Temptation

It is l909 and Temperance O'Neil is a woman ahead of her time. She's happy and devoted to her career helping single mothers on the streets of New York. But her new stepfather, Angus McCairn, does not approve. He makes her an unlikely offer: to go to Scotland, pose as housekeeper to his nephew James, and find him a wife, secretly. If she succeeds, he'll allow her back to New York.

Temperance -- smart, passionate, as stubborn as her stepfather -- is determined at any cost to win her return passage. But she has taken on far more than she expected. James McCairn, Laird of Clan McCairn, is no cultured gentleman but a strapping, rough-mannered farmer, rude and brusque. There are pigeons roosting in the kitchen and chickens in the bedroom. Marriage is the last thing on his mind...

In 1909 New York City, Temperance O'Neil is an upper class intellectual exploring the few public forums allowed her: the campaign against the tenements and the emancipation of women. When her stepfather, Angus McCairn, demands that Temperance move to Scotland to begin a more proper life, she is stuck. Dependent on his control of her money, Temperance moves to Scotland but makes his life a circus of women's committees and good works. To distract her, Angus makes an irresistible offer--once she has found a wife for his reclusive nephew, James, she may return to New York with a modest stipend. Temperance agrees, and heads for the remote laird.

Once Temperance arrives, however, she realizes that the challenge of finding James a wife is equally as intimidating as the prospect of cleaning up a tenement. The house is in shambles, the local town depressed, and his welcome perfectly horrible. Faced with this task or the return to her stepfather, Temperance digs in and focuses all her energies on making James presentable and finding a willing bride. Impressed by her tenacity, James begins to care for her, and it looks like the search for a wife may be over, if Temperance agrees.

Temperance is the heroine we've been waiting for. The descendent of Jane Austen's women, she is smart, passionate, liberated, and true to her own ideals. While at the denouement of most stories the heroine melts into a slushy pile of self-contradictions, Deveraux's character stands strong in her convictions and wins the respect of the readers, if not her fellow characters. Just like the readers, romance heroines are securing the man, the fortune, and the good ending through the quality of their characters, and not by the leverage of their charms. Temperance is the hero that we all want to be, and Jude Deveraux's work is an entertaining medium for inspiration.--Nancy R.E. O'Brien