Temptation Read online

  “Out!” the man said, the door still open, his arm raised as he pointed toward the black, rainy night.

  Temperance had had enough!

  She grabbed the curved handle of her umbrella and jammed the four-inch-long steel point into his chest. “No!” she yelled, using a voice that had been trained to carry to the back of huge auditoriums. “I am not going out in that godforsaken rain and mud again. So help me, if you throw me out I’ll come in through the window or down a chimney. Whatever I have to do, but I’ll not go out into that again.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And if you murder me, I’ll haunt you.”

  As she was advancing on him, he was looking down at her in amazement. He was a big man, with shaggy hair that fell down over the back of his collar. He had dark, fierce eyes and black eyebrows that peaked in the middle in a way that made her think of the devil. The bottom half of his face was covered with a scraggly beard and mustache, but she could see that he had full lips under the hair.

  The truth was, if she’d had to draw a picture of the devil, she’d have drawn this man. He was handsome but in a way that looked wicked.

  But with the way Temperance was feeling, she was ready to take on the devil himself.

  “I don’t know what you have in that small mind of yours,” she said, “but I am here for a job and nothing more.”

  Suddenly something in her snapped and she was back in New York in a tenement and she was one of the many women whose tragic stories she’d listened to and tried to change.

  “You think I’m too pretty for this job? Is that what you think?” She was pushing at him with the umbrella, and she knew he could have taken it from her, but he didn’t. Instead he watched her with the fascination of a cobra following a flute.

  “But it’s this pretty face that has caused me all my problems from . . . from you . . . men!” She spat the word at him, and as she pushed, he backed up. “I hate you. All of you for the things you’ve done to me. I have a husband, but do you know where he is? No, of course you don’t. Nor do I. He left me alone with three children to feed. We were thrown out of our apartment and all my children died of scarlet fever, one right after another. I prayed to go with them, but I was left on this earth for what purpose I don’t know.

  “So your uncle Angus married a rich American woman and he told her he had a job in Scotland for me, so I returned with them to this cold wet island that no one would want if you tried to sell it, and I had to walk four bloody miles in mud nearly up to my knees, and now I get here and I’m told I’m too damned pretty for your bleedin’ job.”

  He was still watching her, listening to her, and backing up when she pushed at him with the umbrella. When she gave one great push, the back of his knees hit a chair and he sat down hard, still watching her in fascination.

  “Let me tell you something,” Temperance said, bending over him. “I don’t want to marry you, and I can’t see why anyone would want to marry you and live in this cold place, but I happen to be married already—although if I ever saw the worthless, philandering imbecile again, I can assure you that I’d soon be a widow—so, now, do you need a housekeeper or not?”

  For a moment the man just looked at her wet face without saying a word. “Uncle Angus sent you, but you don’t want to marry me?” he said in a tone that said that he couldn’t believe this fact.

  She blinked at him. “You’re a bit slow, aren’t you?”

  At that one side of the man’s lips curved upward in what Temperance thought was maybe a smile. “You’re not like what my uncle usually sends me.” He ran his hand over his beard and looked at her as though he were considering the matter. Now that he was sitting and she was standing, their eyes were on a level with each other.

  While she waited for him to make up his mind, Temperance took off what had once been a very nice hat and wrung it out onto the stone floor. Now that she was beginning to look around, she could see that the room was filthy. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The table had dried food on it that had hardened into lumps that would take a hammer and chisel to remove. She wasn’t worried about the water that was puddling on the floor around her feet because it could only help to wash the place.

  When she looked back at the man, he was looking her up and down. She’d seen that look before. “Mr. McCairn— you are James McCairn, are you not?”

  The man nodded, still silently looking at her in speculation.

  “I need a job, and you obviously need someone to . . . to . . .” She looked around the room. What could she say? He needed someone to . . . “The Aegean stables were cleaner than this,” she muttered.

  “And you are Hercules?” he asked.

  She turned back to him, her face showing surprise since he’d understood her reference to a Greek legend.

  Abruptly, he stood up, then turned his back on her. “All right,” he said over his shoulder. “Breakfast is at four. But if you make one attempt to marry me, I’ll throw you out on your delicate little ear. Hear me, Mrs. Hercules?”

  Temperance wasn’t given time to answer because he disappeared through a door at the far end of the room.

  When she was alone, it was as though all her courage left her and Temperance sat down on the hard wooden chair that he had sat on and put her head in her hands. She didn’t know what had made her act as she had and certainly not what had made her lie like that. In her years of working with destitute women, she’d heard one woman after another say that she’d been driven to lie, to steal, or into prostitution. In what she now realized was a very superior manner, Temperance had always told the women that there were alternatives.

  But today, in just one day of cold and hunger, when she had been faced with the prospect of spending the whole night in the rain, she had easily formed a lie that would get her a warm bed for the night.

  As she thought that, a shiver went through her body. Now that she was “safe,” so to speak, and no longer had rage coursing through her veins, she was cold. She looked at the candle on the table. Where was the housekeeper’s room? For that matter, where was the kitchen so she could get something hot to eat before bed?

  Quickly, she jumped up and went through the door where the man had gone, but she was in a dark hallway, facing a staircase that looked as though it had . . . Now she was seeing things. The staircase looked to be littered with bones.

  Going back into the room with the table, she picked up the candle and started to make her way through the house in search of a warm bed.

  Five

  “Mmmmm,” was all Temperance could say as she snuggled against the warmth. Even half asleep, she could smell that the sheets needed changing, but the bed was soft and warm and she was oh so tired. Last night the single stub of a candle had burned out before she could find her way around the house, so she had ended by feeling her way along cold plastered walls until she came to a door.

  After several tries, she’d given up on finding a kitchen with a cheery fire banked for the night and so much as a piece of cheese for dinner. Instead, she’d turned and gone up the stairs toward what she assumed were bedrooms, and when she’d touched a mattress, she’d stripped off her wet clothes down to her combs, her combination garment, and climbed under a coverlet that must have had a six-inch loft. Within seconds she was asleep.

  But now, it was dark in the room, and she was too sleep befuddled to open her eyes, but there was something . . .

  Someone was holding her, holding her in a way she’d never been held before, and against her cheek she could feel the warmth of another human being. Mother, she thought, then snuggled closer. But a hand ran over her body, down the back of her. With her eyes still closed, she moved even closer.

  “I like this part of your job,” came a soft, low voice in her ear, and Temperance smiled in her half sleep as the hand ran over her hip and down her thigh.

  There was a bare shoulder under her cheek, and she felt the texture of warm skin under her lips; then she moved her leg so it was between two large, heavy thighs that drew her closer still.