Mad, Temperance thought. Everyone on the almost-island had gone crazy.
It was the evening of the day after that strange dinner with James and, if possible, the people on McCairn had all gone mad. Maybe they’d drunk something that had a poisonous herb in it, she thought.
She was now at the top of the mountain, and she had practically run up the steep, narrow trail. A few weeks ago she’d been terrified by that trail, but not now. Now it seemed like the least fearful thing in the entire village.
For the last day and a half she had been living with people who made no sense at all. It was as though they were in on some conspiracy that she knew nothing of.
This morning Horrible Hamish’s wife had come running up to Temperance and whispered that Hamish had seen her naked in the pond.
Taken off guard, Temperance had said, “He saw me? No, wait, I wasn’t naked in any pond. Do you mean the bathtub?”
Lilias looked at Temperance as though she were daft. “Not you. Me,” she whispered. “That’s how Hamish and I met. I was taking a bath in the pond by the bottom of the rock fall, and he saw me. Of course I knew he was there and that’s why—” She broke off when she saw Sheenagh walk by, then Lilias put her finger to her lips in secrecy as she hurried away.
Temperance was sure that Lilias had just shared some great secret with her, but why had she shared such an intimate secret? And then there was the thought of stripping off so Hamish would see her naked. At that Temperance gave a shudder of revulsion. Why in the world had the woman wanted that odious little bull of a man?
Shrugging, Temperance had continued walking down the street that ran through the center of the village. At the end of it was the warehouse where Grace’s hatmaking shop was going to be established, and Temperance wanted to see how the work was going.
But she was stopped by Moira, who was a cousin of Grace’s late husband. Moira whispered to Temperance that her husband had broken his arm and she had nursed him back to health. “We were left alone a lot, if you know what I mean.”
All Temperance could do was give a weak smile, and after the woman went away, she continued walking. But two steps later, a woman she had never seen before told Temperance that she and her husband had been trapped together in a shed all night. “After that we had to get married,” the woman said with a great cackle of laughter before hurrying away.
By the time Temperance got to the warehouse, she was sure that the people had gone insane. Grace was there with Alys, and Grace was telling the men that, yes, the windows had to be made larger. “You spend fourteen hours a day sewing without good light and see how your eyes stand up to it,” she was snapping at Rory, the man James had put in charge of the rebuilding.
Temperance dropped the big bag that Eppie had filled with food for the workmen by the door. “Could someone please tell me what’s going on?” she said. “Is there a festival in the planning?”
“Not unless someone else does the planning,” Grace answered quickly. “Why?”
“Because every woman in this village is telling me how she met her husband. I must say that for so quiet a little place, there have been some risqué meetings. The women of McCairn—”
She broke off because Alys looked at Grace, and the girl’s eyes were wide in horror.
“I told them to tell us!” Alys said in a whine; then she turned and ran out the doorway so fast that she nearly knocked Temperance over.
“What’s going on?” Temperance asked, eyes narrowed at Grace.
“The children are planning a surprise for you,” Grace said quickly. “They’re writing a history of Clan McCairn for you to take back to New York with you.”
“And the history tells who had to marry whom?” Temperance asked. “You wouldn’t believe what these women are telling me. Hamish’s wife . . .” She trailed off because she didn’t want to betray a confidence, but if it were a secret, why was Lilias telling it to be put into a book about the history of the clan?
“I don’t think that what I’ve been hearing is quite suitable for a history,” Temperance said. “At least not if it’s to be published. Haven’t there been some battles near here or something bigger—in a historical sense? And, anyway, should the children be hearing what their parents got up to before they were married?”
She looked at Grace and Rory, but they just stood there staring at her without saying a word.
Finally Rory said in a voice louder than it needed to be, “I think you have enough light. It’s going to cost too much to heat the place in winter if you have these huge windows.”
Grace turned her back on Temperance to face Rory and said just as loudly, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s my business, and I’ll have it as I want it.”
Temperance stood there looking at the back of the two of them and knew that what she’d just been told was a lie. Not about how Mrs. Hamish had danced about in a pond naked in order to attract the ramrod-stiff Hamish, but about there being a book written on the history of Clan McCairn.
But whatever the secret was, Temperance wasn’t part of it, and they weren’t going to let her in on it.
Slowly, Temperance turned away and left the warehouse. For the first time in a long while, she felt like an outsider in the village. As she made her way back down the street, no one grabbed her arm and whispered intimate secrets about how she’d snared her husband. When she saw Lilias, the woman turned brilliant red before dashing inside McCairn’s one and only store. Temperance thought about following her and seeing if she could get some answers from her, but she knew that the village had closed itself and she was on the outside.
In the end, Temperance decided to spend the day in her room writing about all that she’d observed since she’d arrived in McCairn. She told herself that it was good that the villagers had shut her out of their lives because she needed to remember why she was there in the first place. She wanted to discover new ways to help the people in New York, the people who really needed her.
But Temperance found that she had difficulty writing because she kept remembering her time in McCairn. She thought of roller-skating with the children.
And sliding through James’s legs.
She thought of helping Grace with her hat business. And just yesterday when she’d quizzed Alys on numbers. “What’s 367 times 481?” she’d asked the girl. Temperance had no idea if the number 176,527 was right, but it sounded good. And the girl had looked into Temperance’s eyes and said that she wanted to be a doctor more than she wanted anything else in the whole wide world. Temperance agreed that it was good to have an education, but why would the girl think that she wanted to be a doctor?
And Temperance remembered the night James had thrown Charming Charmaine out the window. And the afternoon the muscular woman had appeared outside the cave. And how they had laughed over each incident.
And Temperance remembered delivering a sheep with James. And how she’d worn his shirt afterward. She thought about the times they’d shared lunch in his little cave. She wondered if he had ever taken other people to the cave. His wife, maybe? What had his wife been like? Other than unhappy, that is? As for that, why had she been so very unhappy? After all, there was so very much to do in McCairn. For all that Temperance had managed to get one business started, it wasn’t enough to sustain the whole place. The men had their sheep, but most of the women had . . .
Temperance looked down at her paper. She was supposed to be writing about what she would do when she returned to New York, but instead she’d written a list of things that needed or could be done in McCairn. She’d heard that Blind Brenda had some stories to tell. Were they good enough to be published?
After four unsuccessful attempts to get her mind back on New York, Temperance threw down her pen and went downstairs to the kitchen. Old Eppie was hacking away at some meat on the wooden table, so Temperance looked away. She would not now or ever again eat lamb.
“Letter for you,” Eppie said as she pointed a bloody hand toward the windowsill.
Was it from her mother saying that she’d found the most perfect of women for James to marry and soon Temperance could leave the place?
Hesitantly, Temperance took the letter, then smiled. It was from Agnes in New York. Now she’d be able to get her mind away from McCairn and back to her real work.
Temperance went outside, then leaned against the wall of the house to open the letter. It was short, as Agnes wasn’t much for writing. Temperance scanned the single page, reading that everything and everyone was all right, and that Temperance didn’t need to worry.
“She could have at least pretended to miss me,” Temperance whispered to herself. She had been away a long time, first the six months it had taken to make Angus McCairn come to his senses and now these many weeks here in McCairn.
“Thought you’d like to see this,” Agnes wrote. “She’s ever so nice.”
Attached to the page was a newspaper article that Temperance had to read three times before she believed what she was reading.
The news reporter had written a comparison of the “infamous” Temperance O’Neil and a Miss Deborah Madison, who had taken over the work “abandoned” by Temperance after she’d departed the country.
By the second reading, Temperance’s hands were trembling. The article talked about Temperance as though she had left the U.S. of her own free will, as though she’d grown bored with helping distressed women and had walked away from them, leaving them in a much worse state than they had been originally. Miss Madison had taken over the work Temperance had abandoned.
The article went on to compare the two women in a personal way. It said that Miss Deborah Madison was a much gentler, less abrasive woman than Temperance and, as such, she was able to accomplish so very much more.
Also, the article said, the woman was much, much younger than Temperance, and her ways were “more modern.” The article made it sound as though Temperance were 105 years old and her methods were from the Dark Ages.
“‘Younger,’ ‘more modern,’ ‘less abrasive,’ ‘easier to work with,’” Temperance whispered as she looked down at the article.
It was while she was in a state of shock over this letter that Ramsey came to her and handed her a folded piece of paper. The edge had been lapped over and a bit of red sealing wax poured onto it.
“What’s this?” Temperance asked the boy as she shoved the newspaper article and Agnes’s letter into her pocket.
“I don’t know. I was told to give it to you. That’s all I know.”
Yesterday she wouldn’t have been suspicious, but today she was sure that every word said to her was a lie. She glanced down at the paper. There was no writing on the outside, and the wax had not been stamped with a seal. She thought, I’m not going to open this, then looked up to tell Ramsey to return it to whoever had sent it.
But the boy was gone, and she was standing alone outside the house. How Temperance wished she were the type of person who could stamp down her curiosity and not open the letter!
But it was no use wishing. She broke open the page and looked at it. She hadn’t seen James’s handwriting but a couple of times, but that was enough to recognize it now. He’d written the note in a hurry.
Come at once. I need you immediately. Tell no one. The sheepherder’s cottage near where we delivered the sheep. J.
The treasure! was the only thought in her mind. James must have found out something about the treasure.
Without another thought in her head, Temperance started hurrying toward the mountain. After what she’d been through all day, it was good to be needed somewhere, by anyone.
It was only when she was nearly at the top of the mountain that she began to think. It was growing dark, and it felt as if it was about to rain. But then it was Scotland and it always seemed to be raining or about to rain, so that wasn’t unusual, but she didn’t want to be caught in the dark in the midst of a downpour.
Looking about her, she expected James to pop out of the bushes. He had the uncanny ability to walk absolutely silently and to be in places she didn’t expect him to be in.
“James?” she said out loud, but she didn’t hear anything except sheep. She took a few steps and her footsteps seemed to be very loud.
There was something about this whole situation that she didn’t like. James wasn’t the type to send her a note. He might tell Ramsey to deliver her somewhere, but he wouldn’t order her to climb a mountain alone. Certainly not at dusk.
Turning, she started back down the mountain, but then she heard a voice call her name. She stopped and turned back. “James?” she said.
“Over here,” came a voice that sounded like James’s, but she wasn’t sure.
Unfortunately, as she hesitated, the skies chose that moment to open up and within seconds she was soaked—and freezing. With her hands shielding her face from the pouring rain, she ran toward the little stone cottage that she knew was just ahead.
She saw the cottage just in front of her, and there was light coming from the door that was standing open. Through the deluge washing over her, she could see that inside was a fire burning in the fireplace. For a moment she had a sense of déjà vu, as it was what she’d dreamed of finding the first time she’d seen McCairn.
Running, she nearly leaped inside the cottage and slammed the door behind her. There was a table and two chairs on one side of the single room and a bed covered in sheepskins on the other. In the far wall in front of her was a fireplace and a stack of peat to keep the blaze going.
Temperance was so wet from her run in the rain that steam came off her clothes when she got near the fire, and she was shivering with cold. As she turned her back to the fire, it was then that she saw that there was a sheepskin flask hanging from a peg on the wall and on the table was a loaf of bread and a huge chunk of cheese, and when she lifted a crockery cover, she saw two chickens that had recently been roasted.
“What is going on?” Temperance said aloud, holding her arms across her chest as she shivered.
But she didn’t get an answer because at the next moment, the door flew open and in stormed James, his face drawn into a rage.
But when he saw Temperance, relief flooded his face. Crossing the room in one long stride, he pulled her into his arms. “Ye’re all right,” he said, and there was nothing but relief in his voice. “I was out of my mind with worry. Everyone is searching for you, and when I got your note that said you’d meet me here, I thought that maybe you’d been kidnapped.”
Temperance’s cold face was pressed into his wet clothing, and a sane part of her knew that she should disentangle herself and tell him about the note she’d received. Then they could sit down and logically discuss what was going on in the village and who had sent them both these manipulative messages. And who had called out to her?
But Temperance didn’t say anything. Maybe it was that odious newspaper article that she’d just read, but right now she needed to feel young and feminine. She’d never thought much about her age before, but since she’d first met Angus McCairn months ago, her age had been dangled in front of her until she was beginning to need something to prove to herself that she wasn’t a dried-up old woman.
She was sure that she was doing the wrong thing, but instead of pulling away, she lifted her face to look up at James. More than anything in the world, she wanted him to kiss her.
And he obliged. After a second’s hesitation, as though he wasn’t sure he should, he brought his lips down to hers.
A woman had once told Temperance that she couldn’t talk about resisting temptation until after she’d felt true ecstasy with a man. And Temperance thought that she’d felt that because she had kissed a few men before, had even kissed James, but then, she’d felt nothing like what she was feeling now.
One moment her body was freezing and the next she was warm. As James’s lips moved over hers, she stood on tiptoe to reach him. When he opened his mouth over hers and she felt the tip of his tongue, for a second, she pulled back; then she flung her arms about his neck and pressed her closed lips hard against his.
At that James drew back and looked at her, his eyes opened wide in wonder. “Merciful heavens,” he whispered. “You’re a virgin.”
For a second Temperance thought he was going to move away from her, but instead his arms tightened about her waist; then he twirled her around, her toes just touching the floor. Sheer happiness was on his face; then holding her aloft, he began to rain tiny little kisses on her neck, kisses that warmed her down to her wet shoes.
She thought she heard him say, “Not even my wife was a virgin,” but she wasn’t sure. Whatever he said, he wasn’t going to stop, wasn’t going to send her away.
In the next moment he stood her on the floor and began to unbutton her blouse. My goodness! but he was an expert at buttons. They came undone on the wet fabric much faster than she could ever have done them herself.
It was warm in the cottage, and the light from the fireplace made a lovely glow. She could smell the burning peat and the succulent food on the table. But most of all, she could smell him, the warm, delicious male smell of him.
“May I?” she whispered as she put her hands on his chest.
At that he gave a laugh that she could feel under her hands. Slowly at first and shyly, she moved her hands downward. But when he put his big warm hand inside her cold wet blouse and touched the tops of her breasts, she lost a lot of her shyness. She had an irresistible urge to feel her skin against his.
Quickly, with urgency, she tugged his shirt out of his kilt, then pushed upward on it. With another soft sound of pleasure, he lifted his arms and let her slide her hands under his shirt, up his big warm, muscular arms, as far as she could reach. When she could go no further, he pulled the big shirt off over his head and dropped it on the hearth.
Temperance stared at his bare chest for a moment, then slowly ran her hand over him. He was beautiful, with dark skin and black hair curling softly across his wide chest. Tentatively, she ran her hand from his neck down his rib cage to his waist; then she moved across to his warm, flat belly and held her hand there as she looked up at him.
No man had ever looked at her as he was doing now, not with the intensity that she saw in James McCairn’s eyes, and if a man had looked at her like that before, she would have run the opposite way. But not now. Now she smiled at him, and she had an idea that she had the same intensity in her eyes that he had.
In the next moment James again swept her into his arms and twirled her about in sheer joy.
And Temperance’s laughter mingled with his. She was old enough and experienced enough in the ways of the world to now be able to see that they had wanted each other from their first meeting. And their laughter was the release of a great deal of pent-up desire.
When James dropped her down onto the bed, Temperance laughed in delight. She bounced once when she hit the sheepskin straps that held up the mattress, and this caused more laughter. The next moment James was beside her, and she snuggled down beside him, her head on his one arm, allowing his other arm freedom to finish undressing her.
He took his time. He didn’t tear her clothes or hurry the lovely process of undressing her. Instead he gently pulled her blouse out of her skirt and finished with the buttons. Gently, he removed her arms from the sleeves, then unfastened her skirt.
All the while Temperance lay still, looking up at him, at his strong, chiseled profile, at his dark hair. He mostly kept his eyes on the undressing of her, but when he did look at her, the glint in those dark eyes made her heart leap to her throat and pound hard.
They didn’t say a word to each other. But then they had done nothing but talk for the entire time of her stay in McCairn. And all that time, she thought, this is what we really wanted to do. Putting her hand up to his cheek, she caressed it. Every night at dinner she had seen that jawline and had wanted to know what it felt like.
He was an expert at undressing her, and it seemed that within just seconds she was down to her lace-and-cotton one-piece undergarment. Only this thin fabric covered her skin.
He slowly and gently slipped first one strap, then the other down over her shoulders, and his lips kissed the tops of her shoulders as he bared the skin. The tiny buttons down the front of the one-piece garment went next, and his face followed his hands, kissing all the way down. When he reached her belly, she drew in her breath at the pleasure of the sensation he was causing in her.
When he parted the garment and exposed her breasts, for a moment Temperance almost turned coward and fled.
He must have sensed her fear because he withdrew his hand and put his lips back on hers to calm her. Tiny kisses, feathery kisses, little butterfly kisses, he placed all over her face and down her neck.
The second time he parted her garment, she wasn’t afraid. And when his hand touched her breast, she trembled.
“No idea,” she whispered. “I had no idea at all.”
She could feel him smiling, his lips against her breasts, and the thought that she was giving him pleasure made her feel even better.
He took the tip of her breast into his mouth and sucked gently, and it was when he was on the second breast that Temperance wanted less gentleness and more . . . She didn’t have the experience to know what she wanted, but it was more.
She meant to lift his head to her face, but instead she grabbed his hair and brought his lips to hers, and when she kissed him, it was with an open mouth.
Later Temperance wasn’t sure what she’d done, but something seemed to make James lose control. One minute all he seemed able to think of was giving her pleasure, but the next moment it seemed as though he could no longer control himself.
His wet kilt, the scratchy wool so exciting against her bare skin, came off with a quick, one-handed twist, and in a second he was totally nude.
“Now I see why you Scotsmen wear kilts,” she said with a smile as he moved on top of her.
But James was not smiling. His senses were too on fire for him to be able to speak.
Because of her vast experience with such matters, Temperance had thought she knew exactly what the sex act was like. She’d certainly heard it described often enough. And her response to every description had been to give a lecture about birth control and “resistance.”
But now she knew that she had never known anything about lovemaking. Right now she could no more have stopped herself than she could have stopped a runaway elephant.
When James entered her, she gasped, and for a moment the pain was all that occupied her mind. Looking up at him, she saw the strain on his face as he used every bit of control he had to halt himself and wait until her pain subsided. She knew it was going to hurt more, but she gave him a tiny nod and he entered her fully.
For a moment he lay still and she adjusted to him; then, after a few long moments, she began to move under him.
That was all the permission James needed to start making long, slow, deep strokes within her, and after a few awkward movements, Temperance understood what she needed to do and she began to move with him.
His hands were on her body, stroking her, caressing her skin, and they were working together in an age-old way. “As we always work together,” she said softly, and felt James lips smile against her neck.
She wasn’t prepared for the pressure building within her; she hadn’t expected that. She had her head back and her eyes closed, but once she glanced up and saw that James was watching her. He was waiting for something, but she had no idea what. And her pleasure at his deep, slow strokes was too overpowering to be able to think clearly.
It was when the pressure started that she opened her eyes and looked at him in surprise. And, by the expression on his beautiful face, she knew that that’s what he’d been waiting for.
His slow strokes became faster, then faster, then deeper and deeper. Temperance could hear her own small screams as he seemed to hit something deep within her.
When the explosion came, she opened her mouth to scream, but James collapsed on top of her, his neck covering her mouth as her body went into convulsions. Wave after wave of pleasure ran through her.
It was a long while before she became aware of her surroundings. James rolled off of her but still held her very close with one arm as he pulled a couple of big sheepskins over the two of them.
Their skin was sweaty, and Temperance had never felt so deliciously relaxed in her life. She snuggled against his shoulder and kissed him.
“Not yet,” he said. “Give me a moment.”
At first Temperance didn’t know what he meant; then she laughed and quit kissing.
“I always wondered about this part,” she said, looking across him to the fire.
“And what did you wonder?”
“I thought that afterward the two people would be terribly embarrassed. After all, they had just acted in what is, basically, an animalistic way.”
“And what do you think now?” James asked softly as he stroked her damp hair back from her forehead.
“This is almost the best part,” she said, and when he looked at her, she smiled and said, “Almost.”
Feeling warm and happy and safe, Temperance drifted into that state that is neither awake nor asleep.
“All right,” James said quietly, has hand on her hair. “I’m going to give you what you want.”
Temperance smiled, her eyes closed. “I think you just did, but you can give me more if you’d like,” she said, then smiled more broadly. She’d just made one of those little jokes that lovers share.
“I’m going to ask you to marry me.”
“Mmmm?” she asked, moving her leg against his.
She felt James let out a sigh, as though he were admitting defeat. “I’ve decided that I’m going to give in to you and ask you to marry me.”
Temperance lay still for several moments. She was too warm and felt too good to understand words. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m going to allow you to marry me. You win.”
Temperance lifted her head to look at him. “Whatever are you saying? You’re going to give in to me?”
“Yes. I’ve decided.”
She drew back further. “To marry me? Is that what you’ve decided?”
Smiling, James lifted his head and kissed her nose.
Temperance was blinking at him. “You’ll marry me? Is this the consolation prize?”
Putting his hand behind his head, James looked up at the ceiling. “I know you were sent here by my uncle to marry me, and although I’ve tried to resist, I’m now going to admit defeat and marry you.”
For several moments Temperance said nothing. Had he known her better, James would have known what her silence meant. “You are, are you?” she said softly. “You’re going to . . . what was it? Admit defeat and marry me?”
James looked at her in surprise. “Are you getting angry?”
“Ah, now there’s a brilliant remark. Am I getting angry? No, I am getting furious,” she said as she grabbed her blouse off the foot of the bed and held it over her bare breasts. “I am in a rage. Truthfully, I don’t think there’s a word to describe what I’m feeling,” she said as she got off the bed, clutching a sheepskin as she stood.
“What in hell are you talking about?” James said, coming up on his elbow. “You came here to—”
“To find you a bride,” she shouted, then clamped her mouth shut.
He sat there blinking at her. “You did what?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything.” Grabbing her skirt, she started trying to dress while keeping her body hidden.
For a moment, James looked at her hard. “My uncle sent you here to find a bride for me, didn’t he?” he said at last. “That’s who those two women were, weren’t they? I see. The first one was beautiful but brainless. Is that what you assumed I’d want?”
“I didn’t know you then, and—” Even to her own ears, Temperance’s voice was full of guilt.
“The second woman said she thought I wanted help delivering sheep. Did you write my uncle after that first day when we delivered the lambs and tell him you wanted an athletic woman?”
Pausing in her dressing, Temperance opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“So that’s your big secret,” he said at last as he lay back on the bed. “I knew there was one, but fool that I was, I thought that you were the one my uncle sent. No, all of us of Clan McCairn were just something to occupy you, a toy for you to play with, weren’t we? So, what’s your true story? What hold does my uncle have over you?”
When Temperance kept dressing and didn’t answer him, he turned his head and glared at her. “Come on, there’s no reason to be shy, not after what you and I’ve just shared. Maybe I can help you. Since you’ve taken away Grace from me and I doubt if you’ll agree to becoming her replacement, maybe I will get married. But what’s in it for you?”
Temperance didn’t want to lie anymore. “Your uncle married my mother and he has control of the money my father left me,” she said quickly.
“I see. So he told you that if you could find a wife for his lonely nephew, he’d give you back your money.”
“An allowance,” she said as she fastened her skirt. She was still angry at Angus McCairn for the position he’d put her in.
“I see,” James said.
Suddenly, Temperance’s head came up. “Wait a minute,” she said, glaring at him, but he was staring at the ceiling and not looking at her. “If all this time you’ve thought that I was sent here to marry you, then you’ve thought that everything I did was toward that goal.” She was staring at his profile as she thought about this. “All the lunches, the roller skates, and Grace! You must have thought that I gave Grace a job to take away my competition, so to speak.”
Temperance’s hands clenched into fists. “You are despicable! You’re like all the other men in the world: you think that all women are after you. For what? What woman would want to take on you and your bad temper and this poverty-stricken near-island? Do you have any idea how hard my mother is working to find women who will even visit this place? She can’t get a Scotswoman to come here because they’ve heard of it. Clan McCairn is a joke to this whole country!”
James turned his head to look at her, and his eyes were a cold black that she’d never seen before. “I think you’ve said enough.”
But Temperance had never backed down from an argument before and she wasn’t going to now. “No, I haven’t. When I think of what you’ve thought of me all these weeks, that I was doing everything to try to catch you. I could never say enough!”
At that James sat up on the bed, the sheepskins falling to his waist, exposing his bare chest. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, calm even. “No, instead, you were occupying yourself, weren’t you? You were just keeping yourself from being bored. What do you think is going to happen to these children after you leave? They’ll never again be content to live here and accept discipline. Already I’ve heard three children say that when they reach fourteen, they’re going to run away to the mainland and get a job so they can buy skates and oranges and chocolates. And what happens to the hat business when you leave? You think Grace has the confidence to wheel and deal with those buyers? No, of course not. I think, Miss Temperance O’Neil, that you may have just murdered Clan McCairn more effectively than centuries of my family’s gambling ever did.”
Temperance opened her mouth to reply to his accusation, but at that moment the door flew open, as though someone had pushed it open. For a moment both she and James looked at the door in anticipation, expecting someone to enter, but no one did.
The retort that Temperance had been about to make died on her lips. “I think we both know where we now stand,” she said softly. “I will leave McCairn in the morning.”
“And go live with my uncle? And make his life hell?”
“I—” Temperance began but could think of nothing else to say. What should have been the most beautiful night of her life had turned into her worst nightmare.
Picking his kilt up off the floor, James fastened it about his waist before getting off the bed. He closed the door, then went to stand by the fireplace and stare into the flames for a moment. “Things have been said tonight that should not have been said.” When Temperance did not respond, he continued. “And I think that things have happened tonight that shouldn’t have happened. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse as she said it. She’d never meant to hurt him. Why had she said such dreadful things about McCairn? She didn’t feel that the place was horrible. In fact, she had been growing rather fond of it, at least until the last few days, that is.
“I’ll not marry again,” James said softly. “That I can guarantee you. Not after what has happened tonight. I shamed myself before you, and I apologize.”
“You didn’t . . .” she began, but when she saw his back stiffen, she closed her mouth.
After a while James turned to look at her. “I know my uncle. Once he makes a decree, he’ll stand by it no matter what anyone says. He’ll not give you your freedom unless you find me a wife, and since I won’t marry, you seem to have a choice of living with him or here on McCairn. Which will it be?”
“I want . . .” Temperance began, but she honestly couldn’t say what it was that she wanted. Part of her wanted to go back to New York and fight this usurper who was trying to take over the campaign that she had started. But the other part wanted to see if she could make a go of the House of Grace. And there was Lilias’s liqueur and Brenda’s stories and, of course, there were the children.
“Can’t ye reach a decision?” James said impatiently. “Are we that repulsive to you? Or can you not abide working for someone who’s the laughingstock of all Scotland?”
Already, Temperance regretted having said that. Her mother had always told her to think before she spoke, but she never seemed able to do that.
But the words had been said, and she couldn’t take them back. The choices in her life didn’t include returning to her work in New York. To live forever under Angus McCairn’s rule or in McCairn itself?
“My uncle is an old man,” James said through tight lips. “Perhaps he’ll die soon and you’ll be released from your devil’s bargain.”
“The man is my mother’s husband,” Temperance shot back at him. “And for all that I dislike him, she seems to . . .” She almost choked on the word. “My mother seems to care for him. I don’t wish for his death.”
“It’s not up to you, is it? So which is it? Do you stay here or return?”
“Stay,” she said, then found that there was relief inside her at the thought.
But as far as Temperance could see, there was no expression on James’s face, and she wondered if he wished that she’d leave McCairn forever.
“All right, then I suggest that we get out of here. There’ll be enough talk as it is,” he said as he pulled his shirt over his head. After pouring a bucket of sand over the fire, he walked to the door, then stepped back so she could go before him. “I suggest that we forget this night,” he said once they were outside the cottage. “Forget what was said, forget what was done.”
“Yes,” Temperance said, looking up at the moonlight. But how was she going to forget?
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.
