Temptation Read online

  She didn’t ask him that. Instead, she followed him down the steep hillside in the dark, and neither of them spoke a word all the way down.

  Seventeen

  FOUR WEEKS LATER

  “I have it,” Rowena said excitedly as she held aloft a thick stack of writing paper. “But I haven’t read it yet. I waited for you.”

  Melanie smiled in gratitude at her sister-in-law, who had become her close friend. It had been four long weeks since she’d had a proper letter from her daughter. Oh, she’d had letters all right, but each was colder than the last, telling absolutely nothing that was going on in McCairn. The only real information that Temperance had divulged was imparted when she told her mother to stop sending prospective brides for James, as he was never going to marry anyone.

  By the end of the third week, Melanie had gone to her sister-in-law and asked her advice. What had followed were daily visits with each other. And every day there were tiered trays full of delectable cakes for Melanie and a full bottle of single-malt whiskey for Rowena, all devoured while Melanie had read Temperance’s past letters aloud to Rowena so they could compare then and now.

  “Something is desperately wrong,” Rowena had said after just one letter had been read to her.

  “Angus is planning to tell James about the will,” Melanie had told her on the third visit. “Angus says that James must know what’s in store for him. James must either find himself a pretty little wife or Colin gets the place.”

  “You don’t know my nephew,” Rowena said, as she emptied her glass. “James is so stubborn that he’d hand the keys to that horrid house to Angus and tell him Colin was welcome to the place.”

  “Sounds like Temperance,” Melanie said with a sigh. “If she wanted to get married and have children, she’d not do it because it would give too much satisfaction to too many people. Every man in New York who had any dealings with her said that what she needed was a man in her life.”

  In the end, it was Rowena who came up with the idea of writing Grace to find out what they could. “I knew her husband. He was always into what he shouldn’t be into, so let’s hope his widow is the same way.”

  So this morning Grace’s reply had arrived, and Melanie had been almost frantic as she tried to get Angus off to work so she could go to Rowena and hear what Grace had to say.

  “Settled, dear?” Rowena asked when Melanie had a plate full of cakes, a cup full of tea, and Rowena had a water glass full of whiskey.

  Melanie nodded as she took her first bite.

  “ ‘A lovers’ quarrel,’ Grace wrote. ‘That’s all I know how to describe it: a stupid, childish lovers’ quarrel. No one knows what happened, but we all know how it started. It was the fault of my daughter and James McCairn’s son.’ ”

  “His son!?” Melanie said and nearly choked on the pink icing of a lemon cake.

  “Ramsey is James’s son,” Rowena said in surprise. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No. And I don’t think that Temperance knows either. She uses that boy for a lackey, to send messages back and forth.”

  “Good for him,” Rowena snorted. “He shouldn’t get ahead of himself. Now where was I? Oh, yes, James’s son.”

  Alys and Ramsey decided to play Cupid. They thought to get James and Temperance in a, shall we say, compromising situation, with the result being a marriage, but, being children, they didn’t know what to do to make the adults admit that they were in love. Note that I say, “Admit to love,” because everyone used to think that James and Temperance were in love.

  What the children did was Alys’s idea. They “researched” love. They asked the villagers how they got their spouses to marry them. I must say that there were some amazing and, sometimes, rather shocking replies. I had no idea such things went on in McCairn. But, somehow, there was a mix-up and the village women were telling their lurid stories to Temperance.

  “And she had no idea what they were talking about?” Melanie asked, amused.

  For a moment both women thought about that, remembering things that had gone on in their own lives that had been done to snare the man they wanted.

  “Hmmm,” Rowena said after a moment, then picked up the letter again.

  It seems that what the children came up with was to send notes to James and Temperance as though each desperately needed the other. Life and death, that sort of thing. The notes seemed to work, as both of the adults went running up the side of the mountain to where the children had equipped an old sheepherder cottage with wine, chicken, and a fire. As far as I can get out of them, the children saw Temperance and James go into the cottage, close the door, then come out hours later.

  Rowena put the letter down on her lap and poured herself more whiskey. “I think we can assume what went on inside the cabin during those hours.”

  “Not Temperance,” Melanie said in disgust. “You don’t know my daughter. Her high morals would put the pope to shame. She is upstanding and infallible.”

  “But she’s never before been confronted with a Scotsman in a kilt on a moonlit night,” Rowena said seriously, without a hint of humor in her voice.

  Melanie paused with a forkful of cake halfway to her mouth and remembered twice when Angus had donned his clan’s kilt. “Perhaps you’re right. Read on.”

  . . . hours later. They haven’t spoken to each other since except in monosyllables and then only when necessary.

  “Yes,” Rowena said, “only a man you’ve been to bed with can make you that angry.”

  Melanie nodded in agreement on that issue.

  Rowena looked back at the letter. “Oh, no, listen to this!”

  The next day James went to Edinburgh and talked to Angus. As far as I can find out (and please do not ask what unscrupulous methods I’ve had to use), Angus told James the truth about Temperance, that Angus never meant for James to marry her. She was just to find James a wife.

  Rowena looked up at Melanie in question.

  “I knew nothing about this. My husband told me nothing of a meeting with James.”

  Rowena looked back at the letter.

  So now James stays away from the house almost all the time, and Temperance has occupied herself in helping the village. She wrote a publisher about Brenda’s stories and contacted a brewery about making Lilias’s liqueur.

  On the surface one could say that nothing has changed, but it doesn’t take much to see that everything has changed. My hats have become a business but nothing more. Temperance does the negotiating, but she doesn’t laugh over the bargains she’s made as she used to do.

  I’ve tried to talk to James about what’s going on, but if anything, he’s worse than Temperance. He says that Temperance chose her punishment and now she must bear it. No one can figure out what he means by that.

  Truthfully, no one on McCairn knows what happened or what was said the night the children decided to play matchmaker. But we all know the results. Both James and Temperance are two very stubborn people, and they are both doing their jobs, but neither is giving an inch.

  As for the rest of us in McCairn, life goes on as before, but this argument between Temperance and James affects us all. We would appreciate any help or suggestions you have.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Grace Dougall

  “So it looks like there’s no hope of a marriage between those two,” Rowena said as she looked across her glass at Melanie. “What do we do now? Do we let Colin have the place? Get rid of it once and for all?”

  Melanie bit into a strawberry tart and pondered the question for a moment. “I’m not sure, but I think this may be my one—and probably only—chance for grandchildren. I think that my daughter may indeed be in love with your nephew.”

  “No doubt about it that James is in love with your daughter.”

  “But you can’t force people to marry,” Melanie said with regret in her voice. “But it will be a shame for James to lose McCairn. If he doesn’t marry Temperance, maybe he could marry someone else. Isn’t there anyone he has ev