With Garner and Mercy's careful nursing, Whitney was back in form in a day or two, vowing to imbibe neither wine nor rum except under great duress. Garner watched her mischievous exchanges with Ezra over the supper table of an evening with a certain anxiety. But she proved a woman of her word, drinking only coffee with her meals, as he did himself, and he began to relax, shaking his head at the rusty laughs and quips she elicited from his grandfather. They honestly seemed to like each other. The idea of it genuinely surprised him. Imagine the old boy actually liking somebody.

He tried to think of ways to keep Whitney busy, out of Byron's everpresent contempt and out of Ezra's eccentric influence. What did lady-wives do all day, every day?

"A-absolutely not!" Madeline had sputtered, outraged by Garner's suggestion that she include Whitney in the occasional social invitations she received. "She's uncouth and unpredictable, and I'll not be embarrassed by her crude conduct before my acquaintances."

Garner glowered, thinking about it. Unpredictable, certainly. But Whitney's manners, even that first night at Townsend House, were anything but uncouth. In fact, they were astonishingly good, considering her small experience with elegant customs and polite society. And she was quick indeed at picking up new elements as she encountered them, especially since she'd bargained him into her bed again.

It didn't take a sage to understand the pique that lay behind Madeline's refusal. She was used to being the only female in a house full of men. And though Townsend men never coddled anybody, not even little orphaned granddaughters and nieces, she had been given her way in many things, including the pensioning of her old governess last year. Since then, she'd had precious little direction for a young girl of sixteen. It surprised him that her lack of supervision hadn't even occurred to him before now. "My acquaintances," she had said. Garner frowned. Did she have any friends?

Madeline's refusal left Garner with few possibilities for Whitney. Household duties, ladylike amusements of music, drawing, and needlework, and the consummate feminine pastime of shopping; none of them seemed the least bit promising. In pure desperation he stole occasional hours from the office to squire Whitney about the city himself, showing her the sights, treating her in a tea shop.

He finally acceded to Whitney's persistent request to be shown the Townsend Distillery. He collected her one bright, cold afternoon, in the plush Townsend carriage and escorted her to the south end of the manufacturing district.

It had been some time since he'd visited the large, three-story brick building where Townsend Rum was brewed and distilled. When the family's business enlarged to include other concerns, the company offices had been moved to a more fashionable and financial district of town. There had been no need to oversee the distillery on a regular basis, so long as it continued to produce profitably. Thus he was a little surprised to see the neglected state of the brick building's wooden doors and shutters and the rags stuffed into holes in the dirty glass windows.

The exterior proved a harbinger of the dirt and disrepair inside the distillery itself. Moldy straw littered the worn brick floors and half-rotted crates and old barrels were stacked helter-skelter against the walls. The atmosphere was thick and soured, as were the workers they encountered in the dimly lit sections of the fermenting room and stacking house.

Garner found the master distiller and was soon involved in a heated discussion regarding the state of the place. That left Whitney free to investigate further on her own. The scruffy ill-clad workers followed her into the sweltering heat of the great still itself, then into the finishing room, where she respectfully asked to taste the newest batch. They scrutinized Whitney's elegant velvet skirts and fitted shortcoat and ermine muff and denied her request in rather salty and confrontational terms.

But she was not set back in the least by their gruff, defensive manner. Her fetching eyes lit memorably as she turned a rather fierce Daniels-Townsend smile on them. "Oh, I'll have a taste... if I have to draw it myself." After a steely-eyed bit of staring, she was handed a battered tin cup with a sampling of a just-tamped barrel. Under their glowers, she tasted it and tried not to let her opinion show on her face.

"Wull... ?" came a sullen query from a bull-necked fellow with a frown permanently etched on his face. But before she could answer, Garner strode into the finishing room looking for her. And he wasn't particularly pleased to find her in such rough male company, or with a befouled cup filled with rum in her hand.

"I was just tasting," she explained, holding her ground as she held the cup to him. "And I think you'd better taste as well. This isn't anything like the Townsend Rum your grandpa gave me the other day."

Against his better judgment, Garner did taste. And the sour, watery brew turned his Townsend jaw to red granite. He hastily ushered Whitney outside and into the waiting carriage and they were halfway home before he would respond to the gentle pressure of her hand on his arm.

"You were disappointed," she said summarizing both of their reactions. Apparently Townsend "distilling" was afflicted by the same profit-blind disinterest that affected the Townsend family itself.

"Blessit!" he pounded his thigh with a gloved fist. "Townsend Rum has been the foundation of our family fortunes since the beginning. And to see it sink to such a foul state. That swill's a disgrace to the name."

Whitney watched the muscles work in his jaw and, strangely, felt some of his turmoil in her own middle. A distiller's product was a distiller's pride. "So, do something about it."

"Like what?" he snapped irritably, realizing how harsh it sounded and scowling at himself. "Turn it over to you?"

"Me?" Her eyes danced at the way he read her thoughts. "Why that's a splendid idea. Except... I don't know anything about rum. But your grandpa does and he hates just sitting around all the time. He could teach me, or us and we could..."

Garner's dark glare brought her to a halt. "He's a sickly, difficult old man, Whitney."

"You think so?" Her eyes sparkled at the way he didn't reject her involvement out of hand.

"He's an invalid in a wheeled chair-"

"That he uses like a battering ram. Have you ever tried pushing that chair of his around?"

He turned to her fully, searching the clear jewels of her eyes and the peachy moistness of her cheeks. "What are you saying?"

"Only that I think he's much stronger than anybody credits." The warmth of her smile had resolve melting in the middle of him again. "He is an Iron Townsend, after all."

"I'll think about it."

Garner did think about it. All afternoon, as he showed her the city, he thought of little else. And it slowly came to him that a rather unique opportunity had just presented itself. Whitney wanted something, even if it was a chance to pursue her old trade in unthinkable partnership with his irascible grandfather, and just perhaps himself as well. For the first time he was in a position to do a bit of bargaining himself.

He ordered the driver to take them to the large, bustling open-air market. His eyes narrowed craftily as he observed her excitement when they disembarked into the frosty sunshine. The trader's gleam crept into her eyes, and he could feel the urgency mounting in her as she listened to the haggling and bargaining all around her.

"Ezra and the distillery. I'd warm to the idea much faster," he stood close to her and murmured in her ear, "if you were to put your energies into learning to spend money like a proper wife." He fished in his waistcoat pocket and produced two bright coins, holding them up before her glistening eyes. "Here... try it. Anything you want." He waved a generous hand at the myriad choices in the bustling stalls and carts. When she hesitated, he reached for her gloved hand and pressed them into her palm, closing her fingers over them. "Just ask the price and if it's less than ten dollars, hand them the coins. But no bargaining."

Whitney swallowed. No bargaining. The coins seemed cold and foreign in her hand and she wasn't sure she liked the feeling. As Garner led her through the paths, up and down the crowded aisles, the sounds of trading beset her from all sides, setting her heart thudding in her breast and drying her mouth. She paused several times, eying items that betrayed her growing interest in feminine apparel, but couldn't bring herself to inquire the price or hand over the coins. Each time, her throat tightened, her muscles stiffened, and she had difficulty hearing over the shoosh of her blood in her ears.

Her turmoil mounted as she felt Garner's patience thinning, and she finally turned to him with a strained, "I'm sorry-I can't." She thrust the coins back into his hand and fled toward the waiting carriage.

Townsends, however, were long known for their persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. And in that regard, Garner was the Ironest of Townsends. He waited two days and rather astutely mentioned that Christmas was fast approaching and suggested that she might wish to send something to her father and her aunt. The conflict in her heart was visible in her face at the mention of them. Her green eyes darkened and her mouth grew pensive, but she did agree to shop.

More and more frequently, of late, she had sent her thoughts back to Rapture and her pa and Aunt Kate, wondering and beginning to worry. Kate had promised to visit Blackstone in Pittsburgh and to write Whitney about the outcome of his trial. Now, after almost six weeks, Whitney grew concerned at the silence. Surely the trial was over by now. Had something awful happened to her pa, or to Aunt Kate?

On the appointed morning, she allowed Garner to take her to the elegant shops in the mercantile district, but her heart was clearly not in it. She reluctantly selected a pipe and some tobacco for her pa, and a warm, knitted wool vest and cap, but when it came time to pay for them, she refused to take her hands from her muff, or to meet Garner's eyes. He stood, watching her somber mood, sensing the unusual turbulence beneath it, then paid for the items himself. He ushered her straight into the carriage, dropped the packages onto the opposite seat, and took her by the shoulders to make her look at him.

"What is it, Whitney?"

"It's nothing, I-I just don't like using money. It seems... too quick, too easy, to be right." She managed to look up at him through her long lashes, hoping he wouldn't be too upset, or press her further.

"There's more to it..." he surmised, reading confirmation in the deepening color of her face. "What is it?" But even as he said it, he witnessed her furtive glance at the packages and felt the realization forming inside him.

"My pa, Garner," she whispered, unable to lift her eyes from her lap, for fear of what she might see in his face. "I haven't heard from Aunt Kate. She was supposed to write me when..."Her throat closed before she could finish it.

Garner stiffened slowly. Her father. Blessit. He should have known. And he was the one to bring it up. She was undoubtedly missing her family, and thinking about how they came to be separated... and who was responsible for it. Dread opened like a dark, sinking pool in the pit of his stomach as he sat feeling her withdrawal and fearing it more than he'd feared anything in his life. He had to know, had to see. He lifted her face on his gloved hand and held his breath.

Her eyes were dark in the shadowy carriage, but there was no accusation in her expressive features, no anger or denial. In the troubled depths of her unguarded gaze was a tiny, stubborn little flame that he slowly realized still burned for him, belonged to him. And as he sank toward that flame, his lips parting and his reason reeling, the sadness-tinged warmth of her enfolded him. She welcomed his kiss and accepted the comfort and assurance of his touch. He pulled her against him and delved deeply into her yielding sweetness, savoring both her response and his sense of relief.

When he drew back, a long moment later, there was a telling wetness on her lashes. He absorbed some of her heart's ache with his gloved fingers, so that his smile bore traces of her hurt. "I'll have our lawyers send a legal representative to see that he's being treated fairly. Will that ease your mind?"

"Yes," she felt her heart lightening, "oh, yes."

Four days before Christmas, Garner entered the fashionable offices of the Townsend's senior legal representative, Henredon Parker, and in ticklishly vague terms assigned him the task of determining Blackstone Daniels's current legal status and of providing him legal assistance.

"I see," Parker knitted a graying brow over questioning eyes as he reached for paper and quill. "You wish me to send a representative of this firm to see about this Daniels fellow. And where," he began writing down the particulars, "is the fellow being held?"

"In the town of Pittsburgh." Garner squirmed a bit and fidgeted with his wrist ruffles.

"Pittsburgh? On the frontier?" Parker's horror was soon cloaked beneath a solemn legal demeanor. "And what makes you think the fellow is being held there?" It was a question Garner had hoped to avoid.

"Because," Garner swallowed hard, "that's where I took him after I arrested him." Parker's eyes widened in spite of himself.

"You arrested him?!" Parker leaned forward onto his desk, utterly intrigued.

"I was part of the military force that accompanied Washington into western Pennsylvania to put down the whiskey revolt," Garner divulged. "I need to discover what has happened to him."

"A whiskey rebel?" Parker sat back, thoroughly confused. "You arrested him and you wish to provide him legal assistance? Surely, Mr. Townsend, you can see that this is most irregular."

Garner summoned his most "Townsend" mien and announced, "As it happens, the fellow is my father-in-law." And as if that terse pronouncement should elucidate all, he rose and bid the stunned Mr. Parker "Good day."

Christmas came, lifting Whitney's spirits considerably. She sent precious packages west, to her pa and Aunt Kate, along with letters assuring them of her welfare and begging the same news of them. Then she threw herself into a festive mood by decorating the house with fragrant greens and shimmering scarlet ribbons. The family mustered on Christmas Eve for their yearly attendance at church, and afterward assembled in the brightly lit west parlor to receive a few guests, primarily business associates extending the obligatory holiday visit.

Whitney was the subject of intense scrutiny and instinctively stayed close to Garner's side and avoided the mulled wine punch that was served. It was a profound relief to Byron and Madeline and Whitney, and something of a disappointment to Ezra, that she appeared so ladylike and did nothing outrageous or embarrassing.

Garner watched Whitney's determination to adjust to her new world, with a sense of relief. She steadfastly refrained from bargaining the servants, except in occasional circumstances that caught her off guard. But it bothered him that she still refused to use money when they went out to the shops. It was as though some part of her still resisted her new life with him. It seemed that two integral parts of her, her trader's pride and the deepest regions of her heart, where it lodged, were both still beyond his reach. Until he could penetrate that determined trader's instinct, he was convinced, he couldn't gain access to the wealth of deeper feeling that surrounded it. Determined to do something to bring Whitney around to eastern ways of acquisition, he arranged to leave the offices early one afternoon to escort her to the shops again, with a new plan in mind.

But as he waited in the center hall for her to make ready, Byron blew through the front doors, demanding to see Garner in his study immediately. Garner's gray-blue eyes paled a shade and his Townsend jaw hardened as he read his father's combative mood. But he shrugged his greatcoat from his shoulders and strode back through the house behind Byron.

Whitney came downstairs to find the center hall empty; no Garner, no Edgewater. Garner's coat was tossed recklessly over the polished banister railing. The sound of voices from the west hallway drew her back through the house with a deepening frown and quickening steps. Madeline stood in the arched doorway at the rear of the center hall with her arms crossed and a similar frown on her face. Her glare heated pointedly as Whitney passed. Just outside the half-opened door to Byron's study, she found Ezra, sitting in the hallway, absorbed in the heated exchange going on inside.

Anxiety knotted the nerves in her stomach as she came to a halt a few feet from Ezra, reading the seriousness of the situation in the deep scowl on his face.

"Nothing!" Byron's voice was clear and furious. "Nothing, ever, without getting tangled up in a scandal- some debacle or disgrace! You had a chance to redeem yourself and prove your mettle, to bring back a commendation, some badge of honor from that wretched whiskey rebellion. And where the hell is it?"

"The commendation must have been delayed." Controlled anger ran through Garner's deep voice like a rail of steel.

"Or denied," Byron charged.

"That is not in my control, one way or the other-"

"This is typical of you, Garner," Byron pronounced his name as though it were something disagreeable. "You go out there to bring back laurels and what do you bring back?! Some wine-guzzling little tart-"

"Enough!" Garner demanded, stalking forward. "I'll not hear another word defaming her. She's my wife, whether you like it or not. I wanted her, I married her, and she's going to live here with me. Accept it."

Whitney jolted toward the half-opened doorway, but was caught and restrained by Ezra's surprisingly strong grip.

"I won't accept it-having my house, my family turned upside down by a conniving, loose-hipped little Jezebel!" Byron's florid face was clearly visible through the half-opened door as he taunted. "You've moved her in-inflicted her on us. How long before her tawdry relations descend upon us as well? Cousins, uncles... or her whiskey-distilling father?!"

Byron's calloused charge slapped Whitney physically. At the mention of her father, her blood drained to her knees, leaving her heart thumping dryly in her chest.

"Damn you," Garner growled in a tone so calm it was chilling. "Leave her and her family out of this, Byron. Your real quarrel is with me, as it has always been. I may not be the son you wanted, but I'm the son you have. And there's not a damned thing either of us can do about it!"

"Oh, yes, there is." Byron stalked closer, his eyes glittering. "I can see you never have control of Townsend Companies. I'll not turn control over to you and watch you waste and fritter away what I've spent a lifetime building. You have no sense of dedication or duty and no appreciation of the responsibility entailed in managing such an important enterprise. Do you think I haven't noticed how you abandon your duty at the offices at the merest crook of her finger? You're gone half the time-"

Garner coiled, resisting the urge to lash out physically. "I won't answer to you, to anyone, for my time, or on the conduct of my marr-"

"That's probably what you did out on the damned frontier too," Byron charged, stomping closer, inured to everything but his own righteous fury. "One sniff of her skirts and you abandoned your duty, and what little honor you had left!"

The charge struck Garner square in the chest, like a javelin, dead on center. His face tightened and the dark centers of his eyes pulsed with the painful impact. Byron read those subtle changes as the unwilling confirmation they were, and blood erupted under the skin of his face. "Good God-that's exactly what happened, isn't it?! That's why you had to marry that upstart chit... and that's why there's no commendation. They don't commend officers for failures of duty and honor!"

"Stop it!" Whitney wrenched free of Ezra's frantic hold and burst into the study slamming the door back and startling both Byron and Garner. "How dare you?!" She came to a stop halfway between them, her body rigid, her fists clenched and her eyes blazing.

"How dare you say such things to him?!" she choked, turning on her father-in-law.

"Whitney, stay out of this-" Garner thundered, starting for her, but she was too hurt, too angry to heed him, and advanced on Byron.

"Duty and honor-you wouldn't recognize them if you tripped over them! There's not a man born with more loyalty to his country and to his duty than Garner Townsend, and you're forty kinds of a fool if you can't see that just because he's your son!" She swept a fiercely possessive look over Garner's bronzed Townsend features and broad shoulders.

A pained, contradictory pride surged within her at the stubborn honor that lay at the core of Garner's being. It was that unyielding sense of duty and honor that had required him to arrest her father and crush her beloved whiskey trade. But it was the same, uncompromising honor that demanded he fulfill the vows he'd spoken with her and made him protect and provide for her. It was that honor that demanded he replace her shattered world and perhaps someday the love of her heart. He was a man who had paid the price of duty and-Suffering Stephen!-he deserved better from those whose duty it was to love and support him-from his family!

"You want to know what really happened in Rapture? You want to know just how disgraceful and dishonorable he really was? He did his military duty, destroyed the illegal whiskey, and arrested the valley's major distiller even after he'd spoken vows with me..."

"Whitney-no!" Garner lunged around the table for her, but she darted back, her eyes still locked on Byron's burning face.

"It was Daniels whiskey he poured into the ground; whiskey I helped distill," she rasped, dragging the bottom of her register with her very heart. "And it was my father he arrested. My pa was the one his duty, his honor demanded he arrest. And he did it. He did his precious duty, for you and your swollen, bilious Townsend pride! And when his wretched commendation does come-"

"Dammit, Whitney!" Garner exploded at her, seizing her by the arms and pulling her toward the door as she scrambled to resist.

"No-stop-"

"Not another word, dammit-" he snarled, reduced to brute force by the uncontrollable emotions churning inside him. He ducked, ramming a shoulder into her middle and hoisting her, kicking and flailing, up onto his shoulder. In three long strides he was barreling through the doorway, sending Ezra and Madeline skittering back in shock. They stared, dumbstruck, as he carried her from sight and continued to stare at the end of the hallway as sounds of Whitney's protests drifted back to them.

A growl or a clearing of the throat-something- carried through their shock. And close on its heels came a storm of emotion nearly as intense as the one that had just passed by them.

"She's right, Byron," Ezra snarled, rolling himself partway into the room to face his son with the bitterness of years evident in his lined face. "You are a prize fool. But then, why shouldn't you be? You certainly learned from a master." After a long, acrid visual exchange, he fumbled to roll his chair backward into the hall and growled thickly at his granddaughter, "Help me out of here, girl."

Byron turned rigidly aside as Ezra withdrew, stripped emotionally once again by his father's everpresent contempt. He quaked visibly, battling back the chaos of anger and resentment that Ezra's scathing derision always unleashed in him. Ever since he was a young boy... no matter what he did or achieved or built... it was never...

He choked as pressure built in his chest and distended the veins in his neck and temples. His scorn of Garner's behavior was no worse than Ezra's disdainful treatment of him. In fact, the insight rattled every connection in his body, it was the very same.

Close on the heels of that painful realization came a recurrent blast of Whitney's fierce defense of Garner. How dare the chit presume to "protect" his own son from him? The shocking content of her claims was somehow overshadowed by the raw intensity of them. She defended Garner and his honor like a she-lion. A prickling sense of emptiness opened in Byron's middle. No one had ever defended Byron Townsend. Not his cool, elegant mother, nor his irascible, demanding father, Ezra. And certainly not the delicate, retiring girl he'd taken to wife to satisfy his family.

He stood there, feeling suddenly very empty and very naked beneath his fashionable clothes. Hollow and vulnerable. For the first time in twenty years.

Garner's blood was roaring in all his senses by the time he reached the top of the stairs with Whitney's half-subdued form thrashing weakly over his shoulder. Raw instinct led him to his own chamber and moved his hands to open the door and his feet to kick it closed behind them. He strode to the bed and plopped her down on the edge of it, grabbing her shoulders as she swayed.

"What in Heaven's name did you think you were doing?!" he growled, towering above her, wanting to give her the shaking she so richly deserved.

"I was telling the truth, the whole truth." As she shook off the dizziness, anger rose in its place. "It's about time somebody did. The things he said to you-he deserved to hear it!"

"You had no right to tell them-"

"I had every right," she shoved to her feet, pushing him back a pace. "He made vicious, little-minded charges about my marriage and my husband. Garner, how could you just stand there and let him say such things about you, knowing they were foul, blackhearted lies? He's supposed to be your father-this is supposed to be your family-"

"It is my family and I'll handle them my w-"

"Suffering Stephen! This isn't a family, it's a pack of jackals that have learned to bark percentages! Families are people who share their joys and good times and hold each other up in hard times. Real families want what's best for each other and believe in each other and help each other, no matter whose blood flows in whose veins! The folk in Rapture-Uncle Harvey and Aunt Sarah and even Robbie Dedham-they're my family as much as if we had the same blood. And they care more about you and are more of a family to you than your prickly self-centered Townsends will ever be. Your father, Madeline-they don't care about you, they don't trust you or support you in what you do and want, and they sure don't love you-"

"And I suppose you do?" he thundered.

"Yes, I do!" she shouted, desperate to make some dent in that thick Townsend pride. "I do love you. I had every reason in the world to hate your guts, Garner Townsend, and I wound up loving you, wanting you with everything in me. It doesn't make any sense at all to me that they don't love you, too!"

Garner blanched and fell backward, catching himself on one leg so that it seemed a jolting step. Every word went straight to the exposed core of him. He was suddenly battered by the impact of gale force contrasts; his implacable, unforgiving family, and the openness and warmth of Rapture's people; the Townsend coldness and pride in excluding others, and the vital, generous inclusiveness of Rapture's eccentric family. They had accepted him even when he didn't consider himself acceptable. They'd drawn him into their lives when they had every right to mistrust and reject him.

But there was a contrast more shocking yet. His own family, whose very blood ran in his veins, scorned and derided him because of long-ago embarrassments that he had been too young and callow to avoid... incidents the rest of the world had forgotten years since. But his quixotic little Whitney, who had every reason to hate him, defended him, loved him. He'd accused and reviled her, arrested her father, destroyed her beloved family trade, and dragged her off to live in a "pack of jackals" that barked percentages at each other. And she loved him. He reeled from the impact of it, backing a dazed step, then another, scarcely able to focus his eyes. How could she?

Whitney watched him recoil and felt a frightening gulf between them opening with every step he took. Her blood, was pounding in her head, her chest was heaving. What in Merciful Moses had she said?! Oh Lord. She loved him... she'd told him she loved him... yelled it at him!