Author's Note: thanks for all of the reviews! Here is the next chapter. Hope that you all enjoy! Christmas is rapidly approaching, so have a verry Merry Christmas!

He was awakened by the sound of her whimpers, the sounds that he knew by heart. She was weakly tossing her head side to side, her face revealing the apprehension that she was feeling. She was having another nightmare, like the many nightmares that had plagued her for the entire span of their marriage. Indeed the last time that he had comforted her after one of these nightmares had been at the Landing. But this time it seemed different, the words spilling forth in terror were not the same words that she had once uttered.

"Rhett!" she cried. "Rhett, don't go!" She tossed fitfully. "Oh, Rhett." She continued calling out his name, until he gathered her in his arms and began smoothing her hair away from her face.

"Shhh, darling. I'm right here." He brushed his lips over her hair, trying to offer comfort to her troubled sleep.

Her eyes flew open at the sound of his voice, obviously startled to see him. She stared at him for a long moment, almost as if she were waiting for him to vanish, and when he didn't she spoke. "How can you be here? Aren't you married now?" The bitterness in her voice clearly revealing the depth of the anger and hurt that she was feeling.

"Yes, I am married," He chuckled derisively, taking the situation as an amusement, "but not to the person that you assume."

"What on earth do you mean?" Her eyes narrowed into thin slits as she glowered at him as she waited for his explanation.

"I mean, my pet," he addressed her as he brought her hand to his lips, "that I am married to you."

At this she laughed. "Don't be ridiculous. I received the letter with the divorce decree. You divorced me the day that I sailed for Ireland. We are divorced." There was a finality in her tone, a bleakness to her expression that cloaked her in sadness. "Wait. You didn't have your minister come and marry us while I was sleeping, did you?" She looked at him quizzically, knowing what he would do to protect his child. But when he did not reply to the affirmative, she responded with "We're divorced, it doesn't matter."

"As I believed as well..." He replied smoothly. "But unfortunately, or now as I see it,fortunately, it was not legally possible for me to divorce you, certainly not under the terms that I pursued. It was nothing more than a farce or masquerade." His eyes glittered with amusement, "We are still married."

She snorted and a look of triumph flickered across her face. "So I was right, you couldn't divorce me." For a moment that victory glittered upon her face like a twinkling star, but then just as suddenly the triumph came it disappeared with her anguish as the full reality of the situation seemed to hit her with the force of a physical blow. "But you still tried to divorce me, making us both believe that you had succeeded. How could you do that to me? How could you do that to someone that you said that you once loved? There was no kindness in that. Good God, there wasn't even any pity. I am the mother of your child... even if that child was gone.... how could you Rhett?" She tried to compose herself with several deep breaths before continuing. "And what do we do now? Go back to how it was before, live in that horrible detached state we were in, like cool impersonal strangers. No thank you." She told him hotly. "Or like it was after you left, and I lost an entire year trying to drown my pain with ever increasing amounts of alcohol. I can't go back to that either. I'd rather not have you than live like that."

Despite all of their varied emotions, they seemed to be in agreement on this issue, "No, I can't live like that again, either. I don't know quite what we are going to do. But we will figure it out somehow." He picked up her hand and held it, gently caressing the back of her hand with his thumb. "We will handle it. We don't really have another choice." The gaze of his eyes lowered until they were even with her mid-section.

"My life has never been filled with choices that were pleasant to make." She said despondently.

Always on the defensive where she was concerned, he quickly jumped to his own conclusion as to the meaning of her statement. "Yes and we know that you would have chosen Ashley instead of me or either of your other two unfortunate husbands."

Scarlett began to sputter out a defense, but Rhett raised his hand to stop her. "Before you defend yourself, I know that you say that your allegiance has been switched to me." He looked at her suspiciously. "All of a sudden it occurred to me, did you only get pregnant to capture me and force me to stay with you. It is the oldest trick in the book. And I do believe that you mentioned that Dr. Meade recommended it. Was that your plan all along?"

She narrowed her eyes, glaring daggers through him. "As I recall, it was you who took me on that beach. And certainly, as horrible as you think I am, I must be the cause of the storm that came upon us. I am the all powerful Scarlett. Indeed I even have power over the weather. I enjoyed facing death just to see if we happened to survive, you might happen to prove that you still could. And then I would have a child. Oh certainly, I risked death just on the off chance that you might make love to me. " Her anger at him was growing at this latest barb. "I was on the brink of death, and yet you had to prove that we survived. You are the one who told me that Dr. Meade feared that another child could kill me. You knew it all alone, and yet you still forced yourself upon me. It is you that deserves the blame here. It is not as if I am strong enough to stop you if you so desire me."

"But that was certainly your plan in coming here, wasn't it? Don't lie to me Scarlett. I will always know." He threatened.

"Are you really that much of a fool in your old age? Do you think that I would have left here if I had known? Do you honestly think I would have allowed you to think that you had won if that had been my plan? I know what a fool you are for babies. I didn't leave here even knowing that a child had been conceived, let alone specifically plotting against you. You are a fool if you believe that." She turned her nose up at his accusations.

"Well regardless, no matter if this was a trap, You are staying here for the meanwhile. I won't risk my child in your hands." He sneered.

She sucked in a deep breath. "I'll leave. I'll find a way to leave, and you will never see me again." She told him with a tremor in her voice that betrayed her bravado.

"You won't leave. You and I both know it. You are staying here in this house until my child is born." He told her coolly. "You know I won't let you go, not while you are carrying my child."

"This is my child. It is certainly not "your child" alone. You aren't the one who has to carry it for months. You aren't the one who has been ill for two months because of it. You aren't the one that will have to give up your life hiding away because of this pregnancy, whose body will distort and stretch until I look like I'm going to explode. You won't be the one having to endure horrible pain because of birthing this child. You wouldn't have even known that this child existed if I hadn't come to tell you out of a desire to give my child the best in life. You are the one who divorced me before I even realized that I was expecting. Who didn't even seem to consider that there might be a consequence to our encounter on the beach."

She was furious, all of the hope that had bloomed in her heart had been replaced by the anger at what he had done to her. For he had wounded her in ways that no other human ever would. He had broken her heart. "This was all a mistake." She started to rise from the bed, with the haughtiness befitting a young queen. But Rhett stopped her with a firm but gentle hand. "I was wrong to ever let you know." She seethed through clenched teeth. "I was wrong to come back here. I wish that I had just let you marry Anne. And then you could have babies with her. You'll just try and take this baby like you took Bonnie."

"Can you blame me for removing a child from your unfeeling and neglectful presence? I wanted my child to only know love, unlike the treatment that Wade and Ella had at your hands. You couldn't be bothered to be a mother to them, why would I expect you to be any more of a mother to my child?

"You never gave me a chance to be a good mother to Bonnie, and it isn't as if my life was a bed of roses when Wade was little, or even when Ella was born. You are just as at fault with Ella's raising as I am. You married me when she was little more than a year old."

His eyes snapped and glittered dangerously. "Don't expect to be given freedoms when you choose to throw accusations in my face. I am in control here." His words were low and brittle as he knelt beside her before rising and sweeping out of the room with all of the triumph of a Crown Prince Scarlett stared at the door that slammed behind him, knowing that he would not let her escape. With no other outlet for her frustration, she took one of the pillows and tossed it at the door. "I hate you!" She cried, as tears of frustration and disappointment and hurt swelled in her eyes.