"My dear, what is going through that pretty little head of yours?"
"I'm just thinking."
"Thinking, pet? That's dangerous. How oft I have wondered in our rather lengthy (and considerable) acquaintance what the consequences for the world would be if you were to stoop yourself to the low cerebral arts."
He hadn't given up his favorite manner of teasing her, loaded irony, but his voice did not hold the maliciousness she had come to dread in the later years of their marriage. Instead, it brought back memories of their earliest encounters, when he would affectionately goad her because he found her barbed responses so deliciously refreshing when compared to her contemporaries—those silly, simpering 'ladies' to whom social norms and conventionality meant all the world.
She hadn't understood then what he meant half the time, his changeable moods as mercurial to her as Shakespeare's prose, but she knew enough from experience to know when Rhett Butler was mocking her. And she felt sure enough in their renewed love for each other (how strange it sounded!) to trade words with him, and let him know that she was a woman who could think just as much as anyone.
"How unfortunate for you, sir, to be so deeply and hopelessly in love with such a stupid woman," she huffed, rising from the bed and his broad hand carelessly caressing her shoulder (how difficult it was to pull away from that warmth!), and walking over to sit primly on the small sofa on the other side of the room. He laughed a little at her, his broad and baritone chuckle bouncing against the ceiling and back into her ears and down her spine, creating a small shiver of pleasure.
She hoped he didn't notice how even his laugh made her want him.
"Ah, Scarlett, I see I've stung your famous O'Hara pride. Rest assured, darling, I've never thought you 'stupid' in the sense you refer to—any man who looked at your many businesses would think the shrewdest businessmen in Georgia owned them. And that's not flattery, Mrs. Butler, it's the truth." The look of pleasure on her face was gratifying to him—it had none of her former cloying pretend sweetness. Scarlett was looking at him like she really cared what he thought, not just what he said. "What I said earlier, my dear, was in reference not to your knowledge of art or literature or poetry or any of those noble pursuits that you never bothered learning because they held no interest for you. I was only thinking of your habit of putting off thinking about things until tomorrow."
Suddenly that face, the face that he had known and loved since its 16th year and always counted on to be young and gay, or wildly angry and passionate, became very grave and serious. Scarlett looked up from her spot on the small couch and fixed her green eyes on him.
"I've realized that there won't always be a tomorrow to look forward to, Rhett."
Slowly, quietly, Rhett Butler got up from the bed and walked over to where she was sitting, kneeling in front of her. He stared at her in that searching, eager way she had seen so many times but never really understood, his dark eyes as pervasive and overflowing as the spring of his love for her, and hers for him. It was a well that begged to be explored, and they would brave the depths of it together, their understanding of it so new, so raw. The amount of love she felt was too immense, she felt out of her depth for a moment, overwhelmed by it, and she broke eye contact with him. Hastily, she turned her eyes to the rich burgundy carpet instead.
He put his hand underneath her chin, and tilted her face back up to look at him.
"You've changed."
It wasn't accusatory or spiteful or wholly happy—as usual, she had no idea what the man she loved was thinking, but deep inside of her, she could physically feel the bond between them swell, like the fruit on the branches of the trees at Tara in the late summers of her youth. He looked gravely serious, his expression impenetrable, before he smirked a little and the spell of this frightening emotional intimacy between them was broken. Scarlett breathed out, glad for the light moment.
"I hope that's a compliment, Captain Butler, and not one of your usual lowbrow remarks," she coquetted, a teasing parody of her southern belle routine. She raised herself up, apparently to get something off the dressing table, but Rhett stood up at the same time and she could not find it in herself to brush past him so cavalierly. He was so tall—his very physical presence demanded attention, and try as she might she had never been able to ignore him.
"Still fishing for compliments, eh, Scarlett? Maybe you've changed less than I thought." Somehow, he managed to pull her by the waist and into his broad lap on the petite settee. Scarlett squirmed a little against this brazen action, until he whispered huskily into her ear, "And for the record, when it comes to you, a lowbrow remark and a compliment are nine times out of ten synonymous." She blushed hotly, torn between elbowing him to let go of her and asking what 'synonymous' meant.
"I must ask you to let go of me, sir." She intoned with as much dignity as she could muster. "You are imposing on my attempt to…to-" The end of the sentence wasn't coming, she was too distracted by the feel of his breath against her neck and the fingers that where lightly caressing her waist. "—brush my hair." Oh, God's nightgown, she could feel the tickle of his mustache on her shoulder. Men like Rhett Butler shouldn't be allowed!
"Oh no, I'm not letting you get away now. Besides, I don't want you to brush your hair—I want to do it myself, like I used to." He ran a finger from the nape of her neck, through her hair, and all the way to the ends of her dark tresses. "But, my dear, we seem to have gotten a little sidetracked in our verbal tête-à-tête—I was asking you what you were thinking about that gave you that most becoming expression that graced your visage a few minutes ago."
She had nearly forgotten about that.
"Oh, Rhett, I don't want to talk about it, it's going to sound silly." Rhett's interest immediately perked up. She sounded almost…embarrassed? Scarlett O'Hara, embarrassed? It was something he thought her pride would never allow her to show, not real, vulnerable embarrassment anyway. Certainly over the years he'd knocked her down a few pegs through embarrassment, but whatever this was, it had little if anything to do with her pride or vanity, by the sounds of it. This sounded like…an emotional vulnerability.
He was quickly discovering he found these newly realized vulnerabilities of hers just as enticing as her strengths.
…But then again, what didn't Rhett Butler find enticing about Scarlett O'Hara?
"Silly? Have I ever made you feel silly about something, dearest?" He could imagine the aggravated look she might give him if they were facing each other. "Well, it doesn't matter, because I shall not let you go until you tell me." He held her a little more tightly to his chest, secure that his prize could not escape.
"Rhett Butler, let go of me!"
The protest was half-hearted, he knew it. Scarlett couldn't simply acquiesce to his demand, it wasn't in her nature—she had to constantly challenge him. He could feel her pulse quicken from his embrace—he decided to press his advantage.
"Tell me what was going through your head, Scarlett, or I shall have to use dirty means to extract it."
"I'd like to see you-" He cut her off with a series of kisses from her exposed shoulder up to her neck. She yelped in surprise at his tender ministrations, eliciting a small chuckle from him. "Rhett, you had better-"
"What, my dear?" He laughed. "Stop, or continue?"
"Oh, you…" She wriggled a bit more, and no longer half-heartedly at that. He wondered, after everything they had been through, why she still continued to challenge his clear and obvious claim to superior physical strength. Probably because she was Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler, and she would not admit his claim to superiority on any count. "Oh, alright! I'll tell you what I was thinking about, Rhett Butler. I was…I was thinking about…about our first kiss!"
Whatever he had been expecting, that was most certainly not it. Rhett was so surprised he loosened his grip on the tiny waist, which she used as an opening to slip out of his lap and over to the object of her previous desire, the mirror and dresser. He could see her reflection in the mirror, a mixture of discomfiture and fragility, and he wanted to know why.
"Why," He cajoled her from the couch, "I do believe you've grown a romantic heart, Scarlett. I've never known you to dwell on anything that's happened in the past—and still, the memory of that-when was our first kiss, darling, remind me? There've been so many, it's hard to keep up."
Through the mirror, she narrowed her eyes at his mocking smile, vigorously and unnecessarily applying rouge to her already flushed cheeks.
"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, Rhett Butler, you know full well when it was you first kissed me! It was on the road out of Atlanta that God-awful night when Sherman burned the town to the ground." She closed her eyes, imperiously. "And since we are setting the record straight, I shall have to tell you that I was not thinking of your brazen behavior because it brought back any fond memories." Her face was burning, and he could not help but enjoy her futile attempts to diminish the significance of their sexual chemistry. "I was thinking about it…because Ella's growing up, and I expect soon she shall ask me about my first kiss with her 'Uncle Rhett'."
"First kiss with me? That was your first real kiss with any man, Scarlett. And we both know it."
"My first kiss was with Stuart Tarleton and it was years before I even met you." Only a year before she'd met him, but needn't know that. He was very arrogant and he knew that she loved him—did it mean he had to know that she'd never felt anything that could even remotely compare to his caresses? "Or was it Brent? I can never remember…" She turned away from the mirror and back towards him, puzzling it over.
"I see it left a real impression on you." Rhett sat up straight and leaned over to her, the always keen interest in her mind particularly acute at that moment. He knew she had a greater capacity for deep thinking then she would ever know, because Scarlett preferred living to thinking. Her spirit demanded that she partake in the tangible pleasures of life, the ephemeral nature of philosophy had no place where there was so much lusty spirit and heart. And yet, she seemed to be attempting contemplation.
Scarlett would never cease to surprise him.
"Oh, you just wish you'd stolen my first kiss." She pouted.
"As far as I'm concerned, I did." He clasped his hands together on his lap. "So, Scarlett, what about the first time I graced that cupid's bow were you thinking of in particular?"
She frowned a little, tiny crease marks above her brow giving her a thoughtful look.
"Well…don't take this the wrong way, Rhett. But at first I couldn't remember when exactly our first kiss was."
Rhett theatrically gripped at his heart, as if it were breaking in two. Scarlett ignored him, half talking to herself.
"I thought about it for a real long time, and I could have sworn it was the day of Frank's funeral, when you proposed. But somehow, I knew that wasn't right, because I remember knowing what kissing you felt like before that day. And all that time after the bazaar you almost never touched me except that awful day when you came by and tried to proposition me to…to…" She couldn't even bring herself to finish the sentence. He laughed aloud at her strange notions of propriety. They'd shared a bed many times, and Scarlett was not a saint on any count, but still her sense of propriety still reeled that he'd asked her to be his mistress.
"I sometimes wonder if our lives together might have been a lot easier if you'd given into me then, Scarlett," he said, dryly.
"But then-" She plunged on, for once not rising to his bait. "-But then I remembered the road to Tara, when you deserted me to join the army. And those things you said…you said you felt that you were a coward for not joining the army earlier. And a lot of other things—things about me. That was the first time you said you loved me, Rhett, wasn't it?"
She was looking straight into his eyes now. Rhett nodded, briefly, staring back at her, midst the remembrances of that night, one of the most eventful of their lives. It was the first time he had said he loved her…and he had thought for all these years the words had fallen on deaf ears.
"You said you loved me because I was selfish like you. Because neither of us cared about anyone but ourselves," As Scarlett began relaying the night of Beau's birth, the details, for so many years hazy, came back to her. For so long it had been one of a slue of bad memories she had tried not to dwell on. In the war, especially, when she had to run Tara single-handedly and feed all those people, she learned to think of neither the past nor the future. "And Rhett…" He was startled to see tears in her eyes. "I can't make sense of what you meant. Why should anyone love someone for being selfish?"
"My dear, are you asking why I love you?" Rhett stood up and padded softly over to her. He did not kneel down in front of her this time, instead choosing to stand above her, eyes as darkly alive as the first time they had seen her. How can I even begin to explain a thing like that? I don't even know myself, half the time.
She broke eye contact with those frightening, impenetrable depths. What she was trying to puzzle out was as much for her sake as it was for his.
"I never thought that a man could love a woman the way you described it." Her voice was steady, now. She was not sad, she would not cry. She would not be weak and run away from understanding and the truth, as she'd done so many times before.
She wanted to know the truth.
"I thought that men loved me, that is, I thought that all my beaux were in love with me for the way I looked, the way I charmed them, and flattered them, and because of my eyes, and the way I laughed at all of the stupid things they said!" Her voice rose at the last words, and for once Rhett did not feel he could laugh at her ire. Her anger seemed to be directed at herself, at her own ignorance—the ways in which she had been taught to feel. Not for the first time, Rhett felt hot anger at the way that women were trained to curb their passions in lieu of some divine 'honor'.
"When you first started courting me after Charles died, I never knew what you wanted. The things I'd done to get love from men before you made clear you didn't want, and I was never charming to you, because you'd always tease me and ask me why I was bothering to act that way when it didn't have any affect on you. But you'd keep coming back, even when I raged at you and said I hated you—you kept coming back, and I didn't understand. I never saw you clearly. I couldn't make sense of anything…one minute I'd think you were in love with me, and the next I'd…" Words came to her, slowly. "I would try not to think about it, because I never could come around to making sense out of it. And then the things you said on the road that night…Rhett, what a time to admit love!"
Scarlett's voice was reproachful.
"Now, be fair, Scarlett. I was going off to join the army, for all I knew I'd never see you again. I had to have at least one kiss from you before I joined up with the boys in gray." He touched her shoulder gently, and could not help saying, "I find it rather amusing that you would criticize me for inappropriate timing in confessions of love."
She grimaced at the point. It was like him, to bring up that fateful incident in the library at Twelve Oaks…her face fell when she thought of the other time he had heard her confess love, right after Melanie died. Rhett seemed to realize that the joke was in rather poor taste, even for him, and he smiled at her, genuinely smiled, as if those two incidents were mere funny stories and had not been the cause of so much pain for them both.
"Cheer up, Scarlett. I don't suppose my first admission of love mattered much, since you didn't seem to believe me at the time, anyway-"
"Why did you leave me, Rhett?"
Scarlett looked up at him again, her green eyes roving his face. Her voice was shaking, as it had been the night she fell into his arms and cried like a child. She had a hungry look, a piercing stare of a lost person looking for a passage into the soul. Rhett could feel the final defenses he'd built around his heart and mind, years ago, to save himself from her, crumble and scatter to the four winds.
"If you loved me then, Rhett," Her voice gained some strength, "How could you have done that? How could you have left me on the road that night, with Wade and Melly and Prissy and the baby?" There was anger there, in her voice, but something else…a desire to understand him, to know what he'd been thinking that night. Rhett realized what the look she gave him reminded him of.
It was the look that he was sure he'd been giving her since they'd met.
"Did you really not believe in the Cause, Rhett? I'll never understand why you left, because you said yourself that you were selfish and loved me, and then you…you left."
"I'll never understand myself why I left, Scarlett."
Scarlett stood up, suddenly, and squarely faced Rhett. Of course, he was so much taller than she was, she couldn't help but look up to see into his eyes.
"I don't know why I love you, Rhett!" she exclaimed abruptly. It wasn't said jokingly, teasingly. It wasn't a suggestion of a doubt of her love…it was simply a fact. "I thought it was because of all of the times you saved me and held me and let me be myself around you. But, when you left me after Melly died—" He jerked his arms, as if he was restraining himself from smothering her with them, the physical manifestation of his desire to keep her safe and keep the shadows at bay…the shadows he himself had created. "-Why, I found I loved you even more. When you left me after the night of Ashley's party, I loved you, when I should have hated you! You took Bonnie away from me, but all I wanted was to give you another child. Even when you're hateful and you say things I don't understand, I still love you. I love you so much it hurts, Rhett, and I want to know why!"
He lifted up a hand to gently touch the face that would be permanently engrained on his heart, his very soul…heart-shaped, strong jawed, with a sharp chin and the most amazing pair of jade eyes he'd ever seen. As much as he had wondered how he could continue loving her through every thing she'd done to hurt him, he wondered even more how her love, so long unrealized, had finally flourished after he'd done all he could to snuff it out. By all accounts it should have died before she'd even known it existed. That hungry, desperate feeling to be close not only in body, but in mind and soul as well, was etched on every line of her 30-year-old face.
He grasped her hands, gently, and lifted them to his lips where he kissed them.
"Do you need a reason to love me?" He asked, softly. She sighed, breathlessly, worn out by her own tirade.
"Rhett, I want to understand you. I feel like that will make loving you easier."
He wondered if there was anything about the love they felt that could make things 'easier'. He'd understood her for years, and it had made loving her worse.
"Is it not easy loving me?" He couldn't help but ask. He knew the response would be worth hearing, for better or for worse—she'd be honest with him, at least.
"No, it is not!" was her indignant response, as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "All I can think of is that it's only a matter of time before we start doing horrible things to each other, like we always have." She gripped the front of his shirt, clinging as fiercely as she could to him without being trapped by his arms. "Rhett, I'm as afraid that I'm going to ruin it as I am that you'll leave me again."
As soon as the words left her lips, she seemed to regret voicing them. Scarlett stared up into his eyes with such vulnerability he could hardly believe that this fragile thing had been the cause of the most excruciating pain in his life—he'd once gone so far to describe her as his tormentor. She was small and young and he enveloped her in his arms, because he had an instinctual urge to shelter her from everything in the world. Something he had failed to do, clearly, if her life for the last decade was any indication—in fact, he'd become the thing she needed protection from the most of all.
The irony, was, of course, that he'd first fallen in love with her because he knew that she had enough inner strength to stand on her own. Immediately after realizing this, he tried to break that intense spirit—to bend it, make it reliant on him. He had wanted to make her need him as desperately as he needed her. And now, it seemed, he'd gotten what he wanted for all these years. He'd made her as sick for loving him as he was for her.
As she clung to him, he realized, in spite of everything, he felt safe. There'd been a time when he'd jealously guarded himself against her, because he wanted to show her that he was not the same as all the other fools that had fallen under her spell over the years. It was stupid, because the fact was that Scarlett was protecting him as much as he was protecting her.
"Scarlett, I couldn't leave you if I wanted to. As completely and utterly insane as you drive me when we're together, it doesn't compare in the slightest to how I feel when I don't have you." He pulled back from her embrace to gauge her reaction. He could see a hint of Scarlett pride, a shadow of a narcissistic pleasure in her watery green eyes. Rhett was glad, as spoiled and silly as she'd been then, because all he'd ever wanted was to recreate the Scarlett O'Hara before the war had hurt her. "And as for getting to know me…you have a lifetime to get to know me, Scarlett. We can speak honestly, for once."
"But I want to know now!" She cried, pulling her hands down from his shoulders and balling her fists. Her mannerisms were part desperation, part childish petulance. "If I really knew you, Rhett, I'd have known why you were leaving me on that road."
Rough and Ready, again? The conversation kept leading back to the night they'd fled Atlanta together. It was a traumatic experience for her, he knew, but she'd managed to bounce back stronger than ever after many other, worse tragedies than the burning of a mere city. They'd never talked about that parting before…with a start, he realized something that had never occurred to him before.
He'd explained to her why'd he left after the night of Ashley's party…he'd explained that it was cowardice and guilt that had fueled that flight. He'd tried to make her understand why he'd left after Melanie's death…that he really did think his love was used up and gone. Of course he was wrong, he told her, because he couldn't stop loving her, no matter how hard he tried. And she seemed to understand now, in a way, though she'd been hurt. God knows they both had.
He'd never explained to her what made him leave her on the road to Atlanta.
"If you'd known how I felt, Scarlett, you would have known why I left you."
She stared up at him, her lovely face confused.
"What?"
Rhett stroked the cheek with his thumb, affectionately.
"I left you at Rough and Ready, Scarlett, because I loved you."
The confusion turned to incredulity in a brilliant flash. Rhett found himself momentarily lost in her green eyes and their remarkable ability to change as quickly as her moods.
"You left me because you love me?"
Rhett thought it a rather romantic reason to go off to war, and he could not help but grin at the display of Irish temper his reason had elicited. He could almost hear the words "Why the hell did you do that?" trip off her tongue.
"Strange, isn't it?" He asked, lightly. "You and I never have expressed our ardor in the most conventional way, have we, pet?" Her face was still unbelieving, so he pressed on in his explanation. "Yes, Scarlett, it was you who inspired the Confederate spirit long dormant in here." He held her hand over his heart. "If I'd never met you, I would've never joined the army."
He could tell she was listening this time—she was trying, at least. Scarlett's wide eyes began to flicker dimly with the beginnings of understanding.
"But, why, Rhett?" she asked, slowly. "You knew we were going to lose the day of the barbeque."
"Every other Southern man was fighting for something besides himself. The 'Cause', or his rights, or for slaves…" He laughed very harshly. "Most of them, though, were fighting for a girl." He searched her face to see if she was putting it together, and comprehension, he noted with satisfaction, was dawning. "I'd as good as told you that I mattered more to myself than anything else. That I'd never let myself be tied down by anything or…anyone. Well, when you were crying in my arms that night, screaming that you'd go home to your mother no matter what…I knew I'd found something I cared about more than anything else. I'd never put myself into anything selflessly. And seeing you so small and afraid, and at the same time a tower of strength…part of me wanted to stay and protect you more than ever."
"Then why didn't you stay?" Her voice cracked on the last word.
"Because you wouldn't let me, Scarlett. Not really."
Her face changed moods again, this time confusion to disbelief.
"I sent for you, didn't I? I asked you to help me—if you hadn't gotten that horse and cart for us, and told me where to go, we would have never made it out of the city!" she exclaimed, unbelieving. Why did the usually self-assured and self-important Rhett Butler devalue himself so?
He cast his eyes to the side, carelessly letting go of her, and walked back to the bed, sitting down heavily.
"Oh, certainly I helped you, Scarlett. But I was a tool, a means to an end. It was your sheer force of will that saved you, not me. You didn't need Rhett Butler." He reached for the cigar case sitting on the bedside table. "I guess as much as I've always admired your independence, Scarlett-" He pulled out one of his favorite Cubans and lit it up. "-I've resented it, too. A man doesn't like to be superfluous."
"I did need you, Rhett!" she said, desperately. It was all so many years ago, it seemed strange that they should be able to talk about Bonnie calmly, and yet this would stir so many emotions. Scarlett followed him to the bed and sat down next to him. He turned to face her, casually smoking, but his black eyes glittered with a thinly veiled interest in her words.
"I did," she started, softly, but she could not restrain her voice from raising for very long , "I did need you. There wasn't a man alive besides you who could've done it! For years I thought it would've been better if Ashley had been in Atlanta, if Ashley had saved us…but what good would he have been?" She snorted, derisively.
"He might've been able to recall the fall of Constantinople and wax poetic about the destruction of a fine and great civilization." Rhett idly remarked, his distaste for Ashley Wilkes creeping into his voice. He wasn't yet secure enough in Scarlett's feelings for him to spare the honorable Mr. Wilkes his usual verbal thrashing, though it could have been worse. Scarlett noticed his stiffening shoulders, and she realized with a jolt the cause of the dark shadow that had passed over his face the moment before. "Or perhaps he would have recited 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' at Mrs. Wilkes while she was half-dead from giving birth to Beau."
Scarlett ran a hand over the muscle of his shoulder, trying to sooth him before his remarks turned too vicious.
"It doesn't matter now. Thank God you were there, because as far as I'm concerned you're the only man who could've saved us."
"You flatter me," Rhett shrugged. "What I did wasn't all that difficult."
"Maybe it wasn't, but you were the only man in Atlanta who cared enough about us to help…I must have known that, deep down, I must've known that was why you stayed. Even if I didn't know…" She trailed off. He noticed the pained quality in her voice.
"Didn't know what?"
"Didn't know that you loved me." She sighed, staring at the flowered wallpaper across the room. "I expected you to say it to me, and I was really looking forward to holding it over your head when you finally did." A hollow laugh followed the pronouncement. "I guess since you knew me so well, that's probably why you never did say anything."
"That was one of the determining reasons." Rhett agreed. "Though it was my own fear, more than anything." He amended, dryly.
Scarlett's head whipped around and green eyes met black, unbelieving.
"Fear?"
"Scarlett, I've as good as admitted that I find the prospect of dysentery, a hundred thousand Union troops and near certain death less terrifying than you." He laughed, lightly. "Will you forgive me my weakness? I did not think it the most opportune moment in either of our lives for confessions of love, and if your reaction to my kiss is anything to go by, I was right."
"So you were ready to die for something you didn't think was worth fighting for, but you weren't ready to be honest with me?" He inclined his head slightly in assent. "Either I'm a real dragon, or I must've slapped you harder than I thought, Rhett."
She reached out and touched her husband's cheek, running her fingers lightly over his unshaven jaw, as if looking for the scar she'd left behind. Little did she know that the only scars she'd ever given him littered his soul and paled in comparison with any physical injuries he'd ever experienced his entire life.
"My heart was more injured than my face. I don't know what I was expecting you to say after I all but mauled you…the entire time I was soldier, I kept myself alive by thinking about what might've happened if little Wade Hampton had not interrupted my fond farewell to you." She withdrew her hand from his cheek and smacked him on the arm as a reproach instead. His only response was to laugh and to throw the still-lit cigar into the ashtray on the sideboard.
"Rhett Butler, what exactly are you suggesting would have happened that night?" Scarlett asked, putting her hands on her hips in self-righteous indignation.
"Do you need me to paint a picture, or should I spare you the thrilling details?" He leered at her reddening face. Scarlett felt a familiar warmth in her stomach, a purely feminine thrill, thinking about what they might have done on the road to Rough and Ready had Rhett gotten his way. This was the man she loved…a man who had no fear, a man who was danger and daring personified. "Needless to say, Atlanta would not have been the only thing 'on fire' that night." Rhett raised his eyebrows suggestively, his sensuous mouth curving into a smug grin that made his lady love want to simultaneously punch him in the face and reenact that night as he was describing it.
A man who is an utterly tasteless cad!
"That sounds like something you'd read in a one of those vulgar dime store novels."
"I'll admit there is a rather tasteless bent to my turn of phrase." He twisted his body to face her completely. Scarlett's blush intensified, and not for the first time she had the unpleasant feeling that he was mocking her. She didn't think she'd ever get used to it, no matter how much she adored this hateful boor. "And it rather does sound like something in one of the more sentimental romances that all young ladies read when their mother isn't around…would you know anything about that, Scarlett?" He cajoled.
"No, I wouldn't," she said, flatly. The entire conversation had, in a moment, completely changed tone. "And I've made a resolution. I'm not going to rise to the bait anymore. I'm a grown woman and you've teased me enough to last twenty lifetimes. God knows I've done some absolutely hateful things to you in the past, but I won't have us ruining what we're creating now over stupid bickering." His smile dropped immediately, and the familiar poker face took its place. "So, you've got two choices. Either you start treating me like something that's even close to being equal to you, and not some little toy—or when you talk that way, I shall simply not say anything back." She forced her hands into her lap, primly, and shifted her body straight ahead. She could feel his stare on her, and she could not resist peeking at him out of the corner of her green eyes. His gaze bored into the side of her head, and she felt the rush of intense emotion, of fear and passion coupled with some third indescribable feeling, that an angry Rhett always created in her.
"There's a third choice, you know. You could actually try having a sense of humor about yourself for once." He commented, dryly. Scarlett bit back the sharp response she wanted so badly to say.
"Being teased every once and a while by someone who I can actually tease back isn't so bad, Rhett." She kept her voice calm and reasonable. "But you're impossible to bother—you always have been. Maybe it's from all those years of gambling professionally, but you're the calmest and most collected man that ever lived. The only way I've ever been able to get to you is to say really nasty things that I know hurt you terribly. I don't want to do that to you, because it made both of us miserable, but can't you see how hard it is for me? If you'd only let me see what you're thinking, instead of being so damned unflappable all the time, I'd feel like we were on equal ground." Scarlett's voice betrayed the insecurity she felt, and Rhett's face fell as he saw the beginnings of tears welling up in her eyes. "You can read me like a book, do you need more to hold over me? I never have any idea what's going on in that head of yours, I…need to feel like what I say matters to you."
"Scarlett, look at me."
She forced herself to look over at him again. Scarlett felt stupid and small, tearing up in front of Rhett over such a silly thing as being teased. She was trying to show him how she'd grown up, and the age difference between them was never more acute than at that moment. She felt like a little girl—only Rhett was far more daunting father than her own had ever been. Rhett held her shoulders and looked so intensely into her eyes she felt that completely stripped away.
Only, this time, Rhett looked completely stripped away as well.
"Scarlett, there's no one on this Godforsaken Earth whose words matter to me more than yours," he shook her shoulders at the admission, and she felt like the mouse he'd always made her feel like. "And that includes myself. Shocking, I know, honey." He smiled a little at her gape. "If I seem like the most unflappable man in the world, it's because for years I perfected the art of not caring. Or rather, I tried to. I told myself I didn't give a damn what anyone else thought. Hell, I managed to fool myself for awhile. Until one day," he gently brushed back a loose tendril of her hair behind her ear, "I met this girl. A little slip of a thing from the backwoods of Georgia." She smiled reprovingly at his assessment of Clayton County, but he continued, "And she was quite a bit like me—unscrupulous, immoral and stubborn. So I could read her real well, and I enjoyed letting her know that I knew what she was thinking. And this little girl got real hot and bothered because she knew she couldn't fool me. But what she didn't know was that I really cared about what she was thinking." He smiled, ruefully. "I cared what she was doing, too. And what she said. And where she went, and who she went with. And I cared what her moods were, why she was sad and happy. I cared about what she was wearing, even."
"And did you ever tell this Georgian girl that you cared so much?" Her voice was soft but her watery smile betrayed the triumph of conquest that Scarlett O'Hara enjoyed so much.
"I may have gotten around to it, eventually." His hands fell from her shoulders to her back, and he pulled her close to him. "But no, not for a real long time. Because, you see, my dear, I care about myself, too. And I wasn't going to tell this little lady until I thought that she might care back."
She rubbed her face against his shirt and sighed.
"I used to think that everything in life was a big joke to you, Rhett."
He laughed, still gently holding her to his chest.
"Well, before I met you, almost everything in life was a big joke to me. I suppose being turned out by your own father makes a person cynical about the world," he said, bitterly. "I stopped believing that anything mattered but getting what you want while you have the chance. Unfortunately, sometimes what you want," He squeezed her and she yelped and glared at him. "Has a mind of her own. You have to understand, Scarlett, that I tease you because you are one of the few things in my life that is not a joke. I've got to keep you human, darling."
"I…sort of understand, Rhett. I think. But it's just…well, if you talked to me the way you used to talk to Melly, I'd feel like you really cared about what I was saying. If you respected me half as much you did her, then it wouldn't be so bad."
"I was always the soul of courtesy to Mrs. Wilkes because I felt she was one of the few people who was my moral superior in all respects. Though I valued her opinion and she comforted me in one of my…darkest hours, I didn't particularly care any more about the things she said to me than what any of the Atlanta set ever said." He was being honest, and the fact that Rhett had sometimes pretended to care about what Melanie said was not unknown to Scarlett, but the words still sounded strange coming out of his mouth now. "You, on the other hand, are my complete moral equal. And so, for much of our acquaintance I have treated you in a manner I felt that I deserved to be treated."
"You must have a pretty low opinion of yourself." She said dryly into his shirt.
"Yes, well. A girl once told me I was horrid, you know. And she wasn't wrong." He soothingly stroked her hair. "If I hadn't spent so long proving to that girl that she was right, I would have saved us both a lot of grief."
"Maybe…" she half whispered. "Maybe that girl was just as bad. Maybe she was worse." His grip on her tightened, and she felt the familiar safety that Rhett's arms brought her. "Rhett, if you felt half as sick as I did when you left Atlanta…I think I sort of understand why you left me that night. God, being in love is frightening."
She sounded so vulnerable, so young, and all at once he felt a rush of clarity. She was trying to understand, she for whom introspection did not come, ever. Scarlett O'Hara, who shot first and didn't ask questions at all—she didn't want to hold that night over his head. She actually wanted to know, and their mutual experience of rejection was giving her a fairly clear idea of his motivations, for once.
"It really is, Scarlett. It is." He kissed the top of her head.
"I want to know everything about you, Rhett. I never have and you know everything about me." Her voice went seamlessly from child's cry to no-nonsense businesswoman. "I've never really known, and now I want to. You know me so well that I have a lot of catching up to do." She pulled herself gently out of his arms and rose from the bed, walking back over to the little couch he'd accosted her on earlier. Her husband gave her a half-admiring, half-exasperated look. "So, we shall start now."
"Didn't I say earlier that we have a whole lifetime for all that?"
Scarlett fixed him with a steely look and he immediately knew that nearly nothing would bring her willingly back to his arms until her whim was satisfied.
I wish I had a green bonnet to ply her with, he thought, wryly.
"Well, life is going on and on all the time, Captain Butler. So why not start now?" She gave him a pleading look. "I don't want to put this off until tomorrow."
"You won't even eat breakfast first?" He sighed. "Aren't you hungry?"
"Quit distracting me. I'm showing interest in who you are, I thought that's what you wanted. Loving you means wanting to know you, not just…" He grinned up at her again and she felt her face growing hot. "…Other things."
"Alright, then. I fold. Ask away, mon chéri."
"Before Bonnie was born, did you want children with me?"
She said the question quickly, spitting it out, almost as though it had been on the tip of her tongue for years. Rhett opened his mouth to answer, but almost immediately closed it again. His brow was furrowed, but she could not read his expression. He seemed to be at a loss for words, at least, immediately. The question had genuinely surprised him.
"Yes," he finally answered, in a subdued manner. "I did. I did want them."
Rhett could see in her green eyes that she was processing the information. He could easily envision the cogs turning in her mind, but even he could not guess how her heart might react to the news.
"When did you first think about having a child with me?"
God, she's a fast learner. I spend years trying to figure out what matters to her, and after ten minutes of putting her mind to it she asks all the right damn questions.
He thought about the question for a moment, though he knew the answer immediately. Finally, he answered.
"After Ella was born, I came to Atlanta to visit you, do you remember?" She nodded. "You were sitting on the porch, and you handed me little Ella, Frank Kennedy's daughter. She drooled on my shirt and I told you I thought she was a little boy."
"Well, I can't blame you for that, Rhett, she really did look-"
"Scarlett," He cut her off, "When I sat on there with you holding your baby, all I could think about was how easy it'd be to walk inside that house, shoot Frank, and claim you for my own. I found myself imagining that what it'd be like to see you holding my child. In fact, you gave me the very idea."
A look of surprise flitted over her face.
"I did?"
"You said you couldn't see me in the role of a guardian." He laughed, suddenly, his ironic, cynical, harsh laugh, and Scarlett flinched involuntarily. She had long since given up the notion that when he laughed like that he did not care. "I had just lied to you, said I'd 'never yet wanted a woman bad enough to marry her'—when, God help me, I'd have probably married you in a heartbeat if you hadn't snapped at Frank the first chance you got. And I was half-pretending Ella was our little girl, and you said that. I suppose that planted the idea that I would make you see me as a 'guardian'."
A fuzzy memory of that day came back to Scarlett, and she remembered the look on Rhett's face when she'd handed him Ella. He was closed off, his bland poker face in place, but his eyes were gleaming with something…indefinable.
It must have been want—if Rhett Butler wanted something, he went after it with the power of locomotive and the cunning of a jungle predator. She realized with a start what not being able to have her love must have meant to him. He was remarkably successful at nearly every thing he put his mind to, but the one thing he wanted more than anything else had been out of his reach for so long. The blow to his pride alone must have been incomparable. It must have been worse than all those years I had to see Ashley and Melanie married, because I didn't even really love Ashley or know what love was. And Rhett really did love me…
"When you left me and were fighting in the war, what did you think about?"
Scarlett abruptly turned her mind back to her line of questioning. Later, she could process the information more fully, but she was new to this business of trying to understand motivations and feelings and other people, and so she could only press on. Eventually she would ruminate on everything they discussed.
Besides, she wanted to hear Rhett tell her more about how much he'd loved her over the years. He always tried so hard to hide it from her, and had acted more like a mocking critic of her hypocrisies than the head-over-heels in love man he'd been.
Of course, Rhett read her expression immediately from across the room.
"You weren't lying when you told me you'd only stop fishing for compliments on your deathbed," He grinned, "I thought about you, oh vain one. When I wasn't ducking Yankee shells or suffering the pains of dysentery and army food. I'd hate to leave you with the impression that you never left my mind, my survival did sometimes take precedence." He caught the shadow of a sulk on her face at the admission, and he was, frankly, more amused by her narcissism than he probably should be. "Sometimes I think that your only interest in me is in conjunction with yourself."
"That's not true! I can ask questions that have nothing to do with me!" She was charmingly indignant. "What were you thinking about when you weren't thinking about me? See?"
"I never stopped thinking about you."
She could sense the seriousness behind it—the more he revealed the depths of his feelings for her, the more frightened she became at his ability to conceal. She felt so exposed to him, so vulnerable…and she did not feel certain of anything except for the fact that he loved her. Everything else was a daunting mystery. Scarlett O'Hara hated mysteries.
"Really, Rhett, I am trying…I do want to know more about you, just you," She thought for a moment, tilting her head in a way that Rhett could not help but compare in his mind to a curious kitten. She was feline, from her unconsciously languid movements to her bright, almond-shaped green eyes. "Tell me about California, Rhett—about what it was like during the Gold Rush."
"I've told you about California, haven't I?"
He had told her about it, in a way. He'd told her some of his most outrageous exploits over the years, and that included the stories from California. But for the most part his story telling had been for the end of either shocking her or giving her an example of shocking behavior she could model herself after. The truly formative experiences Rhett kept close to his heart during their marriage because he had a rational fear that she would realize he'd never invested as much time and effort into anything or anyone as he had her.
"Well, I never really got a clear picture of it, Rhett," she said, naively hitting on what he had just been thinking of.
"Well, what exactly did you want to know?"
Across the room she contemplated the question for a minute, but he knew her small imagination was overtaxed at the prospect of having to come up with a creative question.
"Did you like it? Were you happy?"
They were simple, obvious questions. Wade could have probably come up with better ones, questions about the Feather River or the gunfight he'd gotten in over claim jumping or any number of infamous stories that surrounded his legendary and sordid youth. Somehow, though, the sincerity of the question she asked—the way her eyes lit up in frank curiosity, and the innocent shrug she gave herself when she voiced her vague question, not caring that it was barely answerable in its broadness—made up for all that. She cared if he had been happy or not—that was all that mattered to him. Suddenly, that open face became sly and predatory, her catlike eyes narrowed—another question was on her mind, and she would not hesitate to voice it.
"What were the women like?"
He laughed. While another man might sputter, deny, or become defensive, Rhett Butler laughed boisterously. Her unsettling feline characteristics melted away as she started, caught off guard.
"My dear," he said, when his laughter had subsided and she had resumed her earlier imperial manner, "What exactly is it you are asking me?" When she didn't answer him, he did it for her. "You're lowering yourself to ask if I've ever been in love before you. I believe the green-eyed monster called jealousy has possessed you."
"I suppose you'd know all about that," she said tartly from across the room. The comment had more than a little bite to it.
"I suppose I would," was his answer, his light chuckle turning cool. She sat in fuming silence, a scowl on her delicate face, while her husband affected bored impartiality about the entire thing. They had a gift for souring moods.
"Well, isn't it fair to ask?" she burst out, breaking the silence. "You've always known every stupid, foolish, thoughtless thing in my heart, why shouldn't I know something of yours? For years I didn't even know you loved me."
The look he gave her was cool, nearly blank, but the flash in his eyes belied what he was truly thinking—that she was right. In spite of everything, she was right.
"I suppose you've a fair point," he responded, neutrally, "Rest assured, my pet, that I was never much of a romantic in my youth. Most of the women I met I fell into a pattern of charming, seducing, enjoying and discarding. It was a very convenient lifestyle for a time, but alas, as a great man once said, 'no man is an island'."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you landed on me and dug your claws in. And I don't believe I'll ever be rid of you."
Without any warning she rose from the chair and flung herself into his arms, like a child. A sharp sensory memory of another little girl he'd loved intensely throwing her arms around him and holding on with a blind love came back to him. This felt the same, this was as full and unconditional as Bonnie's love for him had been, and this was from a woman who'd brought out his meanest, his most cruel and possessive fits of temper. Any distemper he might have been feeling melted away. She loved him after everything, like he loved her in spite of her selfishness and cruelty and her inability to see things that were right in front of her. He held her to him, fiercely, because he did not want to be rid of her.
"You won't. You won't be rid of me," was the muffled words he heard. She was speaking into his shoulder.
"I know. I knew I couldn't be rid of you before you noticed my attributes, did you think I'd even have a chance once you put your mind to me?"
Slowly, gently, Rhett pried Scarlett off his immediate personage. Now she was sitting on his lap again, and while there were no marks of tears on her face, the glimmer of them hung in her eyes.
"What's the matter?"
"Do you hate being in love with me? Is it as awful as being in love with you is?" Scarlett's pale face was glaring at him with a churlish accusatory air, as if this entire business of love was all his fault. By the looks of it, she's not going to let me forget it, either.
"You sure know to sting a man's pride, honey. What's the matter? Is it that bad?" he asked, knowing the answer. Ignoring the question was better than answering, because he didn't want to hurt her or lie to her and he'd do one or the other if he answered. He knew how painful it was, and he could guess what she felt. It wasn't easy being in love with your mirror image, your twin in life. If they were destined for each other, it was God's cruelly ironic joke and not a fairytale romance.
"Well, look at right now. I couldn't stop myself from running over to you and…throwing myself at you. I feel like such a stupid little fool!" She admonished herself.
"Didn't I tell you once that men don't like women who say they can get on without help from men?" His arms were around her, and it was shelter from a storm of troubling emotions and memories. "There's nothing wrong with needing someone for a change. You've been other people's strength for a long, long time." She knew what he meant—she'd supported Gerald and Suellen and Carreen, she'd been Wade and Ella's provider, even if she hadn't been a particularly caring one, she'd saved Melanie's life. She'd even been Ashley Wilkes's strength.
"I want to be yours."
It was a barely audible admission, but Scarlett did not shy from looking him straight in the eye when she said it. He stared intently back, expression earnest.
"You are, honey. And you're my weakness at the same time."
They held each other, each savoring the other's admittance of need. It would take time, they both knew, before there was real trust between them, and real mutual understanding. For now, this strange faith that Scarlett had in him, coupled with his own insatiable appetite for her, would have to be enough.
"So, are there any good associations with the first time I kissed you, or is the thought of it just a harbinger of bad memories and old hurts?" She leaned back, allowing him to envelope her more fully in his embrace. Rhett could smell her dark hair, a mixture of camellias and a summer rain shower, and it was a comforting scent. He always felt at ease when he could smell her perfume—it was part of her essential Scarlett-ness.
"Well, if you must know…no, I shouldn't."
"Scarlett…do I need to carry out my earlier threat?" He kissed the side of her neck again. God, I hope I do.
"Fine, fine!" She quickly relented, "Well, the day after you left us on that Godforsaken road, I remember walking back in the sweltering heat thinking about you and being so angry…and I was really angry at myself, because I'd almost enjoyed kissing you."
He grinned wolfishly at this admission of how long she'd been fighting an attraction to him.
"Almost?"
"Yes, almost. It didn't' make up for leaving me with only Prissy for help."
"You made it out alright, though. Just like I knew you would, you cunning creature." Her only response was a small humph. "I said I was sorry, Scarlett. What else can I do? If I apologized on my hands and knees for all my past misdeeds I'd never get back up again."
"Who asked you to? God's nightgown, what good did that ever do anybody?" Always looking on the practical side of things, she continued, "Why don't you make yourself useful and get me something to eat—" He cut her off by pulling her around and giving her a searing kiss, slow and passionate and at Rhett Butler's knee-weakening best. Instinctually she wrapped her arms and clung to him as he leisurely perused her mouth with self-assured sensuality. Her heart raced, the beginnings of desire coursing through her, and she lifted her hands to thread them in his dark hair—
--Which he took as an opportunity to pull himself away from her with the utmost restraint and rise from the bed. To her mildly irritated expression, he merely gestured to the door.
"I'm going to get you some food, Mrs. Butler. That," he smirked, "That is what you're hungry for, isn't it?" He walked out the door of the room with a somewhat smug expression on his naturally arrogant features.
"You have a bad habit of kissing and leaving me, Rhett Butler!" She yelled after him, half exasperated by his trick, half amused. She pulled one of the pillows onto her lap and hugged it to herself, as if it could be a replacement for her absent husband. Nothing in my life could ever be a replacement for Rhett.
"Yes," said a dark head that had popped through the door again, "I do. But I always come back, don't I?"