To Seduce a Texan. Georgina Gentry

glanced back. Behind him, his three friends strung out in a line, plunging their horses into the Red River and swimming toward Indian Territory. He’d gotten them into this mess and now he’d try to get them out. It all depended on robbing that fat bank in south Kansas.

      Chapter One

      Early October 1864

       The president’s office of Prairie View Bank

      He was either going to have to murder Rosemary or marry her. Right now, he couldn’t decide which would be the most distasteful. Banker Godfrey St. John leaned back in his fine leather office chair and cleaned his nails with his pocket knife. He gazed out into the busy lobby where customers gathered, excited about the coming celebration. From every post and beam hung large banners adorned with bright ribbons shouting, “Welcome Home, Rosemary!” “Rosemary, We Missed You!”

      Like I’d miss an impacted tooth. Godfrey grimaced and brushed a speck of lint off his expensive striped suit. As far as the town folk, they hardly knew her, but any kind of a celebration was welcome with the war dragging on.

      It was a hot day for early October, he thought as he snapped his pocket knife shut and dropped it in his coat pocket. With a resigned sigh, he pasted a smile on his handsome face, ran his finger over his tiny mustache, and walked out into the lobby to mingle with the customers. He hated being so close to such hicks. “Ah, good day, Mrs. Hornswaggle, you’re looking well.”

      The fat widow gave him her brightest smile. “Thank you, Mr. St. John. But I’m feeling poorly. My lumbago, you know.”

      “So sorry.” He walked past her before she could engage him in more conversation. As a rich widower, he knew he was a target for every woman in town.

      “We’re all excited about Rosemary’s return,” she shouted after him.

      “Aren’t we all?” He turned and nodded, thinking about his stepdaughter, and frowned. Plump and plain Rosemary was due in on the noon stage and he could only hope it got attacked by Indians or fell off a cliff, which wasn’t too likely on the flat plains of southern Kansas. Damn her mother, anyhow. Agatha must not have trusted Godfrey after all since he’d discovered after her death that her only child, Rosemary, was to inherit the bank on her twenty-first birthday, less than three weeks from now. Godfrey only inherited if Rosemary should die, and she was healthy as a draft horse and about as appealing. Ye Gods! He was out of luck unless he took matters into his own, well-manicured hands. And after all the trouble he’d gone to get his fingers on this fortune.

      So to maintain control of the bank and the estate, Godfrey would either have to marry Rosemary or murder her. There would be gossip, of course, if he married his own stepdaughter with her mother dead a little over a year, but he had gone too far to give up all this money now. Besides, he was such a pillar of the community that folks would soon forgive him. He thought about wedding Rosemary and frowned. Ye Gods! Maybe he ought to reconsider murdering her.

      Godfrey continued walking through the lobby, greeting people, shaking hands.

      The local minister hailed him. “Great day, isn’t it, Mr. St. John, Rosemary due home and all?”

      Godfrey shook hands with the frail man. “Yes, indeed, Reverend Post, I’ve missed her so much. However, you know, I thought a Grand World Tour would be good for her after the death of her mother. Agatha’s loss was so tragic for all of us.”

      Reverend Post murmured agreement.

      Actually Godfrey had hoped Rosemary wouldn’t survive the Grand Tour. He’d hoped she might fall off the Great Wall of China, clumsy as she was, drown in a Venice Canal, or get carried off to some sheikh’s harem or maybe trampled by an elephant. No such luck.

      “So tragic, Agatha’s death,” the old minister said.

      “Certainly was,” Godfrey nodded, “but life goes on.”

      Or would, if I could figure out what to do about my stubborn, plain stepdaughter. He returned to his office, sat down in his expensive chair, and reached for his pocket knife. He cut off the tip of a fine Havana cigar and lit it, considering his options. The new Union fort that was being built just outside town was drawing more settlers and more money. With that in mind, Godfrey didn’t intend to give up control of the only bank in Prairie View.

      In the early autumn heat, his office window was open and he watched four weather-beaten men ride down the dusty street and rein in near the bank’s entry. Looked like country yokels, maybe cowboys, Godfrey thought as he watched them dismount.

      The tallest of the four tipped his Stetson and nodded to a passerby. “Howdy, stranger, where can we find a stable for our horses and a good saloon?”

      Texans, Godfrey thought, sneering at the drawl. Now what are they doing so far from home, especially with a war going on? The quartet looked tan and dusty like they’d been on the road a long time. The tall one listened to the local and nodded. “Much obliged. We’re mighty thirsty.” Then he led off with long strides, followed by a younger man with red hair and big ears and two old codgers sporting ragged gray beards.

      Godfrey glanced at the big clock in his office and sighed as he smoked. If Indians and nonexistent cliffs didn’t stop her stagecoach, his stepdaughter should be arriving within the hour.

      Rosemary’s stage rolled down the dusty road at a fast clip, moving toward Prairie View. She was the only passenger as she leaned back against the coarse horsehair cushions and sighed, wishing she was headed some place, any place but there. It was hot, so the isinglass curtains had been rolled up. While she sweated, fine dust blew in to coat her face, clothes and big plumed hat.

      Ladies don’t say “sweat.” She could almost hear her dead mother’s scolding voice. Men and horses sweat, ladies glow.

      “Well, I sweat, Mother,” she said aloud and then felt foolish to be talking to herself. She and her mother had never had a good relationship, and it had worsened when Agatha Burke had married that sleazy Godfrey St. John. But then Rosemary had always disappointed her mother for looking too much like her plain and rotund father. She had disappointed her father, too, who wanted a daughter as beautiful as his upper-class wife. Rosemary could never please either of them, no matter how much she tried. When Rosemary finally realized that, she had retaliated by becoming stubborn and difficult. Even being sent off to the fancy finishing school that Mother had attended back East hadn’t done much to turn Rosemary into the fine and elegant lady Mother had longed for. Neither had that Grand Tour her stepfather had insisted she take after Mother’s death.

      Rosemary took out a handkerchief and mopped her steaming red face. Her corset was so tight she could hardly breathe, but her silhouette was still rotund.

      Well, she didn’t like herself much either. With the disapproval and disappointment of her parents, Rosemary never felt loved, and so she comforted herself with food and romantic novels, which only led to more disapproval.

      Speaking of food, she wished she had a sandwich or some cookies right now. That would keep her mind off her unhappiness. Godfrey would think she should have worn the light gray of mourning, but she’d gotten grease from a fried chicken leg on her light gray silk dress and she wasn’t certain it could be cleaned.

      Maybe Agatha was right, Rosemary would always be a disappointment and no one would ever love her except for her money. So now, as the stagecoach bumped along toward Prairie View, Rosemary daydreamed as usual that she was someone else.

      Today she was Lady DuBarry, the beautiful mistress of kings and the most slender, elegant woman in all France. Of course her powdered wig was coiffed in curls beset with diamonds, and a beauty mark accented her lovely face.

      She leaned back and smiled in her fantasy. She wore a gold and silver ball gown, rolling along in her private carriage toward the chateau where a giant ball in her honor was waiting. There handsome dukes and earls, no, it would be marquises, would vie for Lady DuBarry’s attention while she laughed behind her dainty fan and men begged to drink champagne out of her tiny slipper and threatened duels in her honor.

      “Oh,