The dawn light was held at bay by the plush window draperies, but one rebellious shaft broke through to streak a warm path across Scarlett's face. As the sun rose, this tenacious beam moved up, storming the frail barrier of her lashes, slipping under her closed eyelids until sleep fled in retreat. She blinked and rolled away from the morning invader, thinking to close her eyes again. She hadn't slept so soundly in weeks.
Scarlett blinked. The covers on the empty half of the bed were rumpled and creased. Their disarray sparked full consciousness and memory. She sat bolt upright. Rhett. Rhett had been here last night, had slept with her - in, or on, the bed with her, at least. Oh thank God he was gone. How would she face him?
Sitting back against her pillows, Scarlett smoothed the lumpy hillocks of bedding with one hand. Rhett had been there. He had spent the night and she had slept deeply and without dreams. Her mind wandered as she caressed the bed. The surface was already cool, he had been gone for some time. Why had he done it? Not the leaving - she was too grateful for the delay in confrontation to question that. But why had he spent the night? Scarlett frowned. He had come home early last night. He had stopped to wake her up, then offered to spend the night with her. These were facts of his behavior, but they had the lumpy shape of puzzle pieces swelled with humidity. She couldn't fit them together.
What should she expect? Her heart trembled as iron fear gripped her. Would he leave now? Nothing had happened in the night - not at all like the last time he had returned to her bed - but here she was again, alone at dawn. Had he already returned to that house, or even worse, packed his bags to go back to Charleston? What if he went to Europe now? Just how far would Rhett go to get away from her?
She couldn't let that happen. She had a gut sense, inexplicable and indefinable, that Rhett himself was the walls of her home. Without him, the structure would collapse. The roof would cave in on her head. He was shelter and security. Why that should be, she could not fathom. Yet she had slept peacefully all night.
To Scarlett's shocked pleasure, Rhett was at the table when she went down to breakfast. She was dressed for the day already, thinking she might escape to the store for a few hours, go some place where concrete problems could be solved - and keep her mind off the puzzling enigma that was her marriage. She took her seat across the table from him, averting her eyes under the pretext of serving herself from the steaming bowl of grits and cold platters of sliced ham and stone fruit. But it was futile to hope Rhett might let the events of the past night pass without comment.
"Did you sleep well, my dear?" Rhett asked smoothly, after she had taken her first bite. She glared at him, sure he had timed it to prolong the awkward silence before she could respond politely. She wiped her mouth with her napkin then lowered it like a signaling battle flag, ready to charge ahead into fresh warfare.
Her brewing tirade came up short when she lifted her head and met his gaze. His eyes were warm, bland, but not mocking. His tone had been provocative, but his eyes belied the challenge. He was sincere, but trying to hide it for some reason she did not grasp. She swallowed her hot words and nodded. She took a deep breath, physically gathering her courage. "Yes, Rhett. Thank you."
Rhett blinked, then nodded curtly, acknowledging her sincerity without offering anything in return. She was queerly disappointed, and tried to be content that he had not teased her about such a vulnerable night. But she was stung. She had extended an olive branch over his gauntlet, and he had merely withdrawn.
They finished the meal in silence. Scarlett kept her eyes downcast, appearing to study each bite of food while she really was staring at Rhett from behind the protective fronds of her lashes. Neither his face nor body language betrayed any clue to his thoughts. He was closed to her. She was used to it, but this morning it frustrated her as never before. Today, she didn't even understand herself!
"Are you going out?" Rhett asked, startling her. She had hastily retreated to the front hall after she had finished her breakfast, sparing neither word nor glance for her husband. She was pulling on her gloves and bonnet, preparing to set out for the store.
"Oh - well, yes. I need to go to the store. I swear those clerks would rob me blind if I wasn't there to check up on them..."
"Of course." Rhett's teeth gleamed in his pirate's grin. "Should I expect you for dinner?"
Scarlett made a show of carefully inspecting her gloves as she adjusted them needlessly along her fingers. "No," she said at last. "I have a lot to do."
"Very well, Mrs. Butler." Again, she felt that queer pang of disappointment squeeze in her breast, when she lifted her head only to see his back retreating down the gloomy hall.
Scarlett was dragging her feet when she returned home in the mid-afternoon. Melanie had stopped by the store and invited her and Rhett to supper that night. Seized with a fitful motherly impulse, Scarlett had agreed on the condition that they would take her children home with them again. And why not? Rhett was more sober than not, and Scarlett was sick to death of the gossip she knew was still circling the town as all the ladies passed judgement on her as a mother. She knew she came up lacking, and it stung. It stung not because she cared what the old hens thought of her, but because she knew Rhett agreed. And now, they didn't even have Bonnie, and it seemed impossible that there would ever be another child. There would be no way to redeem herself except by trying, once again, to connect with her shy and flighty eldest children.
It was hard to say which prospect made her more reluctant: risking again the rebuff of two human beings under the age of twelve, supper at the Wilkeses, supper with Rhett, or supper at the Wilkeses with Rhett!
With her hand on the doorknob, Scarlett froze. What if Rhett said no? She had clearly promised Melanie both their attendance that night. Oh, why hadn't she hedged on the specifics! It would be embarrassing to attend on her own, though being just family, not unacceptable. But it would be mortifying to show up alone after she had said plainly that Rhett would join her. Whatever she had to promise him to secure his compliance, she would do.
In the hall, Scarlett removed gloves and bonnet, leaving them on the sideboard. The house was quiet. She stopped first at the dining room. There was no reason for Rhett to be there at this hour, but his comings and goings had never been conventional. The fortifying power of the brandy whispered at her from the decanter on the sideboard. She grit her teeth and crossed the hall to the parlor. There was no sign of Rhett in any downstairs room, and Scarlett found herself looking up the stairs with her hand on the newel post. If he was upstairs, he would be in his bedroom. She fled instead down the hall and out the back door into the yard. Rhett had never liked her fashionable gazebo. He had called it a medieval coffin and said he was sure the crows would come peck out his eyes if he stayed too long in its iron cage, and she had called him a fool with no understanding of elegance. He had laughed, she had fumed and stopped talking to him for a week, and she still didn't understand the barb. She had decided to forgive him when he brought home the wind chimes to mount on the gazebo, long metal tubes that tinkled prettily in the breeze.
Scarlett turned away from the gazebo and looked out over the expanse of the lawn. She took one step away from the house, then another. She felt silly, prowling outdoors for her husband like a child playing at hide-and-seek. She would go inside and find Pork. Pork could hunt Rhett down for her.
She had only just stepped onto the veranda when Rhett's voice came drawling out from the shadows under the eaves. "Looking for someone?"
"Oh! Rhett! You startled - what are you doing out here?"
"Taking the air," he said, baring his teeth, "and enjoying the view. Can I help you with something, my dear?"
"Well, yes, Rhett. Melly came to the store today."
"And how is Mrs. Wilkes?"
"Oh, she's just fine. She just loves having so many children in that house, although I can hardly see where they manage to put them all. We have cupboards larger than Beau's bedroom."
"Miss Melly loves children," Rhett said, and there was something arch and pointed in his smooth voice. "She'd make room for dozens if she could."
"Well I don't know how they'd feed them even if she made room," Scarlett snapped, irritated, not sure why, and all the more irritated for that. "You know Ashley has barely kept my - the mills afloat."
"Ah," Rhett murmured. "A gap in Mr. Wilkes' shining armor? Is he no longer the saintly knight?"
"You do go on," Scarlett said coldly.
"I suppose I do. You came out here for something, Scarlett. What is it?"
Scarlett's temper had grown short, and her voice still snapped. "As I started to say, Melly came by the store today. She invited us for supper. She invited us both for supper."
"And?"
"And I said we'd come, and that we'd take the children home with us."
Wood creaked as Rhett stepped forward, towering over her. "I didn't think you minded them being at the Wilkeses' for as long as you could manage to have them kept there."
"They are my children," Scarlett said, stung.
"And you do dote upon them so."
"Don't you start, Rhett Butler. You haven't had a glance for them since - in weeks."
"So you have decided to make up for my neglect and clasp them to your fair bosom, nurturing them and succoring them with the gift of love at last bestowed?"
She understood one word in five when he went on like that, his sentence structure riddling and complex. But his mocking tone was all she needed to comprehend. "Will you come to supper?" she asked through gritted teeth, wishing again that she had not told Melanie they would both attend.
"Yes, Scarlett," Rhett answered, surprising her by the sudden lack of ridicule in his flat tone. "I will escort you to supper."
She didn't bother to say thank you, but rushed back into the house. Safely hidden in her own shadowed corner now, she allowed herself to peek back out the door. Rhett had moved to the veranda railing. She could see only the back of his head as he gazed across the lawn, but it was enough to judge the angle of his gaze. He was looking at the track Bonnie and Mr. Butler had worn into the yard. The jump had been removed and destroyed, but it would be some time before the grass regrew and hid the record of their endless looping passage.
Scarlett thought, briefly, of reopening the door and going to Rhett's side. She, too, missed their baby. She would like to be taken in his arms, and offer him comfort in return. Instead, she retreated all the way to her bedchamber, and pulled the cord for a maid to attend her so she could change for supper. Oh, she was already sick of black. Bonnie would have hated the mourning gowns, for Bonnie had rarely consented to wear any color other than blue, once she had been old enough to make her preference known. How unfair it was! No one knew how she mourned her daughter. Even in black gowns and drab jewelry, no one believed it. But Scarlett couldn't bear the thought of Melanie's scandalized face if she came to dinner out of mourning. She could hear the sweet voice, accepting but confused, and it made her shudder. She didn't deserve such tolerance from her sister-in-law.
"I look like an old crow," she thought, studying herself in the mirror with a ruthless gaze. The skin under her eyes was damaged and bruised, and her fashionably complexion had a waxy, sick look. She pulled at the skin around her eyes, looking for wrinkles, and rubbed the corners of her mouth. She was getting old. So much loss and death was making her old. Scarlett shivered and turned away from herself.
The ride to the Wilkeses' house in their carriage was neutrally silent. She was nervous, but Rhett seemed amiable enough. He had helped her gently up the step and spoken to her kindly. They just didn't have enough pleasant things to say, to fill even the short carriage ride around the block. Rhett helped her alight in front of the square, plain little house, took her arm, and played the perfectly superficial part of a gentleman and husband.
Wade and Ella greeted her shyly, standing still for a hug but quickly defecting to Uncle Rhett. They approached him nervously, but he greeted them with a boisterous grin and lofted Ella above his head. With the ice in their relationship broken, the children's overlapping chatter soon filled the small house. With Rhett's, and Melanie's, attention diverted, Scarlett hung back. She looked around the cramped parlor, taking her habitual inventory of the threadbare and scuffed furniture, and the books which overflowed shelves to take up residence in squat, jagged towers on nearly every horizontal surface. She took a leisurely circle of the room with her eyes, indulging in a pleasant feeling of anticipation. She mustn't look for him too soon. Rhett would notice. Rhett noticed everything. But, eventually—
Scarlett's gaze paused over the portrait of Charlie that hung on one wall. That portrait always surprised her. He never looked quite as she remembered. No matter how many times she saw the old daguerreotype, somehow his face never stayed with her. To think she had been married to that boy! And they had a son. A shy boy, like his father, but a handsome one, she thought, diverting from her circular path to look at Wade. Her son was removing a clenched fist from his pocket. He opened his hand over Rhett's upturned palm, and their heads bent together over the bounty. Scarlett blinked, her mouth strangely frozen between a frown and a smile. Rhett had always been Wade's favorite person, after his Aunt Melly, and she had always been grateful to him as a stepfather. He had never treated her children as unwelcome or unwanted, even if, after Bonnie, they had suffered from his diminished attentions. Yet it pained Scarlett to see her son so close to his aunt and "uncle," watching Wade gesture excitedly as he explained the merits of some unseen treasure, the discovery of which would bring only stammers and blushes should Scarlett attempt to ask him about it.
Unsettled, Scarlett looked away. She didn't want to think about such things. She wanted to think of something pleasant, and so she cut her little game of anticipation short and looked, at last, for Ashley. He was sitting back in a shabby chair, its worn upholstery not nearly as slick and elegant as her own furniture, watching the hubbub with distant eyes and the merest hint of a smile. Scarlett could only allow herself a brief moment to drink him in, not daring more with Rhett so close at hand.
Scarlett had not seen Ashley since the dreadful day of Bonnie's funeral. Her mind shied away from that memory, even the edges of which were too dark and horrible to contemplate in the glow of Melanie's homely parlor. But Ashley's face that day rose up any way, transposing itself over his calm, paternal expression. She saw his ghostly tone, the hair plastered to his head by rain. He was grey on grey, no longer golden and shining but a weak shadow. He had blended into the rain and clouds that day, even as he now took on more warmth from the gentle lamps and soft colors surrounding them in his home. Rhett, she couldn't help but notice, stood out strongly from the background, with his elegant clothes, swarthy skin and black hair. She had had to find Ashley, look at him directly, before she was even sure of his presence. Rhett's presence, his overwhelming size and the power beneath it - she was aware of it all at every moment.
And so she knew, without looking away, that she had been caught staring too long at Ashley Wilkes. Being caught in Rhett's gaze was like stepping into a ray of hot summer sun that had slipped between the shadows of two buildings. One moment you were in cool shade, and taking its protection for granted; the next your skin became flushed and sweaty as the heat smote you. There was no more warmth in Ashley than in marsh light, but Rhett could burn.
Scarlett licked her lips, trying to moisten a suddenly dry mouth, as Rhett slipped an iron arm behind her back. "Shall we go through to supper, my dear?" Scarlett looked around, startled. She had failed to even notice they had been left alone in the parlor. Even Ashley was absent; she must not have been actually staring at him for some time. Perhaps Rhett hadn't noticed, hadn't looked at her until after Ashley had left the room. She might seem a brainless peahen, caught staring at nothing, but better that than having Rhett catch her mooning over Ashley.
Especially when that wasn't at all what she had been doing. Only - what had she been doing?
At evening's end, that question was still troubling Scarlett. She had been distracted and distant throughout supper. An enormous puzzle had engaged her brain, and she couldn't spare the focus to follow the many disparate threads as adult conversation overlapped with the children's conversation, weaving in and out of each other. Melanie encouraged the children to talk at meal times and to ask any silly question that came to mind, and as a result the adult topics were often derailed. None of it mattered to Scarlett.
It was a troubling truth to realize she had not missed Ashley. Of course, since Bonnie's accident, she had hardly even thought of him. That seemed at once entirely natural, for she had been wrapped up in her own grief, and entirely strange. Hurt, devastated, shouldn't she have longed for the comfort of his love? But beyond that, she knew, things had never been quite the same between them since that awful day at the mills. Their friendship had turned tense in those months Rhett was away, and before she knew it she had found the mills sold away and had no more excuse to see him alone at all. More than two years had passed since that last, placid embrace which had lacked anything of passion. And she had not missed him.
No, she thought, marveling over the thought like a child unwrapping an unexpected gift, she had not missed Ashley. She had missed Rhett. She had noticed it first when he had left and taken Bonnie, and it had been understandable if somewhat surprising. He had been away, and she had missed him; it made sense. It was harder to understand how she had gone on missing him for two years when he had been home the whole time. He had been changed, after her illness. He had been distantly impersonal, a stranger sharing her house. And now, since Bonnie's accident—
After that first horrible flashpoint of grief had boiled over, he had changed again. In strange fits and starts, they had clashed and clung to each other. Each victory was paired with a bitter concession: Rhett sober at supper, then leaving her for the night when he returned to that Watling creature. Since that last terrifying argument, before Mammy had returned to Tara, there had been a softening in his words and demeanor. He wasn't kindly impersonal or needlessly cruel. He was more like the old Rhett, using words to provoke a reaction from her. But why?
Was it all just grief? Hardly a moment of the day passed without Scarlett being aware of that cold lump in her heart. The stifling silence of the house echoed with the cessation of Bonnie's voice. Perhaps it was just Rhett's own grief that had cut through that bland wall, made its upkeep too tiresome to maintain.
Yet nothing Scarlett could think of explained Rhett's actions of the previous night. She wondered if he would stay with her again. She wondered if she wanted him to.
Putting aside that question, to be thought of later, at least not until they were in their own home again, Scarlett had returned to the first discovery. She had missed Rhett, and she had not missed Ashley. She had tried in vain to recapture the thrill of longing Ashley had always stirred in her, had looked down the table at his face and held her breath hoping for the flutter of love in her heart. Instead, looking on his dulled face, she saw a stranger. She didn't know this Ashley; she had never known Ashley. She had crafted an image that suited her girlish dreams of romance, and one bright sunlit day at Tara she had pulled that suit over a young Ashley Wilkes. And now it sagged off his shoulders and she felt she was seeing him for the first time in her life.
She had missed Rhett; she missed him still.
The carriage ride home was mercifully filled by Wade and Ella's chatter. Scarlett could not fathom how they had not yet run out of things to say, but she was grateful for their presence removed any need to talk to Rhett. She wasn't ready to talk to him, not with this puzzle still consuming her thoughts. As she had kissed Melanie goodbye, her sister-in-law's words the night before Bonnie's funeral had sounded in her ear as clearly as if Melanie had repeated herself in that moment. Be kind to Captain Butler. He loves you so. Scarlett had not believed her. She still did not believe her. How could that be possible? Melanie was confused. She had misunderstood something. Melanie had no idea of everything that had passed between Scarlett and her husband. It was impossible.
And yet - their eyes met across the carriage, over the top of Ella's head as she wobbled, standing in the center of the carriage for Scarlett had been too distracted to scold the child. Something was falling into place, an understanding both tender and terrible. It shed light on so many things, mysteries of motivation she hadn't bothered to question. She sought Rhett's comfort, she worried for him, she missed him - because she loved him. And how could he love her? Shame squeezed her heart for all the ways she had mistreated him, and the worst of all were the things she had said immediately following Bonnie's accident. She averted her eyes, and avoided his for the rest of the blessedly short trip home.
A/N: Google results vaguely assured me that wind chimes became popular as decorative items in American yards sometime in the "19th and 20th centuries." That's not very helpful Google, two centuries are quite a long time. But given the description of the decoration in the Butler mansion, look up "A set of wind chimes with decorative brass mounts" (include the quotes) for something that certainly seems like an item Scarlett would have adored.
