A/N Apologies for the delay. This chapter just wasn't working for me until I cut the end off. Now I quite like the result. I hope you do too.

--

Rhett loved her. The words she had longed to hear from him for over two years now had finally been spoken. Scarlett fought to prevent a sob from escaping her lips and failed.

"My darling, shhh," he soothed. He wiped at the tears that were streaming down her cheeks, and pulled her to him, stroking her back. She allowed it for a few moments, enjoying the heat of his body against hers, the scent of him that was so distinctly Rhett. Oh, but she had missed the safety and comfort she had always found in his embrace. How she could have failed to recognise her feelings for him for so long she did not know. Scarlett felt his arms tighten around her as he placed a kiss in her hair.

No, she thought, not yet. Things were still far from settled between them. He said he loved her, but what made him think he could just waltz back into her life after all this time and she would welcome him with open arms. She pushed herself away from him.

"We've made such a mess of things, haven't we." She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. "And as much as I would like to, you know we can't blame all of this on Rosemary. I cried for you for months, Rhett, how do I know you're not going to break my heart again?

He sighed. "You don't, Scarlett, any more than I know that you won't break mine. You're just going to have to trust me not to. Do you think we can do that? Trust one another with our hearts."

"It won't be easy, but I'd like to try."

"Good, because I really want to make this work. You know we'll have arguments, but you have to remember that I love you and I'm not doing it to hurt you." She nodded silently. "I've always thought we could be so happy together, and now that everything is out in the open I think that's a real possibility. Maybe it was necessary that we spent some time apart for a while. I wish it hadn't been, what with the baby and all-" He grimaced slightly. God, how he regretted having missed her pregnancy. "But it's done and all we can do now is move forward."

"I want that too, Rhett," she said shyly.

"Good." He tilted her chin up and smiled at her. "I've really missed you, my pet. In fact I've been quite positively miserable without you."

"I should hope so." Her expression softened as she reached up to stroke his cheek and he covered her hand with his own. "You look tired."

"I don't doubt it. Ten months is a long time to go without a decent night's sleep. No doubt I have countless grey hairs as proof of my despair."

"Where?" she put her fingers to his temples and stroked his soft black hair looking for evidence of his distress but found none. "I can't see any."

"Maybe you're not looking hard enough. And after the shock I got last night, I wouldn't have been surprised if it had turned white overnight."

"Why? What happened last night?"

"I was told that you had died," he said quietly, with a depth of emotion evident in his voice that she had rarely heard before.

"What?" She frowned, a look of confusion crossing her face. "Who said I had died?" He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze, as if perhaps reassuring himself that she were indeed real, before relating his story.

"I got in touch with an acquaintance, a friend of Sally Brewton's, after your letter came. The man whose horse I appear to have misplaced. He's an English baronet who has an estate over near Dunsany. Once I'd read your letter I telegrammed him that I was coming over and asked him to instigate a search for me. I only gave him your name, and when they found no Butler, they tried O'Hara."

Realisation dawned on Scarlett's face. "He found my grandmother," she said quietly.

"Yes."

"You didn't suffer too long did you?"

"No. When I took the time to read the notes from the detective properly, I realised it couldn't be you."

"Did you cry when you thought I was dead?" She had a look on her face that Rhett could only interpret as hopeful, and he had to smile at the audacity of her question.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you. You'd get some perverse pleasure out of knowing just how distraught I was."

"I believe I would," she said lightly, "but you're not going to tell me, are you."

"No, I am not."

He didn't need to. Scarlett felt a smug warm glow at the knowledge that her supposed demise had caused him such distress.

"So, what happens now, Rhett? Where do we go from here?"

"Do we have to decide that right now? I can think of a couple of other things I'd much rather be doing than talking." He edged a little closer on the sofa, and snaked an arm around her shoulders.

"Wait, Rhett." She pushed herself away from him and folded her hands in her lap, ready to talk business. "I think we should get a few things straight first."

"All right. Such as?"

"Well, assuming I let you back into my life, are you planning to remarry me?"

"If I asked you would you say yes?" She fought a smile. So that's how he was going to play it. Contrary man! Why couldn't he just come out with flowery declarations of love and devotion, like anyone else? He was Rhett Butler, that was why. Well two could play at that game.

"Well, I don't know, I'd have to think about it." His breath hitched and his heart skipped a beat at her words. "Someone once told me it was bad form to marry for love. Besides, I wouldn't want anything to happen to you. I have a bit of a reputation as a black widow. You'd have to be a brave man to marry a woman who's buried three husbands.

He frowned slightly. "I know about the first two, but what happened to the third?"

"Oh, he died of some sort of age-related illness, poor thing. I forget what, but he wasn't a spring chicken any more you must understand." Rhett cleared his throat noisily. "It was all terribly sad." She let out a small sob and dabbed at her eyes with his handkerchief.

"Well, we could always live in sin if you'd prefer," he said casually as he reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved a cheroot.

"No thank you. And no smoking in my house, please." He raised his eyebrows, then put the cigar away. "As it happens," she continued, "I know a priest."

"I haven't even asked you and already you've booked the church?" She shrugged. "I suppose you'll be wanting a new ring to go with this fresh start?"

"Of course." He took her left hand in his and ran his thumb over her unadorned ring finger.

"Do you still have the old one or is it resting at the bottom of the Atlantic?"

"You are joking! I love that ring, and I don't care how vulgar you say it is! Besides it must be worth a fortune. I may have had a broken heart, but there was nothing wrong with my head. I wasn't going to get rid of perfectly good piece of jewellery, no matter how much I hated you at the time." He winced slightly at her words. "It's up in my room. I had to stop wearing it a few months ago when my fingers started to swell." Rhett let go of her hand at her reference to what he had missed and she knew she had unintentionally touched a nerve.

"One good thing," Scarlett continued, trying to keep the mood light, "if you should ask me to marry you I won't have to go around in black any more."

"Ah, yes, no more widow's weeds. I've always hated seeing you in black."

"Well, I couldn't very well have a baby without a husband," she huffed, "so I killed you off rather than admit that you'd divorced me. Everyone's been very nice to me because of it." She paused for a moment looking thoughtful. "We'll have to come up with some sort of explanation for your miraculous return. I think Colum told everyone you were ill and that was why I needed to get back to America so quickly. Then when I heard you'd remarried and decided to stay, it was the natural progression of things to let you die. Perhaps we can say you were unconscious for a while and when you woke up you had no memory, or that you temporarily lost your mind. Something that makes you look bad, not me. I command a great deal of respect around here you know," she said haughtily. "People call me 'The O'Hara'."

"So I heard."

She eyed him suspiciously. "You seem to have heard a great deal considering you've only been in the country one day."

"I know people," he said dismissively, then continued slowly, his face becoming more serious as he spoke."I don't know how much of it is true, Scarlett, but I was told a pretty gruesome story this morning. That the baby was born under the knife? I didn't know whether to believe it or not." His mind had swum with images of her lying bound to a table being gutted like a fish since he had heard the tale.

"It's true," she said simply.

"Christ, Scarlett, it's a miracle you aren't dead!" He drew her into an embrace he could not withhold at the certain knowledge of how close he had come to losing her and she did not fight him. When he released her, he continued recounting the tale he had heard from Bart Morland's stable boy.

"And then some witch came out of the night and delivered the baby? When he told me that I half thought he was making the whole thing up."

"Well I don't know about her being a witch, but she probably did a better job than any doctor could. Oh Rhett, I wish you had been there. I needed you so."

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, Scarlett. I'll never forgive myself for letting you go through something like that alone."

"Don't, Rhett," she said at the expression of regret on his face. "Like you said, it couldn't be helped. And I wasn't alone, I had Colum and Mrs Fitzpatrick with me. And maybe it's a good thing you weren't here. Had you been, you would probably have had heart failure, and I had enough to worry about as it was."

"You must have been terrified." He knew she was trying to play down the drama of that night, but he didn't want her to dismiss it for anything less than it had been.

"I was afraid, Rhett, but more for the baby than myself. I just couldn't bare the thought of losing another child." Scarlett swallowed hard, thinking about Bonnie and the baby they had lost on the stairs, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. "I lost a lot of blood even before Grainne performed the operation, so I wasn't fully aware of what was happening towards the end. But yes, I was scared I might die. That's why I felt I had to write you. I couldn't leave things the way they were. I wanted you to know how I felt even if you didn't return those feelings." She put her fingers to his lips to silence him as he started to speak. He took her hand and held it to his lips, pressing a kiss her fingertips. Scarlett instinctively pulled away from the intimate gesture.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to do that. It's just that you've had time to think about all this. I'm still trying to recover from the shock of finding you standing on my doorstep. So much has happened between us Rhett, that I'm having difficulty believing all this is real. I hear the words and I don't doubt the sincerity of them, but I can't just ignore all those feelings that I've had to deal with over this last year. Trying to reconcile myself with the fact that you weren't mine anymore - not that you ever really were," she added, "but trying, and I think learning, to accept that I had lost you, only to find it was all a big mistake and that maybe we can be happy after all. I'm guess I'm just a little skittish. My head understands, but maybe my heart isn't ready to risk itself again. Did you understand any of that?"

"Every word. You've changed, my dear. I think you have finally grown into yourself." His compliment was rewarded with a look of surprise and genuine happiness. "We'll go as slowly as you want, Scarlett. I think it's important that we learn from our past mistakes so we can avoid repeating them. At least we both know how the other one feels. I'll do my best to communicate my feelings with you. I won't hide my emotions or run away from you any more. I'm tired of all that and it never got me anywhere. It won't always be easy, but I want to try and I think you want that too. You do want to be with me, don't you?" He looked suddenly so insecure and boyish, so unlike Rhett who was always so sure of himself, she had to smile.

"I do Rhett. I love you, so very much." He didn't doubt the truth of her words.

"Good." He let out a breath he had been holding and grinned at her, and when she smiled back, he took her face in his hands and leaned in to kiss her.

She pulled back and put her fingers to his lips to stop him.

"Wait." Something was still niggling in her mind.

"What now?"

"You are here for me, aren't you?"

He looked confused. "Did I not make that clear?"

"Yes, but I know how much babies mean to you, Rhett."

"Scarlett, I want you," he laid heavy emphasis on the last word, knowing she needed reassurance, "baby or no baby. You have to believe I'd have come straight away if I had known where to find you. As I said before," he put his hand on his heart, "I have been truly miserable without you this past year."

"Serves you right!" she wriggled happily at his words, then softened. "I'm sorry, Rhett, I shouldn't have said that. If we are going to make this work we have to forgive each other our past mistakes and that means no throwing them back in each other's faces. It isn't going to be easy, given our tempers, but we have to try. I don't want to be constantly bickering. About your divorcing me or my stupid obsession with Ashley." He grimaced slightly at the mention of that gentleman's name, and she put her hand on his arm. "That has to stay in the past Rhett, if this is going to work. I'm not saying forget about it, we can talk about those things in a civil manner, but you can't go throwing that in my face every time we have an argument about something. Just like I can't bring up Belle or the divorce or whatever else you've done that's hurt me."

He nodded in agreement.

"But you do really and truly want to be with me, Rhett?" He groaned, but she ignored it and ploughed on. "Because, oh, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I don't want you to feel you have to be with me because of a child. God knows I love you, but I don't want to make your life miserable again. If you aren't really in love with me then we can make some sort of arrangement. I'm not moving back to Charleston or anything, but, I don't know," he was smiling that infuriating smile at her as she rambled on and she knew for without doubt that her worries were for nothing, "maybe you could rent a cottage in the village or something. Or come and live in my stables. They are very fine, I've been told," she said smugly, smiling now as well, "even if they are haunted. So at least you'll have some company." He raised an eyebrow at that. "I might even let you come into the house on the coldest nights. I'm quite a reasonable landlord I think you'll find."

"How very thoughtful of you, my pet," he said, "allowing a lowly tenant to sleep on your kitchen floor on a cold winter's night."

"Only the handsome one's," she coquetted, fluttering her lashes at him. "If you're lucky, I might even lend you a blanket."

"You are all kindness and charity, ma'am." he said bowing dramatically. "But I can think of something else I'd like to keep me warm." His dark eyes twinkled and her heart flipped over.

"What," she asked innocently, "a hot brick?

"That's not exactly what I had in mind," he said, playing along.

"Some brandy then." The smiled faded from her face as he looked at her and was suddenly serious.

"I don't want your brandy either," he said quietly, their playful banter at an end..

"What do you want?" she asked feeling a blush creep into her cheeks as she knew his answer.

He pulled her close to him and black eyes met green. "You, Scarlett" he said with such sincerity as she had never known in him that it brought a lump to her throat. "I want you."

"I think that can be arranged."

This time when he leaned in to kiss her she made no move to stop him.

TBC

--

Thanks for reading. J.