Temptation

Angus had to make his way through four giggling young ladies and six young men who were holding bouquets of flowers and boxes of candy. All ten of them were waiting for Temperance to finish the meeting she was in so she could attend to them.

As Angus handed his hat to the butler, he said, “How many today?”

“At last count, sir, fourteen, but then, it’s only eleven in the morning. I believe there are more expected this afternoon.”

“She’s been told that I want to see her?”

“Yes. She said that she can spare you exactly thirteen minutes between meetings.”

“Spare me!” Angus said in disgust as he threw his gloves into his hat then strode into his office. The desk was piled high with bills, but he didn’t have to open them to know what was in them.

Since he and his new family had arrived in Edinburgh six months ago, Angus McCairn had not had a moment’s peace. Feeling as though he were being a good father, even if the offspring was nearly thirty years old, he had introduced his strong-willed stepdaughter to a friend of his, a lady by title, but without means. For a small compensation, she had been more than willing to introduce Temperance into Edinburgh society.

Angus had been prepared for a reluctant, sulking female; he’d expected fights and even tantrums, and he had mentally prepared himself for them. But he had not been prepared for what Temperance did: She threw herself into society with a vengeance.

And since the moment Angus had said the words, “Let me introduce you to . . .” he had not had a moment’s peace. From early until late, his house was full of visitors. There were girls fresh out of the schoolroom, giggling and nervous, who came to have tea with Temperance. There were women in their forties, unmarried, who came on Thursday afternoons to chat about books. Three hospitals in Edinburgh had weekly meetings in his house. Last week he returned home to find that his library had been recruited for bandage rolling. There wasn’t a moment when the household was awake that both parlors of his house weren’t full of young women who were having a meeting to discuss some good works they were planning.

At the end of the first month, Angus had told Temperance to have her meetings outside his house. But Temperance had told him in the sweetest tone imaginable that a good daughter stayed at home and didn’t leave her family. Temperance said that she wouldn’t be a “dutiful daughter” if she flitted about Edinburgh unescorted.

Angus had gritted his teeth, but his pride wouldn’t allow him to throw her or her zealously good friends out.

Besides the earnest women, there were the males. As far as Angus could tell, Temperance had allowed the word to spread that she wanted to get married, even that she was desperate to get married. To Angus’s eyes, Temperance’s age was a handicap to a man who wanted to start a family, but Temperance’s beauty, her trim figure, and her inheritance seemed to make up for her age. The result was that there were as many males in Angus’s house as there were females. Boys and men, ranging in age from nineteen to sixty-five, were courting her.

And, Angus thought with his fists clenched at his side, she fluttered her lashes, gave coy little smiles, and encouraged all the males to outdo themselves in their courting techniques.

There was the time at threeA.M.when Angus was awakened from a sound sleep by a young man who was serenading Temperance. He sang in a creaky, but very loud, voice while a band of Italian guitar players backed him up. Angus had to threaten to shoot them all to make them go away.

Three times Angus had been awakened by rocks thrown at his window in the wee hours. He’d had to sling open the window and shout at the suitors that they had the wrong room. Once was a mistake, he thought, but three times? He knew that Temperance had purposefully told the men the wrong room.

At work Angus was deluged with men using every excuse in the world to get in to see him to try to persuade him to put in a good word with Temperance. Angus had twice lost business because he had been so sure that the men asking about drapery fabrics were really after Temperance’s hand in marriage that Angus had shoved the men out of his warehouse.

Now, looking back at his desk, he grimaced. And there were the bills. Temperance offered food and drink to every committee member, every do-gooder she invited to Angus’s house. She fed all the men who came to her, no matter how many times a day they showed up. Angus was sure that at least half the men “courting” Temperance were just poor students who were there for the free food.

And what could Angus do? Send them all away? Every day there were letters in the mail telling him what a wonderful job he was doing with this committee and that committee. It seemed that Temperance refused to take any credit for herself but gave all the glory to Angus, saying that he was the one who really did everything. So if Angus threw them all out, he would look like a monster and he’d lose what business he had left.

Besides the food bills, there were bills for Temperance’s clothing. She’d managed to spend thousands of pounds on outfits by Worth and Redfern, Paquin and Drécoll. At first it had bewildered Angus how Temperance could find the time to buy so much when she was constantly in one noble meeting after another. But it seemed that his busy stepdaughter could do half a dozen things at once, as Angus found out when he’d accidently walked in on a meeting of women dedicated to saving diseased cats or some such, and Temperance had been in her underwear trying on some lacy thing that cost the earth.

There were bills for luggage, a couple of bicycles, a typewriter, even motion picture equipment, which she used to show historical films to a group of orphans who came every Friday afternoon and ate their weight in sandwiches and cakes.

So far Angus had had to hire three new maids to help cook, clean, and serve.

And in the six months since he’d been at home with his new bride, they had not had a single moment of quiet calmness together. He couldn’t eat breakfast alone with his new wife because Temperance always had some downtrodden group of women to join them. “They so want to meet the man who has made all of this possible,” Temperance purred at her stepfather.

The result of Temperance’s vow to be “a good daughter” was that, one way or another, Angus was going to go bankrupt. He figured that at the rate Temperance was spending, he could last another two years at most. And truthfully, he was so agitated about his disruptive home life that he couldn’t concentrate on his business and consequently found himself making stupid decisions that were costing him money.

On the other hand, if he threw all these soulful-looking, down-on-their-luck people out of his house, all of Edinburgh would rise up against him and he’d never have another customer.

Either way, he was going to go bankrupt—or lose his mind—he thought.

But for the last two weeks he had worked on ways to solve this dilemma. He could go traveling with his wife and stepdaughter. But who would run his business? He could give his stepdaughter her freedom, which, of course, he fully realized was what she was after; but Angus couldn’t do that. He had been raised in a time when men looked after women and he would never be at ease in his own soul if he allowed a woman under his care to live alone. For all that Temperance had become the bane of his life, she was a woman and she was his responsibility.

On the other hand, his first responsibility was to his wife, and Temperance was making his household so chaotic that Melanie was a heap of nerves. So perhaps Angus should modify his original stand when it came to his stepdaughter. But to save his own pride, maybe he could work a compromise with her.

And maybe he could use her ability to . . . to manage people, shall we say, to do something for him that he’d been working on for years but without success.

So Angus had worked out a solution: He’d send Temperance to be under the care of his nephew, James McCairn, for a while. But he knew he’d have to give Temperance something to occupy her busy mind while she was there or she’d drive James mad, just as she was driving him, Angus, insane. And since there was a problem he’d been having with his nephew for a number of years now, maybe he could kill two birds with one stone.

When the knock sounded on his library door, Angus drew in his breath and let it out slowly. The last time he’d had a private conversation with his stepdaughter had been in New York. And the result of that little talk was that he was now drinking half a bottle of Scotch every night.

“Come in,” he said.

“You wanted to see me, Father dear?” Temperance said as she demurely sat down on the edge of the chair on the other side of Angus’s desk. Still smiling, she looked at the watch pinned to her lovely bosom. “I think I have a few minutes before my next charitable meeting.”

Angus knew that that watch had been made in Switzerland, handcrafted by a company that had been in business for over two hundred years, and that it had cost as much as the yearly salaries of two of his clerks.

Might as well get to it, he thought as he stood and clasped his hands behind his back. How could his sweet wife have given birth to this virago? “I want to offer you a job.”

“But a dutiful daughter would never take employment outside her home. A dutiful daughter—”

He gave her a look that cut her off midsentence; then he saw her look down at her hands in an attempt to hide her smile. “You can stop the acting while you’re alone with me.”

“Whatever do you mean?” she asked sweetly. “I have merely tried to be what you asked of me.”

He ignored her challenge. He was not going to lower himself to argue with her about whether or not she had done what he wanted. “If you complete this job to my satisfaction, I’ll give you an allowance and a modified version of freedom.”

“A what?” The false sweetness was gone from her voice; this was the woman he’d first met, the one he had secretly heard give a speech of such force that, had she been a man and talking on an appropriate subject, he would have admired her for.

“If you successfully complete this job, I will give you access to your inheritance, but it will be supervised by my banking contacts in New York. And I will allow you to live in your mother’s house in New York but with a, shall we say, companion chosen by me.” When she started to speak, he held up his hand. “And you will be allowed to continue your . . .” He could hardly say the words. “Your work with the underprivileged in New York.”

“And if I refuse this job?”

“You will remain here and be a daughter to your mother. I shall put it about that she’s ill and there’re to be no more visitors to the house.”

“This is blackmail,” Temperance said under her breath. “And what have you been at these last months in hell?” Angus half shouted, then had to take a breath to calm himself.

Temperance leaned back against the chair. “All right, I’m listening. What’s the job?”

“I want you to find a wife for my nephew.”

“A what?” she said as she sat upright, then drew her mouth into a tight line. “You’re trying to marry me off, aren’t you?”

“You!” Angus said loudly, then looked toward the door. He could hear more women, more men being shown into his hall. Quieter, he said, “No, I do not want you to marry my nephew. I like my nephew. No, actually, I love my nephew. His father was my older brother, and we—Anyway, the last thing I’d do to my nephew is saddle him with a termagant like you.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” Temperance said. “What’s wrong with the man that he can’t find his own wife?”

“Nothing is wrong with him. He’s the laird of a clan here in Scotland, and he’s very handsome.”

“But . . . ?”

“But he lives in isolation and he works hard to save those people under his care, so he doesn’t have time to look for a wife.”

“So I’m to go to this place and parade a lot of young women in front of him and he’s to choose?” Pausing, she considered this for a moment. “I don’t think that’ll be too difficult. I’ve met many unmarried women here, so I’ll just invite them—”

“No. James mustn’t know what you’re up to. He’s a bit, uh . . . headstrong and if he were to know that I was interfering in his life, he’d throw you off the place and he’d . . .” He looked at Temperance.

“Your nephew would end up like me,” she said, glaring at him. It seemed that every word out of the man’s mouth offended her in some way. She had to consciously swallow her pride.

“If I’m not to introduce him to marriageable women, how do I find him a wife? May I assume that you have a plan?”

Angus dug about in the unopened bills on his desk. “I want you to go to him as his housekeeper.”

“His what?” Angus held up a letter. “James has written to me asking me to find a new housekeeper for him, as the last one died. She was eighty-something, I believe, so it’s no wonder. I want you to go as the housekeeper and to get him married to a woman of good station in life. Certainly not one of your down-on-her-luck women that would take any man. A good woman. You understand me? As soon as you do that, you’re free to return to New York.”

For several minutes, Temperance sat there looking at him. “You couldn’t just forget this charade and give me what is mine by rights?” she said, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“I could, but I have a job that is particularly suited to your, ah, talents and I don’t see why you can’t do it. Why should I give everything and you give nothing?”

At that Temperance stood up, her hands clenched into fists, and leaned across the desk toward him. “Because you are a thief and a scoundrel, that’s why. You took what was left to my mother but intended to be shared with me, but because of unethical laws that are straight out of the Middle Ages, you have the legal right to take—”

“Do you want to do the job or not?” he said, his eyes blazing in rage as he leaned across the desk from the other side toward her. “Because if you decide not to do this, I shall pack you and your mother away to some remote village in . . . in the Himalayas and keep you there for as long as I live.”

“Which wouldn’t be for long, I can assure you,” she spat back at him.

At that they were interrupted by a knock on the door and the entry of the butler. “Miss Temperance is late for her meeting, and the young ladies were wondering if they should start without her.”

“Start eating my food is what they mean!” Angus shouted, then looked back at Temperance. “What is your answer?”

“Yes,” she said, but her teeth were clamped shut when she said it.

Temperance, darling, I know that Angus’s ways might seem foreign to you and somewhat harsh, but—”

“What about in bed?” Temperance persisted, her eyes boring into her mother’s. “Couldn’t you persuade him while you’re in bed together?”

At that Melanie O’Neil had to stop pulling clothes from the drawers in Temperance’s room and sit down on the chair by the open window and fan herself. “You know, dear,” she said breathlessly, “that a lady doesn’t talk about . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words; but then her head came up and she gave her daughter a sharp look. “And, besides, you’re unmarried, so what do you know of such things?”

“I’ve never harpooned a whale, but I’ve read Moby Dick,” Temperance shot back. “Can you do something with him?”

“I . . . I . . .” Melanie looked at her daughter, then stood up and went back to choosing what clothes were to be packed. “I’m not sure I want to. A summer in the Scottish Highlands will be good for you, much better than all that smelly air in New York. And now with those motorcars on the streets, well, I don’t see why horses aren’t good enough.”

“Mother, perhaps you prefer the smell of horse manure to gasoline fumes, but I don’t. I have work to do at home.”

“Temperance, I can’t understand what I ever did to make you see life as so . . . so . . .”

“Unromantic?” Temperance asked. “Mother, if you’d ever visit a tenement with me, you’d see—”

“No thank you, dear. I think New York has enough to handle with one O’Neil taking care of it. Temperance, I was wondering if you’ve thought of the paper you could present in New York when you return there. Six months in a Scottish village. Surely, the village would have a poor section where you could save people. Or maybe it doesn’t and you could present a paper on how not to be poor.”

At that Temperance couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, Mother, you do say the most amusing things. ‘How not to be poor.’ What a ridiculous idea. My impression of Scotland is that it’s very rural and—” Suddenly Temperance’s eyes opened wide. “Cottage industries.”

“What, dear?”

“Cottage industries. Those remote places have cottage industries—you know, weaving and knitting, that sort of thing. Maybe I could . . .”

“Observe and learn, then teach your poor young ladies back in New York?” Melanie tucked another pair of gloves into a little leather case propped open on the bed.

“Exactly. Mother, you read my mind.”

“But what about your job of finding a wife for Mr. McCairn? Won’t that take most of your time? And you’ll be the housekeeper too.”

“What time does housekeeping take? I’ll order the staff in the morning, and in the afternoon I shall observe and learn. I won’t interfere. No, I’ll think of this as a . . . a . . .”

“University course?”

“Yes. Exactly. I’ll think of it as a university course. I’ll make daily records of what I see and learn, and when I return to New York, I’ll publish my findings. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll—”

“What about Mr. McCairn?” Temperance waved her hand in dismissal. “Oh. Him. As far as I can tell, every woman in the world except me is dying to get married. If the man is ugly as a warthog, I’ll still find someone for him.”

“But what if he doesn’t want to marry her?” Temperance rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Mother, have you learned nothing from living with me? Marriage is for men. Married men live longer because they have everything given to them. And all men are susceptible to a pretty face and a trim ankle. Besides, I’ll leave that part of this assignment to you.”

“Me?” Melanie dropped the silk stockings she was holding.

“Yes. You’re good at this. Didn’t you try to match me with every eligible man in four states?”

As she bent to pick up the stockings, Melanie sighed. “Yes, but look what a good job I did. You liked none of the men I introduced you to.”

“True. But that still didn’t stop you, did it? So now’s your chance. Send me some pretty young ladies. Not too smart, though. It’s my experience that men don’t like smart women. And no education. Except for painting and singing, that sort of thing. Yes, send me a few of them and I’ll see that he marries one.”

“How can you be so sure this man wants that type of wife?”

“Mother, I’ve seen— Never mind all I’ve seen, but men marry one type of woman. She’s—” Abruptly, Temperance cut off her words, then gave a guilty look at her mother.

“Like me, dear? Pretty? Helpless? Needy?”

“Mother, you’re a darling and I love you very much. It’s just that marriage—”

“Isn’t for you. I know, dear. You’ve certainly told me often enough. And I know that saving people is a worthy cause, but as you get older it’s nice to have someone to come home to. Temperance, dearest, I know what I’m talking about. I was married for sixteen years, alone for fifteen, and now I’m married again, and I can assure you that married is better. You don’t want to remain alone forever if—”

“Alone? Mother, you’ve never been alone. You had Father for sixteen glorious years, and since then you’ve had me. Haven’t I been a dutiful daughter? I’ve never left you, have I?”

Melanie gave a sigh. “No, dear, you’ve never left me. But—”

“But what?” Temperance said with some agitation in her voice and no little hurt. Then she calmed herself and said more softly. “But what?”

“Temperance, you’re so strong, so sure of yourself. You’re so like your father, so . . . so perfect, that sometimes I wish you were just a little more human.”

“Human? I’m not human?” Temperance was stunned. “Isn’t what I’ve dedicated my life to very human? I can assure you that—” She stopped. “You have one of your headaches, don’t you? Lie down and I’ll call Marie.”

“Yes, dear, you do that. And please call Angus.”

“Him? No, I’ll stay with you. We can finish our discussion and—”

“Please.” With her hand to her head, Melanie staggered to the fainting couch on the far side of the room and had to push half a dozen dresses aside to make room for herself. “Just Angus. Just my husband.”

With a grimace, Temperance left the room. It hurt to have lost her mother so completely.