I told him I was better at anything in the world than he was, and one thing led to another and now it looks like there’s a chance that I might actually be riding a horse in the coming race. If you saw the way James’s fancy racehorses dance around even when they have a rider on their back, you’d start praying for me.

  Now I really, really must go to bed.

  Love and kisses,

  Your daughter,

  Temperance

  Fourteen

  “What an extraordinary letter,” Melanie O’Neil said to her husband, Angus, as she finished reading it aloud.

  “I think I’d better bring her back here,” Angus said, scowling. “It sounds to me like she’s turning my nephew’s whole village upside down.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? But then, Temperance is so much like her father. Neither of them could ever see an obstacle. Whole mountains used to get in his way, but he’d just walk right through them, and smile while he was doing it.”

  “Miss him, do you?” Angus said, looking at her over the top of his reading glasses.

  “Oh, my, no. Living with him was like living in the middle of a hurricane. There was much too much energy for me.” She looked at the letter again. “But what is odd about this letter is that she mentions James so often. Look at this. ‘Skating with James.’ ‘Looking for treasure with James.’ ‘What James said about business.’ ‘How James paid for the food and drink.’ And here she talks of the kindness of James and how he lit a fire to take off the chill.”

  “Damned waste of fuel and money, if you ask me,” Angus said, the newspaper again before his face.

  She looked back at the letter. “The last pages are nothing but about James, James and James. I’ve never heard her talk about a man like this.” She looked up at her husband. “You don’t think she’s falling in love, do you?”

  “Temperance?” Angus snorted. “Not likely. But maybe she’s met a man she can respect.”

  “What’s this treasure she’s talking about?”

  Angus gave another snort, this time of laughter. “A stupid, senseless legend, that’s all it is. My father used to say that my mother was spending the McCairn fortune and hiding everything she’d bought somewhere inside the house. It was absurd, of course, but it amused the children to search for the treasure.”

  “And what’s this about cards?”

  Angus shifted his newspaper. “I have no idea,” he said, but then he put his paper down to look at her. “He must mean the playing cards. My mother had four sets of them made and gave one each to . . . I don’t remember who. The nongamblers, I guess.”

  “Then you received a set?”

  “I did, actually. My mother swore us to secrecy and made us promise that we would keep the cards forever.”

  “I see,” Melanie said softly. “And where would your pack of cards be now?”

  Angus picked up his paper again. “I have no idea. In the attic probably. In one of the old trunks maybe.”

  “Who would know where the other decks are?”

  “My sister. She knows everyone and everything. She was always interested in that sort of thing, not me.”

  “I see,” Melanie said again, then got up to go to the little writing desk in the corner to start writing a note to Angus’s sister, who lived nearby in Edinburgh. She asked if they could have tea together on Thursday, at the sister’s house.

  “Oh, you are a wicked woman,” Angus’s sister Rowena said to Melanie. “I’ve met that vain, silly girl, Charmaine Edelsten, and her dreadful mother. How could you send that girl all the way out to McCairn to meet James of all people? James would eat her alive.”

  “Yes, I figured as much from Angus’s description of him. But I wanted to give my daughter some time away from the rigors of New York. Temperance is such a studious young woman, and so very serious. I’ve spent years of my life begging her to take a holiday, but she never will. So when Angus told me he was going to get Temperance to find a wife for his nephew, it seemed the perfect opportunity to force her to take a holiday. But if I’d sent some lovely young woman the first week, Temperance would have left McCairn and not had the vacation she needs so much.”

  “From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound much like she’s taking any time off from saving people.”

  Melanie put down her teacup. She had liked Angus’s sister from the moment she’d first seen her. Angus had said that Rowena was too bossy for his taste, but Melanie liked bossy people. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have married Temperance’s father or Angus.

  “Oh, but Temperance is having a holiday. She hasn’t skated since she was a girl, and what could possibly have ever happened on McCairn that could rival New York City?”

  At that Rowena let out a snort of laughter. She was only a year or two older than Angus, but she looked a hundred. She wore an ancient dress of what Melanie was sure was handmade lace, but the face the lace surrounded was dark and wrinkled; it was the skin of a woman who had spent her life on the back of a horse in all weather. “Like setting an iron teacup on a lace doily,” Angus had said about his sister, whom he rarely saw.

  “The things I could tell you about that place would curl your hair,” Rowena said.

  “My maid would thank you,” Melanie said softly.

  It took Rowena a moment to understand her meaning; then she let out a hoot of laughter. “I like you better than the other two women Angus married. For all that you look like a plump little dumpling, you’ve got steel inside you. My guess is that there’s more of you inside that hellion daughter of yours than either of you knows.”

  “Oh, please don’t tell Angus,” Melanie said, smiling. “He thinks he likes soft women.”

  Again Rowena laughed heartily. “So I take it you came here to hear the history of Clan McCairn.”

  “If you don’t mind, that is. And there are two decks of cards missing.”

  “My, my, you have been snooping. I have two sets, mine and my sister’s, may she rest in peace. Don’t tell me you found Angus’s set?”

  “Yes,” Melanie said tiredly. “It took three maids and I two days, but we found them.”

  “Yes, indeed. Steel in you.” She leaned toward Melanie so she could see her better. Like many truly ugly women, she was very vain and refused to wear her glasses. “What are you after? Really after?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think I might be matchmaking my daughter and your nephew.”

  “Well, well, well. Think your daughter can stand up to a ruffian like my James?”

  “Can your nephew stand up to my free-spirited daughter?”

  Rowena didn’t laugh, but she did smile. Then her smile grew broader. “You may know about the cards, but do you know about the will?”

  At that Melanie’s eyes widened. “The will?”

  “My brother is an idiot! You don’t think he sent your daughter all the way out to McCairn to find James a wife just because he wants his nephew to be married, do you?”

  “Well, actually, I don’t think I questioned his motives.”

  “Angus! Playing cupid? Ha! He wants to sell James’s wool.”

  “But he does sell James’s wool. I don’t understand.”

  “Angus wants to continue selling McCairn wool, and— How about if I order some more tea and . . .” She looked Melanie up and down. “—and some cakes. You won’t mind that, will you?”

  Melanie smiled. “I am rather fond of cakes,” she said.

  Rowena smiled.
“All right. Cakes for you and a bit of whiskey for myself. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “We all have our vices,” Melanie said with a smile.

  “Then settle down and make yourself comfortable, because I have a lot of territory to cover.” At that she picked up a little bell and gave it a good, hard ring. Instantly a maid appeared.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Tea, cakes, and whiskey. And lots of all three. And hand me that box over there.”

  Obediently and swiftly, the maid handed her mistress a small ebony box, then left the room. Rowena handed the box to Melanie.

  Inside were two decks of cards. They seemed to be ordinary cards except for the pictures of the art objects and jewelry on the fronts.

  “Angus never believed any of it, nor did my sister, but I think those are pictures of what my mother bought and hid somewhere in McCairn.”

  “My goodness,” Melanie said, holding up one of the cards. It had a picture of a sapphire ring on it. “I hope the maid brings lots of cakes and lots of tea, because I want to hear every word of the story that you can tell me.”

  “Gladly,” Rowena said. “It will be nice to talk to someone of the younger generation. All my friends keep dying on me.”

  Melanie couldn’t help smiling. How kind the woman was to call her “the younger generation.”

  It was three hours later that Melanie O’Neil McCairn left her sister-in-law’s house. By that time Rowena was drunk and Melanie had eaten three platefuls of the most exquisite little cakes. She would have eaten more, but her corset stays wouldn’t allow it.

  So now, riding home in the carriage, she was thoughtful, for she’d been told an extraordinary story. If James McCairn didn’t marry for love within the next six weeks, before his thirty-fifth birthday, he was going to lose his ownership of McCairn.

  “He’ll keep the title of laird, not that it’s worth much, but he’ll lose the property,” Rowena had said.