Outside, Edgewater had thrown himself against one wall to keep Byron from seeing him as he left. He was gasping, blinking, shocked beyond words. Master Byron and-that female.

Garner and Whitney emerged from their rooms that afternoon to add to the household tizzy, announcing that they would be traveling to Philadelphia as soon as possible. Kate received the news with profound relief and instantly declared her intention of accompanying them, for Whitney's sake. Byron stood across from Kate at tea, glowering at her and declaring he intended to go as well. And Madeline refused to be left behind... not when her family might need her. Everyone stared at her in amazement and she blushed for the first time in years, and very prettily, at that.

Edgewater would have to go, of course, and Mercy and Benson. Ezra mumped and grumbled at having to stay in Boston, until Whitney pointed out that he wasn't being left behind, he was being left in charge. With that new perspective, his attitude improved markedly. In point of fact, the mood of the entire house seemed to have undergone a change for the better, in the way that bad news has of drawing people together.

Byron quickly engineered an invitation to use a business acquaintance's, former Senator Samuel Potter's, Philadelphia town house for a while. Garner's eyes narrowed on his arrogant father when the announcement was made. Byron Townsend never did anything without expecting a profit, and Garner was at a loss to explain what Byron thought he would gain by helping them. Then it struck him; Byron undoubtedly wanted to be there in person to minimize the damage done to the precious Townsend prestige when connection of the Daniels and Townsend families was revealed. Garner rolled his shoulders to dispell the tension collecting inside him. He was long past caring what icy, implacable Byron Townsend thought of him... or his marriage. But if the bastard said or did anything to hurt Whitney...

Black Daniels was being held in an old jail commandeered by the federals for the expressed purpose of providing maximum security for their dangerous rebel prisoners. Garner made inquiries immediately upon arrival in Philadelphia, and learned the accused men had been brought on a bitter forced march from western Pennsylvania to occupy the grim premises. Only twenty or so of these unfortunates were actually being brought to trial. The others were gradually being released for lack of evidence, and were forced to find their own way home or to seek whatever sustenance could be found on Philadelphia's "brotherly" streets.

Under the half-truthful pretext of seeking legal assistance for Black, Garner left Whitney and Kate and the others settling into the house and made his way through the bustling streets to the ramshackle prison. He stood across the street, staring at the soot-blackened brick, the barred and shuttered windows, and the surly slouch of the guards posted at the door. He was right to have come alone; he knew the dismal reputation of military prisons and braced for what he would find inside.

What Garner hadn't anticipated was the difficulty he would have getting inside. He was stopped by the guards at the door and just managed to "arrogance" his way through, only to be stopped again by two more guards in the dim, sour-smelling interior. With his best Townsend sneer, he demanded to see the superintendent of the facility immediately. The grizzled soldiers spit tobacco onto the rough wooden planks, precariously near his polished boots, and resentfully complied. He was led through a low passage and down a set of wooden steps, to a dank ward room that appeared to have been chiseled out of the stone foundation of the structure itself.

A squat little man with a crimped mouth and bilious eyes sat at a scarred table that was littered with food remains and papers of some sort. He looked up at Garner, who had to bend to avoid hitting the ceiling beams with his head, and barked, "Well, whadda ye want-" He trailed an eye down over Garner's gentlemanly attire and added, "yer lordship?!"

"I'm here to see a prisoner. Blackstone Daniels," Garner intoned quite reasonably.

"Don't nobody see nobody in here. Them's m'orders." The fellow rose with a snarl even yellower than his eyes, and edged closer, squinting in the lantern light.

"I don't think you understand. I'm family, and I've come to see him on the matter of his legal defense," Garner asserted with determined caim.

"Don't care if you're King George hisself," the fellow stuck up a bristled chin, clearly enjoying the run of his power. "No visters."

Their eyes locked in steely confrontation and Garner was surprised to read an acquisitive glint in the superintendent's beady gaze. The Daniels axiom that nothing ever comes free rose in his mind. He felt beneath his coat for the small bag of coins in his pocket and drew them forth slowly. Watching the fellow's gaze fasten on them, he allowed the coins to trickle tantalizingly through his fingers, back and forth. Then to his surprise the fellow jolted back a step and raked a contemptuous glare over him.

"Put yer money away-less'n ye figure to buy yerself a room here wi' it," the superintendent growled. "We don' take no bribes."

Garner purpled with chagrin and wheeled, bumping his head on a beam on the way up the steps. When he reached the top, he found the street door blocked by a fracas of thrashing bodies and flailing limbs. The guards were apparently trying to evict some ragged wretch who didn't have enough sense left to leave. One of the four guards aimed a nasty kick at the fellow's ribs and when he crumpled with a groan, they joined forces to shove him out onto the cold street. Garner stepped outside after him, scowling as his attention snagged on something about the fellow.

The prisoner was holding his sides and staggering to his feet in the cold air. The sight of Garner's elegant boots made him freeze in the middle of testing his bloodied mouth with his fingers. His gaze climbed that memorable footgear, raising his shaggy countenance to Garner.

Garner startled. Overgrown brown hair, square, blocky features, tattered shirt and half-rotted boots. The blocky frame was thinner, much thinner, but the defiance in those piercing brown eyes was the very same.

"You!" Charlie Dunbar coiled and glowered and turned to spit blood from his bashed lips. Unfortunately, one of the soldiers at the door took his haphazard aim as a personal insult and another round of shoving ensued. Garner just managed to draw Charlie across the street and quickly found himself staring straight into the jaws of Dunbar wrath. "I shoulda known it was you," Charlie coiled and Garner tensed as they arched back, evaluating each other. "Come to spring me, have ye... to salve yer damned conscience?"

Garner was speechless at the conclusion Charlie had drawn from this bizarre coincidence, but had no inclination to set him straight just now. Charlie saw the deliberation in Garner's eyes and lifted a grizzled, bloodied chin to what Garner recognized as a hard-trading angle.

"You gonna take me to Whit, or do I have to find her m'self?"

"Take you... to Whitney?"

"I promised Black if I got out first, I'd find her an' see what you done with her. He's still in an' I'm out, an' a Dunbar never goes back on his word. I figger ye owe me that." Charlie glanced meaningfully at his battered frame and filthy clothes. "An' maybe a coat."

That was it? A damned coat?! Garner nearly staggered. No mayhem, no bloody outrage, no roiling lust for revenge? It took every bit of Townsend composure in him to draw himself up straight and say, "I'm not taking you anywhere looking like the wrath of God, Dunbar. How long has it been since you washed, or ate?"

It was an odd twosome that turned warily down the street and strode into a nearby tavern; no one was more cognizant of the fact than the two of them. Garner ordered food and the tavernman's best ale and sent the beer boy off with a few coins to find a warm coat and a large pair of shoes or boots, all under Charlie's suspicious glare.

"I tried to see her father," Garner revealed stiffly, watching Charlie put away the food like he hadn't eaten in months and feeling strangely empty himself. "Didn't get very far, not even with a flash of coin."

Charlie quaffed a full pint of the golden ale and canted a pained look at Garner. "You ain't ever been in prison, have ye?"

"I suppose it shows," Garner retorted dryly.

"Money, don't mean nothin' in prison, not to pris'ners nor to guards. Cain't eat it, nor wear it, and it won't keep ye- "Well, then, suppose you tell me just what the hell the fellow would want," Garner gritted, chaffing under Dunbar's "trader scorn." Hell, here he was, sitting in a smelly tavern being lectured on the arts of prison bribery by a man he'd kept chained to a tree for weeks on account of his rival lust for Whitney Daniels! Dunbar's wily grin was nothing short of astounding, in view of the circumstances.

"Food, Majur." He lifted his tankard and a hunk of the fried meat pie he was devouring. "A few good bottles, a bit o' decent food, maybe a good shirt or a pair o' boots."

"Dammit," Garner muttered nastily, shifting on his bench, "doesn't anybody just use plain money anymore?"

"Food can make a buck do things, Majur," Charlie taunted with ill-suppressed glee. "You forgot how well it works?" He chuckled wickedly at the redness of remembrance creeping into Garner's ears.

"I suppose I just amble in with a basket on my arm and offer the wretch a friendly snootful of rum?!"

"Hell'sfire, Majur, you have forgot!" Charlie braced an arm on his thigh and cocked a look of grave disappointment at Garner. So much potential, that look said, and so little finesse. "That super'ntend'nt won't do squat for you nor me. What we need's a weepy female." His grin became deviltry itself. "Got any idears where we can get us one?"

Whitney hurried down the stairs in the front hall of the borrowed town house with Kate only steps behind her. Edgewater had brought word of Garner's return and she prayed he had some word of her father. She hurried across the parlor toward Garner, then stopped in her tracks as she caught sight of the shaggy, disheveled form planted in front of the nearby hearth. Her heart rose into her throat as Charlie Dunbar turned and leveled a searching brown gaze on her. With a strangled eruption of joy, she launched herself first at Charlie, then at Garner, hugging and laughing, beaming girlish gratitude at Garner, who surely was responsible for freeing him.

When things calmed a bit, Kate gave Charlie a teary-eyed little hug herself, assuring him that Aunt Sarah was fine and that all Rapture missed him. Byron glowered through a tense introduction but Madeline recoiled blatantly from Charlie's grimy hand, turning pointedly to tight-lipped Edgewater and demanding a cover cloth for a chair so that he wouldn't contaminate the furnishings.

Once seated, Charlie related the grim details of his incarceration and forced march to Philadelphia. He and Black had been together the whole way, until recent weeks, when outspoken Black had been moved from their communal cell to somewhere deeper in the prison. There was pride in the way he related Black's unquenchable spirit and beliefs, and the way he'd stood up for himself and the other prisoners repeatedly, even to his own peril. Black Daniels was a man to be reckoned with, Charlie observed with a hushed reverence. And it was clear to all that the federals were intent on reckoning with him.

Then Garner took Whitney's hands in his and stiffly related his failed bit of bargaining. Whitney smiled at him through teary, adoring eyes as the implications of it rumbled through her. Stubbornly eastern and aristocratic Garner had actually tried to bargain a bit to help her pa; the thought warmed her all the way to her toes.

"What was it you said we need, Dunbar?" Garner turned to Charlie and glowered at his insolent sprawl on the parlor furnishings.

Charlie tore his attention from haughty little Madeline's curvy form and flashing hazel eyes and his woolly face creased with a wicked grin. "We need us is a weepy female... and maybe a bit o' pie."

Charlie had to stay with them, at least until he got his strength back; Whitney insisted on it. Much as Garner disliked the idea, he found himself agreeing on the grounds that Charlie's knowledge of Black's circumstances might prove helpful. Madeline glared at Charlie as if he should be tarred for the mange, and withdrew in a huff. Byron muttered and went for his coat and then for a bit of air.

Benson and Edgewater and the house servants were assigned the monumental task of rendering Charlie fit for human company. At no small cost to themselves, they managed to bathe and decontaminate and shave him and by supper had stuffed his now leaner body into a set of Garner's older clothes.

They wobbled down the stairs later, looking ashen and itchy. Charlie followed, looking choked and grumbling that he'd been "done up like a sore thumb." But a Dunbar was nothing if not adaptable. Charlie was soon basking in Kate and Whitney's compliments and looking for a bit of profit in being trussed-up in fancy "gentleman" clothes. As they went in to dinner, he saw Madeline's head jerk as she averted her eyes, and he realized she'd been staring at him. By the time Garner and Whitney began to plan the deal that would get them in to see Black Daniels, Charlie's mind was already set on other bargains.

The next morning, Charlie and Garner watched from across the street as Whitney and Kate carried large willow baskets, leaking delicious aromas, past the mesmerized front guards and into the shabby prison.

"I should never have let her go near that hell-hole," Garner smacked a gloved fist into a gloved hand.

"Whit's a helluva trader, Majur," Charlie frowned, quelling his own misgivings. "She's got trader's nerve. She could do a weepy-female bargain in her sleep." After a weighty silence, he muttered, "An' if this don't work, we can alwus make the bastard a fingers bargain."

There was no cause for worry. Inside, Kate was sniffling into her lady's handkerchief, mostly from the overpowering reek of ammonia in the air, and one look at the premises had made Whitney's expression convincingly bleak. Her pa, she told the grizzled superintendent, with an artful sniff, was all she and her aunt had left in the world.

"We know you're hard put to see to your many charges," she forced a brave little smile, "and I told Aunt Kate you were bound to look after him as a man of integrity would do. But she's pining and sorrowful... afraid that with all your responsibilities he might become a burden. She insisted we bring food and plentiful libation, and soap and a razor, and a shirt."

The seductive smells of beef pastries and apple cobbler and fresh-baked buns were curling through the ward room, and through the paunchy superintendent himself. He looked into Whitney's sea-pool eyes and succumbed to their tidal pull.

"We shan't beleaguer you to see him, sir." Whitney put her arms around Kate, whose weeping had escalated judiciously. "We only ask that you tell him we long for him and suffer with him. And that you allow us to bring him a basket each day."

"Each day?" The superintendent quivered with anticipation; his mouth watered violently. Kate's sobbing increased and the fellow solicitously offered them a chair, and a small bend of the rules. "Wull, mebee we could let ye see 'im a spell."

"Oh, sir... oh, could we?!"

Black was cleaned up a bit and hauled upstairs to a drier cell without being told why. He snarled and snorted and sheltered his dark-conditioned eyes against the lantern light, expecting some new torture or harangue. What he got was a glimpse of heaven. Whitney-his Whitney! His hunger-thinned frame quaked as she stood in the cell door, tears streaming down her lovely face. She rushed to his startled arms and it was a long moment before he could credit she was real and return her crushing hugs. At length he pushed her back to look at her, and the womanly glow of her brought tears to his eyes. A moment later, he was setting her back, insisting he didn't want to spoil her pretty clothes.

"Does he take good care of you?" Black choked as she nodded and defiantly snuggled closer to lay her head on his dirty shoulder. Relief poured through him at the realization that his intuitions about the major's feelings toward Whitney were correct. "Your iron-arsed major, Whit... have you made it a proper bargain?"

"Yes, Pa," she whispered, "it's a true marriage bargain. And Pa, he's helping me help you. He's getting you the best lawyer in Philadelphia and he's helping me bring you good food and decent clothes. We're going to get you out of this somehow, Pa, my iron-arsed major and me.

From that day forward, Black Daniels became a preferred prisoner, lodged on the drier upper floor of the meager facility and given lantern light and modest exercise. Whitney and Kate came daily with willow baskets that thoughtfully contained two of everything: two shirts, two pairs of boots, two pies, two bottles of whiskey. It wasn't long before the daily boots and shirts became conspicuous on the guards outside the front doors. Black's health and appearance improved daily and Whitney felt the weight on her heart lifting with each visit.

Influence was what they needed now, Garner explained to Whitney, Kate, and Charlie Dunbar. There was probably little hope of actually eliminating the charges against Black, but there might be hope of mitigating them. With time running short, Garner suggested they concentrate on those with direct influence on the outcome of Black's trial; prosecutors, judges, certain elected officials.

What did prosecutors want, Whitney wanted to know. Garner thought about it. "In general, I suppose, they all want to be judges." Well, what did judges want? "To be re-elected, reappointed, or maybe elected to Congress," Garner said, quoting Ezra on the dismal state of the judiciary. And to do any of that, they had to appear upstanding and virtuous and hard-working-at least in the newspapers. They had to give speeches and shake hands and listen to people-and have it reported in the papers.

Newspapers. It all kept coming back to newspapers and the slippery, ill-defined commodity Garner labeled "public opinion." Everybody in government seemed to be either running scared of it or panting after it like a randy swain.

"Gloriful Gabriel," Whitney sighed, "then what do newspapers want?"

Garner rubbed his chin. "To sell lots of newspapers, I suppose. And to do that, they have to have stories people are eager to read. And they want to be believed."

He saw the trader's flame flicker to life in Whitney's eyes as she stood up.

"Well, I've got something the newspapers want!"

Philadelphia's General Advertiser had run articles from various correspondents expressing criticism of the government's "military solution" to what was primarily a regional and economic problem. And when they were visited by a sweet waif of a girl in homespun, whose father was wasting away in prison, they were eager to listen and to write vivid stories of the monstrous hardships the brave frontier fold endured during the heinous military occupation. Two other papers picked up the trend, running articles on the heartless federal juggernaut that prosecuted the Reverend John Corbley, whose wife and children had been massacred before his very eyes not long before, and on the pillage and plunder inflicted on the western residents by Washington's "watermelon army."

Garner paced nervously the first time Whitney gave such an interview, waiting on the street with Charlie, down the block from the newspaper offices. He was stunned to witness a dignified white-haired fellow escorting Whitney out, shaking his head woefully and wiping at his reddened eyes with a handkerchief. He turned to Charlie with a drooping jaw and Charlie grinned.

"Whit alwus could talk nineteen to the dozen."

But the amorphous beast of "public opinion" was not enough. They needed swifter and more specified opinion to be of real benefit to Black Daniels. Garner compiled a list of men in Congress and in the judiciary who were known to be sympathetic to western causes and whose influence might be great enough to affect Black's fate.

He first tried to make appointments, the ascribed procedure for access to public officialdom. Virtually nobody he wanted to see was "in." How their coats and hats had managed to make it to the coatracks of their outer offices without their owners was a mystery indeed. It was infuriating to his Townsend pride and to his sense of fairness.

"Blessit! How am I supposed to barg-persuade them if I can't even get in to see them?!" he groaned, pacing the parlor under Whitney's, Kate's and Charlie's troubled frowns.

"I can get you in to see them," Byron stepped inside the warm parlor, his face still flushed from the cold. He'd just arrived from a business meeting and heard Garner's angry complaint as he paused outside the parlor door to remove his coat. Over and over in these last days, Kate's strong words to him had been echoing in his head: "he loves Whitney-and she loves him" and "having to testify against her father could tear him apart."

The air charged around them as Garner faced his father, tightening visibly at the accusation of failure he heard in Byron's tone. "I neither need nor want your help... or interference."

"Dammit!" Byron flamed. "You don't know politics- the way things work. I've dealt with it on a daily basis-"

Kate watched between them anxiously, reading in Byron's offer a tenuous step toward reconciliation with his son. In these last days, she'd experienced an altogether different Byron Townsend, one whose covert looks grew ever more tender and whose brief touches grew ever more hungry. She'd watched him watching Garner with Whitney. And she'd seen long-denied feelings rising beneath his polished defenses of arrogance and privilege. Protectiveness toward that tender little core of developing emotion surged in her.

"Garner, how can you talk to your father that way?" She inserted herself between them, catching both back in surprise. "He's offering to help both you and Black-stone-and you're letting your pig-headed Townsend pride keep you from accepting the very help that might save Black!"

"What's in it for him?" Garner growled defensively, surprised by Kate's intervention. "He never does anything without expecting a return."

"Maybe he's doing it because you're his son," Kate sputtered, "and because he cares what happens to you and Whitney!"

"Or maybe because he's afraid of having his precious family name dragged through the mud!" Garner charged, stalking closer to Byron, his eyes burning.

Kate backed a step, stunned by the depth of Garner's animosity and by the size of the gulf between father and son. She locked at Byron's stony features and read so clearly the turmoil and pain behind his hard-polished exterior. How could anyone fail to see it?

"What does it matter why he does it?" she choked, feeling tears rising inexplicably. "If he's willing to help Blackstone-why can't that be enough?"

Garner caught sight of Whitney as she stepped forward, her shoulders rigid, her face pale and troubled. The sight of her prodded him to recall the trust between them, to recall his vow to do whatever was necessary to help her father. What was the matter with him? Only a fool would reject such help, even if it did come from his cold, calculating father. He made himself ease and turned to Kate, feeling like he'd just been snatched back from the edge of a precipice.

"As you say," he said, deferring to Kate's wisdom, then turned a sober look on Byron, "what difference does his motive make? We... accept your help, willingly, sir."

"But not gratefully." Byron ripped his eyes from his son to stare at Kate. "Fair enough."

Kate turned and fled the parlor and Byron excused himself a moment later as Whitney walked into Garner's arms. Byron stood in the hallway, his eyes burning dryly as Kate's defense of him rumbled about in his heart and mind. No one had ever defended him. He flew through the dining room and the kitchen, looking for her, then rushed up the stairs to her room.

She was sitting in a chair by the window, her face in her hands, when he came through the door with his chest heaving. In three long strides he was across the narrow room and pulling her startled form into his arms.

"Why did you do that, Kate?" His voice resonated through her.

"What difference does my motive make?" she salvaged an equivocal answer from the chaos inside her.

"It makes all the difference in the world to me."

She stared up into his softening face and dared tell him the truth. "I know you wanted to help him-I've watched you. You're a hard man, Byron Townsend, but you're not made of iron. You really do care for him. I wanted you to have a chance with him."

"God." It really was a prayer at that moment. "In all my life, no one's ever cared about how I felt, or cared what I wanted. Lord, Kate, you scare the hell out of me- " He groaned, wrapping his arms tightly around her, savoring her softness and sinking into the warm, liquid copper of her eyes. "But I want you, Kate Morrison, in every way it's possible to want a woman. And I won't be denied."

His mouth lowered over hers and a moment later he felt the explosion of her response all through him. They came together joyfully, seeking and giving things neither had known before. His hands moved hungrily over her waist and sought the hardening fullness of her breasts, claiming her passions and her heart. She pressed against him, reveling in his strength and giving her desires full rein. It was several minutes before Byron lifted his head and cleared it enough to recall the untimely interruption of their last such encounter. He lowered Kate's love-tousled form to the bed and reeled to the half-open door to close and latch it securely.

Whitney peeled herself from the far wall in the hallway, her eyes as big as saucers. She'd come to see if Kate was alright and found... Her knees wobbled as she let herself into the room she and Garner shared. The sight of Kate's loosened bodice, of her glistening eyes and bee-stung lips, clung to her mind's sight. Aunt Kate... with Byron. Kissing and rubbing, acting like a pure Delilah! Proper Aunt Kate had a bit of "Delilah" in her? A giggle bubbled up from her stomach and grew into a laugh that carried the releasing sound of insight. If upstanding, elegant, and refined Aunt Kate had some Delilah in her... then probably all women had a trace of it in them, somewhere.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

The next morning a peculiar alliance was formed in the rented Townsend quarters, a tripartite force of political acumen, righteous determination, and wily brute force.

Over the next several days, Byron, Garner, and Charlie Dunbar made discreet forays into the political arena, targeting and contacting men of influence, from senators to justices to undersecretaries. Garner watched his father's smooth blend of charm and intimidation open doors to them that had been irrevocably closed to him alone.

Garner began to relax enough to study the style and delicacy of Byron's opening gambits, which were different for each man they encountered. It struck Garner that Byron seemed to know, or to quickly read, what each man valued, and that he worked that value to the hilt. Money was never mentioned, nor ever even implied in the subtle transactions underway. And the comparison with Whitney's policy of determining what a person "wanted" and dealing with him on that basis was inescapable. In the highest echelons of power, he realized, as in the very lowest, the mode of commerce was "barter and bargain." A word of influence for a word of support; a vote was traded for a piece of information or a confidence. "Favor" proved the most liquid of all currencies.

There were times, however, that no amount of logic, persuasion, or outright flattery would prevail, and they were given polite ear, then politely ushered out. The first time it happened, Charlie tugged his waistcoat down and narrowed a hard look at the office door closing sharply behind them, snarling, "We shoulda made 'im a fingers bargain."

Byron leveled a penetrating look on Charlie's wry blend of frontier simplicity and worldly grasp of the human condition. "A fingers bargain? I believe I know that one, Dunbar." He met Charlie's wary gaze with a knowing smirk that turned into a startlingly wicked laugh.

"A fingers bargain?" Garner glared at their humor.