Southern Charms Read online

  SOUTHERN CHARMS

  Trana Mae Simmons

  Prologue

  Humans were such a pain at times—such fun at others.

  Fatima woke leisurely in the bedroom of her opulent thirty-room castle hidden away on the edge of the universe. Lips curved dreamily in contentment, she contemplated her waking thought. She so enjoyed interacting with humans—aiding their love lives with her keen matchmaking abilities and magic. But the best thing about her life was pampering herself in well-deserved luxury after an especially trying adventure.

  Snuggling into the satin-covered, goosedown pillows, she wiggled into a decadently cozy position on the featherbed, then re-adjusted the silk sheets and downy comforter. A slight chill tinged the bedroom air, the temperature she preferred when she slept. As intended, her snug cocoon was all the more toasty in contradiction.

  No humans intruded here. No humans even knew this place existed. Their...well, human minds wouldn’t understand the indolent laziness her magic afforded her. Might even be jealous of it.

  She did share one trait with that race, however. After a while, the urge to find some industrious goal in life surfaced.

  Pandora, her plump cat, preferred the chilly air in the room, also, and refused to sleep beneath the comforter. She did, however, curl up in a not-so-dainty ball against the small of Fatima’s back. Luckily Pandora slept in the same position all night through—most of the time. When the huge cat changed position, the featherbed and any occupant swayed with the movement.

  Fatima’s friend, Cupid, once horrified Fatima when he suggested she put the white cat on a diet.

  “I would never think of doing such a terrible deed!” Fatima had told him. “Why, I know in my very bones Pandora prefers to look like a fluffy cloud gliding through life instead of a svelte but hungry shadow!”

  Cupid didn’t understand, of course. He’d muttered something about sleekness and attractiveness, like a typical dense male.

  “Some people prefer to hold a proper armful of what they love,” she’d told the silly man with the bundle of love arrows on his back.

  When she had glanced at Pandora for confirmation, the cat’s bright blue eyes blinked once in assent, her lips stretched into that smug cat’s smile of haughtiness. The next time Cupid dropped by, he somehow missed seeing Pandora and tripped over her corpulent body, arrows flying in all directions. Fatima hadn’t quite grabbed her magic wand in time to turn the marble-floored entryway into a bed of feathers, but Cupid mostly bruised only his dignity. Well, except for a small black and blue spot that showed up on his elbow after he cracked it against a stone table.

  Fatima flinched, recalling the time she inadvertently hit her crazy bone on a door jamb. She hadn’t heard Cupid disparage Pandora since.

  The object of her thoughts stretched just then, a rumble purring in her throat. A few seconds later Pandora rose and stalked to the head of the bed, the mattress giving in the wake of her progress. When she settled on the goosedown pillow next to Fatima’s head and emitted a plaintive meow, Fatima sighed and turned over to face her.

  Propping one palm under her cheek and reaching out to stroke the cat, Fatima asked, “Are you restless so soon, too? I have to admit, I’m about satiated with all this luxury myself. It’s time to find another set of humans to work with, don’t you think? That’s the line I was thinking along when I woke anyway.”

  Pandora yawned, blinked, and bobbed her head. The cat enjoyed their adventures as much as Fatima did. People who thought cats only wanted to laze their way through life, being spoiled and pampered unceasingly, didn’t know the animals at all. Like her, Pandora enjoyed their recoupment time, but after a while, the serene, carefree life paled. It was time to find another difficult set of humans completely unaware of their mutual suitability, and show them they were meant for each other.

  Cupid might fancy his arrows, but Fatima much preferred interacting with her chosen couple and sharing the period during which they fell in love. She and Pandora truly enjoyed watching their charges change as they helped them along that rocky trail to happiness. After all, what better deed could a fairy godmother do for her chosen young lady than show her the road to happy-ever-after?

  Pandora meowed, and Fatima glanced into her pet’s eyes. Was that a hint of hesitation in Pandora’s blue depths?

  “Now, Pandora,” Fatima said. “Granted, that last adventure was a little bit more difficult than I’d anticipated. But think of the fun we had. And think of the satisfaction when we finally did get those two to admit they loved each other!”

  Pandora yawned and closed her eyes.

  “Fine. So you don’t want to think about it. But we allowed ourselves some extra time to recover from that adventure, so we should be in perfectly fine fettle to set out again. Besides, the easy ones aren’t nearly as much fun, remember?”

  Pandora sighed and opened her eyes. Fatima supposed the cat was agreeing with her.

  Fatima frowned, pondering what struck her fancy this time while she continued to stroke Pandora’s fluffy white coat. It was ten years yet until the turn of the century, and given the changes she’d seen the last few years, the speed of new wonders sure to develop in 1900 and beyond would no doubt dizzy a person’s mind. Out of all her nine hundred and fourteen years of being a fairy godmother, she hadn’t enjoyed anything more than the wild, woolly west period. It was almost a thing of the past already, and she would miss it.

  But, she mused, not in Texas. Texas was pretty much the last frontier. She doubted Texas would ever succumb to the civility and sophistication of the rest of the world. In Texas, cowboys and boots and originality would never die.

  “What do you think of going to Texas, Pandora?”

  “Meow!”

  That sounded like agreement to Fatima. She loosened her mind for a few minutes, then smiled in satisfaction. Yes, Texas it was. But first her journey would start in New York City. She wouldn’t stay there long, however. She much preferred the wide open spaces, like where her hideaway was hidden in the beautiful, isolation at the end of the universe.

  Chapter 1

  Shane Morgan closed his mother’s bedroom door.

  Gently, he reminded himself. After all, his dear mother claimed a debilitating headache, despite the bright sunshine flooding her room. Everyone knew headaches responded to shadow instead of light. Were he to pretend to walk off, then sneak back and peek into the room, he’d be willing to bet his mother was up at her writing desk instead of lying prostrate on her bed, a weary hand across her brow.

  Shane shook his head in half-laughter, half-loving mockery at his mother’s attempt to manipulate him. No attempting about it, he corrected himself with a chuckle. His mother left him no choice but to abide by her wishes—unless he wanted her sighs and mournful face to spoil every evening meal until he gave in. Mother so yearned to actually experience the turn of the century into the nineteen hundred millennium. She’d just told him so. But she wanted no unresolved problems marring her life while she waited for that once-in-a-lifetime experience—even if it took ten years to clear them up.

  Shane’s expression sobered. God, what would he do when she actually did go? But the doctor assured him there was no reason to be alarmed about his mother’s physical health. It was one thing, however, for his brain to understand that his mother could maneuver him so easily into fulfilling her desires, another to believe it in his heart.

  Texas, he growled silently. His mood shifted from amused tolerance at his mother to sullen irritation at this irksome new demand on his time. Shoving his hands into his trouser pockets, he headed for the stairwell.

  Who the hell in their right mind went to Texas in the summertime? Everyone with any sense was out of New York City during the fetid heat, but they were sum
mering in the Catskills or at Martha’s Vineyard. Not one of them went to a place where you had to weave your way through piles of cow dung to cross a street, and where the heat would make this town feel like fall in comparison.

  Texas. What the hell could make him go to that godforsaken state right now? Not a what, but a who possessed the ability to send him off to board a train and endure that long trip to a state with a climate so close to their minister’s warnings about hell’s. He would rather walk naked down a busy New York City boulevard, but Mariana Catalina Morgan could send him to Texas with no more difficulty than she’d just effected.

  Immersed in his thoughts, he rounded the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, plowing into the little housemaid-in-training his mother had hired last week, who was placing a vase of fresh flowers on a small table. Vase, water, flowers and housemaid flew in different direction.

  “Sir!” the maid said amid her expelling breath when she skidded across the polished oak floor on her rump and hit the far wall.

  “Good God!” Shane hurried over and helped her to her feet. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you standing there. Are you all right?”

  “Fine, sir,” she said, although she was far from it, as her pained breathing indicated. “Please. I need to clean the mess before Madame comes down to see what the commotion is. I dassan’t let her see what I did.”

  “For pity’s sake, it was my fault, not yours. Sit down a minute.” Shane easily pushed her into a hall chair and then handed her his handkerchief to wipe the water from her face. But the longer he stood there, the more he could see that the maid was more worried about taking care of the broken vase and ruined flowers than her own self. Sighing, he finally walked away and let her handle her duties. The maid would find out soon enough that his mother was a big pushover with her servants.

  Mariana. His mother. The woman who, a few minutes ago, begged him to follow up the latest report from the Pinkerton she hired two years earlier. The mother who, when she turned sixty, for no apparent reason began believing every day might be her last one on this earth. Who wanted no loose ends left in her life, the most important one being the reason she hired the Pinkerton Agency.

  And the agency had done its usual stellar job, no doubt with the assistance of the unlimited funds his mother made available to them. They had tracked down a woman they claimed was the missing heiress—the daughter of his mother’s deceased childhood friend.

  All that remained now was for Shane to confirm the information in the report—a job his mother would most certainly undertake herself if Shane balked at abiding by her wishes.

  Shane stomped into the library, which he also used for an office, and over to the well-stocked bar. Try as he might, he couldn’t keep from glancing at the Queen Anne clock on the mantle as he picked up the brandy decanter.

  Darling, drinking before the cocktail hour is just not done, unless it’s in the privacy of that dreary old men’s club you belong to. His mother’s voice again.

  At that moment the clock chimed three. Four more hours until his mother felt it an appropriate time to partake of liquor. Shane picked up the decanter, jerked the top off and drank straight from the bottle.

  The brandy went down the wrong way, and Shane choked, spitting brown liquor all over the carpet. After he quit coughing, he glared at the decanter as though it were its fault, then at the ceiling to see if his mother’s disapproval from above somehow caused the mishap. Sighing in acquiescence to at least one of his ingrained strictures of decorum, he poured a crystal goblet on the bar three-quarters full and carried the goblet with him to the chair behind the desk.

  He sagged into the chair.

  Don’t mess with Shane Morgan.

  Shane, he’s honest as the day is long, but don’t cross him or try to steal from him if you value your life or want to continue doing business in this town.

  You try any shit on Shane Morgan, he’ll shit back on you double.

  Shane knew what they said about him—fostered their attitude without qualm in the business world. But a tiny slip of a woman with a name way too large for her barely-big-enough-to-throw-a-shadow body could let one tiny tear sneak from one mournful, beautiful blue eye and he’d cave in to her wishes!

  He downed half the brandy. It found a safe, warm path to his belly this time.

  He reverted to his childhood custom of calling her Mama for months after the steamboat explosion a year and a half ago. But no one else except his Aunt Blessing dared call Mariana anything short of Mrs. Morgan.

  No one else could imagine the strength beneath Mariana’s deceptively tiny frame the first time they met her. She looked like the perfect society matron, someone a man might want to take under his arm and shelter against the world. She used that appearance when it behooved her wishes, too.

  Yet Shane knew how fast his mother could shed her feminine demeanor and bend everyone within striking distance to her will. How quickly she could erase any misconception someone might have that her tininess meant she was weak.

  He finished the brandy and rose to refill his glass. Above the mantle hung a portrait his mother had had done a few years ago. He faced it.

  “Mother,” he said, saluting with his brandy. “To you.” As soon as he took a swallow to acknowledge the toast, Shane sat down.

  Mariana proved her steely strength more than once. After she received the telegram informing her that Shane had been horribly injured, Mariana Morgan made it from New York City to St. Louis in two days time. She bullied railroad executives into ordering her personal Pullman car hitched to any train headed the direction she needed to go. And she borrowed an engine and travelled alone on the connecting tracks that didn’t have a scheduled train for her to hook onto. Conflicting schedules, also, were rearranged to suit her need for swiftness and desperate desire to reach her son’s side.

  Mariana’s nursing no doubt saved Shane’s life, but the scars on his back, and left arm and hand, were permanent. He wore long sleeves even in the summer, but refused to wear a glove. Let his scarred and mottled hand remind people of what he had gone through.

  It didn’t do any good to hide it, since everyone knew about it anyway. His fresh injuries sure as hell had made Anastasia’s eyes fill with revulsion, even when she couldn’t see the rest of his body.

  He had heard the whispers. Anastasia broke their betrothal less than a week after he and his mother returned to New York City. Anastasia told one friend, who told another, who spread the word around, that Shane was now loathsomely mutilated. Horrified, her friends whispered that Anastasia couldn’t bear the thought of living with a man so disfigured.

  Shane snorted and finished the rest of the brandy in one swallow. Truth be known, Anastasia couldn’t bear the thought of making love to his less than perfect body. She hadn’t been after his money, since her own father was filthy rich. But she enjoyed making love and intended it to be a big part of any relationship with the man in her life. Too bad Shane mistook making love for being in love.

  She’d had no intentions of waiting until they were married before sleeping with him. Thought herself so modern and so up-to-date in knowing how to avoid pregnancy. In hindsight, Anastasia wouldn’t have lasted through the engagement without lovemaking. She hadn’t been a virgin. And she had torn at his back and meow’red like a cat in heat, never sheathing her claws, the times he bedded her before the explosion. She couldn’t have endured having to learn to avoid his scars.

  “The Beast,” Shane murmured, and saluted the air with his brandy glass again.

  That’s what they called him. One of his friends got drunk one night and thought it hilarious to tell Shane about his nickname. The ex-friend hadn’t thought it so funny the next morning when he couldn’t see out of one eye and had trouble eating with his painful jaw.

  “Sir?” Withers said from the doorway, wrenching Shane’s thoughts from the past.

  Grateful for his valet’s appearance, Shank arched a brow in inquiry.

  “Madame has informed me to pack
your things for a trip to Texas,” Withers said. “I sent Cook’s son to the station to retrieve a current train schedule and will begin arranging your bags immediately. When will you depart and how long will you be gone, sir?”

  Making a snap decision, Shane said, “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but we’ll leave on the first available train in the morning, Withers. Pack a bag for yourself, too. You’re going with me.”

  Withers’ face paled. “To Texas? Oh, sir, please. I have no business in Texas.”

  “I haven’t lost anything in Texas either,” Shane spat, “but Mother appears to think she may have. And you’re my goddamn valet, Withers, so you’ll go where I go. Pack the sturdiest but coolest clothes I have. We’ll stay in a hotel in Fort Worth, if they have one that’s at all suitable in that cow town. We can buy clothing more appropriate to the territory there if we need it.”

  Withers gulped. “What do they wear down there, sir?”

  Shane waved his brandy glass. “Oh, you know. Those Levis and Stetson hats. We’ll each need some. And we’ll want a pair or two of heavier boots than the English leather ones we use for riding now. I hear there’s poisonous snakes by the thousands in that part of Texas, so we’ll want sturdy enough boots to deflect their fangs if we run across one. Those should be available in that western town.”

  “S...snakes?” Withers asked.

  “Rattlesnakes. Huge ones, longer than a man and as big around as a man’s thigh.” Shane caught sight of himself in the mirror over the fireplace. An evil look filled his face, and grim satisfaction seeped through him when he looked over at Withers and saw the valet’s hand tremble as he smoothed his sparse hair.

  For just a minute, guilt stabbed him at his rather heartless treatment of his valet. But then he recalled all the times Withers had helped his mother drill etiquette rules into his mind. These days, he totally enjoyed shaking up Wither’s prim and proper comportment.

  “I understand they can make a complete pair of boots out of one snake’s skin,” Shane mused loudly, “and they eat snakes down there, too. Grill them over a campfire, and they’ll feed a family for a week.”