The bed was empty when Whitney awakened the next morning. She turned over, wriggling with naked luxuriance in the soft sheets, and waiting for the achy echoes of pleasure in her body to damp before she slid from the bed. She donned her shirt, stirred the embers to life in the hearth, and threw back the drapes to admit the morning. The sun was suprisingly high. Her gaze swept the floor around the bed for some trace of Garner's clothes and found none. He was an early riser, she recalled with a trace of a smile.

As she collected her clothes and drew them on, she couldn't help recalling how they had been removed. He'd followed her defiant exit from the dining room, and instead of the furious lecture she expected, he had listened to her and taken her into his arms. She had been so lost, felt so empty, and he had reached past his family's outrage and past his own righteous anger and gentlemanly prejudices to give her the comfort of his desire. Traces of his "comfort" still lingered in her body... and her heart. It was a tantalizing bit of the "more" she always seemed to want from him. Maybe there was hope for her bargain, after all.

Mercy arrived with a breakfast tray, hot water, and a dark look at the open drapes and the crackling fire Whitney had built. Whitney watched her tidying the bed and changing the toweling on the washstand. It made her uncomfortable, having somebody else do personal things she was used to doing. As her memory enlarged to include more of the events preceding and precipitating Garner's stunning comfort, her face darkened too. The Iron Family thought she'd trapped Garner into marriage for his money... and a life of eastern luxury.

"I'll be building up the fire of a morn and drawin' them drapes, in future, M'am." Mercy finally faced her with a tight, wary expression. "It be my duty. I'd have done it earlier, but I looked in an' you was sleepin'. And the young master, he said to let you sleep."

"Well then, what will you take for your service, Mercy?" Whitney stood and struck a trading pose, leaning back on one leg with her head slightly tilted.

"Why... n-nothing, M'am," Mercy frowned so that the crow's feet above her wary brown eyes deepened. "It's my duty, M'am."

"Not with me, it's not," Whitney informed her. "Now... I'd be willing to help you with your chores every day for a bit of water and the wood I use at night."

"M'am." Mercy's eyes widened slowly as she realized Whitney was earnest in her shocking proposal. "I'd never allow it, M'am. It be purely unthinkable."

Whitney read her shock, and decided with her trader's logic that she'd insulted the woman by offering too little. Her face flamed as she realized that she was essentially a pauper in this great house, with virtually nothing of her own to trade. But then, she vowed, that had never stopped a Daniels from doing a bit of bargaining before.

"Well... you can draw the drapes and stir the fire, but I'll fetch my wood and water myself, then. If you'll just show me or tell me where the woodpile is, I'm handy with an ax."

"Oh-h-h, M'am." Mercy splayed a work-reddened hand over her ample bosom and staggered back, shaking her head. "No, M'am. Not me." And she exited in a flurry of proper gray skirts.

Whitney stood, crimson-faced at having done so poor a job of dealing, and even more determined to take nothing while in this house except what she earned in an honest bargain. No one was going to call her a greedy, conniving fortune hunter again! She'd take nothing but what was necessary for the "living" that was owed her; just food and shelter. She already had enough clothing for decency and warmth.

She washed, nibbled some breakfast, and picked up the tray to carry it back to the kitchen herself. At the top of the stairs in the center hallway, she paused, realizing she had no earthly idea where the kitchen was. Footfalls from behind startled her, and she turned to find Benson hurrying down the hall toward her. His arms were filled with hearth brushes and a bucket, and his worn, oversized clothes and his ruddy face were smudged with ashes and soot. His whole countenance brightened as she returned his tentative smile, and he stopped a safe distance away.

"M'am!" he beamed at the sight of her love-polished cheeks and sparkling eyes. "Ye fairin' well, M'am?"

"Well enough, Benson. And you? How do you like 'gentlemun's gentlemuning'?"

"Oh..." he flushed and looked down. "Wull, the majur, it seems he already had help thataway, so they give me the hearths to tend. It be all right, if n Old Edgywater don't come about too much." Whitney nodded in perfect sympathy. "Oh-" he startled and hastily set his things aside to reach for the tray. "I'll take that for ye, M'am."

"No," she said pulling it back, "I'm taking it back myself, Benson. Just tell me the way to the kitchen."

"Oh, but, M'am..." For every tug Benson made on the tray, she tugged it back.

"What in heaven's name is going on?" Madeline's voice wafted up the stairs, followed closely by Madeline herself. Whitney turned to face her and had to chew a smile from her lips. Cousin Madeline was wearing loopy hound's-ear braids on each side of her head.

"What do you think you're doing?" She turned on Benson the instant she landed on the top step.

"I were jus' offerin' to take the tray back-"

"I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself-" Whitney began.

"Don't be absurd," Madeline turned her pert young nose up at Whitney, "you can't go about carrying things. That's servants' work." She took hold of the tray herself, shoving it into Benson's charge with obvious distaste. "Take it off to the kitchen and then get back to your hearths. Henceforth, you're not to concern yourself with aught but grates and ashes." As Benson reddened and hurried off, Madeline turned to Whitney with a cool, assessing stare that aged her young face.

"Cousin Garner has left instructions that I'm to take you to a dressmaker this afternoon." She eyed Whitney's shirt and brown homespun skirt with obvious distaste. "Undoubtedly to make you more presentable. Make yourself ready, midday."

Whitney recalled her recent resolve and realized this was a perfect opportunity to demonstrate her utter lack of interest in Townsend luxuries. Her lips tightened in a little smile as she leaned toward Madeline with a determined glint in her eye.

"I won't go," she declared flatly. "I already have all the clothes I need."

Madeline drew her chin back, surprised. Her fine Townsend nostrils flared briefly and her hazel eyes narrowed as she evaluated Whitney, searching for the scheme behind her unexpected refusal and finding none. "Suit yourself."

A small, warm spot of satisfaction bloomed in Whitney's middle as she watched bossy little Madeline lift her skirts and sail down the hall toward her room. Then she descended the stairs with a spring in her step, recalling Benson's route of escape and intent on finding the kitchen herself.

In the hallway above, Madeline paused at her door to flick a smug little glance back at the empty top of the stairs. "Well, Cousin Garner," she purred, "you can't say I didn't try."

Whitney located the kitchen at the rear of the huge house, and the staff stopped dead at their tasks to stare at her. She inquired politely as to the whereabouts of the spring or well and the woodpile. After a bit of fuss and consternation by the head footman, she was shown a monumental pile of split logs at the back of the service yard. When she made to load her arms with some of it, she found herself staring into the head footman's outraged face, and then locked in a steely-eyed tug-of-war over the log in her hands. She tried bargaining him, offering to take some to the other upstairs rooms as well if he'd just let her have it.

Minutes later, she strode back into the kitchen, her arms empty and her cheeks aflame. The wretched fellow acted as though the blessed woodpile belonged to him exclusively! She requested a bucket and directions to the well. No bucket, no well. She was close to losing her temper when she noticed bread-makings on the heavy maple table and decided to try bartering a bit of culinary skill for the wood and water she wanted. The gray-garbed cook just stared at her in horror, and there was a shocked murmur among the maids, the scullery boys and the footmen who had collected as word of the young master's wife's presence in the kitchen had spread.

The rotund, rosy-faced cook spread herself between Whitney and the table, sputtering. Whitney was not so perplexed or so easily put off this time. Cooks of all stations were known to be jealous of their venue and their methods. Why, Aunt Sarah would hardly let anyone else even tend the fire when she made some of her special pies.

"Well then," she said, a trader's gleam in her eye as she raised her chin, "ever heard of a Queensbury Fruit Braid?"

She saw the cook startle, and realized yet another of Aunt Kate's snippets of grand eastern life was about to bear fruit... fruit braid, to be precise. She saw the cook's wince of temptation and threw in her perennial trump, that irresistible Daniels grin. And shortly she was up to her elbows in flour and butter and fresh peeled apples and cherry conserve.

Edgewater stalked through the house, finding virtually no one at their proper duties, and when he saw the clutch of servants jammed into the kitchen doorway, he charged into the kitchen in high dudgeon. The sight of Whitney bending over the worktable, her sleeves rolled and her chin smudged with flour, was enough to cause a veritable explosion of indignation.

Whitney wouldn't have minded for herself, actually. But he vented his anger on the cook and the others who were only watching. She wiped her hands and brushed flour from her skirts and retreated to what Edgewater called the "family" part of the house.

Now truly at loose ends, Whitney rambled darkly about the main floor, her hands clasped securely behind her back to prevent bumping or disturbing any of the "exquisite" things she encountered. There were two great parlors on either side of the center hall, filled with silk-covered furnishings and great, somber-hued portraits of old men who looked like they'd all bitten into the same sour persimmon. Probably Townsend forebears, Whitney deduced darkly. Why else would they keep such gloomy-looking faces hanging around? She studied the portraits and shook her head. There wasn't one she would have trusted in a horse trade; flinty, acquisitive eyes; pointy, interfering noses; and arrogant and unyielding chins. Garner Townsend was apparently from a whole line of Iron Forebears, she decided. And the question rose inescapably inside her; how did Garner escape being cast of solid iron, too?

She quickly exited their collective disdain and drifted down a side corridor, peering into rooms and wondering where Garner was. Spying a half-open doorway, she crept closer and peered into a musty, shuttered room lined with what appeared to be shelves stuffed messily with books and papers. Its contrast to the bright, pristine state of the rest of the house was striking, and she ventured inside to investigate. Her nose curled at the air of stale tobacco and moldy dust and she made her way to the window to throw back the shutters. A snuffling inhalation and a startled grunt came from near the fireplace, and she wheeled.

"You!" came a sleep-rusted voice.

Whitney found herself facing old Ezra Townsend, who was seated on his wheeled chair in front of the fire, shading his eyes fron the intruding sun as he glared furiously at her.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" he snarled.

"I didn't realize the room was... occupied." She stiffened, her defenses well-primed from the morning's several disastrous encounters. "I just saw the books and..."

"Humph," he snorted derisively, his gray eyes narrowing on her shapely form and the light of pride in her striking eyes. "What would an unlettered chit like you do with a book? Plundering, more likely. The whelp ought to keep you on a shorter rein."

"I can read, thank you," she crossed her arms firmly beneath her bosom for emphasis, "and a Daniels would never 'plunder.' We only take what we've earned in a good, honest trade."

"That remains to be seen," Ezra wheeled a bit closer, looking her over with a proprietary air. She was a damnably fine piece of work, old Ezra decided, at least on the outside. "How did you do it?" he demanded. And when she canted her head to eye him mistrustfully, he clarified, "How did you trap him into marrying you? He's a fool sometimes, but he's no idiot."

Whitney's cheeks flamed as she met the old man's razor-gray gaze straight on. "No, he's not. Nor is he an arrogant, profane tyrant... nor a wasp-tongued chit... nor a dried up old prune!" She savored the sudden bit of color that leaped into the old man's sallow face. "He's a hard man sometimes, but he's not like the rest of you Iron Townsends at all. And thank God for it!" She squared her shoulders as Ezra's mouth worked soundlessly, and then strode out.

"A-and stay out!" Ezra hurled at her back as she quit the threshold. He grumbled, wheeling himself to the window to slam the shutter, which rebounded on him with a sharp bang. He slammed it a second time and again it refused to stay closed. Snarling a wordless oath, he turned his wheeled chair toward the open door to stare at it.. And as he sat in the warm stream of sunlight, his distemper drained, replaced by an intriguing bit of insight. So the hot little piece defended the whelp, did she?

Chapter Seventeen.

Whitney charged upstairs to the meager sanctuary of her room, roiling inside. She plopped down on the bench at the foot of her bed and stared past her scuffed boot toes into the blue rug. She'd encountered his prickly family, his stuffy old butler, and his cowed and irritable servants, and offended nearly every soul in the household on some level or other... and it wasn't even noon!

She huffed irritably. It was an unholy affront to her trader's pride that they wouldn't let her bargain decently to meet her needs, or even let her do things for herself. On the one hand they accused her of fortune-hunting, and on the other they refused her the dignity of earning her keep! But a Daniels was nothing if not pragmatic, and she was too astute a trader not to recognize a lost cause when she saw one. To continue to bargain and insist on doing the most basic tasks herself would only reinforce their already jaundiced view of her, and expose both her and Garner to further derision. And while she didn't give a flea's ear what his wretched family thought of her, she was coming to care a great deal about Garner's place in their esteem and how they treated him. Their approval was crucial to the control of the Townsend companies that he seemed to want so badly.

His family, she thought with a shudder. Her pa had said Garner owed her a family. But this wasn't a family,it was a nest of vipers! They were cold-blooded and competitive and critical of each other in the extreme. They marked out their territories in "percentages," and defended them with all the charm and civility of snapping turtles. Whitney's frown deepened. They would never be her family, not in a million years! Imagine growing up in such a treacherous climate! How Garner had survived was beyond- A warm wave of understanding washed over her. He'd grown an iron shell, that's how he'd survived ... a stern, righteous, unbending iron shell. Garner's face suddenly rose in her mind as it had been last night, dark-eyed and smiling one of those rare, dazzling smiles, and she melted physically. Inside his iron defenses was a deliciously tender and sensual man, a man who had comforted her with his loving, despite his family's obvious contempt for her and in spite of his own gentlemanly misgivings about her background and behavior. She had begun to think she'd only dreamed such caring, conjured it out of her own longings and need, but it was there, alright.

Her sea-green eyes darkened like a wind-whipped ocean as she recalled the dusky heat of his face, the inflamed velvet of his lips, the caring that was evident in every movement, every nuance of his loving. She relived the way his powerful body trembled against hers, and the way it stopped trembling. Her troubled scowl of minutes before was gradually replaced by a glow that was sultry and feline and utterly new to her-a potent blend of "Daniels" and "Delilah."

Garner Townsend owed her. Her pa was certainly right about that. But she didn't want Garner's money, and she certainly didn't want his family. That left the third part of the bargain... his "manly service." Chills rippled from her toes all the way to her fingertips and the tips of her breasts at the shocking physical memory of his touch on her bare skin. Her lips tingled and she felt herself going warm and liquid inside.

If what her special trader's sense told her was true,she'd probably get more than she bargained for. That wickedly enchanting Daniels grin spread slowly over her face. Maybe a lot more.

That evening, Madeline met her in the center hall with the announcement that Garner wouldn't be home for dinner-something or other about business-and that she'd taken the liberty of ordering a dinner tray sent to Whitney's room. Whitney read the intended snub in Madeline's spiteful little smile and squelched her first impulse to accept the temporary reprieve from his family. She strode past the girl and into the dining room to wait with ladylike patience while dinner was delayed and another place was set at the table. And under three pairs of hostile eyes, she managed cutlery and napkin with an aplomb that would have warmed Aunt Kate's heart. Her only gaffe of the evening was a request for a bit of whiskey in place of the wine she wouldn't be drinking-a request that was immediately and emphatically denied.

The next three days offered Whitney no chance to work at securing her bargain with Garner. He rose well before dawn, went to the company offices straightaway, and returned home late at night, precluding all possible interaction between them. He was avoiding her, she realized with a pronounced sinking in her chest. How was she supposed to make good her bargain if she was never even able to lay eyes on him?

Alone and adrift, she wandered about the house, studying things and trying to occupy her restless energies. But even Townsend House was only so large, and after nearly three days of solitary exploring and trying to avoid his prickly family, she gave up and made her way downstairs determined not to shrink from them anymore.

She pushed open one of the sliding doors to the parlor and stepped inside, unaware it was occupied. She suddenly found herself eye to eye with Madeline, who was ensconced on the silk brocade settee near the fire, beside a very dignified looking woman with graying hair. Talk ceased as the woman followed Madeline's narrow-eyed glare to discover Whitney standing near the door, "I'm sorry..." Whitney frowned uncertainly. "I didn't know if..."

"Well, since you're here-" Madeline put her tea cup down on the butler's tray sitting by her knees and turned a vengeful look on Whitney. "You may as well clear it away." She waved a taunting hand. "Carry the tray back to the kitchen."

Whitney stood a moment, stung unexpectedly by the taunt and the gesture Madeline used regularly with servants. Since she insisted on going about dressed like a servant and acting like one, Madeline's look said clearly, then Madeline would be pleased to treat her like one. The fashionable woman gave her an unseeing glance and turned back to their interrupted conversation. Whitney bristled. She hadn't lived in a fancy house long, but she knew the insult that was intended.

"And Garner's wife..." the dignified guest inquired, "when will we get to meet her, my dear?"

"Oh, I doubt for some time," Madeline purred. "She was raised on the frontier, you know. Not used to our 'advantages.' Do you know... she won't drink wine. Only whiskey."

"Oh, dear. Poor Garner."

Whitney turned on her heel and shoved the door back angrily, striding out into the center hall, nearly colliding with Edgewater.

"Your coat, M'am?" he stiffened at her request.

"It's not in my room and Mercy said that you'd know about it. It's made of gray felt," she gestured irritably down her front, "with polished horn buttons-"

"It is indelibly etched in memory, Madame," he sniffed, with a jaded glance at her clothing. "I was under the impression that Madame would not be leaving the house until her new apparel arrived."

"Well, there won't be any 'new apparel,' thank you." She flamed and couldn't help glancing down at her simple homespun garments. She dressed worse than the servants, Madeline had said. She drew herself up straighter. "And you had better find my coat."

"I'm afraid that's impossible Madame. It's been... burned."

"B-burned... ?" Whitney was perfectly speechless. They took what little she could call her own and burned it?! She finally found her voice on the bottom of its register. "How dare you?"

Trembling with hurt and ire, she pivoted, striding straight for the kitchen and the servants' hall. She had to get out of there for a while!

"I need a coat, any coat!" She took a stand in the midst of the kitchen with her hands on her hips and her chin raised to a defiant trader's angle. "And I'm willing to deal for it." The kitchen staff and other servants stopped dead in the shocked silence. Time was kept by the angry pulse of Whitney's blood.

"Here, M'am." Over Edgewater's sputters and cook's clucks and the shocked murmurs of scullions and footmen, Benson stepped forward unbuttoning his own worn uniform coat. "I'd be proud to give ye mine."

Whitney's throat was too tight and her eyes were suddenly too full to bargain him properly. She simply accepted it and made to put it on.

"No!" Mercy stepped forward, then hurried to the pegs near the kitchen door for her heavy brown cloak. She brought it to Whitney with a solemn, "A woman's cloak's more fittin'."

Whitney nodded mute gratitude as she spun the cloak about her shoulders and strode out the kitchen door. In her wake, a confusion broke loose and the imperious Edgewater lost his temper and had to pound the table with his fist to restore order and send everyone back to their duties.

Late that afternoon, Garner arrived home with an aching head full of numbers and a healthy dread of running into his unpredictable wife before he reached the sanctuary of his room. His efforts to avoid her had netted him too much work and too little sleep in the last three days. He was in no condition to combat his volatile urges toward her... or to surrender to them. He quickly handed off his hat and voluminous greatcoat to a very terse Edgewater, but was intercepted by his petite cousin before he reached the stairs. Madeline dragged him into the east parlor and launched immediately into a detailed list of complaints against the household's newest member.

"... duty to make you aware that your wife has the entire household in a uproar. She persists in disrupting the servants' routines; invading the kitchen, arguing over servants' work. She haggles and bargains for food and necessities like a common fishwife! Good Lord-she insists on carrying things and chopping her own wood and drawing her own water-as if she still lived on the wretched frontier! It's a pure embarrassment to the staff to have to deal with her!"

Garner stood, stunned, with images of Whitney in defiant trader's glory burning in his mind. Bargaining for food and water?! He shuddered visibly.

"And she refused to accompany me to a dressmaker so that she could be made presentable... absolutely refused." Madeline's lashes fluttered, and one dainty hand splayed over her throat as if containing the shock. "She said she didn't want or need new clothes and she wouldn't go. Wouldn't go! And she's been demanding whiskey to drink! Whiskey-like some crude savage-" She swooned, pressing the back of her wrist to her forehead, at which point Garner came to his gentlemanly senses and ushered her to the settee near the fire.

"She refused the clothes?" he ground out from between tightened jaws. The throbbing in his head had just gotten orders of magnitude worse. Dammit! He should have known she'd do something like this... ruin his plan by refusing the clothes. Then she'd set the whole bloody house on its ear... and demanded whiskey to drink!

It was his own fault; blame sank deep claws into his Townsend pride. He'd left her to her own devices, expecting that she'd somehow come to terms with... No, he sternly made himself face the fact, he'd run from her. The turmoil she bred inside him had overpowered his manly sense of duty yet again and he'd fled her. But there was no retreat from something as potent and devastating as Whitney Daniels. He should have known. She was something in his life that had to be confronted, met head on, whatever the outcome.

"... just demanded one of the servant's cloaks and left." Madeline was on the brink of a few artful tears.

"Left?" The news galvanized him. He grabbed Madeline's shoulders. "What do you mean, 'left'?! Where did she go?"

"I have no idea. She just threw one of her little fits and left, hours ago. She's probably gone for good."

Garner was on his feet in a flash, running for the stairs. His heart was pounding wildly as he burst through her chamber door and paused, scouring the room for signs of her. He threw open the wardrobe and slowly released the breath he'd been holding. Her clothes, such as they were, were still here. She wouldn't have gone without them. Scarcely reassured, he stomped back downstairs bellowing for Edgewater to have his horse brought around, then roaring for Benson and a second mount. He was going to find her and when he did...

Whitney's steps slowed in the closing darkness. Dread weighted her feet. She stared down the cobbled street at the looming outline of the great house and wished she could have stayed the night on the commons instead. She felt more at home in the big, old trees and the frozen, weedy fields of nearby Boston Commons than she did in the cold elegance of Garner's house.

"Poor Garner," Madeline's lady guest had said, and those words had echoed in Whitney's heart all afternoon. It was no secret that his family considered both her and her marriage to Garner a major disgrace. But it surprised her to realize that so much of their outrage seemed to be based on what she wore... and drank. And it bewildered her that they seemed to judge upstanding, gentlemanly Garner by the shortcomings in her wardrobe and her taste in liquor. An oddly protective urge swelled in her. He deserved better!

She sighed heavily and paused to look above. There was the evening star winking in the sky, and the cool, crescent moon grinning down at her. She felt a wave of pure longing for Aunt Kate's womanly wisdom and her pa's infectious confidence. And she wondered if they were watching the same moon, the same sky, thinking of her, too. The empty feeling she'd been fighting all afternoon deepened.

Roused from her musings, she entered the carriage turn and hurried up the steps, past a footman holding two horses at the edge of the front portico. Just as she reached for the great brass door handle, the door jerked open and she was bowled back, engulfed in an angry storm of camel-colored wool and heated male force. She stumbled and flailed. A pair of strong hands narrowly kept her from tumbling off the portico, then pulled her into the light from the open door and tightened fiercely upon her.

"You!"

Whitney looked up into Garner's anger-bronzed face and pale eyes and her heart stopped. He was huge overpowering in his caped greatcoat, and he was obviously furious. He growled something else as his eyes raked her wind-mussed hair and dropped to her cloaked form, but the sense of his words was lost in their leonine tone. He dragged her back into the center hall under the shocked gazes of Cousin Madeline, Edgewater, and half the household staff, and kicked the door shut behind them. The sound jolted her ears back to functioning. "Just where the hell have you been?"

"I-j-just went for a walk. On the commons..." She tried to straighten in his grasp, her mind racing to discern the reason for his fury.

"Out alone... in a city you know nothing about?! That is the most irresponsible- " He caught the avid stares turned on them and stiffened abruptly. Pulling her roughly into the west parlor, he released her long enough to draw the huge sliding doors against their audience.

She braced as he turned on her, eyes narrowed, gloved fists clenched. What in Suffering Stephen had she done to rile him so? In two long strides, he was looming over her again, thundering loud enough for the entire house to hear.

"Your behavior is appalling, inexcusable! Going out without escort-without even a word-you could have been set upon or spirited off-I won't have it, Whitney Daniels! You're not to go out alone again:-ever!" His hands closed hard on her shoulders. The shake he intended to give her dampened to a mere quiver as the warmth of her flooded up his arms, releasing a wave of relief in him. Her cheeks were coid-poushed and her eyes were deep tidal pools beneath long, feathery lashes; she was whole and safe and here. But the melting of his worry laid bare other issues that were not so easily disposed of.

"In three short days you've managed to turn this entire household upside-down! And by Heaven, that will stop as well, do you hear?!"