Temptation

Temperance managed to make it through dinner. The man, this stranger, sat at the head of the table—in her father’s chair, her father’s place—and laughed and chatted as though it were a given that both his new wife and her daughter were going to pack up and return to Edinburgh with him to live! All through dinner the man lectured on the glories of that foreign city.

Winking, and even once touching Temperance’s hand, he told her that he’d be able to find her a husband in no time.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with these American men,” Angus McCairn said, smiling. “You still have your looks, and even though you might be a bit over-the-hill for most men, I’m sure we can find you someone.”

“Can you?” Temperance asked quietly, looking at the man with hatred in her eyes.

He didn’t seem to notice. “And we’ll fatten you up on good Scottish beef. You’re on the thin side for the taste of the men of the Highlands. Oh, we’ll have a time of it. As long as I have my dear wife by my side, how can we fail to be happy?”

Temperance looked across the table at her mother, but Melanie O’Neil kept her head down, pushing the food about on her plate and refusing to meet her daughter’s eyes.

“Mr. McCairn,” Temperance said slowly and evenly so he’d be sure to hear what she was saying. So far the man seemed to hear only his own voice. “I do not know what you have been told about me, but obviously it couldn’t have been too much.” Her eyes bored into the top of her cowardly mother’s head. How could you have done this?! she wanted to scream. She’d thought that she and her mother were friends as well as relatives.

But now Temperance tried to calm herself as she looked back at this large man who seemed so out of place amid all the delicate bric-a-brac that her mother so loved to collect. “Mr. McCairn, I—”

“You must call me Father,” he said, smiling at her warmly. “I know you’re a bit old to be given pony rides, but we can manage something.” He looked at his new wife to share the joke he’d just made, but Melanie just lowered her head closer to her plate. Another minute and her nose would be in the roast beef.

Temperance had to unclench her fists. If the man made even one more reference to her age, she was going to dump the entire platter of brussels sprouts onto his head.

But she’d spent the last eight years dealing with difficult men, and she’d rarely lost her temper. “Perhaps it’s a bit early for such familiarity, but what I want to say is that I cannot possibly live in Scotland.”

“Canna go?” he said, looking from Temperance to her mother then back again. This announcement seemed to bring out the accent in his speech. “What do ye mean that you canna go? Ye are my daughter.”

Temperance could see that there were little sparks of light beginning to flash in his blue eyes. Little sparks of temper. For her mother’s sake, she’d better diffuse that anger.

“I have work to do here,” she said softly, “so I must remain here in New York. If Mother must go—” Here she choked and again looked at her mother’s head.

Melanie took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and put it to her eyes, but she didn’t look up at her daughter.

“Now look what ye’ve done!” Angus McCairn said loudly. “You’ve gone and upset her. Come, come, now, Mellie, don’t cry. She doesn’t mean it. Of course she’ll go. A daughter always stays with her mother until she’s married, so, with her bein’ as old as she is, you may never lose her.”

At that Temperance came to her feet. “Mother! How could you have married this insensitive lout?! Couldn’t you have just had an affair with the grocery boy?”

When Angus McCairn got to his feet, Temperance didn’t think she’d ever in her life seen anyone so angry. But she didn’t back down from him, even when he raised his hand and she was sure he was going to strike her. She’d faced furious men before when she’d told them what she thought of what they were doing to their families.

“In my office,” he said under his breath. “This is between you and me. I’ll not upset your mother.”

“My mother is a grown woman, and since she created this impossible situation, I think she should be involved in it.”

Angus was now so angry he was shaking. When he pointed his finger toward the dining room door, he was trembling. “Go,” he said under his breath. “Go.”

Temperance looked down at her mother and saw that she was crying hard now, but Temperance had no sympathy for her, for she had been betrayed by the person she loved most in the world.

Turning on her heel, Temperance left the room, but in the entrance hall she halted. She was not going to enter her father’s office and act as though she knew that now that room belonged to . . . to him.

Angus strode past her, flung open the door to the library, then stepped aside for her to enter. He took three strides to cross the room, then sat down on the green leather chair that had always been her father’s chair. “Now we shall talk,” he said, his elbows on the carved arms of the chair, his index fingers made into steeples as he glared at her.

Temperance decided that perhaps this situation called for a more subtle approach. “Mr. McCairn,” she said softly, then waited for him to correct her. But he didn’t.

Temperance took a seat on the other side of the desk. “I don’t think you understand about my life, about who I am and what I do,” she said with a modest little smile; then she ducked her head in a way that usually made men jump up and fetch something for her. But when she looked back up at Angus McCairn, he hadn’t moved a muscle; there was still much anger in his eyes.

She gave him a smile. “I’m sure that you must be a delightful man or my mother wouldn’t have married you, and, as much as I’ll miss her . . .” Temperance had to pause or she was going to choke at the thought of her mother being gone forever. “I will miss her but I cannot leave New York. I am needed here.”

Angus didn’t say anything for several moments, but just looked at her. He was not going to tell her that tonight he had hidden in the back of the auditorium where she was making her speech and he had heard all of it. Never in his sixty-one years had Angus ever been so disgusted. That a woman, any woman, could stand before people and give a speech was, in itself, going against nature, but what she had said was truly horrifying. She had encouraged women to earn money. She told the women that they couldn’t depend on men to give to them but that women must find a way so they didn’t need men in any way. “Except as the begetters of children,” she’d said, and the hundreds of women in the audience had laughed and cheered riotously at that. Don’t these women have families to take care of? Angus had wondered. What are their men doing allowing them to run around the city alone at night and listen to such sedition?

And now, here she stood before him trying to make him believe that what she was doing with all those poor women was something that he should allow her to continue. From Angus’s standpoint, he was doing New York a favor by taking her away.

“Are you through with your play-acting?” he said after a while.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have just spent three months with your lovely mother, and you are all she could talk about. I know all about your so-called ‘work.’ I know how you traipse through the slums of this city and how you interfere between men and women whom God has joined. I know all about what you do, little missy, and I am happy to say that now it has ended. You are going with your mother and me to Scotland, and that is my final decision.”

Temperance wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “You are threatening me?” she said under her breath. “You have no idea of the people I know. Of the—”

Angus gave a guffaw in derision. “From what I can tell the only people really on your side are a bunch of women who’ve been discarded by the men in their lives. And I’m sure with good reason. As for important people, from what your mother tells me, even the mayor of the city would pay for your ticket out of here.”

That was so close to the truth that Temperance thought she might explode from the anger that raced through her body. Coming to her feet, she leaned over the desk toward him. “I am a grown woman, and I will do what I damned well please. I’d rather starve than live anywhere near you.”

“Then that’s just what you’ll do because you’ll get no money from me,” he said calmly, still sitting, still with his chin on his fingers.

Temperance stepped back from him. “I don’t know what you think I am, but I can assure you that I’m not interested in your money. I have my own money and I—”

“No,” Angus said softly. “The money you have belongs to your mother, and as she is my wife, it now belongs to me.”

For a moment Temperance could only look at him, blinking. If she had been an innocent girl of eighteen or so and seen less of the world, she would have proudly told him she didn’t need money, then turned and walked out of that room. But Temperance knew all too well how women fared in the world without a means of support. And, besides, how could she help people if she was spending fifty hours a week clerking in a ladies’ shop or whatever?

“You married my mother to get at the money left us by my father,” she said quietly.

At that Angus lost his calm. He came to his feet, his face turned red, and she could see that his emotions were so choking him that, for a moment, he couldn’t speak.

When he did speak, his voice was tremulous. “The three of us will live on my earnings,” he said, his back teeth clamped together. “I left my business for these weeks to pay my new wife’s daughter the respect of fetching her in person. I could have sent you a letter ordering you to come to Scotland.”

At that Temperance gave a snort. “And you think I would have obeyed such a letter?”

“No,” he said, glaring at her. “I had heard enough from your sweet mother to figure out what kind of woman you are. No wonder no man will have you!”

“No man—” Temperance started, then closed her mouth. She was not going to tell this man of the suitors she’d turned down. If she’d kept all the engagement rings offered to her, she could have opened a jewelry store.

“Let me make myself clear,” Angus said. “I’m giving you only two choices in this matter. You either return to Scotland with your mother and me or you remain here in New York. If you remain here, you will have no money and no home, as I may sell this place.”

“You can’t do that! This is my father’s house!”

“Your father has been dead for fifteen years! Your dear mother has been alone all that time. She’s dedicated her life to you for years, so now it’s time she had some happiness of her own.”

“You are to give her happiness?” Temperance sneered. “You are no match for my father. You are—”

“You know nothing about me,” he said in dismissal. “Now, which is it to be? Do you pack or do you walk?”

At that Temperance couldn’t reply. Her pride warred with her logic and with all the visions of what she’d seen in the years that she’d been working with destitute women.

As Angus watched her, he softened somewhat. “Come, girl, I know all this is a shock to you, but I’m not so bad a person. You’ll find out. It’s not that I’ve taken your money from you. All of it will be held in trust for you until the time you marry, then it will be turned over to your husband.” His voice softened even more. “And I’m a fair man, so I’ll make sure you have a small private allowance just for yourself so you can buy yourself some pretties.”

This was all too much for Temperance to take in. It was as though, in one hideous night, she had gone from helping impoverished women to being one herself. “What about my work?” she managed to whisper.

Angus waved his hand in dismissal. “While you live with your mother and me, you will be a dutiful daughter. You certainly won’t spend your time traipsing all over the tenements of Edinburgh.” He gave her a hard look. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Oh, yes, very clear,” Temperance said, her eyes harder than his, but her mind was working quickly. Unfortunately, he had the law on his side. Temperance knew women who were fighting against such unfair laws that gave this usurper total control over a grown woman, but, so far, that particular battle had not been won.

She did her best to give him a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Just for clarification’s sake, could you define what you mean by ‘dutiful daughter’? I don’t want to have any misunderstanding between us.”

Angus looked puzzled. “I don’t know, whatever girls do. Tea parties, charitable causes, book clubs. Buy a few dresses and, and . . . gentlemen callers. I know you’re a bit long in the tooth to make an ideal bride, but perhaps there would be a young or not so young man in Scotland who’d have you. You’re presentable enough.”

“Presentable, am I?” Temperance’s voice was low. “Charitable acts and dresses? And I’m not to stray too far from home? Yes, I see. Perhaps that is the way,” she said thoughtfully. Her head came up. “Yes, Mr. McCairn, I think I can promise you that I will be the most perfect daughter anyone has ever seen. I shall be the epitome of a good daughter and shall do only the most feminine things.”

Had Melanie been there she would have told Angus to watch out when Temperance was being agreeable, but Melanie was upstairs hiding and couldn’t tell anyone anything.

But Angus didn’t seem to notice anything unusual in Temperance’s smile. He’d expected the girl to give in. After all, what else could she do? And, besides, what he was doing for her would be, in the end, good for her.

He smiled warmly at his new stepdaughter. He’d told Mellie that all Temperance needed was a firm hand and she’d stop her nonsense and see reason.

“Good,” he said, and there was relief in his voice. “I’m glad to hear something sensible come out of your mouth. I think perhaps you’re more like your mother than she knows. Now, go and start packing.”

“Yes, sir,” Temperance said, then bobbed a bit of a curtsy to him. “Thank you, sir.”

“No need to thank me. You just be a good daughter to your mother and that will be thanks enough.”

An hour later, after Angus had told his new wife all about his little talk with his new “daughter,” Melanie said, “Oh, Angus, I’m frightened.”

“Mellie, dear, there’s no longer anything to be afraid of. That’s why I’m here, to take care of you both.”

“But you don’t know Temperance. When she’s agreeable that’s when she’s most disagreeable.”

“Don’t be silly. All the girl needs is a man to guide her. You mark my words, six months from now I’ll have her married. Now come to bed, my little butterfly, and let me take all the worries from that pretty brow of yours.”

“Oh, Angus . . .” Melanie said, then forgot all about her daughter’s bad temper.