The Southern Devil

by Diane Whiteside

  Sitting across from Morgan at the wedding dinner had been awkward. She’d known every time he’d picked up a knife or fork, turned his head to speak to the lady next to him. She’d even watched in helpless fascination as his Adam’s apple moved in his throat when he drank.

  “Have you seen Morgan?” Cyrus asked, looking over her head.

  Dear God, was he reading her mind? She had to wet her lips before she could answer. “Morgan?”

  “After two days here, the fellow is still three deep in chaps wanting him to ‘invest’ in their old plantations.” Cyrus chuckled, deep and soft. “What they really mean is an interest-free loan to pay the taxes. If he’d just be rude to one of them, the rest would scatter to the hills.”

  Cyrus twirled her for the fun of it, sending her flounce up and over the steps to the musicians’ platform. Jessamyn giggled as he had expected her to.

  “Little cousin has the best manners in Mississippi and the best stories of any Westerner. Pity this is the first time we’ve both seen him since our marriage; I’d like to spend more time with him.”

  Jessamyn sniffed, reminded of Morgan’s numerous sins. “He’s probably inviting them to join in another one of his Western ventures, whose address is undetermined, reports few and far between, and the rewards unknown but potentially great.”

  “Those damn get-rich-quick schemes,” Cyrus commented.

  Jessamyn came alert at the worried note in his voice, realizing he’d just described both his father and Morgan. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Cyrus’s shoulder. She would not mention her own concern that Morgan was shirking his responsibility to the family, since David was managing Longacres, not Morgan.

  The man was shady and untrustworthy a dozen times over, from everything she’d heard in the past six years. Nothing at all like reliable, adorable Cyrus.

  Her beloved husband immediately pulled her closer, possessively, wrapping his arm tighter around her waist. He nuzzled her cheek and she shivered, recognizing the preliminary to a bedroom romp. Her pulse immediately speeded up and she tilted her neck in invitation, just a little.

  “It’s very late. Does my darling feel a little tired?” he whispered, his tongue flickering against her skin. The wicked man had perfected this so that almost no one could see exactly what he was doing.

  Jessamyn gripped his shoulder desperately, her skin flushing under her respectable blue silk ball gown. “Your darling feels the overwhelming need to take her husband someplace private for a lecture,” she retorted.

  He chuckled, added an extra twirl to their dance pattern, and somehow spun them both off the dance floor. Jessamyn found herself in front of the great double doors leading to the staircase up to their room. She laughed up at Cyrus, recognizing how neatly he’d maneuvered her, and slipped out with him.

  Morgan’s mouth tightened as he watched the doors close behind Cyrus and Jessamyn. Somewhere below his chin, Thomas Maley, one of his father’s old business partners, was pontificating about the merits of modern agricultural methods. Modern meaning anything invented after 1790 but before 1820.

  The hell of it was that Thomas Maley’s gibberish was less distressing than meeting Jessamyn again, and far less painful than watching Cyrus and Jessamyn together.

  He’d known seeing Jessamyn again, for the first time in six years, would be concentrated agony. He’d anticipated the hard-edged carnal suffering of his flesh’s reaction to her voice, her scent—the overwhelming urge to leap upon her and have his revenge for ripping away his very definition of himself as a man. He was desperate to have her under him, begging him for more even as he thrust into her—but she belonged to Cyrus.

  What he hadn’t expected was that Cyrus and Jessamyn together were one of the happiest married couples he’d ever seen, fully as content as his parents had been. They shared both laughter and silences together, while seeking excuses to talk to each other. Dammit, he’d memorized every smile on her face when Cyrus was teasing her out there.

  As for their evident physical joy in each other…Morgan had nearly stormed onto the dance floor and torn them apart when Cyrus had twirled her, displaying her ankles to the world. And when Cyrus had nuzzled her cheek and she’d laughed up at him with that look of eager anticipation, then slipped outside with him—Hell, what a fellow wouldn’t do to have the same joy in his life?

  Now that he was becoming established in the world, he’d planned to find himself a biddable wife while he was here in Mississippi. He hadn’t wanted anyone too complicated, just someone to keep his house and bear his children. But who could think of convenience once they saw Cyrus and Jessamyn’s delight in each other, blazing like a beacon before them?

  Morgan slammed down his glass of Madeira onto the table. “You’ll forgive me, gentlemen, but I have another engagement I must attend to. Good evening.”

  He nodded curtly and shouldered past them to the door. He needed a bottle of whiskey and at least one willing woman if he was to forget Jessamyn tonight.

  Chapter Five

  Kansas City, June 1872

  Morgan Evans pushed the signed bank draft across the desk to Halpern and sat back, taking a deep puff on his cigar. The stout man didn’t quite snatch the paper up but it seemed to leap into his hands all the same. No man would let the payment for one hundred custom-made ammunition chests slip by.

  Morgan hid a smile and stood up, stretching as he strolled over to the window. Once he, too, would have been just as impressed by a sum that large. Now it was just another purchase for Donovan & Sons, one of the most prominent freighting houses west of the Mississippi.

  He was almost as accustomed to buying for Donovan & Sons as he was to the two Colts that he’d worn since he was fourteen, or the Bowie knife against his thigh. He flexed his fingers automatically and rolled his shoulders back, the habitual motions of a pistolero keeping his muscles ready for the next quick draw.

  Paper crackled sharply in his breast pocket, rasping against his vest’s silk lining and making him stiffen. The telegram’s words burned in front of his eyes, as alarming as when he’d first read them this morning.

  AUNT EULALIA BROKE LEG STOP NEED HELP STOP CAN YOU FIND JESSAMYN STOP GONE TO VISIT ARMY FRIENDS STOP UN KNOWN DESTINATION AND DURATION STOP MAY BE IN KANSAS CITY STOP GEORGE

  Morgan’s mouth tightened and he drummed his fingers on the window frame, ignoring the busy street below. Here, men came for a quick taste of civilization before returning to the wilds of Texas or Kansas, or parts even farther west. Cattle bellowed from the dockyards a few blocks west, their rich stench reminding all comers of this town’s foundation. Gunshots cracked in the distance, while a train whistled sharply. Brilliantly colored posters touted the dubious delights to be found inside local establishments, while gaudily dressed women paraded up and down in a vivid display of their personal wares. Barkers shouted encouragement and drunks staggered out of the saloons found on every block. The wild vitality normally would have made him grin.

  But now he focused on personal affairs. Cousin George could deal with Great-Aunt Eulalia very well on his own, as he had many times before. But where the hell could the nearly penniless Jessamyn have disappeared to? She was barely surviving on her pension as an Army widow, the only one of his relatives—however shirttail—not to ask money from him, and had been living in Jackson, Mississippi, with Great-Aunt Eulalia. He’d seen her briefly in Omaha a week ago but she’d vanished before he could locate her. After receiving George’s cable, he’d cabled the Donovan & Sons’ office there but they couldn’t find her in any of the hotels or lodging houses.

  Logically, he should ask Pinkerton’s to find her; they had the resources to do so quickly.

  Despite intellectual certainties, now he found himself staring out the window, looking for a slender, black-clad female with a lissome glide. Folly to think George’s suggestion made it likely she’d be here. Jessamyn with the green eyes like a forest glade and the red mouth made to drive a man insane. Jessamyn, who deserved to be throttled�
��or locked in his bedroom—as repayment for what she’d done to him.

  “It’s certainly been a pleasure doing business with a genuine Southern gentleman like yourself, Evans,” Halpern said sincerely, as he finished locking up the draft. “Would you care to join my family for dinner again this evening? Just a simple meal, which my daughter Millicent prepared with her own hands. She’s an excellent cook, as you know.”

  He glanced significantly at the pictures behind him. They’d been rearranged since Morgan’s first visit, so Millicent’s image now held pride of place. Blond, pretty, amiable—any sane man would be glad of a wife like her. On the frontier where Morgan spent most of his time, and where men outnumbered women by twenty to one, she’d have been married within a week of her arrival.

  God knows he should be married by now, with a brood of youngsters. Familial duty required it, society expected it, his wealth anticipated it. Even satisfying his strong carnal desires could be done most discreetly within his marriage vows.

  So why the hell didn’t Millicent Halpern make his cock twitch at all? Or was she another one of the females he was polite to, simply because he didn’t give a damn?

  Hell, he needed to be married, with or without passion.

  Perhaps if he had dinner with the Halperns again, he’d find something in her that would interest him enough to make an offer. He didn’t have to stay too long, since he was meeting the Donovans and Lindsays later for drinks. Morgan hesitated.

  Halpern, a very sharp man, read him accurately. “No need to give me an immediate answer, Evans. Millicent will always be glad to set another place at the table for you. But it’s a hot day and I’m feeling rather parched. Larrimore’s Hotel across the street makes an excellent mint julep. Would you care to join me?”

  “That would be a pleasure, sir,” Morgan accepted, his Mississippi drawl sliding across the other’s flat Bostonian accent.

  Outside, the late afternoon traffic rushed up and down the street in clouds of dust, and pedestrians bustled along the boardwalk. No sign here of a gliding black-clad female on whom he’d sworn vengeance. He could not imagine her lingering amid this wild tumult, since Kansas City held few attractions other than as a place to change trains for places west. As an Army officer’s widow, Jessamyn had friends a-plenty at Fort Leavenworth or Fort Riley, or farther west in Kansas, Colorado, or New Mexico.

  So why did Cousin George think she was here now, when Morgan had seen her in Omaha a week ago? For a woman to shuttle first north along the Missouri River from Memphis, then back south again to Kansas City, implied almost a distracted state of mind. Such a frenzied journey would be so uncharacteristic of the disciplined female he’d known all his life that Morgan dismissed the possibility out of hand. Jessamyn Tyler Evans would not be found in this town.

  Having reached that conclusion, he was able to anticipate an iced mint julep with a sense of relief and rubbed out his cigar in the street.

  Larrimore’s Hotel was a luxurious establishment catering to the area’s wealthy businessmen, complete with marble columns and steps at its entrance, Brussels carpets and brass spittoons throughout its lobby, velvet-covered furniture and flocked wallpaper, and crystal chandeliers and gas lamps. It also rented rooms by the hour, with complete discretion, for any activity a gentleman wanted to perform, as Morgan knew very well.

  Halpern headed for the bar with the ease of long habit. Crossing the lobby behind him, Morgan automatically searched his surroundings for threats, as his years of fighting on the frontier and during the War had taught him.

  Little to worry about from the fat burghers scattered among the chairs and sofas on the first floor.

  A great staircase led up to the second floor and the private parlors there. A man was taking those stairs gracefully, with the ease of an animal in perfect health.

  Morgan grinned as he recognized the fellow. Jeremy Saunders, a Consortium switch and an excellent street fighter, as well. Simply put, he was an extremely well-trained and well-paid gigolo, able to play the predator or the recipient in the carnal fantasies popular among Consortium members. Why, only two nights ago, Morgan had seen him excite at least two women into ecstatic paroxysms with his hands and mouth.

  Years ago, William Donovan had sponsored Morgan into the Consortium, a highly secretive network of private clubs for wealthy men and women. Morgan had enjoyed the training and the companionship he’d found there. But he’d also never forgotten that experience nine years ago that made him seek out the formal discipline offered by the Consortium.

  Smiling slightly as he recalled some of the wilder sessions at Consortium parties, Morgan quickly scanned the balcony above the lobby but saw no one suspicious.

  By now Saunders had reached the second floor. Morgan started to rejoin Halpern, envying Saunders his late afternoon diversion.

  A flutter of black silk next to a white marble balustrade caught his attention. A chill raced up Morgan’s spine and he spun around.

  The woman raised her hand to Saunders before stepping back from the balcony. For that instant, Morgan could see her face clearly in the gaslight. Dark eyes in a pure cameo face, red mouth created to drive men insane…

  Jessamyn was meeting Saunders here in a private parlor? Everything primal in Morgan roared in denial.

  He said something to Halpern, he never knew what. It must have made some sense because the man didn’t raise an objection. At least, not one loud enough to force Morgan’s attention.

  A second later, he was taking the stairs two at a time, a growl vibrating in his throat. Dammit, why did Jessamyn always have to rattle his concentration?

  Jessamyn Sophia Tyler Evans stood with one hand on the sofa in the parlor, uncertain what to do next. This was not, after all, a situation covered in any etiquette manual. She had to explain what she wanted and how long it would take.

  She wished to God, yet again, that Cyrus were still alive. Not dead and buried, leaving her to fight for those trapped in a desperate, plague-ridden city, after a terrified Richard Burke and his sister abandoned Plato, Aristotle, Cassiopeia, Socrates, and the horses. Dear God, they’d told her they would stay to guard the horses, no matter what happened, no matter who tried to steal them in the grips of yellow jack’s madness. Until she could return and take them all to safety.

  When they were children, Morgan would have called this rendezvous a wild prank. He’d have known exactly how to help her, without a word of explanation from her. But she wouldn’t trust him now with a plugged nickel, let alone information about a fabulous treasure.

  So she’d have to hope that this stranger’s honor would prove as strong as Cousin Sophonisba had promised.

  Cousin Sophonisba—technically Cyrus and Morgan’s cousin—had spent decades investing in real estate located in riverfront boom towns. She was also an incredible miser and Great-Aunt Eulalia’s best friend. Jessamyn had spent three days with her in Omaha, trying to obtain a loan. This hotel and the stranger facing her were the result.

  The hotel’s private parlor was as snobbishly respectable as Cousin Sophonisba had described, with lace-edged cloth on every well-polished surface and hand-stitched biblical mottoes on the walls. But Cousin Sophonisba’s miserliness had provided barely enough money and recommendations for this lodging and the gentleman escort to admit Jessamyn into the reading of Uncle Edgar’s will. She’d emphatically refused to loan Jessamyn any larger sums, nor details on exactly how she’d learned of the gentleman escort.

  The highly polished mantel clock ticked imperatively. Fifteen minutes before three in the afternoon. They had to reach Abercrombie’s office by three or else all of this was for naught.

  Jessamyn fell back on the most basic conventions of polite society as a bridge. “Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr. Saunders, while we talk?”

  “Certainly, Mrs. Evans.” Mr. Saunders, a very well-mannered and well-dressed gentleman, moved toward the chair beside her.

  The door burst inward with a single splintering crash and Morgan Evans sprang in
to the room. He was elegantly dressed in a formal black frock coat and gray trousers, neatly tied black cravat, crisp white linen, with the gaslight glinting on his chestnut hair. He might have looked every inch the handsome, wealthy cavalier, except for the naked Bowie knife in his hand and his expression of completely murderous intent.

  Morgan? Here in Kansas City? Dear God, why did he have to be so much more attractive than the very well-mannered Mr. Saunders? Jessamyn snarled, wishing she could once again sneak cod liver oil into Morgan’s maple syrup.

  Saunders spun to face him. His fingers twitched, as if reaching for a weapon, then stilled.

  Was Morgan about to ruin something else for her? “Gentlemen!”

  They both ignored her, deadly fighters very ready to come to blows.

  Jessamyn sprang to her feet, trying not to shriek curses at Morgan. As a frontier soldier’s wife, she’d seen too much violence on the Kansas plains. Bloodshed was only a hairbreadth away here.

  Morgan lifted his left hand slightly. His fingers flashed briefly and he tilted his head, in the barest excuse for a nod Jessamyn had ever seen.

  Something like surprise washed over Saunders’s face. He lifted his right hand in a similar gesture and also nodded, a trifle more deeply.

  Was this some strange new form of game?

  “If you weren’t Consortium, you’d be dead, Saunders,” Morgan announced, his gray eyes like chips of ice as he watched the other. “Since you are, we’ll play this by Consortium rules. I claim first rights to her.”

  “First rights? Who the hell are you, Morgan Evans, to talk about first rights?” Jessamyn demanded, wishing she could hurl lemonade into Morgan’s face as she had when she was six and he was ten.

  Morgan’s eyes ran over her briefly before returning to Saunders. Dammit, he was still as deadly as a mountain lion and handsome as a dream of sin.

  Why was she thinking about that now?

  “Are you denying that I was the first man to have a taste of you, before you married my cousin?”