Temptation Read online

  “Accidentally.”

  “What?”

  “It was an accidental death, remember? Not murder. It wasn’t as though he picked up the pistol and shot her.”

  “Sure. Right. But I wonder who it was who had the pistol in the first place? Did he threaten her with it? ‘You tell me where the things you bought are or I’ll blow your head off,’ that sort of thing.”

  “Remind me never to go to America,” he said absently as he flipped through an account book for the fifth time. “Do you think Grace knows what Gavie did with the accounts he found?”

  “She didn’t say. You should go ask her. I’m sure you know where her bedroom is.” At that Temperance froze. Why had she said that?

  James didn’t look up. “That’s the second time you’ve acted jealous of Grace. Are you sure you don’t want to stay here in McCairn?”

  “Jealous?” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous. And there are people in New York who need me. Look, I’m going to bed. We can look for whatever you hope to find in the morning,” she said as she stood up. “It’s just too bad that your grandmother didn’t return your love enough to entrust you with the knowledge of what she’d put where.”

  “Sweet Mother of—” James said under his breath.

  When Temperance turned to look at him, his eyes were wide in shock. “What?!” she demanded when he just sat there saying nothing.

  “She gave me a pack of cards.”

  “She was buying great works of art and all she shelled out for her beloved grandson was a pack of cards? Didn’t she know you weren’t the gambling brother?”

  “That’s just it,” James said softly. “She told me to hide the cards from Colin and my grandfather or they’d take them from me and lose them and they were very, very important cards.”

  Temperance’s mind was racing. “If she’d given you anything else, you would have played with it and worn it out, but you’ve kept the cards hidden and safe all these years?” Hope made her voice rise on the end.

  “Yes,” James said, and the sound was barely a whisper. “In a box in my bedroom.”

  At that Temperance made a leap for the door at the same time that James jumped up and started running. They reached the doorway at the same time, and both tried to go through it at once. Temperance was determined to win, so she pushed hard, her body slammed up against James’s as they were wedged in the doorframe.

  It was after several moments, when she wasn’t making any progress, that she looked up at him. He was smiling down at her, with that one-sided smirk of his. The front of her body was wedged up against the front of his body, and he was toying with her, keeping her from getting through the doorway.

  She narrowed her eyes in threat at him. He laughed, then stepped back to let her pass. “You may be bad at entertaining the children, but you’re certainly keeping me amused,” he said.

  Temperance didn’t bother answering him as she ran up the stairs to his bedroom. At the doorway she paused; he was right behind her. She looked into his bedroom, then back up at him. “You touch me and I’ll put sand in your food all next week,” she said.

  “After what I found out from kissing you, I’m not even tempted,” he said, then moved past her to enter the bedroom.

  For a moment Temperance stood outside the room frowning. She’d never met a man who could make her as angry as he could. Part of her wanted to turn away, go to her own bedroom and get some sleep. Let him unravel his own family mysteries by himself!

  But then she saw him digging inside a big old chest that she was sure some medieval ancestor had carried on the Crusades, and she went into the room to look over his shoulder.

  “Here!” he said as he pulled out a little box, then carried it to the bed. “Get that candle, would you?”

  One of the “girls,” Eppie or her sister, had lit a single candle in his bedroom, so Temperance carried it across the room to set it on the table by the bed. “No, put it here,” he said, frowning, meaning for her to sit on the bed beside him.

  She was so interested in what he had in his hands that she didn’t hesitate, but climbed up on the high bed, put the candle in its pewter holder down on the heavy velvet spread, and looked at what he held.

  “I haven’t looked at these in years,” he said, leaning on one arm toward her. “My grandmother gave these to me when I was nine, only a year before she died.”

  His voice was soft, and the heavy hangings of the bed made them seem as though they were isolated. Suddenly, all her annoyance with him was gone. It was as though she could see the little boy who had grown up among gamblers and a grandfather with a “ferocious” temper.

  As he opened the box, he spoke softly. “She told me these were very, very valuable and that I was to keep them always.” He looked up at Temperance, their heads mere inches apart. “She said they were my future.”

  Temperance thought of about a dozen things she wanted to say to that, but she bit down on her tongue and kept quiet.

  “I thought they were fortune-telling cards, but I couldn’t figure out how to use them.”

  By the time James spread the cards out on the bed, Temperance’s heart was pounding. He spread them out in a perfect fan, and from the formation she could tell that he wasn’t a stranger to a deck of cards.

  But as soon as she saw the cards, her heart steadied. There was nothing at all special about them. They were red-and-white on the back, one of those intricate patterns that card makers seemed to love. Nothing at all even interesting.

  When she looked at James, her disappointment showed on her face.

  James gave her a tiny smile, then looked down at the cards. Slowly, he turned one over.

  On the face of the card was a picture of a diamond necklace. In the corners were the symbols for the ace of diamonds.

  The next card he turned over was the three of hearts. It had a picture of a small golden cherub.

  Slowly, Temperance picked up the card and held it to the candlelight. “Looks Italian to me,” she said, then looked back at James. He was smiling at her as though he were waiting for her to figure out something.

  Looking at him, trying to read his mind, she suddenly had a thought. Turning, she reached down and flipped the whole curved fan in one gesture. When the other side was exposed, she saw works of art and jewelry and silver serving dishes.

  “Oh, dear,” Temperance said. “Do you think that these are the things she bought?”

  “I always thought so, but I could find no verification. And of course my grandfather wasn’t telling. That’s why the reciepts Gavie found interested me.”

  “But in all those years you found nothing?”

  “Not really. A couple of times we found some things like dishes, like you found, but nothing else. The first time we showed the dishes to my grandfather and he smashed them. After that we had to keep anything we found secret and we had to keep our searching a secret. He didn’t like any reminder of his wife.”

  “Can’t imagine why. Guilt maybe?” She held up one of the cards and looked at it. There was a sapphire ring on the four of diamonds. “Except for some of the silver pieces, everything seems to be small, and all of it’s nonperishable, no oil paintings that would rot. All of these things would hold up over long storage.”

  “Any idea where she stored them?” James asked.

  “That’s the question I should ask you. Remember, you’re the laird and I’m the visitor.”

  “Right,” he said, smiling, as he picked up another card. The six of spades showed a small bronze statue, probably Greek, probably ancient. “So now that we have an inventory, how do we find the goods?”

  “Did she leave you anything else? A map maybe? Think hard.”

  He knew she was making fun of him, but he still laughed. The treasure was part of his childhood, and since he’d become laird, he hadn’t had much time to think of anything but work. As he gathered the cards up and put them back into the box, he said, “I can’t see that we’re any closer to finding the treasure than we were