The captain stumbled to a halt, realizing Garner was staring past him, in the direction of his wife. Byron, oblivious to all but the throb of his exalted Townsend pride, interjected: "My son's testimony may be counted upon to see at least one of those wretched rebel traitors properly disposed of."

Whitney heard it all, the wording of the subpoena, the call to testimony, and Byron's crass response. But the sound of her father's name linked to a charge of "high treason" eclipsed all else in her mind.

She moved through an airless void to Garner's side, reaching for the summons with cold, clumsy fingers. His eyes on her were probing and uncertain, as she read for herself. "One Blackstone Daniels"... "charge of high treason." Her eyes fixed on the fanciful script of her father's name and the blood drained precipitously from her head. She swayed, and Garner's hands shot out to steady her. "Whitney-"

Every eye in the room was riveted on them as she raised luminous, pain-darkened eyes to him and he grasped her shoulders tightly. Tension thickened the air with every heartbeat.

"Treason..." her voice was choked. "A trial for treason?" She saw Garner swallow hard, felt the tightening of his hands and the tension that radiated from his hard frame. When he remained silent, she looked to the captain and his men, who frowned confusion, then to Madeline and Aunt Kate. "B-but... they hang traitors," she rasped, grasping Garner's sleeves and again searching for some denial in his stony features.

"Traitors deserve to hang," Byron declared, watching the tense exchange between Garner and Whitney and keening at the way his pride in the moment was being cheated by her unthinkable interference. "That's the price they pay for trying to destroy the forces of order and reason, for defying the constitutional authority of our nation."

Whitney heard no more. Her thoughts were suddenly lost in the bleak certainty of Garner's gaze. Her pa... on trial for his very life. Two or three years, Black had said, and he'd be free again. She'd come to Boston with Garner believing it. She'd begun to make a new life here with him, believing it. She tore from Garner's hands and ran from the parlor.

"Whitney-" Garner lurched after her, jolting to a halt after two steps. He turned on Byron, trembling, and lunged at him, grabbing his coatfront and shaking him. "You bastard. You miserable, cold-blooded bastard!"

"No-Garner-no!" Kate flew to grab Garner's arm as he grappled with his father. "You can't-he's your father! Think of Whitney-Garner-she needs you!"

The sound of Whitney's name and Kate's pleading face managed to penetrate Garner's fury. Only the sheerest margin of will kept him from unleashing the rage coiled in his muscles. He shoved free, heaving and snarling, "Go ahead, put it in your damned Gazette! I've gotten a Special Commendation for hanging my wife's father!"

He wheeled and ran after Whitney and confusion broke loose. The soldiers made a shocked and hasty withdrawal. Byron quaked with humiliated fury under their covert glances and under Ezra and Kate's burning glares. He roared from the room, stalking straight for his study. Ezra blustered and demanded to be helped from the room and, for once, Madeline complied without a moment's demure.

Garner reached Whitney's door and stopped with his hand on the door handle. His entire being was in raging turmoil. The pain in Whitney's face minutes ago thundered through him again, overriding even his rage at his father and his damnable duty. She'd stood with bittersweet pride in her face, giving him the support of her love in his wretched "triumph." And moments later, she'd clung to him, dark-eyed, hurting, refusing to believe her father's peril, and his own cursed role in it.

Treason. Dear God. He closed his eyes as icy fingers of reality sank through him. How could he have known they'd twist his statements to accuse Blackstone Daniels of leading the rebellion and charge him with high treason?! He thought back to Colonel Caspar's grasping order: he wanted prisoners-evidence be damned. The courts would take care of that, he had sneered. Garner was only now beginning to realize the awful implications of those words.

The sight of the bruised trust in Whitney's eyes pierced him afresh. He wanted to go to her... to love and comfort her. But did he have the right? His hand tightened of its own will on the door handle and the latch clicked.

Whitney stood by the window, in the dim evening light, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. The straight line of her back, the stark angle of her jaw both spoke of her struggle to deal with the horrifying new reality. She turned as he came closer and the tumult in her face halted him. For a long moment they searched each other in pained silence. And when she spoke in a choked whisper, it was as though the earth itself rumbled the question.

"Did you know?"

Garner went hollow inside. He had asked her the same question once. And he'd believed the circumstances more than he'd believed the honesty of her heart. Now he could only pray she'd give him more credence than he had given her.

"No, Whitney, I didn't know." Every word was ground from his soul. "I arrested him for illegal distilling, nothing more. I had no idea they would charge him with treason. Believe me, I would never have taken him, otherwise."

She stood, watching him, the conflict of her heart plain in her face. She wanted to believe him, the look said. But how could she? He was called to testify against her pa, to give evidence of his treason. Why would they call him to testify if he had nothing to say?

He read the thoughts, the doubts in her face, and had no defense against them except the ache her hurt caused in him. "I love you, Whitney."

"I love you, Garner," she whispered, motionless,suspended between loving and desperation. Her eyes filled with pain's delicate crystal. "And I love my pa, too."

Garner nodded. His muscular arms hung at his sides, feeling stripped and empty, impotent. Their strength was incapable of protecting and sheltering her this time. For this time, the greatest threat to her loving heart was him. Him and his wretched duty. He turned on his heel and strode out. When he reached the center hall he blew, coatless, out into the frigid night, breathing in its icy tendrils, letting it penetrate him and praying the numbing cold would blunt his pain.

The door to Byron's private study had scarcely quit vibrating from his violent entry when it was wrenched open again and slammed a second time. He startled about, coiling for another round with Garner or Ezra. But it was Kate Morrison who stood just inside the door with her arms crossed tightly under her breasts. Her face was flushed and her hazel eyes simmered like molten copper and scorched just as surely.

"Just what the hell do-"

"You are without a doubt the most callous, unfeeling wretch ever birthed!" she charged, uncoiling to stalk closer. "Have you no human feeling in you at all?"

"How dare you barge in here-" Byron contracted about his stinging pride and launched his own defense. "I have every damned right in the world to be proud of my son's accomplishment, every right!" His voice thickened as his gray gaze darkened. "I've waited years for this, to take my son's hand in a moment of triumph."

"Triumph?" Kate stared at him with that way she had of piercing his very skin. "That's "what you call this? A triumph?!" The depth of his arrogant self-absorption was appalling! "It's her father, you unconscionable beast! Whitney's father, Black Daniels. Garner arrested him in Rapture and it's him that Garner is called to testify against."

His features hardened into turbulent bronze as he battled the heat and confusion boiling up visibly within him. "H-her father?"

"Yes, Whitney's father. It's Garner's father-in-law you so eagerly promised he would help dispose of." She could see her razor-edged charge found entry through his thick Townsend hide.

"Well-how the hell was I supposed to know?" he stormed, chagrined he hadn't investigated more fully the circumstances of his son's marriage-especially after hearing that Garner had arrested her father. Good Lord-a traitor! "I-I've never even heard the wretch's name before today!"

"Because you've never bothered to learn a thing about her, have you? Your own daughter-in-law. But then, why should you, when your own son is a perfect stranger to you?" Kate breached the outer perimeter of his defenses, invaded both his ire and his senses as she neared.

"You don't know nor care that he loves Whitney- and that she loves him. And it probably doesn't mean a thing to you that having to testify against her father could tear him apart." With womanly ferocity she chose a still sharper-edged thrust and delivered it with unerring aim. "You wouldn't understand, because you don't have the faintest idea what it's like to have feelings for someone!"

Her harsh accusations were only partly to blame for the wild tangle of heat and emotion rampaging through him. The friction of her hot auburn eyes as they rasped down his form brought his blood near the point of combustion. No woman had ever dared or abraded both his pride and his passions the way she did. He was trembling, assaulted by her on every level, xoused. A shaft of pure elemental heat erupted from that tough Townsend core to rip through his senses and burn a swath all the way into his loins.

"Ezra was right about you," Kate's blatant contempt rained sparks through him. "You haven't got any damned urges of your own, so you debase and belittle them in others-"

"No damned urges?" he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her tight against him. "No urges, have I?!" In half a heartbeat his hard Townsend mouth closed over hers, his hard Townsend arms clamped about her, and Iron Townsend desire sprang to life against her stunned frame.

An outraged gasp parted her lips and he took full advantage of it to penetrate her lush mouth, forcing her to recant her charges, daring her to deny this "urge." She pushed frantically against the sides of his silk-lined coat, wild to escape the startling feel of his mouth on hers, and the upwelling of her own desire to meet it. But her wriggles and twisting only drew the vise of his arms tighter, thrust her harder aganst his focusing male heat.

She slowed, stunned by the billows of smoky desire that filled her senses, claimed by the heat uncoiling in her. Molten, fluid sensations swirled through her body, burning, congealing in her womanly places. He felt the change in her and his mouth softened, coaxing, commanding, even as her body softened against him, lush and luxuriant. A sensual shudder signaled the completion of his arousal and he groaned, lifting his head to stare hungrily into her flushed face and sulty hazel eyes. Then he tasted her again and sent trembling hands down over the voluptuous contours of her waist and bottom.

"Oh, God, Kate-" he moaned, clasping her rounded bottom, pressing her hard against his swollen desire and shocking even himself with the natural, if involuntary, thrust of his hips against her. He couldn't remember ever wanting a woman the way he wanted copper-eyed Kate Morrison. And the mildly shocking way she rubbed her tantalizing breasts against his ribs, the way her tongue danced over his-she wanted him, too!

Blood pounding, bodies aching, they stood entwined, kissing, pressing, until their knees weakened and he moved her back against the desk. He held her tightly and dragged his mouth lower to nuzzle the hollow of her throat and to explore the tantalizing swell of her breasts. His hands followed, feathering, caressing, luxuriating in the texture of her skin, then invading the meager fabric of her bodice to claim one hard-tipped prize. She arched, offering, insisting. And now, his mouth followed where his hand led, fastening on the tight delectable pebble of her nipple, teasing it to proud perfection.

"Byron..." Desire swirled up from the very ground of her being and curled through every part of her as the fullness of the sound blossomed erotically in her mouth. "Ohhhh, Byron-"

The sound of his name on her lips brought his head up, and his lips poured over hers hotly as he probed the steamy depths of her desire, pushing her toward the melting point of surrender.

A strangled human sound at the door managed to register through the storm raging between them and Byron lifted his head over Kate's shoulder to behold Madeline's huge eyes in the half-opened doorway. There was a swirl of skirts and the muffled smack of the door against its frame and Byron jolted upright, panting and struggling to focus his eyes. His shock relayed through his hands on her body and Kate opened her eyes, blinking, dazed. His arms slid from her and he staggered back.

Kate followed his eyes down her body, to discover her bodice tucked to bare most of one breast. She groaned, tugging the fabric up to cover herself as she slid from the desktop onto legs that would scarcely support herself. He'd kissed her, her head swam dizzily, and touched her... ohhh-all over! She tried to swallow, to say something, but her throat was still in desire's paralyzing grip and her lips felt swollen and hot.

Byron stood, sharing her shock, still feeling the heat of her lush body against him and suffering the wild throb of arousal in his loins. He looked down his front to the blatant bulge of his gentlemanly breeches and felt an icy blast of humiliation. No damned urges, old Ezra had said.

The sight of her backing toward the door pulled him from his turmoil. In her luminous eyes he saw the same dismay, the same bewilderment, and the same lingering shimmer of desire. "K-Kate-"

The sound of her name somehow energized her and she wheeled and fled the study, her face burning with shame. Byron watched her go, unsure whether he should stop her, or whether he even wanted to. He was quaking; hot currents of illicit desire still swirled through his chest, his Joins.

Ezra be damned, he realized. He'd unleashed his urges on Kate Morrison, because he bloody well wanted Kate Morrison! He groaned, sliding weakly into his chair. She was incorrigibly lovely, infuriatingly accomplished, defiantly female... and hot. And that heat had set him on fire, all of him; his pride, his passion... even his wretched conscience!

Kate's heart pounded madly as she leaned back against the door of her room. Never-not in her entire life-had she behaved with such shocking wantonness! Wriggling and moaning and thrusting herself against... against Byron Townsend! But the shock of who had aroused her was momentarily overshadowed by the strength of her passions themselves. She'd been on fire in her womanly places, actually burning, craving the feel of his body so much that she couldn't breathe or speak! She'd never felt such things before, certainly not in the five years she spent as handsome Clayton Morrison's wife. Dry husbandly pecks and even drier, dutiful submission were her lot, on the nights philandering Clayton deigned to come home at all. But Byron Townsend made her feel hot and tingly and wet inside, filled her with all manner of shocking, undulating desires.

Her eyes widened in horror. Desires? She had desires? How could she; she was a decent woman!

The dim chiming of the great clock in the center hall indicated it was the wee hours of the morning, and Garner still hadn't returned. Twice Whitney had donned her heavy velvet robe to look for him, and now she ached with worry, consumed by the gnawing fear that he might not come back... not to her.

The bleakness of his expression when he left tortured her. She burned to recall her words, to purge the frightened accusations that had filled her mind and heart. In the chill of predawn things seemed clearer, less charged with emotion. She should have listened, talked, or just held out her arms to him. With each lengthening minute her worries grew more feverish. Perhaps he wouldn't come to her bed, even when he did come home. She picked up the branched candlestick and hurried across the hall to his room, finding it as empty and quiet as her own.

Both disappointed and strangely relieved, she began to wander about his room, seeking his presence, trailing fingers over polished wood furnishings and rich, claret-red brocades. His big bed, his comfortable chair by the fire, his lap desk. The air held a faint, tantalizing trace of his musky male scent, an aura she'd come to associate with his loving and with the intimacy of his body and habit. Her eyes filled and she blinked, turning to go. But her gaze caught on a small leather trunk sitting in the corner. Her heart beat erratically as she paused.

It was his military kit, the small trunk he'd had with him in Rapture. Drawn to it, she set the candles on the mantel and dragged it onto the rug before the cold hearth. Her slender fingers traced the tarnished brass fittings, the scuffed leather straps, the initials tooled into the side. Memory began to wash over her in waves... his glorious uniform, four soft shirts, his bellowing exasperation, gleaming buttons, his reluctant arousal... a proper bargain. They'd come through so much together. Her hand massaged a faint ache in the middle of her breast, around her heart.

The trunk was light, probably empty, she thought. But she worked the straps and latch and opened it anyway. In the golden candle-glow she saw felt, wool felt, drab gray and familiar. And there were polished horn buttons, ones she'd helped Black Daniels make from the rack of the first stag she'd ever brought down.

Her coat. Her rough, ugly old coat. Her throat tightened fiercely. He hadn't burned it!

Through the painful squeezing around her heart, she picked it up and brought it near her face, breathing deeply. Woodsmoke, and horses, and the musk of old leaves. It smelled like the forest, like her home. When her eyes opened, she strangled a cry. Deerskin! There in the trunk, beneath her old coat, was a pale tan patch of deerskin. She dropped the coat and snatched up her old breeches, rubbing the soft, worn leather against her cheek. Her breeches, he saved her breeches too!

Something glinted from the bottom of the trunk and she reached for it, lifting a solitary gold button into the flickering light. A button bearing teethmarks. His button. The marks of her teeth.

Her fingers closed around it as a terrible ache slammed through her. He'd saved it all; her coat, her breeches, the button she'd bitten that first day in Rapture. And without fully understanding why, she buried her face in her deerskin breeches and began to sob.

Garner found her just after daybreak, sitting on the cold floor of his unheated room. Thinking she wouldn't want to see him, he'd already decided to spend what was left of the night-and likely all future nights-in his own bed. And he'd gone straight to his own door.

He'd spent the evening and most of the night walking the streets and pacing the deserted Townsend offices, blaming himself for the painful sundering of the trust between them. After his last meeting with Lawyer Parker, he'd known her father had probably been taken to Philadelphia. And Parker's Philadelphia newspapers hinted that the government was becoming increasingly desperate to fix blame for the revolt on someone. He hadn't told her any of it, convincing himself that it would only worry her.

Tonight when she had asked him if he knew... he'd said no. It was true in one sense; he was as shocked as she was to learn Black Daniels was being tried for treason. And yet his denial carried a taint of dishonesty; he had known conditions were worsening, and he'd withheld that information from her. His desire to protect the tenderness between them and to keep her with him had eclipsed another basic need in loving, the need for honesty.

The simple truth was, he was terrified of losing her. All along, a cynical little maven of doom inside him had whispered that someday, something would come along, something she wanted more than she wanted him. That's just the way women were, experience had taught him; always on the lookout for a better deal, a more profitable bargain. And much as he protested that she was different, there was the inescapable evidence of her former betrayals to prove otherwise.

Someday something would come along, and in the depths of his being he must have recognized what that "something" would be. Twice before, when she betrayed him, it was for her father's sake. Now her father's very life was in peril, and he was the one responsible for it, even if he hadn't intended it to go so far. She had every reason in the world to recoil from him, to withdraw her love, to declare the bargain and the love between them dead.

Garner was totally unprepared for the sight of her, sitting on the floor before the cold hearth with her eyes reddened and her heartlike face filled with a haunting blend of love and sadness. Then his eyes fell on his open trunk and her old coat and breeches, now clutched in her hands. His heart stopped and his muscles turned to stone weights.

"You-you didn't burn them," she whispered, her eyes shining with the sweet pain of loving. In the thundering silence, she watched prisms of moisture form in his eyes and saw his fierce struggle to contain them.

"I could never destroy anything of yours, Whitney." It was a confession ripped from the very fabric of his soul, and one to which there were no exceptions.

It was true. Her eyes closed, releasing suspended tears, and she bit her lip, letting the pure wonder of it flood her. He loved her, he would never intentionally hurt her or those she loved. Then she rose, coming straight for him with open arms... and a hungry heart.

"Oh, Garner-"

His corded strength and vitality engulfed her at the very moment her life-giving warmth and stubborn faith in him invaded his chilled heart. They stood, wrapped in each other's arms and in the resilient love they had forged in passion's hottest fires. She raised her tear-streaked face to him, reaching for his kiss. And he lowered his trembling lips to reclaim the precious prize of her love.

Their hands and bodies began to move, expressing that love, trusting it, clinging to it. They made love in Garner's cold bed, scarcely noticing the chilled air and icy sheets. And afterward, in the love-warmed cocoon of soft linen and down comforters, they clung tightly to each other.

"What do we do, Garner?" she murmured into his bare chest, somehow knowing his thoughts were the same as hers.

"I don't know." The Iron Townsend in him rebelled at such an admission, but he wouldn't lie to her again, not even by omission. "But we'll find some way to help him, I swear." Tears filled her eyes as he tilted her chin up to look at her. "I love you, my sweet Whiskey." She nodded and drank in the tender promise of his lips on hers.

"Garner, you arrested Pa for distilling and not paying the Tax," she observed with amazing absence of resentment. "Then how did he come to be charged with treason?" She raised onto one elbow as mental wheels began to move behind her beguiling Daniels face.

It was the question Garner had dreaded. But he looked into the fathomless love in her sea-green eyes and told her the truth as he knew it, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He spoke of Gaspar's prejudices and coercion, and admitted the blend of duty and anger that had driven him to arrest Black Daniels. Under her solemn look, he talked of the "watermelon army's" frustration at having no supplies, no pay, and no enemy to fight, and of the futile search for the leaderless rebellion's "leaders." Then he revealed what he'd gleaned of the government's growing desperation to punish somebody for leading the "whiskey revolt" in order to politically and financially justify raising a largely unnecessary army.

"You mean, they've got a cost on their hands," she said. The glint of outraged understanding stole into her gaze. "And they have to make some kind of profit out of it... to save their wretched pride."

"More like, to save their political hides," he corrected, a little awed by her uncanny capacity for getting right to the "ledger balance" at the bottom of any situation, or person. With her unique frontier trader's philosophy, she managed to reduce the most complex human tangles to manageable terms of cost and profit, of need and supply. She was a true master of the fundamental economics of life itself. And heaven help him, he was beginning to see things in terms of "profits" and "price" and "bargains," himself!

"Then they want something, those federal boys," she declared with a dangerous Daniels glow and a faraway look in her eyes. "And a fellow who wants something..."

"Whitney..." Garner watched the glow and saw her chin rise to a fateful and familiar angle. And he felt himself being drawn along, reading the alarming "bargaining" trend of her thoughts and realizing she was probably right... again. "Whitney!"

She turned to him with irresistible determination. "We can do it, we can help him, Garner, together." She read his odd expression as Iron Townsend reluctance and added with a pure Delilah wriggle of her bare hip against his sensitive parts: "I can make it... worth your while."

Garner's first impulse was to correct the notion that he needed any such persuasion, but a second impulse quickly overtook him. And he very generously allowed her to "bargain" him into cooperating. After all, the Daniels's did have their pride.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

By midmorning, the Townsend household was spinning with the story of Whitney's father and Garner's role in his fate, and with Kate Morrison's announced intention of taking up respectable lodgings elsewhere, that very day. Byron heard it from a very terse Edgewater and came charging out of his study to confront her. Madeline glowered at her disheveled uncle and informed him Kate was in her room, packing. He charged up the stairs and barged straight into Kate's room, without so much as a knock.

"Just what in the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded, slamming the door back on its hinges and spreading his feet determinedly.

"I's-should think that was obvious," Kate sputtered, stuffing the petticoat she'd been folding into the open valise on the bed and raising her chin. Her eyes widened on his crumpled, half-opened shirt, the sleepless rings about his eyes, and the stubble on his face. He looked terrible, which pleased her in a vengeful sort of way. Apparently he hadn't slept a wink, either.

"Running off," he charged.

"I cannot possibly stay here any longer, not after what happened," Kate said flaming.

"Shocked, are you? Compromised? Well, it can't be anything I've done," he adroitly wielded her own words against her. "I don't have any urges, remember? Then it must be your urges you're running from."

Ignoring her outraged sputters, he stalked her, forcing her back toward the bed. A spear of excitement shot through his loins at the proximity of her reddening lips, her flashing eyes and soft breasts. She darted for the door but he caught her by the wrist as she opened it, and he reeled her back partway.

"S-sir! You forget yourself-" she rasped, frantically wrenching her arm in his unyielding grip.

"Dammit, Kate Morrison, I'm just remembering myself!" he growled. "And it's your damned fault. You made me think about things I haven't thought about in years, desire and pleasure, feeling and family." As she stilled and braced, he released one of her wrists to run a possessive hand over her cheek. "You're not going anywhere, Kate Morrison, not yet."

Kate shivered alarmingly under his taunting caress. "How dare you presume to give me orders!" she said. Byron's light gray eyes glowed with an insufferable male certaintly that was somehow different from his usual Townsend arrogance.

"You made me remember," his voice lowered suggestively, and male conceit canted his features, "while I apparently made you forget... yourself... your niece. She'll want to know why you're running off, deserting her at so critical a time."

Kate reeled, stung sharply by his self-serving logic and utterly unable to refute it. Whitney-Lord, yes-she had forgotten all about poor Whitney! Horror at her unthinkable lapse melted her rigid posture. All she'd thought about was escaping... both Byron and her own Delilah desires.

Byron watched the fiery, independent Kate Morrison giving way to a softer, more vulnerable woman. And that strange, hollow feeling opened in the middle of him again. It was a wanting, a hunger for the closeness of her, for the pleasurable feel and taste of her, a need for sharing and completion of a sort he'd never really known.

He reached for her chin and tilted it up, searching her darkened eyes until his lips found hers. The contact was brief and full... and stunningly pleasurable. He tore himself away, battling back the urge to pull her fully into his arms.

"Unpack, Kate."

He turned on his heel and strode for the stairs. Kate stumbled back a few steps and sagged against the bedpost. He wasn't going to let her run. And he'd just served notice what would happen if she stayed. She slid her arms around her waist and suffered a dismaying shiver of anticipation.