"What are you doing here?" Whitney cast the harness back into the floor of the shed and stepped in front of Kate, clamping her work-stained hands on the sides of her breeches-clad thighs.

"I am doing my duty, Madam," he pointedly ignored Whitney, choosing instead to address her aunt Kate. The rank appraisal of his flinty gray eyes was soon transferred to the rambling two-story log house, the sturdy barn, and the drying gardens near the house. "I am here to search for contraband liquor and stills, and those who harbor them. I advise you to cooperate with my men. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. I assume there is a man of the house?"

"How dare you come-" Whitney lurched forward, only to have Aunt Kate grab her by the arm to stay her. A half-instant later, Whitney was grateful for Kate's restraining presence; the cool little smile that never left the corners of the major's eyes said he would love nothing more than to see her lose control. She suddenly understood; she'd earned this little visit last night when she humiliated him in the tavern.

"My brother-in-law, Blackstone, isn't here just now." Aunt Kate drew herself up regally. "I am Kathryn Morrison, Whitney's aunt."

"Whitney?" he turned a focused gaze on Whitney's braced, resentful form, letting his eyes fall with provocative leisure to the anger-quickened rise and fall of her breasts, then to her narrow waist. He felt an unreasoning trickle of disappointment that her name was a legitimate one after all, however unusual. Whitney. Somehow "Whiskey" had seemed more fitting... and forbidden.

"Where is this Blackstone?"

"He's... well, not expected. He's-.gone..." Aunt Kate faltered under Whitney's warning look. Thank heaven they'd purged the premises of whiskey!

"To Pittsburgh," the major finished smoothly, "with the other men of the valley... the other distillers." And before they could refute his incisive conclusion, he turned to his men with eyes narrowing. "You, you, and you," he waved three soldiers into the barn with hard authority. "It has to be here somewhere. Start with the barn and that shed. Check everything, every barrel, every box, every loose board and suspicious bucket."

"Now see here-" Kate voiced, realizing the full scope of what was about to occur. "You can't just go through our- "Like a dose of salts," he leaned threateningly and countered with a vengeful smirk. "Sergeant, bring two men and come with me." He made a martial pivot and struck off for the house itself. He was halfway to the kitchen door at the rear of the house when Whitney and Aunt Kate jolted and ran after them.

Whitney reached the house first, her every instinct roused and churning in response to his fierce, determined presence. But as she spread herself across the kitchen door, it was the trader instinct in her that surfaced first. "Just where do you think you're going?" she demanded.

"Inside." Intending a smug bit of intimidation, he lowered his face toward hers. It was a grave mistake. His lips began to part of their own volition and his head filled with a blast of warmth that was tainted with a strange spiciness; whether perceived or remembered, he couldn't tell. Either way, the effect was potent, indeed. He jerked up with a flash of raw disgust at his roiling responses and he grabbed her by the waist to set her aside bodily.

But Whitney had a viselike hold on the doorframe, had her boots wedged in the corners, and managed to resist being hauled aside. "If you want to search, you'll have to pay for the privilege," she ground out, huddling back into the doorway, unwittingly drawing him closer to her in a tug-of-war over her waist. "Nothing is free, Major.Folk in Rapture learn that early on in life."

They were nearly nose to nose, faces heating, breathing harder.

"Don't be absurd," he straightened, ripping his hands from her waist as if she had scorched him.

"Damages," she scrambled for a bargaining position as she caught a glimpse of his men's uncertain faces. "There'll be damages. Why just look at them!" She jerked her head contemptuously toward his grimy, grizzled minions. "That ham-handed lot will likely wreck the place. Vile, wanton destruction... that'll set all Rapture dead against you. And they'll soon hear of it clear in Pittsburgh, see if they don't!"

He went rigid, feeling his men's eyes questioning him, feeling his blood and reason both heating to intolerable levels. With all this heaving inside he couldn't think of a suitably nasty retort.

"Just compensation, Major," she prodded, wondering if his hesitation was a harbinger of victory.

"Dammit1"

With that ambiguous expletive he snatched her out of the doorway and barged inside, followed by his three men, a red-faced Whitney, and a rather ashen Aunt Kate.

"Check the flour barrels," he ordered, surveying the comfortable kitchen gruffly and giving the planking floor a testing stomp with his gentlemanly heel. "And test the floor for loose planks... and the larder and foodstuffs. Leave no bag or vessel unchecked. No telling where they hide the stuff."

The horror on Kate's face deepened as the soldiers unsheathed their long knives and began stabbing through barrels and crocks and splitting open bags of potatoes and turnips. She flew furiously from one small disaster to another, ordering them to leave things alone, or at least use more care. More than once she smacked a clumsy hand as the scruffy, wooden-fingered soldiers invaded the cupboard to plow through her precious glazed china dishes, and rifled through her linen trunk. They thumped and dumped; overturned the woodbox and clattered carelessly through the kettles and cooking irons.

Everything came to a sudden halt when one soldier called out that he'd found something on top of the cupboard. Into their burning glares he lowered it, a black cherry pie. Every eye fixed, every muscle froze for a moment, focused on that tin mounded with golden crust as though it might explode any instant.

"Damn," the sergeant's raspy voice finally broke the silence. "Pie." And at the word, every man in the room felt his mouth watering violently.

"Damn suspicious pie, I'd say, Sergeant," The major waved the soldier carrying it over to the table and relieved him of his knife. Two whisks of his blade cut it into fourths and, over Kate's gasps and moans of frustration, he lifted one piece out on his gentlemanly fingers. He opened his aristocratic mouth and, with a meaningful glance at Whitney, devoured a third of it in one bite. A shudder of raw pleasure went through him and, lacking deterence, his men dug out the remaining pieces and wolfed them down, groaning gustily.

The major's eyes closed in concentration on the sublime experience; the succulent cherries squishing between his teeth and the sugary juices bathing his tongue. He opened his eyes and found himself staring straight into Whitney Daniels's ripe cherry lips... that were moving.

"Damages, Major," she crossed her arms angrily, drawing her coarse shirt tight over her breasts.

He squashed a quiver in his loins and made himself swallow that last bite. He swung away and was halfway through the next doorway, waving his men after him and snarling, "What's in here?"

They invaded the tranquility of Kate's precious plank-paneled keeping room and set about lifting and examining and overturning things while the major strolled about the room. He tossed aside the quilt that covered the French settee and ran his supple fingers over its silk brocade. Then he examined the delicate carving of the French writing desk, and evaluated the wrought iron chandelier hanging in the center of the room.

Kate rescued a blown-glass lamp globe from one quarry-faced fellow and her elegant sewing basket from another, appealing indignantly to the major, who paused, leaning back on one leg, inspecting Kate as baldly as though she were part of the furnishings.

"Something in Rapture must be prosperous indeed. Where did all this come from?"

"It's mine," the harried Kate drew herself up formidibly, cradling a painted Dutch figurine against her bosom, daring anyone to set hands to it, or to her. "I brought these things with me from Allentown when my husband died and I came west to see to Whitney's upbringing."

"So you're the agency responsible for the... niceties of her behavior," the major charged as though it were a criminal offense. Flicking a taunting glance at the angry twitch of Whitney's shoulders, he savored this bit of revenge for the spectacle she'd made of him yesterday. The little invasion was proving more entertaining than he'd expected, if less productive. He pointed to the stairs. "What's up there?"

Before they could intervene, he was mounting them.

"How dare you-" Whitney was after him in a flash, trailed by Aunt Kate and the burly Sergeant Laxault. When he ducked into her room at the top of the stairs, she strangled a screech of outrage and burst past him to take a hot-eyed stand in the middle of her room. "Get out."

"Yours?" he deduced from her proprietary indignation. Scanning the chamber with casual contempt, he was struck by the unnerving blend of the primitive and the elegant in the little room. It was utterly like her, he realized; an intriguing mix of beauty and coarseness, the splendid and the common. He side-stepped her to saunter about, poking and stroking and examining things. One aristocratic hand feathered a touch across the smooth marble of the washstand and one arrogant boot toe prised open the simple oak trunk. Ignoring her indrawn breath and wordless ventings of ire, he fished around in the contents and came up with a thin muslin chemise, dangling it lewdly at her on one finger.

"Give me that!" she snatched it from him and clasped it protectively against her chest, flaming.

"It can't be yours... you never wear one," he taunted in a vile, throaty whisper.

"Are you quite satisfi-finished?"

"Not quite, wench," he turned toward the elegant mahogany bed with its crocheted canopy, soft quilt coverlet, and plump down pillows. Whitney inserted herself between him and the bed, as though trying to shield it from him. In the dim light of the small window, she was flushed, appealing, outlined by the frame of her unexpectedly elegant bed. In one hot movement, his eyes stripped her shoulders bare, loosened her gingery hair... and suddenly he was beside and above her, absorbing the inescapable womanliness of her. She filled his head, stirred his mutinous blood and sent heat flooding into his loins.

This was where she slept. Images of her lying warm and languorous with sleep swirled through his taut body, tightening his belly, curling his fingers into restraining fists. The strange spicy spirals of her warm breath floated upward, mocking his control, entwining about his resolve. Soft bed, soft flesh...

He was here, in her room, beside her-she managed the distracted realization. For the last three nights, she'd lain in her bed, haunted by images of him, by whispers of the passion he'd roused in her. Now he'd invaded her room in the flesh... those long, corded columns of his legs, those broad, encompassing shoulders, those molten silver eyes. She'd never exorcise him from her bed now, she groaned privately; his potent male presence would be indelibly etched into its vulnerable confines. Hard eyes, hard muscles...

They stood beside her soft bed in the hazy light, their bodies close, their gazes drawn together. Tension came alive on the air around them, drawing throaty mutters of confusion from the doorway.

Kate Morrison watched them standing beside the bed, chests heaving, bodies coiled with raw excitement. The bronzed intensity of the major's handsome face and the sultry, womanly glow about her niece were utterly shocking. The heat of their confrontation fanned across Kate's face in a hot blast of sensuality that dried her eyes and squeezed at her throat. Alarm rose in her, but could find no outlet in the charged atmosphere.

"There ain't nothin' acrosst the way, Majur," Laxault thrust through the bodies in the doorway to growl his report. It was like a lightning crack, releasing the hot potential between them.

The major took a reeling step backward. God. She'd done it to him again. He wheeled and was down the stairs in a flash, trailed by his gawking men, his crimson-faced adversary, and her stunned aunt. Charging irritably out into the side yard, he spotted and headed for the spring house, ordering his men into it for a thorough search. He was aching for a bit of evidence, an excuse.

"Lookit here Majur," Laxault emerged moments later with a wicked grin, holding up a heavy earthen jug.

"That's not liquor!" Aunt Kate protested as Whitney flew down the steps and ducked into the spring house to defend their food stores from pilferage.

The major snatched the jug, uncorked it with a spiteful glare, and inhaled a huge whiff of hard cider. Ire grew to supplant his disappointment and he declared that it would have to be checked for alcohol content back at Dedham's Inn. Above Aunt Kate's furious sputters of the absurdity of it, he ordered Laxault to confiscate the lot.

He moved on to the barn, where the contingent that had searched the area earnestly reported no contraband to be found in the shed, the barn, or the gardens. The major's eyes grazed their bulging pockets, detecting telltale litter of purloined oats and dried skin, of snitched onions stuck to the nearby fabric. And a few men had developed strange round growths under their coats... suspiciously pumpkin-sized.

Whitney saw it, too. The chill of the spring house had drained the heat from her fevered senses and she was in control again, determined to set the major back on his fancy heels a bit. His men's covert filching provided the perfect opening.

"Well, they've filled their pockets handily, Major," she planted herself before him with her hands on her hips and her chin raised. "Pillaging and plundering innocent folk. Just like you high-handed federals-stealin. We demand just compensation for the damage inflicted upon us in the name of the U.S. Government."

"Don't be absurd, wench," he turned away, but found his way blocked by his own men as they crowded closer to watch expectantly what transpired between their commander and this feisty little gal. Their looks prodded him to look to their pride as fighting men; to take no sass from the wench. He turned back partway. "You've sustained no damages; indeed, my men have shown admirable restraint in the face of grave provocation."

"Pie, Major," she rounded to face him again with a knowing glint in her eye, "and six full jugs of fine cider, close to forty gallons, and God knows what else they've stuffed their pockets with. And there's the monumental task of setting things to rights again. Aunt Kate's time and anguish, alone, are worth-ten dollars-federal money."

"Ten d-" he choked, feeling red creeping up his ears and dread creeping up his stiff neck. That insolent tilt of her head was back and her voice had a clear confident ring that he was beginning to recognize in 'the marrow of his bones... bargaining.

"A dollar a jug for the cider, and another dollar for the pie. That makes seventeen dollars, Major. Reparations, I believe that's what they call it in wartime."

"Reparations hell!" Warning rumbled through him at the spread of a tight, challenging little smile on her face.

"And we won't take your paper promises, Major," she declared evenly, reading the nuances of his shimmering eyes and the tightening of his aristocratic features with a keen trader's eye. He was bracing for something, and she wasn't about to disappoint him. "Now what have ...

Her eyes flitted over him and her heartlike face flushed with the pleasure of discovery. She grabbed a long knife from the nearest soldier's belt and severed one of the major's gleaming buttons, mid-chest, with one neat stroke.

"That ought to do it," she handed the soldier back his knife by the hilt and held the button up for an instant's appraisal before stuffing it into her pocket. "Seventeen dollar buttons, Major." Her green eyes had borrowed a glitter from the gold. "Mighty nice."

He stared, thunderstruck, at the tuft of thread where his button had been and his entire body began to quake with rage. His head jerked up. His eyes glowed white-hot. His fists clenched convulsively at his sides. His gentlemanly fiber was frayed to mere strings; he was within a half-breath of trouncing her... female or not! He'd never been so close to a total rupture of control in his life!

"Assault on a duly constituted officer of the U.S. Government is a treasonous offense," he rasped, his voice dredged from the deepest, most primitive regions of his being. The stark, obvious containment of his anger melted the taunting little smile on her face and silenced the muffled snorts and guffaws from his men. He turned on them, seeming to grow before their very eyes, and snarled: "Fall in!"

Whitney watched the major's coiled fury as he mounted his horse and led his soldiers off, bearing away their winter cider. And she continued to stare, unblinking, long after they were out of sight. The magnitude of his fury had poured through her like hot lead, solidifying in her limbs to forbid movement.

"Assault... treasonous offense..." echoed in her head. It was more than a statement; it was a vow made to them both. The next time she provoked and humiliated him before his men, he'd slap her in chains, and there was no one to say him nay.

It was a wonder he hadn't done it already. The thought circled meaningfully in her mind and for some reason her face began to heat. She'd incensed and exasperated him, outraged and defied him, with small, infuriating encroachments on his dignity and his self-control. And he'd threatened and bullied her, menaced and out-muscled her, with devastating explosions of brute command and male dominance. And yet when they came together minutes ago, they both had grown hot and silent and very still. And she always felt those swirling liquid sensations in the core of her that seemed to dissolve her mental processes. It was a pure "womanly" response he provoked in her, she reasoned; something she wasn't quite prepared to handle. It was probably a bad sign.

... a very bad sign indeed her aunt Kate was thinking as she watched Whitney's concentration produce an unmistakable womanly glow in her cold-polished face. She, too, was recalling that stunning confrontation beside Whitney's bed, and she was dreading the implications of what she'd witnessed. She couldn't have picked a worse time to insist that Whitney begin acting like a woman.

Chapter Seven.

The Iron Major honestly didn't use liquor. It was a genuine disappointment to Whitney. What kind of man wouldn't take at least a sociable tilt, now and again? And he didn't use tobacco. And according to the frisky May Donner, he had no use for voluptuous widows, either.

Over the following two days, Whitney collected these and quite a few other tidbits about her prime adversary. Robbie Dedham reported solemnly that the gentlemanly major's boots didn't stink, that he owned four very fine shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons, that he wrote left-handed, and that he shaved shirtless every morning. Uncle Harvey observed that his "guest" did not care much for "leather britches" beans nor the fatty salt pork that flavored them, that he carried his own salt and a pepper grinder in his kit, and that, in the absence of coffee and tea, he insisted on drinking only pre-boiled water. The major was punctual about rising and retiring, saw to his horse before he saw to himself, and like his boots polished to a high sheen, none of which revealed a particularly useful vice or vulnerability in him.

There had to be something the man wanted, besides the complete destruction of the whiskey trade in the valley. There had to be something that could persuade him to abandon his pursuit of Rapture's elusive stills. Every man had his price; it was an established fact.

Whitney admonished her people to watch more closely, and soon learned that he permitted little gambling in his camp and never participated in games of chance himself. She sighed when she heard this; another promising vice dispensed with. With each report it seemed another of the seven deadly sins was eliminated: lust, drunkenness, gluttony, greed.

"Sloth" didn't seem to be one of his deficits, either. He personally led half of the soldiers' daily sorties into the woods, looking for stills and signs of illegal activity. Otherwise, he devoted himself to systematically searching out and questioning nearly all of Rapture's inhabitants, using fancy words that had them scratching their heads by the time he was through.

In short, he proved the very model of decency, diligence and gentlemanly decorum. In both word and deed he upheld an infuriatingly inconvenient philosophy of "moderation in all things." The only thing even close to an excess in him seemed to be his penchant for using his own last name, Townsend, in conversation at least three times a day, especially when giving orders or lecturing poor Uncle Harvey. Apparently he was rather impressed with his family's status and expected everyone else to be properly awed as well.

"It's not much to go on," Whitney admitted wanly to a small assembly of Rapture's folk, "but it smacks of pride. And as the Good Book says: 'Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall'-the book of Proverbs."

The only problem was, it didn't "goeth" quickly enough. Daily, the folk brought Whitney word of searches drawing ever closer to their main cache of liquor and Black Daniels's current still site. Fortunately, the major proved to be a methodical man, given to orderly methods of dividing up territory for searching. Whitney donned her breeches late at night, when Uncle Julius and Uncle Ballard sent for her, and slipped out of the house to help them move the still, always to a spot the soldiers had searched the day before.

Such strenuous nightly activity took a toll on her daily energy and concentration and more than once Aunt Kate's eyes narrowed suspiciously on her fatigued form. Her whole life was being consumed by her covert battle with the Iron Major. Things would be so much simpler if he were just the normal, temptation-prone sort.

What did the wretched man want?

Four days into the occupation of Rapture Valley, Uncle Harvey's barrels went bone dry.

"Well then-buy more, dammit!" the major steamed as he personally re-checked the notched depth-stick that was used to test the barrels. "My men have to have rations of spirits."

"Cain't, Major. Don't have no cash money-only your paper." Diminutive Uncle Harvey just managed to not flinch when the major leaned over him. "Them fellers over at Greensburg got to have cash money fer their whiskey, 'cause they gotta pay cash money fer their tax."

"Then go to Pittsburgh and get your blessed money and then buy more!"

"I ain't never been to Pittsburgh." Uncle Harvey seemed genuinely horrified at the prospect of leaving Rapture Valley. "An' anyway it'd take at least a week or two." He watched the major glower and grind internally and finally surrender with a: "Dammit."

The very next evening, Uncle Harvey had yet another bit of bad news for the tenacious major and reluctantly sought him out as he made his routine evening inspection of the camp.

"What do you mean, no food?" The major stalked across the trampled grass at the far edge of camp to tower over the little innkeeper again. Uncle Harvey was getting a crook in his neck from the frequency of such unnerving encounters.

"Well, not quite no food yet, Major. But we got precious little. So I thought ye'd be wantin' to reduce them rations to stretch it a bit."

The major insisted on seeing for himself, and was given a doleful tour of the tavern's kitchen and smokehouse. He stomped back out to his camp with the sight of the meager flour in the bottom of a barrel burning in his mind. "Then barter or bargain or whatever it is you do, and get more."

"I already tried, Major," Uncle Harvey protested, shooting a sweaty look at Charlie Dunbar, who lounged nearby. He had no wish to join Charlie in shackles, no matter how good the food was. "Nobody's got much to trade, an' they don't want no paper money for what little they got. I be taxin' my neighbors sorely to take in my own child'rn to feed, the way it is." The major flamed at the innkeeper's left-handed revelation of just how earnest the shortages were; he was sending his own children out to neighbors to be fed.

"Then I'll have my lieutenant pay a call on these residents, to persuade them they can part with some of their food."

"He won't get nothin' neither." Charlie Dunbar snorted a laugh. "That lew-ten-ant of yers, he's got city boy writ all over 'im. They won't trade him nothin'."

"Who the hell asked you?" the major wheeled on him.

Charlie's smug look had a patronizing air about it. "Majur, what you need's a born trader... somebody who can swap th' spurs off n a rooster."

"And I suppose you're just the man?" the major, sneered.

"Naw, not me, Majur," Charlie's blocky face took on a wicked glow, "I'm a pris'ner, remember? Ye need th' best. Ye need Whit Daniels. Why, she can swap sheep straight outta their wool... and, I hear tell, th' buttons right off n a stuffed shirt."

The major twitched and, in spite of himself, glared down at the empty buttonhole on his chest. Raw anger roared to flame inside him and soon Charlie was repenting his vengeful jibe beneath new bindings and a rag stuffed into his mouth.

But the boy-faced Lieutenant Brooks, being no trader was no more successful than Uncle Harvey had been, and that very night, the Ninth Maryland Militia went on half-rations. The major and the lieutenant, in an unexpected move, began to take meals outside with their men, making it clear they shared the deprivation and intended to set an example of duty and determination under hardship. The men's eyes widened at the sight of the gentlemanly major eating his handful of watery beans and meager biscuit sop, just like they did. But it didn't assuage the emptiness in their bellies nor improve their mood.

By dinner the next day, they were grating on each others' hunger-bared nerves, and by nightfall they were bristling at each other like porcupines. Their misery was seriously aggravated by the sight of Charlie Dunbar, lounging indolently beneath his tree, stuffing himself with crusty johnnycakes and leftover slices of pie that had been brought to the edge of the camp by various of the locals, in Aunt Sarah's name. There was considerable snarling and wrangling over who would be assigned to guard him, and the only way Sergeant Laxault could prevent mayhem amongst the men was to rotate the assignment, so that each soldier would have the chance to fill his belly every few days.

It was into that volatile state of affairs that Aunt Sarah Dunbar, with the help of a younger son, carried a pot of venison stew and a big pan of warm biscuits. Behind her, in spite of the major's prejudice against locals in camp, swayed the curvy May Donner, bearing two apple pies. As they trod that central path, soldiers rose up in their wake, following the beckoning aromas like rats would the Pied Piper. Hungry faces ringed them as they fed their charges. The men pressed closer as it became clear there was more to eat than Charlie and his two guards could manage.

Aunt Sarah turned nervously to them, and the hunger in their faces melted her motherly heart. She began to hand out biscuits, then offered them the stew to "sop" in. May cut her pies in small wedges and distributed them as far as they would go. And when the flurry of food frenzy was over, Aunt Sarah murmured, "It be hard... managin' without m'Charlie at home. If ye gets too hongry, Ned," she patted his cheek fondly, "ye can come, mebee split me some wood... fer a bit of supper?"