Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.
"…And of course we'll have to have a tea here with all of the ladies of Charleston while you're visiting, Scarlett. Are you sure you can only stay for two weeks?" Pauline, it must be said, was far older than Scarlett remembered, but still as annoying as ever.
"I absolutely must get back to my farm, Aunt Pauline." Scarlett clenched her hands together in order to keep from putting them around her aunt's neck. Setting aside the bad manners involved, Scarlett would quickly be hung for murder if she followed her impulses.
"Surely the men can look after the farm, Scarlett," Aunt Eulalie added.
"I know they can, but there are some aspects that just need a woman's touch, and," Scarlett took out her handkerchief and fluttered her hands expressively, "it's home and I just miss it, so."
"There, there, dear, of course you do," said her aunt with a pat to her arm.
"I'm sure you miss your children," said Elizabeth Butler, "but you should have brought them with you."
"Well, you see," said Scarlett, "The whole reason I'm here is an unpleasantness concerning the children, and I'm hoping in this brief visit to resolve that and perhaps come east again. It was suggested that Ella might have a season in Charleston."
Everyone looked at the young lady sitting quietly to the side. Her hair was a gingery blonde, but of the sort that became unmanageable in the humidity of a coastal town. She had it up in a snug upsweep, but enough of it had come free to form a slight red-gold cloud around her head. It was the most interesting thing about her. Her face didn't often warrant a second look unless she was very excited in some way, either happily or angrily. Then one realized that her almond shaped eyes were very much like her mother's. Her mother never saw it, of course, because Ella rarely showed any excitement around her mother. She had learned early to stay quiet in Mother's presence. Right now with her lips closed and her eyes cast properly down, she was the essence of young Southern femininity.
"Ella will have her season in Charleston," said a voice from the doorway.
"Uncle Rhett!" said the girl, speaking for the first time in half an hour. She jumped up and ran to him but stopped short of throwing herself into his arms for a hug as she did in childhood. Remembering the older ladies in the room, she stopped as was proper and let him kiss her hand.
Rhett, meanwhile, never quite stopped looking at Scarlett, even as he greeted the older ladies first, giving his mother a kiss on the cheek. "Mrs. McLure, I was quite surprised and delighted to learn that you were in our fair city. I trust your business here will be transacted successfully." He sat carelessly on a chair close to the settee where she was wedged between her aunts. Ella sat back down in her chair, but now with new interest in her face. Anyone who looked at her now would be drawn into the second look that just a few minutes before seemed pointless.
"I do hope you're right, Captain Butler, but you and the other gentlemen will surely know more about it than me."
The innocent look of helplessness that she gave him was so put on that he laughed. "I believe you are in a far position to win the day, and you may rest assured that the gentlemen are handling things well." He turned to Aunt Pauline. "Have you met Mr. McLure? He's quite a good lawyer when he can be forced into it, and a fine horseman, as well."
Pauline frowned. "We understand that Mr. McLure stayed in Texas."
"And Rhett, she didn't bring the children," said his mother.
"I'm glad she did not," he replied. "It would have made quite a few things very complicated. There will be future visits, now that things are in the open," he reassured her.
Elizabeth was only partially mollified. "I would like to meet those boys," she said.
"I don't doubt that you will, mother," Rhett said soothingly. "I agree with Scarlett—er, Mrs. McLure—that now is not the right time. More importantly, we should be discussing Ella's season. She's coming out in Texas in just a few months if I'm correct?"
Ella smiled and nodded. "Yes, Uncle Rhett. Just before Christmas in Galveston, and then in Houston until the last ball back in Galveston again."
"Surely there's a way for her to come out in Charleston next year," he said to the older ladies in the room.
"She does have connections in the city," said Eulalie, looking at her sister.
"And she's such a darling thing," said Pauline, at which Ella beamed with delight.
"Of course, it will be up to some of your wife's friends to get her into the St. Cecelia," said Elizabeth, looking at Rhett.
The ladies started assessing who to contact and what might be done during this visit. Scarlett leaned back in her seat and tried to stretch her legs under the coffee table. She'd been sitting still far too long, but she was hoping her aunts wouldn't realize about the baby. Surely people wouldn't assume anything about the baby, but the less said on the subject, the better for her battle against Caroline.
"Mrs. McLure?" Rhett's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"I'm sorry, Captain Butler. Were you speaking to me?"
"I was suggesting that you might still be tired from your travel. May I escort you back to your hotel?"
"I—"
"Don't worry, Scarlett, Ella will be in good hands," said Pauline.
Eulalie added, "We just need to chat with her a bit more and discuss our plans. Oh, won't this be fun!"
Scarlett found herself hustled out the door quickly after that, her hand within Rhett's arm. Despite having wanted to stand up for some time, the quickness of it all didn't give her body time to catch up and she swayed a little on the porch.
"Whoa!" Rhett put his arm around her. "Are you all right, there?"
"Of course I'm all right. I just stood up faster than I was prepared for."
"Is it the baby?" He'd spent several months wondering and worrying about her state. With his arm around her, he could feel that she was pregnant.
"I suppose, but only because it's so much work to do anything, even sit still, and this whole time the old busybodies have been telling me what I should have done and all the ways I've ruined things." Her voice became petulant. "I'm already tired of this town."
Rhett's voice was soothing. "Let's go this way," Rhett suggested, leading her into an alley between lots. "I'd rather not go past my house."
"Why? Is your wife home?"
"I have no idea." He pulled her hand through his elbow. "Scarlett, we need to talk about a subject that one of us might find disagreeable and the other might find difficult. Let's chat amiably for a few minutes until we get to where we can talk privately."
"What do you want to discuss?"
"How was your trip? Did you stop anywhere interesting?"
"No, I came straight from Houston, one train to the next the entire way."
"You should be exhausted, then. Why did you rush?"
"I'm hoping if I can just get this over with, I can go home, where the sun shines and the cotton grows, and I'm with the people who love me."
"There are people who love you, here. You really didn't need to rush."
"Ewan said that I need to come and get it done hopefully before anyone realizes about the baby."
"Does he think it would make a difference?"
She bit her lip and looked up at him. "If people knew… it would be a disaster if the child was born and then obviously yours, or even if people knew about last spring and wondered…" She looked away. "God's nightgown," she muttered.
"They think it hurts your case if the child is obviously mine?"
"Ewan thinks it would look like we've been… lovers… for a long time."
He nodded slowly. "And then you couldn't claim I treated you like a prostitute?"
"It's ridiculous," she said. "Anyone from Atlanta could tell them that I'm just one woman among many to you. You told me yourself."
He stopped walking. "When would I ever do that?"
"When—" She thought fast. She was giving far more in this conversation than he was, but there was never a good way to twist it back. She'd already committed herself to this though— "when I told you I was going to lock my bedroom door."
He just looked at her. He vaguely remembered that night, but apparently she took what he said to heart. "And you assumed I was out with other women?"
"Weren't you?"
"And that if I was, it was because you didn't matter to me?"
"Did I?"
He didn't answer. In fact, he was quite quiet, and she stared at him. This attempt at conversation had taken a difficult turn, so maybe they should find something else.
They started walking again before he said anything. "How are the twins?"
"Angry that I didn't bring them with me."
"It would have been nice if you could have brought them. Mother is dying to meet them... and spoil them, no doubt."
"Ewan said if I brought them, your—Charles Bell might try some way to get the court to keep them here."
McLure wasn't wrong. "Another time then. What have they been doing?"
"You mean, besides digging up half their gardens to see if the seeds have sprouted or chasing the chickens when they should be feeding them?" Scarlett sighed. "Jerry figured out how to shimmy up the columns on the front porch. He pushed Langston up and then followed him. Three days before I left, we came home from the fields to find them sitting on the porch roof, so proud of themselves. Olivia was panicking in the house because she knew she should have them but had no idea where they were."
Rhett chuckled. They were certain to be hellions by the time they were grown. "Caroline would be begging you to take them back if she had them."
"She's not getting the chance as long as there's breath in my body."
They arrived at a cemetery. Rhett led her in and sat her down on a bench under a dogwood tree. It was quiet and empty of people, so they could speak confidentially, but it was a very exposed place so they wouldn't court scandal.
"Why are we here?"
"Your lawyer, who is also your-McLure, made a very bold suggestion in his brief, Scarlett."
"That's why I'm in Charleston, so that your wife thinks I will step right back into being your wife if I can."
"What do you think? Do you consider yourself still married to me?"
She looked up at him. He was staring at her as if he was hoping she would say something in particular, like he always looked at her when she caught a glimpse before he changed his expression. She knew if she had ever figured out what he wanted years ago, they would all still be in Atlanta.
She didn't realize that her face was a tortured mix of what-ifs and could-have-beens. It was impossible not to want her life to have stayed that way all along, but there was no way to reclaim what was from what their lives had become. When he saw the wishes in her eyes, he had the slightest bit of hope.
"Fiddle dee dee, Rhett, what kind of question is that?"
"It's the most important question that could ever be asked between us."
"I would give anything to have been the wife you could have kept loving Rhett, now, after I realized everything I'd done wrong. But to try to go back now? I can't leave my husband and our children."
"Not even to keep the two that are our children?"
"That's so like you." She tried to stand up.
He pulled her back down. "What do you mean by that?"
"You let me get into a crisis, sometimes helping it along, and then you swoop in to save me, except you don't, quite. You just leave me to have to make some impossible choice as you abandon me."
"Scarlett, this time I'm not going to abandon you. I'm thinking very hard about letting them say the divorce was invalid. I had you completely drunk and distraught when you signed those papers, after all, and as McLure so helpfully pointed out, I was under duress as well."
"And then we're both bigamists."
"Only inadvertently. If we immediately file to declare our other marriages null, there shouldn't be a penalty."
"Legally."
He didn't answer that. Her eyes narrowed at him, pale green in the bright sunlight, daring him to suggest that no one would be hurt.
Finally, he sighed. "Yes, we would have to resolve many things, but what if that was the only way to keep the boys with you?"
Scarlett thought of her new Tara in Texas, of the ripening fields, the smiles of all the people who lived there, the friendships she'd made with the other farmers that were so hard-fought because she was a woman, the smell of the prairie, and the man who'd helped her put her life together. She would have to give all of that up and more for the boys if she had to. She would become a shell of herself, but her children would be safe.
"Yes," she said, "If it was the only way… I would do it."
He watched the play of her face as she thought of her home and loved ones. It was not unlike the day he'd asked her to give up her childish dreams to have a life with him. It was a richer expression than the one in the past. She knew the reality of what she was giving up this time. He was willing to take the same gamble as before. She eventually learned to love him that time. The moment in her bed last spring had proved that she had not completely stopped loving him even now. Yes, he would throw his chips into the ante.
"Then, my dear, it's time to plan your re-entry to the world as Mrs. Scarlett Butler."
She started to puff up, and he put his finger over her lips. He pulled her close and soothed her as he did when she was younger. "Hush, my darling. I don't know for sure that we will have to do this or that I will be able to do this until after Caroline has spoken to her father and I have spoken to her and some other people." Like Rosemary.
"I brought you to this particular place for a reason," he said. They stood up, and he pointed to the tombstone in front of them. "Langston Rhett Butler, Born c 1765, Died 1840."
"Your grandfather?" she asked. He admired that man, as she recalled.
"Look at the stone beside him," he answered.
It said, "Katherine Kelet Butler, Born C1783, Died 1835"
"My name is Katie, or Kate."
"It's so similar, though."
"Is that supposed to mean something?"
"I just find it interesting."
"It's not like you to be... well, it's almost superstitious, Rhett."
He frowned at her in consternation. They walked back out of the cemetery, and into the hotel. When they got to Scarlett's suite, Wade was sitting at the table in the sitting room of their suite, writing and paging through a file.
"Mrs. Butler has the documents," he said.
"Did you see her?" asked Rhett.
"No, but the lawyer we're working with assures us that his clerk put them in her hands." He looked at his mother and put his files into his valise that was sitting under the table. "Uncle Henry is leaving tomorrow, and I'll have to leave in a couple of days."
"What if I need to… how do I…"
Wade handed his mother a card. "This is the local lawyer we're working with, and I'll be here for another day or two."
Rhett looked at the name on the card. "They're good, Scarlett. They'll take care of you and they know the judges here, if it comes to that."
"You can send a telegram to Uncle Ewan, too, Mother. Uncle Henry has court later this week. I have to be back to help him."
Scarlett looked at her grown up son. "I guess I can't keep you, then." She smiled up at him.
Wade leaned down and hugged his mother, kissing her cheek. "I love you, Mother. One way or another, you won't lose this case."
"Winning may feel like losing, though," she whispered.
He hugged her one last time and then left to have dinner with Henry.
The door barely closed when Rhett's arms came around her. "At last," he whispered into her ear.
She pulled at his arms, "Rhett, really!"
His hold loosened, but his hands stayed around her middle. "That's the baby, isn't it?"
"I—"
The child started moving when he pulled her so close to himself. Now he slid one hand above the baby bump, holding her close as the other traced the motions he could feel under her skirt. He patted and rubbed soothingly until the child stopped moving. He turned her slightly so that the hand on her belly could tip her chin up.
It wasn't like the kisses that made her dizzy. This one was gentle but still demanding. The hand that was holding her under her raised waistline now slid to where it could cup her breast. Her eyelids fluttered and she twisted away. "Rhett!"
She couldn't get completely away and he pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes still closed and a soft smile on his lips. "Sweet," he breathed out. He swallowed hard and stepped back away from her, turning his face away. "You're right, Mrs…" He turned back to stare at her. Who was she today, and who would she be in a month? He smiled his lazy, knowing smile… "Scarlett. You're right. It's not the time yet."
He'd wait until more cards were on the table.
A/N: The song related to this chapter was written by Kurt Adams and Sammy Gallop. The version with which I'm familiar was sung by Nat King Cole.
Are we reading all the other stories out there and reviewing in the hopes of getting more? I've seen a couple of things pop up when I sort by recently updated which is really exciting. I've seen some guesses about the mysterious Michael in the reviews for a new story. Wouldn't it be a hoot if his surname started with S? Then there would be two stories with a mysterious MS!
Thank you to all the readers and reviewers whom I've met along the way, including COCO B, gabyhyatt, Melody-Rose-20, kanga85, Truckee Gal, KatelovesEwan, Gwtwlover2, breakfastattiffanygs, romabeachgirl, Guest 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6 , Melanie Wilkes, Mammy, Leafhuntress, mega700201, and whoknows3.