Temptation

by Jude Deveraux

  Within twenty minutes, they were all assembled in the room: Temperance, James, Colin, Kenna, and Grace. Temperance shut the door behind them, locked the door, then put the key in her pocket.

  “Where’s the whiskey?” was the first thing that Colin said.

  “I think that all of us need to be sober for this,” Temperance said solemnly.

  “Ah, yes, puritanical Americans,” Colin said, then sat down on the sofa. “So what do we owe this little meeting to? Have you been a bad boy, brother?” Colin asked in a lazy way that made Temperance want to hit him.

  For a moment she hesitated. Maybe she should have told James everything in private, but she didn’t like secrets, not horrible secrets like this one, anyway. She took a deep breath and turned to look at James. “Your brother and the woman you’re to marry today are planning to murder you.”

  At that James turned laugh-filled eyes to his brother. “Are you, now?”

  In that single moment Temperance knew that everyone knew everything—except for her. She sat down on a chair. “Not that I care anything at all about this family, but no one is leaving this room until I’m told what’s going on.”

  “You bastard,” Kenna said under her breath, her eyes narrowed at Colin. She was wearing the gown that had been designed for her, and except that there was a streak of dust along one edge, it was a stunning dress.

  Temperance turned to look at James. He was wearing his wedding outfit, a black velvet jacket, a pristine white shirt with a lace jabot in the front. His kilt was clean, his sporran silver-edged. Beneath the kilt his heavily muscled legs showed that he didn’t spend his life behind a desk.

  It was Grace who broke the silence. “Whatever is going on, someone has to marry the McCairn in about an hour, or the will gives everything to Colin,” she said softly.

  “Ah, yes, the will,” Colin said, great amusement in his voice. “Are you sure you put all the whiskey outside?”

  “James,” Temperance said in a low voice, “if you don’t tell me what’s going on, I shall leave here this moment and you will have to take care of all those houseguests by yourself.”

  At that James had real fear on his face. He looked at his brother. “All right, where do I begin? I’ve always known about the will,” he said.

  At that Temperance opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.

  James smiled at her. “I really did think that you’d come here to marry me, and I thought that at last my uncle was showing some sense. But that presumption turned out not to be true, as you so forcibly told me.

  “But I knew that Aunt Rowena would come through. I was surprised that she didn’t demand that you and I marry immediately, but when she said Kenna was willing to marry me, I knew that that meant Kenna knew something about the treasure. The only things in Kenna’s heart were money and Gavie, in that order. She never loved me.”

  At this Temperance turned to look at Grace, who was staring at her hands on her lap. So now Temperance knew why Grace had been in a bad mood since Kenna’s name was first mentioned. “I see,” Temperance said slowly. “Everything has been a joke.”

  “Oh, the will is real enough,” James said. “I’m to marry to-day, for love, or I lose everything to my wastrel of a brother.”

  From the way the men were looking at each other, it was plain there was no animosity between them.

  “Do you gamble?” Temperance asked Colin quietly.

  “Not much,” Colin answered with a smile.

  “But one of us was expected to, you see,” James said, “and—”

  “And when dear Aunt Rowena, the old gossip, saw me with a deck of cards after my father’s death, she told everyone that she’d been right all along and that I did have the family sickness.”

  “The truth is that my brother is a hardworking barrister with a wife and three children to support.”

  “Not much time to play the gaming tables,” he said cheerfully.

  For a moment, Temperance sat still, trying to comprehend that what she’d been told about the family was actually nothing but a pack of lies. She looked at Kenna, sitting silently in her wedding dress. Her beautiful face was full of rage, and she seemed to understand everything that was going on.

  “What about this?” Temperance asked, nodding toward Kenna.

  “Like to hand it over, dear?” Colin said. “Might as well now that there’s to be no murder.”

  At that Kenna stood and pulled a thin piece of brass from inside the front of her dress, and as she handed it over to James, she looked at Temperance. “Not that it matters, but murder was his suggestion and I refused to have any part of it. I draw the line at murder.”

  “True, she did,” Colin said as he moved to stand beside his brother to look at the brass ornament.

  “Shall we have a look?” James said, then reached into his sporran and withdrew all four packs of cards, the ones that his grandmother had had made for them.

  Temperance knew that someone had searched her room to find two of the decks, but she didn’t mention that fact.

  Kenna, Colin, and James spread the cards out on a long table that ran the length of the big leather sofa and began to twist and turn the ornament on top of the backs of the cards. Temperance and Grace stood to one side watching, silent, not speaking to each other or commenting on what the others were doing.

  After about fifteen minutes, Kenna said, “I don’t see anything. How does it work?”

  “I have no idea,” Colin answered. “I don’t have the mind of a gambler. If the gambling spirit skipped us, do you think that maybe Ramsey inherited it?”

  “Or one of your daughters,” James shot back, annoyed that the whereabouts of the treasure hadn’t been immediately revealed.

  “Get one of your relatives in here!” Kenna said angrily. “Surely one of them must be a gambler.”

  “Gamblers, yes, but cheats seemed to have died with my grandfather.”

  “All this trouble and we’ve still found nothing,” James said slowly as he looked at Kenna in accusation. “I gave you as much time as possible without actually marrying you, so I think you could have—”

  It was Grace who remembered. “The wedding!” she said. “We have to go tell them the wedding is off. Everyone is waiting. They must all be at the church by now.”

  Colin gave a slow smile. “Well, brother, it looks like the place is about to become mine.”

  At that Temperance turned away and looked out the window.

  Behind her, James said in a teasing way to Kenna, “I guess you still wouldn’t want to marry me?”

  “I’d rather be burned alive.”

  “You?” James said to Grace.

  “No more men for me, thank you. It’s much more fun to earn money.”

  Behind her, no one spoke for a few moments, so Temper-ance turned around to look at them. All eyes were on her.

  James’s eyes were hot and intense. “On a fast horse we could get there without being too late.”

  Temperance’s heart was pounding. What could she say? All she could feel was joy that James had never intended to marry anyone except her, and now she wouldn’t have to leave McCairn and go back to have a war with a girl who— “I’m a mess,” she heard herself say.

  With a jaw-splitting grin, James grabbed her hand. “Later, I’ll buy you wardrobe from Paris.”

  Temperance’s heart was pounding so hard that she couldn’t think of anything to say. Married! She was about to get married! She swallowed. “Actually, Finola showed me a dress she’d made and I was thinking about expanding the House of Grace to include women’s clothing. And Struan in the stables has made shoes and—”

  It was Grace who shouted, “Go! Go! Go!”; then Colin gave his brother a push toward the door. There was a moment of throaty laughter as James fumbled in Temperance’s breast pocket for the door key; then they were in the empty hallway. As Grace had said, everyone was now at the church.

  “Ready?” James said, then Temperance laughed and he started running, ne
ver releasing her hand as they ran toward the stables. There was a saddled horse waiting as though they’d been expected. James leaped into the saddle, then pulled Temperance up behind him, and they were off and running.

  Maybe it was the wind in her face, or just the now-familiar path to the village, but as she clasped his broad back in her arms, Temperance’s confidence faded a bit. “They’d rather have Kenna. She’s one of their own,” she said to him.

  “If they think that I’ll give the place to Colin and he can run them all off!”

  Smiling, Temperance hugged him closer, but questions started going through her mind. Why? Why? Why?

  “Why did you push me away that day I was crying? You must have known that I almost asked you to marry me that day,” she said, her face turned up to look at the back of his neck. After today she’d be allowed to touch him any time she wanted.

  “I knew that Kenna would return only if she knew something about the treasure,” he said over his shoulder. “I wanted to give her all the time I could.”

  What he said made sense, but Temperance couldn’t help frowning as she remembered her pain of that day. He’d done nothing to alleviate her pain. Why? Because he wanted his bloody treasure—which he didn’t get anyway.

  She could see the church at the end of the long street, but at that moment a large flock of James’s beloved sheep decided to cross the road, so he halted and waited. He’d do nothing to make a sheep panic and maybe break a leg. There was something else bothering her. “Do you know anything about Deborah Madison?”

  James threw a smile over his shoulder at her. “I found the newspaper article and the letter in the sheepherder’s cottage after the night we spent there,” he said. “I could see nail prints in the letter, so I knew you’d been upset by what you’d read. It was a hunch, but I had an idea that this Deborah Madison was like you were when you first came to McCairn. I wanted to show you that you were a much better person with us than you were in New York, so I contacted Colin and he telegraphed New York and Miss Madison took the first boat over.”

  “Oh,” Temperance said, then put her head back down on his back. His hunch had been right, and she’d seen what he’d hoped she would. He was wise and perceptive, she’d give him that.

  But there was something about this that still bothered her. Couldn’t he have talked to her about what he’d read? Sat down with her and told her that she’d changed? Why did he have to do such a sneaky and elaborate thing as go behind Temperance’s back and arrange for Deborah Madison to come to McCairn? It was the kind of thing that you’d do to teach a child. Show them. But grown-ups had reasoning power. Couldn’t he have . . . ?

  Shaking her head, she tried to clear her thoughts. This was going to be her wedding day, and this was the man she loved. She knew him; he was a good man. She’d seen the way he took care of people. Later, they could iron out their differences. Later, after the requirements of the will had been fulfilled and McCairn was safe, she and James would talk.

  But still, she remembered herself saying to women, “Didn’t you think of that before you married him?” Usually this pertained to the man’s love of whiskey. The answer the women gave was always the same: “No, I was in love and I didn’t think of anything past ‘I do.’ ”

  When the sheep were clear of the road, James nudged the horse forward and Temperance tried to still her thoughts. James McCairn didn’t have any bad vices like those of the men involved with the women she’d dealt with back in New York. James didn’t drink to excess, certainly didn’t gamble. Perhaps he was a little high-handed, but every man had flaws, didn’t he?

  In the next minute they were at the church, and the second they stepped inside, the place went wild with excitement, with everyone cheering and shouting. At the end of the aisle in the front row were her mother and Rowena, and they fell on each other, crying and laughing at the same time.

  “Looks like they don’t mind having you after all,” James shouted down at her.

  Temperance was smiling, but, inside, something was bothering her deeply. There had been no hesitation on anyone’s part when she had appeared in the doorway with James. But hadn’t they been expecting Kenna? “One of their own,” as they’d said a thousand times.

  Everyone was there, all of McCairn, plus scads of James’s relatives from all over Scotland. And as she walked beside James up the aisle, nearly everyone slapped him on the back.

  “You said you could do it, and you did,” she kept hearing. Along the way, someone thrust a bouquet of flowers into her hands.

  But she didn’t understand what the words of the people meant. James had been able to do what? Get married and save McCairn from a gambling brother who doesn’t actually gamble?

  It was at the altar that everything became clear to her. Hamish, a man Temperance had once despised, smiled and said to her, “James said he wouldn’t let you leave us, and he was right. Welcome home, lass.”

  Then Hamish put up his hand for silence, and when the church was quiet, he began the wedding service. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today . . .”

  Turning, Temperance looked out at the congregation, all of them beaming in that way that people do when they’ve pulled off some great feat. It was difficult for Temperance to comprehend, but she suddenly realized that everyone in the village had been in on this. They hadn’t hesitated when they’d seen Temperance at the entrance to the church because they had been expecting her to show up with James.

  I don’t like this, Temperance thought. I don’t like it at all.

  “Do you, James, take this woman . . .” Hamish was saying, but Temperance was still looking at the congregation. Her mother was sitting in the first row, crying softly into a handkerchief.

  I thought he was serious about marrying Kenna, but he wasn’t, went through Temperance’s head. And she’d thought the people of the village were serious about wanting Kenna more than they could ever want an “outsider.”

  When James said, “I do,” Temperance turned to look up at him, but she didn’t smile.

  Hamish said, “Do you, Temperance O’Neil, take this man—”

  Temperance turned back to look at the people. She’d had a lot of experience giving speeches, and she knew how to project her voice so that she could be heard by the people in the last row. James was holding her hand, but she pulled away from him. “I helped you in a spirit of honesty,” she said to the people, “but you didn’t treat me with the same respect. You weren’t honest with me.”

  To say that the people were stunned was an understatement. Only Grace, standing to one side, having arrived on a horse with Colin, had a look on her face of, I knew this was going to happen.

  It was Lilias who spoke out. “We never wanted Kenna. She was always after young Gavie. The boy was mad about her, but she left him to go after the McCairn. She deserves what she gets. If we used her, then it was because she deserved it.”

  At that the people made noises of agreement.

  “And what did I do to deserve to be tricked by all of you?” Temperance asked, then looked at her mother. “You were part of this, weren’t you?”

  Melanie didn’t make any answer as she put the handkerchief up to her face and cried harder. Her silence was enough admission of guilt for Temperance.

  “I don’t like this,” Temperance said softly, but everyone in the church heard her.

  “Darling,” James said from beside her. “I think that—”

  When she turned to look at him, she felt as though everything in her life had been leading up to this moment. Her mind was crystal clear. “All you had to do was ask me to marry you,” she said. “That’s all. Not say to me, ‘All right, I’ll give you what you want; I’ll marry you.’ No, I wanted what it seems that most of the women in this church received: a proper marriage proposal on bended knee, preferably with a ring in a pretty box, the same things that all women want. But instead, I got tricked and manipulated.”

  As he’d always done, James tried to tease her out of her bad
mood. “Isn’t it all fair in love and war?” he asked, eyes sparkling.

  “Yes, I believe it is,” she said, then stopped. Everyone in the church was holding his or her breath; she could feel the tension. She knew that if she allowed the service to continue, there would be more cheering and great happiness. But Temperance couldn’t do it.

  She wanted more. She wanted more than trickery and things done behind her back. But, most of all, she wanted love.

  She looked down at the bouquet of flowers that had been thrust into her hands. She wasn’t wearing a wedding dress because this wedding had been planned for another woman. After Temperance had asked Kenna for the fourth time what kind of flowers she liked best, Kenna had reluctantly said, “Lilies.” So now the church was full of white lilies. But Temperance hated lilies. Hated the shape; hated the smell of the things. But then, this wasn’t her wedding, was it?

  No, she wasn’t going to marry a man who until an hour ago she’d thought was to marry someone else, a man who had yet to ask her to marry him. And he’d certainly never said those words every woman wanted to hear. He’d never said, “I love you.”

  She looked up at James. Truthfully, she was finally, at last, sure that she was in love with him. No one could look at a man and get all jittery inside as she did with him and not be in love. But she was going to take her own advice: she was going to think of problems before she married a man.

  She thrust the bouquet of flowers into his hand, then turned and started down the aisle.

  No one in the church said a word after the first gasps of disbelief.

  James caught her arm halfway down the aisle. “You can’t do this,” he said quietly; his eyes were pleading with her. Don’t embarrass me in front of my people, he was silently asking her.

  “If you leave, I’ll lose McCairn and people will be homeless,” he said softly.

  Looking into the eyes of the man you love and saying no had to be the hardest thing that Temperance had ever done in her life. And she knew that if, right now, he’d say those three little words, she would turn and go back to where Hamish was still standing, the prayer book in his hand, his mouth still open in astonishment.