Sorry for the delay, I'm going to try to update around once a fortnight for now and then hopefully increase it back up to the weekly posts sometime in the new year. Fingers crossed! Anyway, after what's been an intense old week politically-speaking, let's enjoy watching Rhett and Scarlett as they finally break down a few walls. Hope you like it.

The fire was burning low in the grate when Rhett finally closed up the file and admitted defeat. Despite a pressing need to get his business affairs back in order after his impromptu absence, he could not seem to settle himself down to the task.

Behind tired eyelids, images of his wife's face, first calculating and cautious, then enraged and passionate, played themselves out as if on an endless loop. From time to time, a third expression would flash past, often striking at the very moment when he was finally about to do some work, and cause him to throw down his papers in despair.

In all the years they had fought and baited one another, never had he seen her react quite like that. Unnerved by the way she had closed herself up and regarded him coldly out of weary, glacial eyes, he had found himself yearning for a return to her usual fiery, impassioned retorts. Scarlett's behaviour reminded Rhett unpleasantly of the inert, unfeeling look that would pass over her face whenever she spoke of her previous husbands and his chest clenched painfully at the thought that she was already beginning to consign him to that same dark, unvisited corner of her heart where Charles and Frank resided.

Sighing deeply, Rhett acknowledged that he had once again allowed his temper to get the better of him and, in doing so, had instantly undone all the good work he'd put in over the course of the last twenty-four hours.

Given his present situation, the thought that this time last night he had been in bed with his wife, holding her in his arms and watching as she took her pleasure from him, was almost too miserable to bear. He'd always had a talent for making the worst of a good situation, but tonight he had certainly outdone himself.

To think that he had been so happy all day, had enjoyed watching Scarlett walk around with a poorly concealed gleam in her eyes and a noticeable bounce in her step. The presents this morning had worked even better than he had hoped, diverting Scarlett's attention and reassuring her that her earlier actions had in no way lessened his opinion of her.

At dinner, watching her squirm and wriggle in her seat, her movements a sinful parody of the ones she had previously made in the darkness of their bedroom, he had practically had to sit on his hands to prevent himself from reaching over and pulling her onto his lap, so keen was he to feel her body writhe against his own once more.

He had been disappointed when he had come back downstairs after putting the children to bed to find that she had shut herself up in the parlour, the closed door a seemingly silent request for him to leave her alone. He had been looking forward to spending his first evening back at the house in her company and was disheartened, if not wholly unsurprised, to discover that she did not feel the same.

Resigning himself to yet another solitary night spent in his study, he had hardly been able to believe his eyes when Scarlett had appeared in the room a mere five minutes after he had first sat down at his desk.

Her cheeks flushed and with a few stray strands of hair escaping their clips and falling loosely around her face, he had almost thought her an apparition, a mirage created by his tired mind to soothe away the seemingly ever-present sting of disappointment.

That was, at least, until she had opened her mouth and started speaking.

A crush. He sneered inwardly, his earlier anger rising up once again. She had honestly expected him to believe that she had wandered into unchartered territory with the sole purpose of speaking to him about some stupid party. Just how gullible did she think he was?

The crushing disillusionment had reminded him starkly of another occasion when he had come perilously close to falling for her sly machinations, an occasion in which, bar for a missing pair of gloves, he would surely have ended up laying the depth of his devotion bare to her cruel, cutting claws. He had told her then that he despised being lied to, hating that she thought she could manipulate him like one of her gormless Clayton County beaus. His aversion to such tactics ran deeper than a sense of wounded pride however, for it was the idea that he could not depend upon her to speak to him honestly that had always hurt the most.

That she could lie about the big things made him wonder just how many trifling, small mistruths she told him everyday and, for a man who so desperately wanted to know every last inch of his wife's mind, this constant sense of uncertainty frequently drove him to distraction.

He wanted so badly to be able to trust her. There were so few people in his life that he truly trusted and the thought that he could not count his own wife among their number pained him more than he could say. When he had first met Scarlett, he had been so sure that they were cut from the same cloth, that here, at last, was a woman to whom he could unburden even the darkest secrets of his soul without fear that she would turn away in disgust or use the revelations against him.

In hindsight, the man who had once thought such things seemed to him to be almost criminally naïve in his outlook, for now there was almost no one he would trust with such secrets less than his wilful wife. Rather than safeguard them against her chest, Scarlett would no doubt think only of how she could best use them to gain the upper hand. For that's all it seemed he was to her these days; a commodity to be utilised.

She wanted his money to show up the Old Guard. She wanted his design ideas to impress Ashley. She wanted everything from him but his actual self. For that, it seemed, held precious little value as far as she was concerned.

Her apathy might not have been such a problem, after all many marriages got by just fine with both parties showing only minimal interest in the other, were it not for one small stumbling block: try as he might, he simply could not stop loving her.

He knew if only he could train himself to stop caring then their marriage would become so much easier. They could be friends, the way they had been during her marriage to Frank, back when he'd thought secret buggy rides and private confidences were the most he'd ever be able to have with her. He had still desired her during that time of course, had found himself selecting only dark-haired, pale-skinned girls to share his bed and had often felt himself grow sick at the thought of Frank's doughy, lily-livered hands sliding across skin that his own so itched to stroke.

Still, at least then he had been able to take comfort in the thought that it was only her married status that was preventing them from truly being together. That, were it not for her hasty decision to wed Frank, she would have been his and they would have been happy. Now though, such assurances were worthless. His ring was on her finger and yet still he could not rightly call her his.

With that thought embedded deeply in his mind, Rhett rose and made his way upstairs, almost doing himself an injury when he tripped over something laying on the carpet just outside his bedroom door.

Cursing under his breath, he bent down to pick the offending item up, already making a note to chastise the children on the dangers of leaving their toys lying around where anyone could fall over them in the night. When he finally caught hold of it though, he realised his ire was misdirected, the object belonging not to Wade or Ella, but rather to Scarlett.

Something uncomfortably close to shame washed over him as he recognised the horseshoe in his hands, imagining the fit of pique that must have engulfed Scarlett to see her rush to locate the gift and fling in bodily from their bedroom.

Only this morning he had headed down to the stables while she lay sleeping, the idea to add the unassuming object to the already extensive pile of presents he had brought her back from New Orleans having come to him sometime during the early hours. It had struck him as the perfect way to both atone for the harsh words he had flung her way on the morning of their initial fight and to assure her that her unexpected display of night-time passion had in no way lessened the regard in which he held her.

She had received the token far better than he had expected her to, instantly grasping the silent meaning behind the present with a perceptiveness foreign to her usually oblivious mind. She had seemed touched by the sentiment behind the gesture too, a hazy memory of the softness that had swept across her face and the dizzying way she had laughed against his lips when he'd pulled her in for a kiss assaulting Rhett suddenly and making him yearn to turn back the clock just a few pivotal hours.

Caressing the cold metal between his palms, Rhett studied the horseshoe as best he could in the gloomy light of the hallway and felt a weight settle in his stomach as he wondered if perhaps he hadn't been gravely mistaken in his earlier assumptions about Scarlett's motivations. He prided himself on being able to read her and, while he was certain that there had to be an alternate reason behind her sudden desire to hold a crush, he had to admit that she had seemed remarkably earnest when declaring that neither a desire for his money nor a predilection for impressing Ashley had been the underlying cause.

At the time, and given her past behaviour, those had seemed like the two most likely options, but perhaps it had been remiss of him not to consider a third before opening his mouth and accusing her. After all, he knew better than anyone just how dearly she wanted to be thought of as a great lady. He alone knew how great a impression her mother's legacy had left upon her consciousness and how guilty she felt each time her indiscretions inevitably saw her falling far short of the mark.

Perhaps she had reached out to him in the hope he would help temper her more extreme choices, adding a touch of restraint and class to plans which would doubtless veer dangerously towards the vulgar if she were left to oversee them unchecked. The thought of Scarlett worrying about such matters, and turning to him in the hope of a solution, made him feel oddly protective of his young bride and reminded him that, underneath her hardened, world-weary veneer, lay an unschooled country girl who would need guidance and support if she were ever to achieve her wildly improbable dream.

In light of this new consideration, the words he had so unthinking thrown at her back down in his study now returned to haunt him. Not only had he flatly refused to assist her, but he had also gone so far as to state that she was no lady and never would be.

Not to sound cruel, darling, but your little act isn't fooling anyone.

Not to sound cruel. Yet, that's exactly how he had intended to sound. She had hurt him so he had wanted to hurt her back. It was purely instinctual now, a habit so over-used that it had become nigh on impossible to break. All thoughts of the horseshoe and the silent declaration he had made her that very same morning had flown completely out of his head when faced with the sudden overriding need to see her humbled. It seemed that, no matter how serious his intentions to change, they were doomed to spend their days going round and round in ever more vicious circles, tearing each other down a little bit more each time until one day soon there would be nothing new left to say, not one ugly, vile insult left to throw at the other that they wouldn't have already had levelled at them a hundred times before.

It was shameful and tawdry and it was killing him. Slowly but surely, it was destroying the man he wanted to be and the husband he had once been so intent on becoming. With every nasty word he sent her way he lost a little more of himself, moved a little further from that idealised version of Rhett that he had once felt only she could inspire in him. He no longer counted winning a fight against her as a victory, for he now knew that both of them lost whenever conversation broke down into conflict.

Defeated, and determined to atone for his earlier outburst, Rhett clutched the horseshoe tightly in his hand when he entered the bedroom, failing to hold back a rueful smile when he realised his wife was once again engaged in a futile attempt to convince him that she was already asleep.

Curled up on her side, Scarlett was busy emitting soft, breathy and -to Rhett's well-trained ears at least- obviously false sounds every couple of seconds. Watching her clumsy performance, Rhett felt last of his anger drain silently away, replaced instead by an overwhelming need to reach out and touch her.

Kneeling down by the side of the bed, he ran a hand through her flowing hair, slipping his fingers underneath her black tresses to delicately cup the back of her neck in his palm.

His eyes fixated upon her face, he smiled as he watched her frown at his actions, her whole body tensing as she no doubt struggled to remain still. He could almost see the desire to leap up and start shouting at him as it played itself out across her brow, her lips pursing up in a way that doubtlessly conveyed her displeasure and yet only made him long to lean down and smother her with kisses until she forgot her ire altogether.

Forcing himself to hold back, he ran the tips of his fingers across the smooth skin of her neck, pulling back the thick blanket so he could continue his path up over the swell of her shoulder and down the bare length of her arm. Circling her wrist, he played with her slender fingers for a moment, enjoying how she fought stubbornly to keep her eyes closed even when the lover-like sensations made her breath catch tellingly in her throat.

Rhett shifted on his knees to find a more comfortable positon, transferring the horseshoe from one hand to the other as he moved. Struck by a sudden, playful idea, he reached up and pressed the two metal prongs of the object gently against the length of Scarlett's exposed neck, careful not to let it dig in when she flinched away from the unexpectedly cold touch. Following the same path his fingers had carved out mere moments before, he slowly dragged the horseshoe down his wife's arm, enjoying the fine trail of goose pimples that shivered into life in his wake.

As he moved lower, her arm grew slim enough to allow him to slide the entire horseshoe down around her limb, almost as if she were wearing a clucky silver bracelet, until, upon reaching her hand, he turned to press the body of the object into her palm and carefully closed her fingers up around it.

'It's yours.' He said simply, hoping that she would grasp his meaning as well the second time around as she had on the first.

After a few moments of obstinacy, her eyes finally flickered open, their expression cautious yet searching as they gazed upon him.

Holding her stare, Rhett decided it was time to concede a little further. 'Though I wouldn't blame you for having changed your mind, if you still require my assistance in organising a crush, I would be only too honoured to provide it.'

Scarlett tensed back up at his words, moving to turn away before a restraining hand upon her shoulder halted her in her tracks. 'Rhett-'

'No, Scarlett. You asked me for my help and I should have given it. No accusations. No recriminations. Indeed, I can think of nothing that I would enjoy more than the chance to share in this endeavour with you. Together, we shall throw the first, and most infamous, crush that this fair city has ever seen.' Noticing her lips twitch involuntarily, Rhett grinned devilishly and grew determined to draw out the sweet peal of her laughter. 'Years from now, long after you and I have departed this mortal coil for pastures new, people will still gather in the streets to reminiscence upon the most illustrious, decadent night ever to have taken place this side of New Orleans. There will be books written on the subject, my dear, stacks and stacks of them. So many in fact that they will have to build entire new libraries just to hold them all. Thousands of men will have to be employed to complete the task, more than were needed to build even the great pyramids of Egy-'

'Oh, Rhett, do hush up!' Scarlett cried, rolling her eyes even as his foolish words made her preen vainly. 'You're talking ever such a lot of old nonsense.'

'Not nonsense, my pet. Fact.' He teased, his eyes glinting brightly in the darkness as he took in her drastically improved mood.

Without a thought, he reached over and pulled her into a kiss, relishing the way her lips were still stretched out into a smile even as they moved against his.

Leaning back, he cupped her cheek reverently for a moment before moving to stand up, almost toppling over onto the bed when she surprised him by lurching forward and pulling him into another kiss, this one far more passionate than the last.

Rhett barely dared to breathe as Scarlett wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his upper body onto the bed and crushing their torsos together as her mouth began demanding things that he was only too willing to give her.

Unable to shake the sensation that he was dreaming and would surely awaken at any moment to find that he had fallen asleep at his desk in the study, as alone and unmissed as ever, Rhett forced himself to end the kiss and pull back. Staring down at Scarlett, he almost expected to see her to curl her lips up in derision and mock him for ever being foolish enough to think that she would seek out his touch in such a manner.

Far from finding contempt in her eyes however, Rhett felt his heart seize up at the mix of nervousness and determination he saw emblazoned there, her emerald orbs shining as brightly as they had been in the first few minutes after she'd entered his study.

'Scarlett?' He questioned uncertainly, despising the way his voice wavered on the last syllable like that of an inexperienced schoolboy.

He held his breath as her cheeks coloured prettily, her eyes seemingly begging for something that her lips didn't quite know how to ask for.

'What is it, honey?' he asked, cupping her flushed cheek in his palm. 'What do you want?'

The answer, when it finally came, was rushed and mumbled and so very quiet that he was half convinced he had imagined it. For, surely, it was far too perfect to be true.

'Sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Could you repeat it?'

Scarlett scowled up at him from under slanting brows and would most likely have pushed him off of her altogether had he not had the sense to hold onto her. As it was, it suddenly seemed all too imperative that he did not let this moment slip through his fingers and so, clutching her tightly, he decided to chance his arm a little, leaning down to kiss her before whispering against her lips.

'Please.'

Her body relaxing a fraction in his arms, she seemed to gather the fighting spirit that he had always so admired, her face certain and her tone sure as she looked him directly in the eye and stated clearly, 'You, Rhett. I want you.'

Swallowing thickly, he felt his own insecurities fall away when confronted with her show of courage. Overcome by need, he felt the old, assured Rhett Butler begin to re-emerge, his movements growing stronger and his voice deeper as he bent down and murmured a heated promise into her ear.

'Then by all means, Mrs. Butler, you shall have me.'