Chapter Twenty

Rhett watched Scarlett closely. Her lovely green eyes widened, and he saw surprise in them, but perhaps not as much as he had feared. "Oh! Oh, how could he?" she asked. "After everything I've done for him – all the years that I've taken care of him, for Melly's sake. God's nightgown! I've paid his living expenses for years, ever since he lost the mills because he was incompetent to run them. I pay Beau's tuition and room and board at the University of Georgia – not that I mind that, because Beau is a sweet boy, but it was Ashley's responsibility. And this is how he pays me back! By trying to kill the man I -" she stops abruptly, but of course, it was too late.

"Pray go on, Scarlett," Rhett said, his dark eyes gleaming with mischief. "The man you – what?"

Scarlett thought about snapping at him, might even have done it, but there was no malice in his eyes, no desire to hurt. In fact, his expression reminded her of the way he used to look at her long ago, when they first married and Rhett had tried to please her.

"Care about," she finished.

Rhett roared with laughter, but again, Scarlett didn't take offense. She heard the relief that he was trying to hide.

"You didn't think I would believe you, did you?" she asked.

The laughter died immediately. "I have to admit, I was worried," he told her honestly. "Mostly because it was Ashley. He's always been a sore spot between us, and yet, he's been your friend for your whole life. I couldn't really be surprised if you couldn't believe that he would deliberately set out to kill me, especially since I have no proof."

"I'm not nearly as close as I used to be to Ashley," Scarlett said. "And there are reasons for that."

Rhett sat quietly beside her, holding her hand. "I'd be interested to hear them, if you'd like to tell," he said gently.

After a moment, she sighed, and squeezed his fingers. "I suppose I should tell you," she said softly. "Because at least some of it has to do with the way I felt about him all during our marriage. But not here, where people can see us. Can we go somewhere private, Rhett."

He hesitated, glancing behind him at the hotel. "I could get a room here, but Scarlett -"

She laughed, shaking her head. "Not that private!" she protested. "Why, I wouldn't have a shred of reputation left! No, I just meant, somewhere that's not sitting right out in front of the largest hotel in Atlanta, where who knows who might be watching? Could we go to the little park we were at yesterday, and just sit on the bench while I tell you?"

"We could do that," he agreed, tenderly helping her to rise and leading her over to where the buggy was parked.

The gray eyes that watched them from the window flashed with anger. Rhett Butler had proven harder to kill than he expected, but he had not given up. Once Butler was dead, Ashley had no doubt that Scarlett would change back into the sweet, loving girl he had known all these years. It was his pernicious influence that had caused his darling girl to become so coarse, so unladylike, but once he was gone, Scarlett would be free to be her natural self again, and he would be safe. She would love him, and care for him, the way a lady should.

He glanced down at his feet, to where the man who had helped him kidnap Rhett lay, all neatly trussed up and ready to be disposed of. Only this time, he would make sure he was dead, before he threw him in the river. Last night had taught him the folly of leaving anything to chance, distasteful though more direct action might be.

He had seen from Rhett's expression that he knew that Ashley had tried to kill him. That would make matters harder, for though Rhett was not a gentleman, he had received an education, and had a certain native cunning the made him hard to trap. Ashley would need to be on his toes, as he had been today, getting to the National Hotel ahead of Rhett and Scarlett. He found Rodney first, and had taken steps to make sure that Rhett was never able to speak to him. It was a good thing he had anticipated where Rhett might be going when he left Aunt Pitty's. If he had been only a few minutes later, he might have missed keeping Rodney away from Rhett, and that would have been disastrous. Rodney would have told Rhett everything to save his own skin, and Rhett would have told Scarlett. His beautiful darling would have been so angry with him! Why, she might have refused to speak to him, or to allow him to visit her.

Rhett lifted Scarlett from the buggy. Though she was perfectly capable of climbing down, he enjoyed holding her too much to deny himself. He guided her to the bench with an arm around her waist, then sat beside her and waited for the words to emerge.

"During the time after I left Atlanta, before I met Tony, I did a lot of thinking," she said. "Mostly, I was trying to understand just how I had gotten so mixed up and confused, not just about you, but about everything. I went through times when I was so angry with you, I could have taken a buggy whip to you, but mostly I tried to look past how I felt about things, trying to see why they happened. A lot of the conclusions I came to weren't very flattering to either of us – and don't look at me like that, Rhett Butler. If you haven't yet seen that many of the problems of our marriage were just as much your fault as they were mine, believe me, I'll have no problem educating you!"

Rhett nodded, but the smirk on his face did not entirely fade. "I have had years to see the mistakes I made," he said. "So if I smile, it's not because I'm trying to deny the blame. It's just the idea of you, indulging in self-analysis, that amuses me."

To his surprise, she laughed. There was no real joy in the sound, for Scarlett had always found it difficult to laugh at herself, but at least it was a laugh. "I never was any good at seeing beneath the surface," she admitted "But at least I was admitting that deeper things existed. And I was able to come to some conclusions – we'll have time to talk about them later, I hope. But I could never figure out how I went so wrong with Ashley, until I met Tony again."

"Ah," Rhett said, and Scarlett heard the edge to his voice. "And the good Mr Fontaine had some insight to offer on the matter?"

"Are you jealous of him, Rhett?"

He started to deny it, then shrugged. Honesty seemed to be the watchword of the day. "Oh, hell yes," he admitted. "He seems to have managed to have with you what I spent years wanting, and never got. So certainly, I am jealous."

She nodded. "It wasn't, you know."

"Wasn't what?"

"Wasn't what we could have had. Don't get me wrong, I loved him and don't regret a minute that we spent together. But it wasn't what I could have had with you, if we had ever made it work."

Rhett squeezed her fingers. "Thank you, my dear," he said.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. "You're welcome." After a moment, she straightened and looked at him. "The thing you have to understand about Tony is that he was the smart one in his family. Not smart about books – all the Fontaine's were book-smart, though unlike the Wilkes's, they believed in reading about practical things. Joe hoped to become a Dr like his father, after the war, though nothing came of that, and Alex studied modern farming techniques that would probably still make him the best farmer in the County, if he ever had the money to put them into action. But Tony was smart about people, and in the real world, that's just as important as knowing about things in a book."

"More," Rhett told her. "Especially if your eventual fate is to end up broke and alone in a hostile place, making your living by your wits. Then knowing people might be the only thing that keeps you alive."

"Yes... you have that in common with him," she said, smiling. "Anyway, Tony is the person who helped me see about Ashley, and he could do it so much better than you could, because he was there. He knew a lot of things that you didn't."

"Such as?"

"Tony told me that Ashley's behavior was the talk of the County for weeks before the barbecue. I know you thought I decided I wanted Ashley for no better reason than because he wasn't interested, but Rhett, that's just not true. For weeks before that barbecue, he was at Tara at least once a week to escort me to a garden party, or to invite me to tea with his sister; we went to an ice cream social, to the church bazaar, to political rallies in favor of the war. He gave every appearance of courting me, Rhett, and all the time he planned to marry Melly. Tony said he wondered why my father didn't ask him what his intentions were, there was so much talk."

"So you're saying that Ashley deliberately made you fall in love with him, even though he didn't intend to marry you."

Scarlett nodded. "That's what I think. Tony -" she hesitated, and then went on. "Tony thinks he intended to – to make me his mistress, after he was safely married to Melanie. Probably get me to marry some other man as a cover, then seduce me. He thought he could, because I loved him."

"And you had no clue that all this was going on?" Rhett asked.

"Oh, Rhett, you know how innocent they kept the unmarried girls in those days. I didn't know anything at all about men and their carnal needs. Why, I was foolish enough that I didn't even understand why some of the slave girls had babies that were so much lighter of skin than they were. That wasn't a problem at Tara – my mother would never have stood for it – but at other plantations, yes. In fact, Tony told me that was the reason that John Wilkes never remarried after his wife died. He liked to take his pleasure among the slave girls, and the more reluctant they were, the better he liked it." Scarlett shuddered. "And to think I thought he was such a gentleman, once, and I looked up to him. Even wished that Pa could have had genteel manners like his. Why Pa was worth ten of him. A hundred!"

"Why didn't your father ask Ashley his intentions?"Rhett asked curiously. "I can't imagine that he was nervous about it – I met your Pa once, and timid is the last word I would have used to describe him."

"I think that Pa realized that if he asked Ashley his intentions, he might have forced a situation where I ended up married to him," she said simply. "And Pa didn't like Ashley. He liked his father well enough, though he admitted that he didn't understand him, but he disliked Ashley, for some reason. I never got a chance to ask him why. Tony -" she hesitated, looking up at Rhett through her lashes.

"Go on," he encouraged. "I won't snap at you for talking about him."

"Well, he said that he thought that Ashley didn't treat Pa with respect, as a landowner, and an equal. It was a real touchy point with my father, because of the problems he had with a landlord when he left Ireland. So that might be why he didn't want me to marry Ashley."

"So all this time, Ashley has been playing little games with you, manipulating you to do what he wanted. No wonder we could never make anything work between us; every time we started to relax and be happy, he was there to throw a wrench into things."

"Yes," Scarlett said, and her face was very calm. Too calm. She remembered the day she had gone to Ashley about the taxes, which resulted in her going to Atlanta to offer to prostitute herself to Rhett. She remembered the day she had spoken to him about how Rhett's attitudes 'coarsened' her, which resulted in her kicking Rhett out of her bedroom. She remembered the day they had been caught hugging in the mill, which had resulted in – well, perhaps she wouldn't hold that day against him, after all, she thought.

Rhett saw a bare hint of her dimples. "What are you thinking?" he asked curiously.

"I'm thinking that Ashley threw enough 'wrenches' into things for us," she said, "and that perhaps it is time that we returned the favor."

She smiled, and anyone who knew her would know that smile was a dangerous sign.

He met it with an equally dangerous smile of his own. What," he asked, "did you have in mind?"

Well, it turns out Scarlett already had some reasons to distrust Ashley! This probably explains why Rhett had noticed the coldness between them, and why Ashley feels so desperate. He knows that his livelihood depends on Scarlett's good graces, and he can feel her slipping away.

Please review and let me know what you think. Rhett and Scarlett still have to find proof of guilt so that Ashley can be punished, although since Scarlett held the purse strings, some punishment is assured. Thanks for reading, and again, I love all reviews.