She tried to read the strange, shocked look on his face, the dazed half-frown he wore, and her vaunted trader's acuity utterly failed her. She had recklessly made her last offer in the most important bargain of her life, and had no idea whether it would be accepted or rejected.

"We-11..." the strange waver in her voice was caused by her heart beating in her throat. "I just mean, you're so diligent and upright and dutiful, everybody in Rapture thought so..." She groaned inside as his eyes focused meaningfully on her's and his scowl intensified. "And you're honest-you've always been honest with me. And honorable-you say you'll do something and you do it or die. And you're strong and self-controlled even in the face of monstrous provocation and... gentlemanly and temperate and very moral- You wouldn't have bedded me at all if I hadn't crept into your room like a Delilah-"

"You think not?" he came to life, lunging at her, catching her against his hardening body in a fierce grip. His face bronzed and his eyes darkened dangerously. "Well let me tell you how it really was in Rapture, Whitney Daniels! From that very first afternoon, when I found myself spread over your delectable little body,you're all I thought about, your full breasts, your hard little nipples and the softness of your lips, your long, sleek legs. For weeks I stalked about Rapture in a state of blind, consuming rut, wanting to both strangle you and throw you down and mount you on the spot! You embarrassed or humiliated me every time I set eyes on you, and all I could think about was what it would feel like to bury my aching flesh inside you-to have you hold me in your arms and feel your softness in mine." His arms around her tightened, overcoming the last resistance of her hands against his chest, and his head lowered above hers, crowding everything else from her consciousness. "You don't know how many times you came within a hair's breadth of finding yourself flat on your back, wench. On your own bed, in the woods, against your damned barn wall, in the middle of my own men's camp... your virtue lived a damned perilous existence. It was just a damned good thing I didn't realize it existed until after you tried to bribe me with it!" He was holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. "B-but I didn't try to... I only wanted a prop-" "A proper bargain with me-I know that now. Dunbar clarified that little point for me. But, you see, I was all too willing to believe the worst of you. Even while lusting after you with every particle of my being. I was a pompous, arrogant, self-righteous, temperate, diligent, moral... sham! I did abandon my duty and honor. I knew you were involved in the whiskey trade somehow and I didn't do a thing about it. And I knew I had no business touching you, kissing you, but I didn't do a thing about that, either. I wanted you more than I wanted commendations or honor or my cursed family's approval- Dammit, that's the kind of man I am... not some paragon of manly duty and moral rectitude! I married you because I was forced to, not out of any sense of honor. I arrested Black Daniels because I was forced to, not out of some elevated patriotic duty. And I brought you with me to Boston because I couldn't stand the thought of letting your desirable little body out of reach, not out of some noble notion of holy matrimony! That's the kind of man I really am-greedy, distractible, profane, lustful - Dammit, I'm lustful!" he growled, arching hard against her, making her feel the insult of his arousal.

"Now-" his eyes glittered with challenge, "do you still love me?"

Chapter Twenty.

Whitney looked up into the turbulent depths of his soul, bared in his face, and recognized the importance of the intimate access he offered her. He risked opening the pain, the disappointment, and the raw, stubborn hope that lay in the depths of his being, to her. The insight sent an ache slamming through her.

She bit her lip and nodded.

His eyes closed. And after a long, breathless moment his frame melted one desperate degree. "God... don't say that, Whitney, unless you really mean it. Say you want to be my wife, say you want my loving or even my money."

"I do want your loving," she spoke through the tears in her eyes and voice, "and I do want to be your wife. But I also happen to love you, Garner Townsend. Greedy, distractible, lustful old you. Generous and tender and painfully honest you. Handsome, pleasureful, and capable you. I know exactly what kind of man you are." She slid her arms around his neck and rose onto her toes to hug him fiercely. "And I do love you."

One last instant of hesitation, one last heartbeat of doubt, and Garner's arms crushed her to him, surrendering to the storm of need roaring through his entire being. His mouth sought hers hungrily, tasting the saltiness of her lips, absorbing the joyful eagerness of her response.

She loved him! He picked her up and whirled her around, delirious, giddy from the sudden release of pressure inside him... she loved him!

"My laces-" Moments later she managed to slide her passion-bruised lips aside enough to insist. But her mouth was soon captive again, being plundered with exquisite Townsend precision as his hands obliged.

"My buttons," he demanded in a voice like rough velvet, arching back to give her access while refusing to relinquish the delicious treasure of her mouth. Fingers flew and clothing peeled, baring them to beloved hands and hot, intimate caresses.

He pulled her from her ladylike dress, relishing the feel of her bound waist and the soft flesh mounded above and below it before stripping her corset from her too. His hands cupped her satiny buttocks possessively and lifted her so that her body met his. Breast to breast, belly to belly, they pressed and kissed as her hands clasped and claimed him. Then he nudged her legs apart, and his swollen shaft sought her sensitive womanflesh.

Again and again he arched, his big, muscular body flexing, thrusting nearer, coming closer... closer... commanding, initiating her hot, liquid response. She wriggled against him, seeking the fullness, the deep, shuddering satisfaction that would come as he penetrated her. But he moved her back to the bed and continued his relentless stroking arousal. Bracing and rising above her, he watched hungrily the erotic undulations of her body and the way his veined shaft slid over her creamy flesh to part those moist, gingery curls again and again. She arched and mewed both pleasure and frustration, wanting completion and yet wanting the divine torture to continue.

"Say it again," he growled, braced above her, his eyes mesmerizing, black-centered rings of silver fire. There was no doubt of what he wanted. "Say it..."

"I love you," she rasped, finding his passion-bronzed face through her swirling senses. His fierce, carnal grin took part of her breath and the plunging weight of his body on hers took the rest. His kiss was sublimely savage and possessive as he wrapped himself around her, cradling her body beneath his.

"Again," he demanded, lowering the heat of his devouring kisses down her throat to suckle the proud, impudent nipples that sometimes begged for and sometimes defied his attentions. Now they were his, she was his, a hundred percent his.

"I love you-" she was breathless with need, exultant in the power of his desire for her. "I love you, love you, love..." She arched as he tugged at her nipple and sent billows of pleasure spreading beneath her skin and swirling into her aching, empty coral flesh. And soul-deep desire welled within her. "Love me, Garner... please... love me."

His whole body tensed, rock hard, at the need distilled in her words. His blood surged, his desire absorbed and focused hers. He knew what she wanted; he felt it as though it were his own unbearable craving. She asked him to love her and it was not just the joining of their bodies that she sought. She wanted exactly what he had wanted; the certainty of it rocked him. And only he could give it to her. He braced above her to stare into the seductive emerald lights of her eyes, collecting her senses in his.

"I do love you, my sweet little Whiskey." He ran his hand over her cheek and threaded his fingers back through her hair, cupping her head. "You're... the very heart of me now."

Her breath stopped, setting her heart thudding explosively in her chest as she searched the tension of his frame against hers. The tautness of his bronzed features told of passions held in check against a greater need, the need to love and to share that love. Joy exploded inside her, shattering all awareness but that one: he loved her!

"I'm your heart?" She shoved him back to search his face. "I embarrass you and interfere in your family and I can't spend your money properly... and you still love me?"

"I do."

"You were forced to marry me and bargained into bedding me. I've caused nothing but trouble in your life, your house, and your family... and you still love me?"

He nodded with a tenderly wry expression. "Is that so hard to believe? You just declared your love for a greedy, dishonorable, arrogant wretch who has lusted after you unceasingly from the first moment he set eyes on you. What makes you think I can't love a stubborn, impudent, conniving little wench who has taken advantage of my boundless lust for her at every turn?"

Her jaw drooped at his summary of their love and he laughed, overcoming her shocked resistance to hold her tightly.

"I guess I am... stubborn sometimes," came her voice, muffled by his bare chest.

"Determined." His lips curled on one end.

"I don't mean to be impudent or disrespectful."

"Just truthful." His grin widened.

"And I don't mean to interfere..."

"Just to be helpful," he finished with a broad smile she couldn't see. And he felt her head bob against his shoulder.

Suddenly he knew. It was love that renamed all her flaws virtues and transformed her excesses into zeal in his mind. Fate, guided by the unfathomable wisdom of love, had cast Whitney's sweet flaws over the weaknesses in his own character, to strengthen and uphold him. And by some pure miracle, she seemed to feel the same about him. He turned her face up to his, treasuring and sharing the wonder he read there.

"I need you, Whitney. God, how I need the warmth and the joy of you in my life. With you, I feel alive, whole, for the first time. I do love you-"

His mouth descended on hers with a tenderness that drew her breath from her. When he raised his head, she lay utterly still, deep in wonder, listening to the quietest whispers in her deepest heart. After a moment, his fingers on her cheek brought her hurtling back to him and she came alive beneath him.

"Show me-" she demanded with a fierce, passionate glow. "Show me how you love me." Her hands clutched at his back and her legs wrapped him possessively, pulling him against her liquid heat. Caught in the updraft of her explosive sensual joy, he captured her mouth and rocked her with powerful flexing motions of his body. She arched and wriggled, inviting him, tantalizing him, commanding him.

He joined their bodies with a driving thrust and absorbed her rapturous moan with his mouth, sharing it, completing it. They moved as one, thrusting, giving, holding nothing back as they mounted pleasure's tightening spiral. And with the hot brilliance of colliding stars, they shattered sensory bounds and bodily limits to reach that ultimate of joining. Then in the lavish contentment of afterlove they floated a long time, spendthrift with warmth and careful with love.

"Garner..." she rubbed her cheek against the hard pillow of his flexed biceps, "will he really do it, do you think?"

"Will who do what?" he murmured, lifting lidded eyes to her.

"Your father. Can he keep you from becoming head of the companies?"

There was a long silence in which Whitney could feel him wakening further, considering it. And she felt a decision in the determined relaxation of his lean, powerful body. "He can't do it alone. Legally he has to have Ezra's and Madeline's backing. Sixty percent."

As he said it, he marveled at how insignificant it all seemed just now. The ambition of a lifetime, uprooted, supplanted by the love of a lifetime. A curious twinge of warmth vibrated through him and he wrapped her in his arms. For the first time in his life, he wasn't seeing his future narrowing inescapably into a hard, linear, Townsend furrow. And he owed the emancipation of his outlook to the bewitching little Delilah in his arms.

Sixty percent. Whitney felt it resonate in the depth of her trader's soul. He needed it. He deserved it. And since she was the one who had cost him the coveted control of Townsend Companies, she'd have to be the one to see it restored to him. With that fierce new resolve in her trader's heart, she snuggled against him and drifted to sleep.

The hour was late, the sun had set, when Garner blinked and rolled onto his stomach, squeezing his eyes tighter shut and refusing to heed Whitney's soft, insistent call to rise and dress for supper. He was adamant; he would allow no promise of food or recitation of obligation or prodding of propriety to roust him from his warm bed. Whitney stood in her chemise, watching his very stubborn repose, and a wifely glint appeared in her eye. She removed her chemise and peeled back the covers slowly, baring his insolent male frame.

It was all Garner could do to lie still when he felt her cool, satiny skin slide over him and realized from the concentration of her weight she was likely sitting-very warmly-astride his buttocks and lower back.

"Oh God-Whitney!-are you biting me?" Every muscle in his body contracted violently. She'd found that special spot halfway down his back, halfway to his right side.

"Ummhummm." She did it again. He jolted, then writhed, clutching handfuls of sheets. Her laugh, husky and voracious, prepared him for it the third time and he managed to embrace its full erotic impact.

Suddenly he was wide awake, and he was on fire! He tried to turn over but she pushed his muscled shoulder down insistently and began a series of determined and delectable little bites up the center columns of his back to his neck. His eyes closed as he surrendered to the pleasure raining through him.

"If-" he managed through clenched jaws, twitching and flexing with escalating arousal, "you're determined to do that... please do it in places that won't shock my valet too badly."

Again came that devastating Delilah laugh. "Perhaps you should make Benson your valet. He wouldn't notice a thing." Her little bites had muted to sensual nibbles by the time they reached his earlobe. She raked it with her teeth and purred.

"Benson. I'll... consider it," he rasped with deceptive surrender. A moment later he snapped around to snatch her wrists and pull her to the bed. A second silky move brought her beneath him, squealing mock outrage and wriggling to escape. "But first... I have a score to settle with you, wench. You've a habit of using your teeth on me, and I told you I'd make you pay for it someday." His voice was a primal growl as he spread her arms and pinned them to the bed. "Well, someday has just arrived."

"No-Garner!-" She writhed, her eyes widening as he bared his teeth with lecherous menace. "No- really-ohhhhh-"

He raked his teeth over her bare shoulder, then tightened them deliciously on one succulent spot. She sucked breath and wriggled helplessly, her eyes widening even farther when she saw where his eyes drifted next.

"No, Garner-oh- OH!- Ohh-oooooh..."

From her breasts to her sensitive inner elbows to the supple bend of her waist and the sleek plane of her belly, he gently consumed her, firing her passions and ignoring her pleas. He tantalized her hipbones and the backs of her knees, then roused her to frantic heights as he nibbled his way up her inner thighs. He made one last tidbit of the downy skin of her thigh just below the patch of gingery curls, then rose, sliding upward onto her softly undulating body. Desire squeezed her throat, permitting only a tattered moan, a plea.

"That's what you get for biting me," he growled hoarsely, and her darkened eyes fluttered open.

"You mean... every time?" she breathed.

"Every time."

"Anything... else?"

"Ummmm. This."

His eyes closed and her eyes closed. Neither breathed. A long penetrating moment later Whitney felt his lips against hers and spoke into them. "About Benson..."

"Ummm?"

"You're going to need him."

"Interfering ag- Ohhh!-Whitney!"

The day after the great explosion, Whitney rapped on the door of Ezra's study and smiled when she heard Ezra's crusty permission to enter. She slipped inside and closed the door carefully behind her with a warning finger to her lips. Edgewater. . . lurking outside, the gesture said. And from the folds of her skirt she produced a bottle of Ezra's favorite, Townsend Rum. He grinned.

"I do love this stuff," he mused later, savoring the last swallow in his glass and eying her and then the bottle. He huffed disgust as she corked it firmly. She was getting to be as bad as the rest of them.

"Then how would you like to... taste it-every day? Distill it again?" she proposed.

Ezra came up straight in his chair, his eyes razor-keen on her trader's glow. "You mean... me at the distillery?" His heart began to hammer like a schoolboy's and his eyes narrowed as they searched her. "What's in it for you?"

Whitney straightened and canted her chin to a modest trading angle. "Your ten percent." She saw Ezra's surprise and added, "For Garner."

"The whelp," Ezra snorted, looking away disgustedly. "Should'ave known."

"Not your true ten percent... just your voting ten percent," she clarified it with a keen eye on his reaction. "He's a very good manager, you know. His judgment shouldn't be judged by..." she swallowed and made herself say it, "his urges toward me."

"I don't know why the hell not," Ezra turned back to her with a crafty glint in his eye. "A good businessman has to have a few urges... and follow 'em now and then. My voting percentage for a chance at the distillery again..." He didn't have to think for very long. A slow grin spread over his face. "I think marrying you might have been the best business move the whelp's ever made."

January progressed with a plodding gray succession of watery snows and a plague of bone-chilling cold. When the sun finally appeared one late January afternoon, it was a welcome relief, so welcome that Garner could think of nothing but enjoying it with Whitney. He left the offices early to take her for a much-needed airing on the frozen commons. They had just returned home in the lowering daylight and ordered a tray of hot tea and cakes for warming, when there was a flurry in the center hallway. Edgewater exited the parlor to investigate.

A human figure bundled in a shapeless, fleece-lined deerskin coat, a floppy felt hat, and heavy boots caked with drying mud stood on the pristine marble floor of the hall, restrained in the grip of the footman who had answered the knock at the door. Edgewater's thin mouth drew thinner still as he hurried to enforce the footman's reluctance to admit such a creature to Townsend House.

"Good Lord, Nolan," Edgewater intoned.

"Tell this insufferable thatch-head to unhand me at once," came a bold feminine voice as the figure wrested about in the hapless footman's hands. "This is intolerable! I am here to see my niece, Whitney Daniels. I know she was brought here against her will and I shan't leave until I've spoken with her."

"Good Lord, it's a female," Edgewater pronounced, scrutinizing the bizarre camouflage of her clothing from a safe distance.

"Indeed," the eyes narrowed fiercely. "I am Kathryn Morrison, Whitney's aunt," her voice rose in pitch and volume, "and I demand to see her!"

"What in heaven's name is going on Edgewater?!" came Madeline's voice from halfway up the stairs. And in the same instant one of the front doors swung open, admitting an icy blast of air and the irate, greatcoated figure of Byron Townsend, whose approach to the doorway had gone unheeded in the ripening confrontation and who had been reduced to opening the door for himself.

"Dammit, Edgewater!" he snarled, ripping his fashionable, high-crowned hat from his head. "The least you can do is see the bloody door atten-" When his eyes fell on Kate Morrison, he stopped dead. His pale gaze narrowed, raking her rough, unwieldy garments but missing the nuances of femininity beneath. "What in hell is that?"

"I'm-let me go!-" Kate jerked free of the houseman's hold and turned to face the arrogant prig that had just .conversationally neutered her. "I am Kathryn Morrison-"

"It's a Kathryn Morrison, sir," Edgewater sniffed, with the air of just having created the new classification just for her.

"And just what the hell is a Kathryn Morrison?" Byron demanded of his butler, ignoring Kate pointedly. "And more importantly, what the hell is it doing on the clean tiles of my hallway floor?"

Kate sputtered, jerking her floppy felt hat off to reveal a crimson face punctuated with flashing eyes and surrounded by a rumpled mass of dark hair. In spite of herself, she looked down at her dirty boots and the tracks they'd made on the pristine marble of the floor.

"Apparently related to a Whitney Daniels, sir," Edgewater intoned, enjoying the denigrating bit of repartee. "And demanding to see one."

"Good God." Byron turned on Kate with an oft-practiced sneer. "I knew it! We're being positively swarmed by these unsavory frontier types."

Proud, refined Kate Morrison had been traveling for more than three excruciating weeks, through intolerable cold and muck and deprivation. She'd weathered with fortitude the insults and hazards and unholy propositions that confronted a woman traveling alone through frontier provinces. And then to be further insulted and assaulted when she finally reached her destination-her endurance and tolerance came to an abrupt end.

"You pompous, inhospitable wretch!" She advanced on Byron with blazing eyes and noted with satisfaction that he backed a step. She glared at him and stomped- deliberately stomped!-mud from her boots onto the floor. "I've spent weeks getting here, going without sleep and proper nourishment, half frozen, imperiled on every hand!" she raged, stalking closer. "And by Merciful God, I'll see my niece with my own two eyes and learn what that foul beast of a man has done to her! And you daren't stand in my way, you arrogant, overbearing boor-" She planted her fists in the vicinity of her waist and bellowed from the depths of her capacity, "Whitney!"

"See here, woman!" Byron thundered, astounded by her vitriolic attack and by her sheer capacity for volume. "How dare you invade my home, raving, and insulting me-"

"D-do something, Edgewater!" Madeline rushed down the steps in the midst of Byron's denunciation and gave the shocked butler a shove. "Edgewater!"

In the parlor, Whitney stood before the fire, enjoying its warmth and the warmth of one of Garner's ever-more-frequent smiles. The uncustomarily loud voices in the hall caused her to frown at the parlor door and a moment later she went poker straight before the fire, her eyes wide. "Garner, that sounds like-" An instant later, she was in motion, hurrying into the hall with Garner close on her heels.

Edgewater and Nolan the footman and Madeline were all pointing and yelling at once, demanding something be done and refusing to do it themselves. Just beyond them was Byron Townsend, still gloved and coated, his countenance beet-red and his Townsend jaw working furiously. And nearly nose- to nose with him was... Aunt Kate!

Whitney blinked and looked again, disbelieving her eyes. "Aunt Kate?!"

"Whitney?" Kate swung around, her fiery eyes flying to Whitney's womanly, velvet-clad form. She blinked as well. "Whitney... is it you?" She scanned the stylish dress, the sweetly sophisticated fall of curls down Whitney's back, the womanly bloom of her beloved niece's face, and an eruption of emotions in her choked off all other words.

She took one mute step and hesitantly opened her arms. Whitney flew to her, engulfing her in a joyful hug that nearly bowled her over. Around and around they twirled, laughing and hugging, tears flowing, oblivious to the horrified stares leveled at their reunion. It was along minute before Kate managed to push her back to look at her and touch her face and hair with awed tenderness.

"Let me look at you! Oh, Whitney, I've been half out of my mind with worry-"