Temptation Read online

  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