“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.
“Yes,” she whispered as the hand moved from the back of her body to the front. Her combinations had an opening that extended from just below the waist in the front to the waist at her back; the hand found this opening and moved inside, over her bare hip.
It was when the man moved on top of her that Temperance awoke fully. The unaccustomed weight of a man on her made her eyes fly open, and she looked up . . .
Only she could see nothing. There was no light within the room, no light outside, and all she could see was blackness. But she could feel that a man, a very large man, was in the bed with her and was now—
Temperance let out a scream that made the doves, sleeping on the roof, awake with a start. Then she started fighting with all her might, hitting out with her fists, kicking, and screaming all the while. It’s what she’d been taught when she’d once attended a six-course session on how women of virtue could defend their honor. Temperance had felt she needed what the male instructor could teach, since she was often in places where men did not conduct themselves with propriety.
“Bloody hell,” she heard the man say as he rolled off of her and she was free of him. Within seconds he had found a match and lit a lantern by the bed.
James McCairn was leaning over her, and he didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, pulling the coverlet up to her neck, and there was real fear in her eyes. She knew what men could do to women. Hadn’t she seen broken noses? Broken arms? Hadn’t she heard tales of—
“Me?!” he shouted. “You are in my bed. Lord, woman, but I think you’ve broken my rib. What possessed you to come at me like that? And after you’d made the invitation?”
Right away Temperance saw that everything was her own fault. Obviously, last night she’d been too tired to check if the bed already had an occupant. So now, should she apologize? Grovel even? Somehow, she doubted that any etiquette book covered this specific situation. Better to brazen this out, she thought.
“Would you please put on some clothing?” she said, with her chin up and her eyes averted.
So that was lust, she thought as she stared at the faded wallpaper on the opposite side of the room. That’s what women were talking about when they said they “couldn’t help themselves,” that they “forgot” everything else when a man took them in his arms.
And that’s how women ended up poor and alone and with three children to feed, Temperance thought.
She could feel that he wasn’t moving, but she still couldn’t look at him. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak.
“You want to tell me what you were doing in my bed?” he asked. “If you aren’t looking for a new husband, then why—”
That did it! Naked or not, she turned to glare at him. “I made a mistake, that’s all. A simple mistake. I was tired, hungry—am still hungry—and the candle went out and I groped my way down the hall to the first bed I found and I got into it. Could you please tell me what makes you believe that every woman wants to marry you?”
He still stared down at her, still made no attempt to put on clothes. “Do you swear that you didn’t come here to try to persuade me to marry you?”
“I told you that I already have a husband,” she said, the lie making her throat swell up so she wouldn’t have been able to swallow if she’d tried.
“Hmph!” he said and she couldn’t tell if he meant that he did or didn’t believe her.
She was trying not to look at his nude body, but he was beautiful, like a Greek statue from the museum come to life. He had broad, muscular shoulders, a wide chest that was molded with muscles. Whatever this man did all day, it wasn’t sitting behind a desk writing letters.
“I can assure you that I do not want to marry you,” she said, pulling her eyes away from him. She was finding it impossible to keep her eyes on his and not look downward. Her previous visions of the male member had been on children and those statues at the museum. Her mother had not wanted her to see those statues.
He stood there a moment longer, looking at her; then he turned and pulled a tartan garment from the back of a chair.
Temperance tried with all her might to keep her eyes averted, but she couldn’t resist looking at the back of him. His massive, muscular back tapered down to a slim waist and buttocks that were hard and firm and round. She’d once heard a woman say about her lover that you could “bend a nail on his bum”; then the other female listeners had laughed raucously. At the time, Temperance had put her nose in the air and walked away. Thoughts like that were what got a woman into trouble in the first place.
But now she could see what the woman meant.
He fastened a thick kilt over his hips, and Temperance blinked a couple of times at the realization that he wore no undergarment under the kilt. A big cotton shirt was pulled on over his head, and as he began to tie the cuffs, he turned back to her.
“Then why did my uncle send you?” he asked, but as Temperance opened her mouth, he held up his hand. “I know you’re an American, and I know that you think we’re backward Scotsmen, but please, for all that we have a country no one would want, according to you, some of us do have a bit of a brain. You’re no housekeeper. You have the hands of a lady.”
He looked up from the tie on his cuff, and his voice lowered. “And you’ve not had three children. Not with that flat belly.”
Temperance had no idea that a person’s entire body could blush, but hers did. She turned red from her toes to her hairline. For a moment she looked away to give herself time to recover. Fast! she thought. She had to come up with an answer very fast. If she told him the truth, he’d send her away; then Angus McCairn would make her live forever in Edinburgh and she’d never see New York again.
She turned back to James McCairn, standing beside the bed wearing the big shirt, open at the throat and showing muscles and hair. He had looped a wide leather belt about his waist, fastening it with a heavy silver belt buckle that she was willing to bet hadn’t been made in this century.
At the thought of Agnes, Temperance had an idea. “I was a lady,” she said softly, looking down at her hands, “but I . . .”
“You what?” James snapped. “I haven’t got all day.”
“I ran off with a man and my father disinherited me; then when the man found out about my father—”
“He skedaddled. Right. You poor fool of a woman.”
Temperance had to bite her tongue to keep from setting him straight on that one. No man had ever come close to making her forget that she had a purpose in life, a purpose that she meant to get back to no matter what she had to do!
She swallowed, then took a breath. It was difficult for her to try to look helpless. “Your uncle’s new wife helps women in my situation, so she—”
“Ah, a do-gooder. I wouldn’t have thought that Angus would be attracted to such a woman,” James said thoughtfully as he reached for a heavy sweater from the chair. “Angus likes women who are sweet and gentle, not those half-male kind that can’t keep their minds on their own business.”
Temperance thought she might choke.
“Go on explaining!” he ordered. “Or do you want me to send you back to him?”
Temperance gave a shiver that was genuine. Anything but that! “Your uncle has given me six months to bring order into your life. If I don’t succeed, then he’ll send me back to New York to fend for myself.”
“I see. With no man to care for you. That’s not a life for a lady, is it?”
There was almost sympathy in his voice, and maybe she should have been grateful, but she wanted to scream that she was nearly thirty years old and she had never had a man “take care of her” and that all she needed was her own money.
As James pulled the sweater on and as his head popped through the opening, he said, “You know, of course, don’t you, that Uncle Angus means for you to marry me?”
“No,” Temperance said with her teeth clenched. “I know no such thing. Would you mind, if it’s not too much bother to you, could you please tell me why you think that any woman who speaks to you, even if it’s to apply for a job, is out to marry you? Are you so very great a catch?”
At that James sat down on the bed at her feet, but not in a sexual way, in a chummy sort of way, as though they were two friends having tea and a chat.
“No, I’m not, and there’s the mystery of it. Oh, aye, I’m a fine-looking man, there’s no denying that, and I can give a woman a lusty time in bed. And she’d have fine sons from me too, what with all my ancestors and all, but . . .”
Temperance was blinking at him. The man’s vanity was fascinating. “With such a pedigree, what could be wrong with you?”
He gave her a sharp look to see if she was making fun of him, but Temperance, still sitting on the bed, the coverlet now just covering her breasts, gave him a sweet smile of encouragement.
“The life here is too hard for city women. They can’t take it. They’re too soft. I wear them out. Oh, not what you’re thinking, in bed where it’s good to wear a woman out, but out there.” He pointed toward the curtained window. “It’s lonely here, and only the strongest of women can take it.”
Temperance let go of the coverlet and leaned toward him. “Surely you can find a woman who’d like to be married to the laird of a clan and live—”
At that James snorted in derision and got off the bed. “Is that the romantic nonsense that my uncle filled you with? Oh, aye, I’m the laird all right, but Clan McCairn is the smallest and the poorest in all of Scotland. Do you know how I got this body?”
Temperance’s eyes widened. The man seemed to have no sense of what was proper and what wasn’t. But then, they were alone in his bedroom and she was under the covers in just her underwear and . . . All in all, she thought she’d better not look at the circumstances too closely. “How?” she asked.
“I’m a sheepherder. And I drive cattle. I muck out barns, and I repair roofs. I go out fishing with the men and we sell our catch.”
“But I thought you had a castle, and this house seems to be huge.”
“Castle! It’s a ruin on the hill. We use the stone to repair the houses in the village. And as for this house, my great-grandfather built it.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “He married a pretty little thing that wanted the comforts of London, so he tried to give them to her and he built her a house that cost too much.”
“So now you hate all women,” Temperance said with such sarcasm that her mouth turned downward.
“Oh, no,” James said, wide-eyed. “I love them too much, but as I’ve told you, they can’t take the life here. Too hard for them. Now, I’ve no more time to explain my life to you. I think you should go back to my uncle and tell him you’d rather return to New York and take your chances. We have no jobs for ladies here.”
Temperance didn’t move. “I somehow doubt that life here is more difficult than life in a New York tenement. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll remain here.”
“Suit yourself,” James said as he walked toward the door, then turned back, his hand on the latch. “Do you mean to sleep with me every night?”
“Certainly not!”
“Ah, pity,” he said, then left the room.
For several moments Temperance sat there blinking. “What an extraordinary encounter,” she said aloud, then got out of bed. And the only thing she had to put on were the still-damp garments she’d worn the day before.
