Temptation Read online

  “Roof,” the women said together, then laughed.

  “How do you know so much about the family? Or does everyone know?”

  “My husband was the estate agent for James.”

  Temperance grimaced. “And the laird certainly took care of you after your husband’s death, didn’t he?”

  “I think you should be less harsh with James. Truthfully, the first time I . . .” Trailing off, she looked down the hall, not meeting Temperance’s eyes.

  From experience, Temperance guessed that Grace carried the great secret that she had made the first moves toward McCairn. “Loneliness makes us all do things we sometimes regret,” she said in dismissal. “Shall we look inside that room?” Temperance asked, nodding toward a door at the end of the hall. “Tell me more.”

  “The gambling seems to skip generations and people. James’s grandfather had it, his father and Angus didn’t. James doesn’t, but his brother, Colin, does. It’s a good thing for all the people who want to live here that James was born the oldest.”

  “I can’t get this door open,” Temperance said as she pushed against it.

  As Grace put her shoulder to the door to help, she kept talking. “Even though James’s father didn’t gamble, he considered himself a gentleman, so he spent what was left of the McCairn fortune that the old man hadn’t gambled away. The younger brother, James’s uncle Angus, was better off, as he didn’t inherit the burden of this place, so he was free to run off to Edinburgh and make his fortune in the drapery trade.”

  “And Angus was never a gentleman,” Temperance said under her breath as she pushed on the door. “Wait a minute,” she said, then disappeared into a bedroom and returned with a fire poker, which she used on the rusted hinges of the door.

  As Temperance worked, Grace leaned against the wall and talked. “By the time James and Colin came along, there wasn’t much money left. My husband said the accounts were very low and the whole estate was in dreadful shape.”

  “Who does the accounting now?”

  “I have no idea,” Grace said. “James was never one to sit at a desk for long. He’s more of a physical person. You should see him on a horse! He’s almost as good as young Ramsey who rides in the races. Anyway, when he was a child, James used to visit McCairn, and he loved it, and since his father died, it’s been his life goal to take this place back to what it once was. He wants McCairn wool to become known for its quality. His uncle Angus introduces him to buyers.”

  As Temperance pushed on the hinge, the poker slid off and scraped her finger. Putting the injured digit into her mouth, she leaned against the door and looked at Grace. “What about McCairn’s wife?”

  “Oh, her. Poor thing, she cried for the whole two years they were married. She hated anything with the McCairn name attached to it: him and the land.”

  “That’s easy to understand,” Temperance said as she turned back to the door.

  “She saw the state of this house and didn’t have the gumption to clean it up or to do much of anything except whine.”

  “Didn’t do her duty as the laird’s wife, right?” Temperance said as she gouged the hinge with the poker.

  “She didn’t do anything. Did you see that key?”

  “What key?” Temperance asked, then saw that Grace was pointing to the top of the door.

  Temperance grabbed a rickety chair from the hallway, pulled it to the front of the door, balanced on it, then grabbed the key. It fit the lock perfectly, and after a few tries in the rusty old lock, it turned.

  Inside was a ballroom. It was a huge, empty room, with a wooden floor made for dancing. At the end were tall windows with curved tops. The walls had been painted with scenes of sunlit gardens, complete with flowers and birds.

  “It’s beautiful,” Temperance breathed as she batted at a cobweb hanging from the ceiling. Overhead was a huge crystal chandelier that, when filled with lighted candles, would no doubt make the room look heavenly.

  As Temperance walked across the floor, she left footprints in the dust. The huge windows were so dirty that they let in little light.

  “Ah, yes, the ballroom,” Grace said, looking about her. “I’d forgotten this place existed.”

  “But you’ve seen it before?”

  “No, only heard of it. My husband used to tell me about the parties he went to in here when he was a child.”

  “Ah, yes, society,” Temperance said with a bit of contempt in her voice.

  “Oh, no. James’s grandmother used to give parties for all of McCairn. I know the place doesn’t look like much now, but fifty years ago McCairn was prosperous. There was a lot of money from the sheep and the fish and—” She broke off, embarrassed.

  “But everything was spent,” Temperance said as she touched what had once been a red velvet curtain. The fabric came away in her hands.

  “I guess,” Grace said, looking at one of the murals on the wall. “My husband told me that James’s grandfather went to his grave saying that his wife had spent more than he gambled. He used to say that she bought things and hid them.”

  “Like the dishes and the candlesticks.”

  “Yes, but on a larger scale. Gavie, that was my husband’s name, said an old stableman used to tell him that the two of them fought horribly. They’d scream that each was spending all the money. Whatever, when they died, there wasn’t much left.”

  Temperance was looking up at the chandelier and trying to count the number of candles it would hold. “I think the man won on that count, because if his wife had bought a lot, maybe some of it could have been sold later.”

  “That’s just it,” Grace said, and there was an urgency in her voice. “What happened to all that she bought?”

  Temperance looked at Grace. “What do you mean?”

  Walking toward her, Grace lowered her voice. “Gavie took care of all the accounts from the time he was a young man. He had a good head for numbers. If James’s grandmother bought as much as her husband accused her of, and if she spent the McCairn fortune as she is still accused of, what happened to all the things that she bought?”

  “Were they sold to pay gambling debts?”

  “No. The old man gambled what he had, but he didn’t die in debt. He died in relative poverty, but he owed no one. When my Gavie stepped in, there were years of receipts that had been thrown into drawers, and he began to sort through them. He used to come home at night and tell me about what he’d found. She bought silver and lots of it. There were punch bowls and vases. And she bought things like gold statues made by a man named Cel . . . I forgot the name. It was something foreign.”

  Temperance lifted one eyebrow. “Cellini?”

  “That’s it.”

  “My goodness,” Temperance said. “I could see that someone of taste had bought some of the furniture, but even I have heard of Cellini.” She was quiet for a moment. “Did your husband think that maybe the two of them were in a war? Maybe she was buying things to keep him from gambling it all away. Investment things?”

  “That’s what Gavie thought,” Grace said quietly. “He used to say . . .”

  “What?” Temperance said sharply.

  “—that all the things that James’s grandmother bought were still somewhere in this house. She had to hide them from her husband to keep him from selling them and gambling the money away.”

  “If that were true and neither of her sons were gamblers, wouldn’t she have told them what she’d done and where she’d hidden the loot?”

  Grace hesitated before speaking, as though she were trying to decide if she should speak. “Maybe she meant to tell, but he killed her before she could tell anyone anything.”

  “What?” Temperance asked, eyes wide.

  Grace lowered her voice even more, then looked around as though to make sure that no one was listening. “Only my Gavie knew the truth, and he only told me on his deathbed. The old man had a terrible fight with his wife, worse than usual. He said he was going to kill her if she didn’t tell him what she’d done