Conversations

It was not yet daylight when Rhett slipped quietly through the dark hallway, and let himself into Katie's room. Gently, he shook her by the shoulder; when she only mumbled and then went still again, he shook her a second time, harder. "Katie, wake up," he whispered.

She sat up quickly, her dark eyes opening wide when she saw him. "Cap'n Rhett! Is something wrong?"

"No. Put on your wrapper and come downstairs with me."

Looking sleepy and confused, she did as he bid her. He led her out to the front porch, where the sky in the east was just now beginning to lighten with the dawn. They sat on two of the padded wicker chairs that Scarlett had placed there, along with several small tables, and Rhett indicated a cup and a covered plate. "Those are for you," he said. Katie lifted the cup, and the smell of hot chocolate filled the air. She sipped carefully at the still-steaming liquid.

"Mmm, that's good," she said. Lifting the cover off the plate, she saw a sticky bun, one of the good kind that Dilcey made, with raisins, and frosting. "But Dilcey only makes these for special occasions," Katie said, sounding bewildered.

"I asked her to make them," Rhett said, and Katie nodded. Dilcey liked Rhett; she would have done almost anything he asked.

"Why?"

"Because we need to talk, you and I," he said. "And there never seems to be a time or place for it, in an ordinary day; someone's always around. So I figured we could sit out here and watch the sun rise, and talk."

Katie took a piece of the roll, tearing a bite sized bit off and then eating it slowly. Then she nodded. "Okay," she said. "I'm ready to hear."

"Wade says that you are more observant than your sister," Rhett said. "I don't know you as well as he does, but from what I've seen so far, he's right. You see everything."

"Lot's of times I notice things that Lanie doesn't." Katie said. "Sometimes even things that Mama doesn't."

Rhett nodded. "I believe that," he said. "But you're still a little girl. So sometimes you don't know the meaning of what you see. Do you know what I'm saying?"

Katie shook her head solemnly.

"It's like... have you ever seen a mama bird push the baby birds out of the nest?"

"Yeeesssss," she said, drawing out the word as if to emphasize that she didn't see the relevance.

"Well, if you just saw that, you might think she was being mean, and trying to hurt the babies. But really, she's trying to help the babies, because she knows that they can fly, even when they don't know it yet. Once you know that, it changes what you think about the meaning of what the mama bird is doing. Do you see that?"

"I guess so," she said.

"And the same thing is true, when you saw that I didn't like it when your Mama talked about how you look like your father. You saw that, but you don't know why."

"Will you tell me why, then? Did you hate Daddy, Cap'n Rhett?"

"No, darling. I only ever saw your daddy twice in my whole life, and for the life of me I don't remember a single thing that we said to each other. I thought of him as a boy, which he was then. But he didn't stay a boy; he grew up, and became a man who I would have liked a lot. How do I know this? I know because your Mama loved him. Wade loved him. Ella loved him. You and Lanie loved him. And a man doesn't get to be loved by such a fine family without being a really good man, indeed, so I'm sure he was."

Katie's lip quivered. "Sometimes I can hardly remember him," she admitted.

"That's all right, though. Because your Mama has all kinds of stories she can tell you about him, and so do Wade and Ella. They'll help you to keep your memories of him."

Katie nodded. "So why did you not like it when Mama said I have his eyes?"

Rhett smiled. "Because, strangely enough, you and Lanie have eyes that are the same color as mine, too. And I like to think that makes you a little bit mine – just a little, but some. Is that ok?"

Katie took a drink of hot chocolate while she considered the matter. Then she smiled at him, a mustache of milk and chocolate coating her upper lip. "Just a little bit," she told him, holding her thumb and first finger an inch apart.

Wade stopped his horse and dismounted, waiting for Sally to come up beside him. She was laughing, her face flushed in the cool morning air. This was the first time he had persuaded her to come for a long ride with him; normally, she refused to leave William with the nursemaid for more than a few minutes. Partly, that resulted from a belief that a child should be raised by its parents, not the servants, and Wade always felt pleased and proud when he thought about that. Sally was a wonderful mother to William, and he repaid the attention by being an almost angelic child – sweet-tempered and placid, always laughing and ready to play.

Wade suspected, however, that another part of her reluctance sprang from a desire not to be beholden to them – most specifically, to him. He could understand it; he could even admire it, but he didn't like it, and he was hoping today to find a way around it.

He helped Sally down from her horse, careful not to let his hands linger at her waist longer than propriety allowed. Not that he didn't want to touch her, but he knew that once he did, stopping might be a problem. He found that spending time with Sally only deepened his feelings for her, but before he could allow himself to relax and let the relationship develop, he needed to ask her about William. Uncle Rhett was right about that; he wouldn't be able to live with not knowing.

Taking a deep breath, he said, "Sally, I think you and I need to talk."

"All right," she said. Wade led her to a fallen tree where they could sit, close enough to the river that they could her the silvery sound of the current and watch the gleam of the sunlight on the water. It was April, and the world was stirring to life again.

"I'm struggling to find words," Wade said after a long moment of silence. Sally nodded, and bent forward so that she was looking at the ground. Then she turned and met his gaze with hers, and he saw determination and courage in her green eyes.

"You want to know about William, don't you?" she asked softly. "Because – because of that time that I came to your mother's house in London."

"Yes," he answered. "I – Sally, I need to know how you came to have William. I don't think there's anything you can tell me that would change how I feel about you, but I have to know."

"This is all because I'm such a coward," she said. "If I had been brave enough to just tell Geoffrey 'no, absolutely not,' when he first came to me with the idea that I should have a baby with someone else, if I had threatened to leave him, or to kill myself... but I didn't, so we find ourselves having to have this miserable conversation about a horrible subject that I would be glad to never mention again."

"Sally," he said, moved in spite of himself by the tears that ran down her face; he put a hand on her shoulder but she pushed it away.

"Don't!" she said. "Don't touch me, Wade. Sometimes I think that I can never bear to be touched again." She drew a deep, shuddering breath, and forced herself to look at him, to meet his eyes squarely. "I'll tell you," she said. "But after this, I'll never talk about it again. No matter what."

"All right," he said softly. He wished he could spare her this, but the only alternative was to let her go completely, and he loved her. He wanted a life with her, and he thought she wanted the same with him, but he knew that she would never find happiness – not with him or anyone else – until she faced what had happened.

"You know, Geoffrey thought that he was doing me a favor, finding a way for me to have a baby," she said. "He knew that I wanted one, and he never considered that the end might not justify the means. I think that he was unbalanced, Wade, I really do. So when you spoke to him – when you refused to do what he wanted – he decided on another tactic. Something even worse."

"Worse?" Wade said. He tried to make his voice gentle and non-threatening, but some of his tension must have been audible in his tone, for her hands clenched together until the knuckles were white. "What did he do, Sally?"

"He found someone who didn't have your scruples," she said, refusing to meet his eyes. "And – and then he drugged me. He put laudanum in the glass of wine I had with my dinner. The fact of the matter is, I don't remember anything about how I... conceived; I wasn't awake for the event." A shudder went through her. "I didn't even know it had happened until months later, when I began showing signs of – of pregnancy. Then he told me. Casually, as though it were no big deal. And when I was upset, he acted as if I were insulting him by not being grateful that he had thought of a way around my – my silly scruples, as he put it."

"I should have taken you away," Wade said tightly. "When you told me of his first plan. But after I talked to him, I thought that he saw how wrong it was, to treat a woman as if she were an object. Sally, I'm sorry; I should have found a way to protect you -"

"It wasn't your fault, Wade," she said, turning to him and taking his hands. "You couldn't have known what Geoffrey would do. As I said, I think he was unbalanced, really I do. No one who was normal could have thought that what he did was acceptable – and he did, Wade, truly he did. When I continued to be angry with him, he -" she broke off.

"What did he do?"

"That's when he stopped taking care of himself, or letting the servants do it," she said. "Before that, he always did just what the doctor said – he was even a little fanatical about exercising, and keeping himself clean. After that, though, during the time when I was pregnant, and hating him so bad that sometimes days would go by that I wouldn't speak to him, or even look at him... it was as if all the spark went out of him, and he stopped caring."

"Good," Wade said, and Sally smiled faintly.

"That's what I thought," she agreed. "I thought if he would just die, everything would be all right again. I wouldn't have to see him, or feel the weight of the hatred I felt for him. It changed me, Wade. The way I came to feel about him changed me, and not in a good way. It made me mean. Vicious, even. Or maybe that was always in me, and I just didn't know it."

She stared out at the water for a long moment.

"At first, I didn't even want William," she said, her voice so low that he had to strain to hear her.

He took her hands, holding them firmly in his. "How could you?" he asked. "A child forced on you in such a way -"

"I think that's what caused Geoffrey to give up," she said. "When he saw that he had done it all for nothing. When William was born, and I – I still didn't love him. All through the pregnancy, when I would see Geoffrey, whenever he forced himself into my company, he would tell me that it would be all right. That when the baby came, and I loved it, it would make everything worthwhile. And when William was born, I didn't love him; that's the plain truth. I didn't love him, I didn't care for him at all. It's as if I were numb, inside. The wet-nurse took him, and cared for him, and I hardly ever saw him. I didn't want to see him. And then Geoffrey got sick."

She looked at Wade, her eyes filled with despair.

"He got sick, and I made a bargain with God. I told him – promised – that if he would take Geoffrey away, I would learn to love William. I would make myself love him. I would be the best mother ever. And Geoffrey died, and it was as if the floodgates inside of me opened up. I realized that I could love my son. I did love him. But even that is tainted for me, tainted by what happened, and the anger and hatred I let myself be filled with... Oh, Wade, I never knew I was such an evil person, and now I don't know how to live with it."

She leaned her head against his shoulder and he held her as she cried, and wondered if he had been wrong.

Maybe not knowing would have been better.

The second half of this chapter turned out to be a lot darker than I expected. Not that I expected it to be all roses and rainbows, just not so revealing of the worst aspects of both Sally and her late husband. And the sad thing is, I still feel kind of sorry for him. Like Scarlett in GWTW, he did terrible things, but once you understand why, it's hard to hate him. Unless you're the person he did them to... I understand Sally's point of view, too. One of the dangers of being the writer, I guess.

As for the first part, well, Rhett proves he still knows how to charm the ladies. Hot chocolate and sticky buns (with raisins)... I can totally see that.

Thanks for reading. Please review, if you feel so inclined; I love every one!