Temptation

“Is James in love with her?” Alys asked her mother as she struggled to sew the tiny stitches that were needed to make the delicate roses that went on the hats. She was secretly being allowed to miss school to help with the hats. The secret came because she wasn’t allowed to let Miss Temperance know that she wasn’t in school. “Why can’t she know?” Alys had asked her mother before the first question was answered. “If it’s all right with the master, why wouldn’t it be all right with Miss Temperance?”

“You shouldn’t ask so many questions,” Grace said, her mouth full of pins as she struggled to attach the flowers to the hat brim.

“I’m just trying to understand who is actually the McCairn. Is it the master or Miss Temperance or the McCairn?”

Grace stopped pinning long enough to give her daughter a quelling look and opened her mouth to snap at her, but then she thought of the way the horrible old fabric kept tearing in their hands, and there had been sunshine outside today.

Grace dropped the hat onto the table. She’d been working since fourA.M.and it was now nearly six in the evening, and if she tried to do any more, her eyes were going to cross. She looked at her daughter, who’d been helping her for six of those hours. “Let’s go outside, shall we?”

“Oh, yes,” Alys said and dropped the hat instantly. Minutes later she and her mother were walking along the beach, and the sand between her toes made Alys feel good. Since she and her mother had been living in the big house, she’d had to wear shoes all day. The house was nice, but sometimes she missed the freedom of running barefoot along the sand.

“What’s going to happen to us if she leaves?” Alys said.

There was no need to clarify who “she” was. “I don’t know,” Grace answered softly, “and, honestly, it worries me.”

“Is that why you’re trying to make as many hats as you can now, because after she leaves you think you’ll not be asked to make any more?”

“Yes,” Grace said simply. She was no longer surprised at her daughter’s insight into what most people would call “grown-up problems.”

“Would she be angry if she knew that I wasn’t in school?”

“Oh, yes. She’s an American, and she believes that little girls can grow up to be president.”

“What’s a ‘president’?”

“A cross between a king and a member of Parliament.”

“Is the American president like our king with all his lady friends?”

“Of course not!” Grace said in shock. “If an American president were like that, the people would throw him out.”

“Is he in love with her?” Alys asked after a moment. She and her mother had been alone for several years now, and Alys knew when her mother was deeply worried about something, and it was Alys’s guess that her mother was afraid of the future. Grace was afraid of taking on this business of hatmaking all by herself, for that’s what she’d be doing as soon as Miss Temperance left McCairn.

When Grace said nothing, Alys persisted. “Is she going to leave soon?”

“Why not? There’s nothing to hold her here. She likes to try to make us think that she needs a job, but anyone can see that she’s rich. Her clothes, the way she speaks, the way . . .”

Trailing off, Grace looked out at the sea. In a way, before Temperance had come to McCairn, Grace had been content with what she had. She knew what to expect from the future. But now she was afraid to want what she could see. When she was near Temperance, everything seemed possible. It seemed perfectly reasonable to think that she could run a hatmaking business and make enough money to send her daughter to a university in Edinburgh.

“Alys is smart,” Temperance had said. “She’s very, very smart. I’ve never seen anyone as good with numbers as she is. And I think she has an aptitude for science. Maybe you should think of sending her to school in Edinburgh; you’ll certainly be able to afford it.”

So now Grace had gone from the joy of making pretty hats to thinking that if she failed, she’d be cheating her daughter out of a wonderful future. That is, if being a female doctor was any kind of life for a woman. And, too, if Alys left McCairn, Grace would be alone, even more alone than after Gavie died.

So, Grace thought in disgust at herself, I’ve taken my daughter out of school and made her sew flowers on hats, something that she’s no good at and that she hates.

“. . . laugh,” Alys was saying.

“What?” Grace said, returning to the present.

“Are you angry with me?”

“No, of course not,” Grace said, smiling at her daughter. “I have things on my mind, adult things, that’s all.”

Alys turned back toward the ocean and threw three more stones. “I think he’s in love with her,” she said quietly. “I don’t think she loves him, because she’s seen more people than he has, so she’s mixed up about who’s good and who’s bad. But if he told her he loved her, she might love him back; then they’d get married and she’d never leave McCairn. Then she could run your hat business instead of you, and you could go live with me in Edinburgh while I become a doctor; then when I’m a doctor, we could come back here and make people well.”

By the time Alys finished, Grace was staring at her daughter in openmouthed astonishment. She’d had no idea that Alys had heard Temperance’s ideas about where Alys should go to school and what she should study. And Grace had certainly never said aloud her worries about being away from her daughter for the years of study required to become a doctor.

For a few moments Grace stared at her daughter. She knew that she had a couple of choices now. One, she could pretend to know everything there was to know and that her daughter was just a child and knew nothing. That’s what Gavie would have done.

But Gavie wasn’t there, and maybe her entire life depended upon this moment.

And, two, Grace could be honest. She chose the latter.

“What do you think we ought to do?” Grace said after a while.

“Leave it to Ramsey and me,” Alys said so quickly that Grace laughed.

“You and Ramsey?”

When Alys looked at her mother, her face was very serious.

“And what do you two children have in mind?” Grace asked, unable to keep the laughter out of her voice.

“I don’t know yet. I need to do some research on the matter.”

Alys was so serious that Grace had to struggle not to laugh out loud. “All right,” she said at last, “you and Ramsey work on it. Why don’t you go now and find him?”

At that Alys nodded solemnly, then took off running, leaving her mother alone on the beach. Grace picked up stones and started tossing them. Part of her wished that Miss Temperance O’Neil had never come to McCairn, had never interfered in their lives.

But the truth was, there was something that was haunting her. Her daughter had said that James McCairn was obviously in love with Temperance—and Grace had seen it. Was it jealousy she was feeling? Or was it worry that . . .

Her head came up. She didn’t want her life to go back to what it was. The truth was that she wanted her daughter to go to school as much as Alys seemed to want it. Grace wanted all the things that she was seeing that could be possible, and she knew that they were obtainable only if Temperance stayed with them.

“What have you got to lose?” she seemed to hear Gavie say, and his words put steel in her spine. With a determined gesture, she grabbed her skirt and started back toward the house.

James was at his desk in the library, and there were papers in front of him. He looked as happy as a ship’s captain on dry land.

“Why don’t you tell her you’re in love with her?” Grace said, her back to the closed door.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

That he hadn’t asked, “Who?” made Grace know that she was right. “You can’t lie to me; I’ve seen you with your clothes off.”

Frowning, James kept his eyes on the papers in front of him. “You shouldn’t say such things, especially now that you’re . . .”

“What?” she asked, walking toward the desk. “A businesswoman? I can make pretty flowers out of your old curtains, but that’s it. It’s her with the ideas, and she has the . . .”

When Grace didn’t seem to have the words, he looked up at her. “—the belief that she can make anything happen?”

“Yes, she does. And she’s what we need here on McCairn, and what you need after that first wife your father forced on you and—”

“Don’t say any more,” James said in a threatening manner. “I don’t need your charity. Look to yourself if you want someone to pity.”

“I have no pity for myself. I loved my husband, and after he was gone, you were there to warm my bed.”

“Was that all I was to you?” he asked softly.

“That’s all,” she said, and there was relief in her voice. She’d been afraid that what she’d been feeling lately was jealousy. “You and I have seen too many bad things to have any belief that the world’s a good place. But her . . .”

“She’s never been hurt. She believes that if you want something enough, you can get it, so she decides to set you up in a business making hats. And if she were pushed, I have no doubt that she could come up with businesses for all of McCairn.”

“Probably,” Grace said. “But business isn’t love, is it?”

“Don’t you have something to do? Don’t you have hats to make and food to cook?”

“Yes, much, but I can’t stand to see you brooding over her and doing nothing about it.”

“Brooding? I’m doing the accounts.”

“Yes, so I can see,” she said as she nodded toward the paper in front of him. There was nothing on it but doodles.

With an angry gesture, he crumpled the paper, then threw it across the room. “I’m not in love with her.”

“Oh? What other woman has ever made you laugh as she does? What other woman cares about this dying village and has tried to keep it from its inevitable end?”

“It’s not . . . And I don’t . . .”

“Don’t what? Need a wife? Need someone to inject new blood into this place? Look around you. You might as well live inside a mausoleum as in this rotting house. The hatred of your grandfather rules this place so much that there’s a stench about it—and it’s the stench of death.”

“Get out of here,” James said softly; then, standing, he pointed toward the door. “Out.”

Grace knew when he was angry, and this was it. With her mouth set in a rigid line, she turned and left the room. But she slammed the heavy door behind her and there was a satisfying crack as something inside the room fell and broke. Smiling, she went back upstairs to the table covered with half-completed hats.

“What is wrong with everyone today?” Temperance asked as she sat next to James at dinner that night.

He didn’t answer but kept looking down at his plate. He was pushing his food around, but then it was his third plateful, so whatever was bothering him hadn’t affected his appetite.

“Well, actually,” Temperance said in a falsetto voice when James didn’t answer, “I’m sulking because Grace has met another man and I’ve discovered that I’m in love with her myself.”

“I’m not in love with anyone!” James shouted as he stood up so abruptly that he knocked over his chair. “And I don’t want to marry anyone!”

Temperance looked up at him, blinking. “And I’m sure that no one wants to marry you,” she said softly.

It took James a moment, but he gave her a half smile; then he picked up his chair, sat back down, and resumed eating.

Temperance again tried to make conversation. “So what did you do today?”

“Accounts,” he mumbled.

“So that’s what’s put you in a bad mood.”

“I’m not in a bad mood,” he snapped, then grimaced. “People not minding their own business always puts me in a bad mood.”

“Oh? And who didn’t mind his or her own business?”

James had a mouthful of chicken (killed by Eppie, out of sight of Temperance), and he looked at her. “Tell me again why you came here. And where is your husband?”

“My—? Oh, right, my husband.”

“The one who didn’t teach you about kissing. The one you were escaping, remember?”

“I know everything there is to know about kissing,” she said with narrowed eyes. “And my husband is . . . Well, he’s somewhere,” she said with a wave of her hand, then glanced toward the sideboard. “Grace got someone else to do the cooking. What do you think? Maybe the chicken is a little tough.”

“Why did my uncle send you here?”

“What do you care?” she snapped, then calmed herself. “Did you know that Alys can add as well as her father could? I quizzed the girl, and she is brilliant. Grace and I are planning to send her to school in Edinburgh. You didn’t by chance look at those cards any more, did you?”

“You’re not married, are you?” James said quietly. “Never have been, have you?”

“I, ah . . . You want any more chicken? Or would you like some pie? Ramsey picked blackberries all afternoon.”

She stopped because James had leaned back in his chair and was smiling at her as though he knew something that she didn’t.

“Would someone pleeeeeeeeassssssse tell me what’s going on in this house?” she asked. “Every person in it is acting strangely. Alys has been whispering with Ramsey, and Grace looks like she’s at a funeral. And you have been brooding so much that Heathcliff would envy you.”

But James didn’t answer her. Instead, he said that he would like to have some pie. And for all the world he seemed to have solved some mystery, and he was very pleased with himself for having done so.