Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.
Author note: due to a lot of forthright but nevertheless well-reasoned reviews, I may need to hold off on the next chapter of ASOGAC for longer than my usual posting schedule of every two days to do a little re-tooling. I offer the following sketch with my apologies. It's not necessarily connected with the other story but not necessarily disconnected either. It is, as so many stories here are, a slight change to a conversation that sort of happened to me this past weekend. This first section in italics is directly from the canon as per the Project Gutenberg ebook.
"Are you asking me to marry you?"
He dropped her hand and laughed so loudly she shrank back in her chair. "Good Lord, no! Didn't I tell you I wasn't a marrying man?"
"But-but-what-"
He rose to his feet and, hand on heart, made her a burlesque bow. "Dear," he said quietly, "I am complimenting your intelligence by asking you to be my mistress without having first seduced you."
Mistress! Her mind shouted the word, shouted that she had been vilely insulted. But in that first startled moment she did not feel insulted. She only felt a furious surge of indignation that he should think her such a fool. He must think her a fool if he offered her a proposition like that, instead of the proposal of matrimony she had been expecting. Rage, punctured vanity and disappointment threw her mind into a turmoil and, before she even thought of the high moral grounds on which she should upbraid him, she blurted out the first words which came to her lips- "Mistress! What would I get out of that except a passel of brats?" And then her jaw dropped in horror as she realized what she had said.
He laughed until he choked, peering at her in the shadows as she sat, stricken dumb, pressing her handkerchief to her mouth. "That's why I like you! You are the only frank woman I know, the only woman who looks on the practical side of matters without beclouding the issue with mouthings about sin and morality. Any other woman would have swooned first and then shown me the door."
He was right and she'd done it all wrong. Whatever would mother say? Scarlett stood up, all angry rage and humiliation. "I could kill you!"
"Calm down." Rhett was still for a moment, but then burst out laughing again.
"I don't see what's so funny." A line formed between her eyes as she tried to puzzle it out.
"You never understand a good joke."
Rage erupted again. She stomped toward the door. "I don't know why I even let you come."
His hand around her wrist stopped her. "Yes you do. And it has nothing to do with the gifts I bring you."
She stared at her arm, encircled by his. "You're just a varmint, a cad."
"Granted." His mustache tickled her fingers as he kissed the palm of her hand. "What if you liked it?"
"I don't," she said with firm authority.
"How do you know?"
"I have a son. I know."
"You believe you can't enjoy love with a man on the basis of what a fumbling boy did to you? How long did you have? One or two nights?"
"It was enough," she said around the lump that was in her throat as Rhett continued to kiss her hand and then the inside of her wrist. "What are you doing?"
"Proving you wrong. Your pulse is like a speeding train, Scarlett. I think it's very possible that you could enjoy your time with me greatly-if you let yourself."
"If I-I'll have you know that I'm not that sort... there's no way I would..."
His lips were back on her wrist, but then he pulled her closer and applied them to her throat. "I can feel your pulse here, too." Sliding a hand between them, he placed it flat over her left breast. "It's like a triphammer, here."
She pulled away then, and nearly swore. "How can you? Someone might see us!"
He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit it. "What of it?"
"What of it?" she hissed. "We'd be, I'd be..."
"Compromised," he said with a shrug. "I will ask you again. What of it?"
She sat heavily on the porch steps. He would never marry her. He hadn't married that girl when he was younger, and now that he had no reputation, it was unthinkable. "What would I get out of it besides a passel of brats?" she asked in a neutral tone of voice. "You're asking me to give up everything."
"Nothing that really matters."
"You're asking me to give up being respectable, to give up my family and everything that makes me secure. And what am I supposed to do when you decide you don't want me any more, and how will I take care of the children you're going to leave me with?"
"It will all be fine, Scarlett."
"That's easy for you to say." Hot as it was, she suddenly felt cold. She wrapped her arms around herself and bent over her legs.
He sat beside her and put his arm around her. "Maybe it is too much to ask, and yet I ask it. Scarlett, I want more than that. I want you to give up your memories of other men, too. I want you to become completely and unutterably mine."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because of this." His lips were suddenly on hers. His mouth obliterated every thought in her head. She went hot and cold and shaky. She was filled with a wild longing and a joyful pleasure. She would have fallen over if he wasn't holding her.
And then as suddenly as it began, it stopped, and he pulled away. He stared at her in the moonlight, trying to get a sense of what she was thinking. She stared at his tie, trying to decide what she was thinking, herself.
"Scarlett?"
"I don't know, Rhett. It frightens me."
"What does?"
"That feeling. It went all through me. I wanted it, I wanted more, but what if it overwhelms me?"
He pulled her close with a sigh. "You probably shouldn't tell all of your suitors that. Some might want to take advantage of making you feel that way."
She pulled away. "Don't you want to take advantage of it?"
"No," he said. "I wanted to share something with you to our mutual enjoyment. I have no intention of hurting you, and I don't want to take advantage of you. Did you like it at all?"
She turned honest eyes to him. "Ye-es. Even now I feel as though I want more. Can you tell me what it is?"
"Simple passion, my dear." He leaned back on a column, away from her. "I should have restrained myself. I gather you're not ready."
"How could I be ready? You never told me what's in it for me. What's to become of me after you don't want me any more?"
He reached out and traced a loose curl of hair. "You've been in my thoughts since I met you, and I can't imagine the day you won't be. If it does happen however, I would see you set up with your own home and an allowance in some place like New Orleans or Paris, where such relationships are less frowned upon. You would quickly find a new lover or maybe even a husband, I'm sure."
"So I'd be exiled in fact as well as socially," she whispered sadly. "I don't think I can do that. You're right, I don't like being exactly like all the other mealy-mouthed peahens in Atlanta, but I can't-that can't be my life."
"You almost sound as if you want to do it," he mused. He picked up her hand and kissed it affectionately but without any real passion. "What were you planning to say if I'd done the conventional thing and declared myself, offering a proper marriage?"
She scooted back until she was facing him with her back against the adjacent column. "I never can tell," she said wearily. "I planned to let you down, gently but firmly, and have the memory to hold over your head forever after, but you always get the upper hand somehow."
He laughed, throwing off the intensity of the conversation. "An opportunity lost for me, I'm sure."
She sighed. "We'll never know, since you are not a marrying man."
"But you, my dear, will not stay unmarried forever. The war will end and someone will think you're just what he wants. He will snap you up quickly, and there you'll be, perfectly respectable."
It sounded boring when he put it like that. "Do you think he'll have that passion?"
"I'm sure he'll feel passion, but whether or not he cares about your passions I could not guess. I don't see much of it in the men you're likely to meet and marry."
She made an annoyed sound. "You're saying I have a choice between ruining myself completely or lying underneath another man like Charlie forever. Women don't get very good options."
He moved closer to her and caressed her cheek. "I could set you up with a home of your own here, but everyone would know."
Just from his nearness she felt that power start to rise within her. "Is there no other way?"
"Oh, Scarlett," he whispered. He kissed her again, gently. The passion moderated to a gentle breeze that led her to kiss him back. Her fingertips explored the hair at the back of his head. He traced the sides of her face and oh so tenderly ended the kiss to press his lips to her eyes and forehead and in her hair. His hands shifted to her shoulders as his lips traced her throat.
"Why do I feel this way?" she asked.
"Tell me about the man you love," he whispered. "Does he make you feel like this? Do you crave his touch? Would you let him come this close to you and kiss you, and touch you like I'm doing?"
Scarlett realized his lips were well down the opened collar of her basque and his hand was flat against her lower stomach, right where something was leaping to life within her.
"Please-"
Rhett looked into her eyes, into the innocence that still possessed her, and knew she was his for the taking. He realized as well that if he took her, she would never be his.