The cloudless sky was a crisp autumnal blue over Jonesboro, with a bite in the air that turned Bonnie's plump arms pink. She had refused her coat, and Rhett had not forced the issue. Bonnie was in the same travel-stained dress she had now worn for two days, her breakfast had been nothing more than pastries and a few sips of milk, but to go against her will would have engendered only more horrible tantrums. Bonnie had always been spoiled, but more than two days of travel, with all the disturbance and excitement that entailed, had now completely overwhelmed her. Rhett and Prissy were reduced to immediate capitulation to the child's wishes to maintain whatever peace they could. Hopefully once they reached Tara, and Mammy, some sense of order could be restored.
For now, yet another piece of hard candy pacified an incipient tantrum long enough for Rhett to hire a wagon to take them to Tara. The driver knew Tara, of course; everyone in the County knew the O'Hara place. Wasn't that such a shame about Mr. O'Hara? But a blessing for the old man, who just hadn't been the same since he lost his wife during the war. Will Benteen had done well for himself, and for Tara, and hadn't he come up in the world to marry one of the O'Hara girls! Of course after what happened, no one else in the County would have had Suellen.
"Pardon me saying so, sir. I don't mean no offense but everyone knows what she did to Mr. O'Hara. Tweren't right."
Rhett murmured a noncommittal reply and bounced Bonnie on his knee. He had eventually heard the whole story from an outraged Scarlett, although even she had seemed confused if she was madder at Suellen for her part in causing Gerald's death, or that Suellen's plot hadn't worked and all that money had gone unclaimed. He was grateful that the driver's oblivious chatter did not demand any reply or participatory conversation on his part. As they neared the plantation his mind was racing ahead, tracing imagined country lanes to the shady porch of a house he had never seen but felt he knew intimately. He knew the wide central hall with doors at both ends to entice the breeze to blow through, the formal parlor with its portrait of her grandmother, the dining room where the family had prayed and the passage to the kitchen, the warm wood stairs and at the top, the bedroom with its cream-painted walls and the new blue curtains that had been replaced after the war. The vision was hazy, the dimensions of rooms growing and shrinking as his mind wandered through them, but still - he knew it.
The foolishness of this venture was becoming apparent. They had quite the neat set-up in Atlanta, he and Scarlett. Their separate rooms, her virginal sanctuary and his brightly lit haven for Bonnie. What would Scarlett do out here? She didn't appear to care about the gossip in Atlanta any more than he did, but her antagonistic rivalry with sister Sue had to be considered. Scarlett could still surprise him with what she chose to take on over. She socialized with the worst trash in town yet had chastised him for the appearance of excessive pride in fatherhood after Bonnie's birth. He was potentially walking into an even greater mess than he had originally considered, but it was far too late to change their plans now.
The hired wagon turned off the main road onto an avenue generously shaded by arching cedars. Gravel crunched under wagon wheels and hooves. The wagon bed creaked as Prissy moved, turning around and craning her neck for her first sight of home. As the drive curved, the trees fell away to reveal the modest white brick farmhouse situated on the green shore of a red sea. The front lawn was spread with clover and Bermuda grass and behind the house, the waves of red dirt rolled in fields emptied of cotton.
A wide veranda covered the front of the house, and as they drew nearer Rhett could make out dark forms moving in the shade. One figure stood and moved with swaying skirts before she was joined by another. The indeterminate people stood close together for a long moment, too deep in shadow for him to read their body language, much less decipher their identity. A third figure stood and crossed the porch, another woman with the bell of skirts about her. These last two people disappeared inside the house and the first woman walked the length of the porch to take a seat in a chair turned at an angle toward the side railing.
The driver pulled the wagon around in the driveway. Rhett could see her profile clearly now, a black silhouette against the bright afternoon sky. Scarlett did not turn to look at them. His lip curled down. She had never been motherly, but did she really care so little about their daughter whom she had not seen in six months?
Rhett paid the driver and directed him to leave the luggage on the drive. Someone could take it in later; if not a Tara servant, then Pork, who had made the earlier journey with the rest of his household. The forgotten kitten poked its head out of its basket and immediately made a break for freedom, dashing across the lawn and around the house. Prissy shuffled her feet eagerly, but he commanded her, "I'll want you to take Bonnie inside to Mammy after she's greeted her mother. Then you can take your liberty until supper time."
"Mother?" cried Bonnie, wriggling excitedly in Rhett's arms. "Where Mother?"
Rhett reached the foot of the short steps in two strides and set Bonnie down on the wood floor of the veranda. Her short, chubby legs worked vigorously as she ran to the figure seated at the far end. Rhett watched his wife, and saw the slim shoulders squaring up before she stood slowly and turned at last to greet her daughter. Rhett stared.
"Mother!" exclaimed Bonnie in an offended voice. "You're fat!"
No one laughed at the statement, delivered with all the rude frankness of a child. Scarlett raised stricken eyes in a white face to him, heedless of Bonnie's grasping hands which tugged at her long skirts.
Grateful for the years as a gambler which had forced him to perfect a blank poker face or lose his livelihood, Rhett knew his own face revealed nothing. "Prissy," he drawled with matching blandness, "Take Miss Bonnie inside."
"No!" refused Bonnie. "I want to stay with Mother!"
"Why don't you put on one of your new frocks to show your mother how pretty you look?" Rhett suggested.
"Yes," Scarlett said suddenly, in a raspy unfamiliar voice that Bonnie didn't know. "Mammy is - upstairs. In the nursery."
Bonnie condescended to be led away by Prissy, leaving the Butlers alone in the yard. Scarlett stood on the porch, one hand on the whitewashed railing, staring fixedly at some point past Rhett's shoulder. He studied her in silence. She seemed pale, and her cheeks were too hollow despite the bulk of her protruding belly. She was undeniably, heavily pregnant, and not blooming with maternal health as he remembered her from carrying Bonnie. He could no longer ignore the truth, as he had Melanie's hints, and his first feelings were of surprise; but was he more shocked that she had become pregnant, or that she hadn't, in his absence, terminated the pregnancy, as she had threatened to do with Bonnie? He had abandoned her, inexcusably abandoned her in the pitch of scandal. She didn't want children - didn't want his children - and yet, there she was. The hard knot of anxiety which had developed during his conversation with Melanie wrenched painfully in his gut as he was finally forced to face Scarlett.
"You are looking pale, Mrs. Butler," he began, driven by those perverse impulses which always seemed to take over in her presence, to anger her and misdirect her and keep her sharp eyes from focusing too closely on his true feelings. The rest of the jab died in his throat as he looked her over, taking in again the drawn face and the delicate, bruised skin under her eyes. "Scarlett," he said instead, taking the first step up to the porch.
His movement disturbed her at last and she moved for the first time since rising to greet Bonnie, stepping quickly away from him. "Why are you here?" she asked, her voice smooth now, the emotion that had distorted it earlier apparently mastered.
"I had thought to ask you the same question," Rhett said lightly.
"You know I couldn't stay in Atlanta - like this—"
The reference to her obvious and yet still unaddressed pregnancy hung heavily between them, temporarily stifling the conversation. She rested one hand on the curve of her belly, her thin fingers trembling visibly. Rhett felt ill at ease. Bitter words crowded in his mouth, but the memory of a dream held him back. He did not wish to turn this stilted discussion into open warfare.
"I didn't know," he said, helpless.
"No," she said, sharply. "You didn't. I couldn't - why—" she fumbled. "Thank you for bringing Bonnie. Are you - will you - oh!" she cried, a sound of pure frustration. He watched her narrow shoulders rise and fall as she gathered herself figuratively and, taking her skirts in hand, literally. She moved toward him, coming close enough that he could just pick out a faint hint of lemon in the fall air.
"Why did you come?" she asked him plaintively.
"Bonnie missed you," he said, looking down into her turbulent green eyes.
"What will we do?" she hissed, and his heart flipped over wildly in the space of her breath, before she continued. "Sue will expect her to sleep in the nursery. She'll expect - you - oh, hush, damn you!" He had been unable to stifle a chuckle at his own insane moment of hope followed by her practical words. Of course, she was worried about the sleeping arrangements. "If you thought I would - if you think I would ever, after six months, after what you did!"
Rhett stiffened and looked down at her belly. Ah, yes. After what he had done.
"What would you have me do?" he asked, suddenly tired.
He would have to stay. There was Bonnie's future to consider, even if there was nothing else. It was a stroke of luck that he had come home before the birth. The gossip could be checked, now, though it had undoubtedly reached a fever pitch with his absence and Scarlett's removal from town. And there was the new baby - his new baby. He remembered his dream, and his harsh words in April - You wouldn't object to having his children, would you—and passing them off as mine? But he had no doubt that this child was his, and he marveled again that she had not followed Mamie Bart's despicable advice.
Scarlett laid out the terms of his residence at Tara in a terse, businesslike manner. He would make Bonnie sleep in the nursery. The unfortunate Lou had been sent to Tara after the night Bonnie's light had gone out and she was eager to redeem herself. She would stay with the children in the nursery, close at hand in case Bonnie woke in the middle of the night. No lamp would be left burning, but Bonnie could have the bed by the window, under the short curtains that allowed moonlight to slip beneath their hems. Rhett himself would have to stay in her room. There was nothing for it, according to his wife, who averted her eyes as she dictated this last. He must give her his word.
"As a gentleman, my pet?"
"Do you take me for a fool, Rhett? You must swear - you must swear on Bonnie's life that you will control yourself." Her face was no longer pale, but flushed to her hairline. Rhett wondered if she, too, was remembering her last pregnancy, and the resurgent honeymoon period which had characterized their relationship until the last months just before Bonnie's birth. He remembered. He remembered how slim she had been even as her belly swelled outward, the hair on his chest flattened against her smooth back and her hips cradled in his as they lay side-by-side, drowsing in the muggy afternoon heat. He had shocked her, but he had thought she had enjoyed their intimacy - until the blow had fallen, after their daughter was born.
He remembered April, and her harsh words when he had finally gathered up the courage to go home.
"I swear it."
"On Bonnie?"
"I swear on Bonnie's life, I will not touch you again, Mrs. Butler," he said, more harshly than he had intended. As usual when he felt he had revealed too much, though, Scarlett's belligerent self-centeredness blinded her and saved him. She seemed satisfied with his answer, though her eyes would raise no higher than his chest.
"Will and Suellen will want to meet you," she said, and stepped around him to enter the house.
Thank you all for the reviews and follows! Sorry for the (relatively long) delay in getting this update out. Weekend one of four traveling away from home is done, and yes, it did mess with my plans to update. I will definitely get at least one new post a week but possibly not more until the end of June, as there is a lot to do with the little time I am at home between now and then. Please bear with me, the ffnet notifications are a delight in my inbox!