Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.
Scarlett sat on a bench and watched boats go up and down the rivers. A sailboat similar to the one Rhett used drifted by, containing a merry group, headed to an outing or perhaps coming back.
"Are you all right, ma'am?"
Scarlett held her hand to extend the overhang of the bonnet she was wearing. The person speaking was blonde-haired and blue-eyed and quite pretty. "I'm quite fine, thank you," she replied.
"I couldn't help noticing that you walked down the street in some distress. I see that you're in an interesting condition."
"I'm fine now. I just need to rest for a little longer and I'll be quite able to go on my way." She turned back to face the water, hoping it would end the conversation.
The blonde sat down. "Are you from Charleston?"
Scarlett clenched her fists in her skirt. "No, ma'am, I'm not from here. In fact, I'm simply here to transact some business. I'll be on the next train out as soon as that's done."
"Is your husband with you?"
"I hope not," muttered Scarlett under her breath.
"I beg your pardon?"
"My husband has never been to Charleston," she answered. "He stayed home with our children, except for this one, but we telegraph each other every day. He'll be happy for me to get back home."
"I see," answered the other woman. "I wonder—isn't he unhappy that you had to travel in your condition? Surely he's anxious that no harm come to the new addition to your family?"
Scarlett felt herself puffing up. Whatever gave this woman the idea that she could ask such questions? She bit the inside of her lip and thought a moment. Her primary concern was to get rid of the lawsuits and go back to Texas with her life intact, but the secondary purpose was Ella. If the girl was hoping to get a good marriage and life somewhere in the Carolinas or Georgia, Scarlett would have to keep from making a scene.
She thought of Ewan and forced herself to smile. "My husband adores all of our children. He's a good father and is eager for this one as well. Nevertheless, this business came up, and I had to deal with it, so here I am, hoping it will be completed soon.
"Have you other family in this town? I don't believe I've seen you in any drawing rooms."
"I do have some distant relatives. Are we not all related here in the South?"
"I suppose that's true." The blonde made a chuckling noise without mirth. "May I inquire about the nature of your business, Mrs…?"
"It's a personal family matter and I'd much rather not." Scarlett turned her head and glared out from under her bonnet. Why couldn't this woman take a hint and leave?
"It's all so very interesting," mused the woman who wouldn't go away. "I have nothing at home to keep me busy these days. My husband has had a visitor from out of town for a couple of weeks. He hasn't told me when his guest will be leaving."
Scarlett started to get an inkling of her interlocutor's identity. "I'm sure you would love to have that business done with and have your home to yourself. No matter how delightful company is, it's always pleasant when they leave, is it not?"
"You're certainly right about that, and I'm sure it's pleasant to go back to wherever one comes from as well," answered the other woman, who got up. "If you're sure you're not in any distress, I'll take my leave of you."
"I'm quite fine, thank you," said Scarlett.
"I'd invite you to come back soon, as a gracious Charlestonian would, but you don't want to come back, do you?"
"I'd rather not, but thank you for the sentiment just the same," she responded.
Caroline walked back up to Margaret's house.
"Who was she?" asked Margo.
"She's no one, just a woman traveling through for a short time," answered Caro, who had a thing or two to think about.
"So this is where I'm to be kept."
Rhett lifted his gaze from the table in the parlor and saw that she had returned. "Kept?"
"I was to be your kept woman, was I not? This was where you intended to keep me."
"This was where you and I together would have thumbed our noses at polite society. I intended to build a family with you, here."
"A family?"
He stood next to her. "The twins are mine. Since you've had Aiden and Joseph, I can only assume there would have been more." He placed his hand over the new baby. "This one might be—"
"Don't say it!"
"Very well." He stood up and moved close to her. "You're still young enough that there might be another one or two as well. But not as my kept woman, Scarlett. If we pursue it, we might be husband and wife. I swear to make a good life for you and all of your children."
"You know that most likely this one is Ewan's, too. What if this one looks just like Aiden and Joseph, and we all know it probably will. What would you want in that case?"
"I suppose your noble Texan has said he would raise the child as his no matter what it looks like."
"He already has with the twins."
"You didn't give me the chance, Scarlett."
"You didn't give either of us the chance, Rhett. You left me and separated yourself from me in every possible way. What on earth was I to do?"
"You must have known you could contact me through my mother."
"You know I couldn't do that. I couldn't even do that when I was pregnant and we were married!"
He looked out the front window. "Did I really make everything so difficult? Didn't you make things difficult, too?"
He looked at her for a few minutes. Finally she broke eye contact and looked out the window, herself.
"Is there no other way to protect the boys?"
"It's still possible that she will drop the lawsuits."
"What must I do to make that happen?"
"Do?"
"You never give without expecting something in return. How can I pay you, what can I give you for you to make her do that? Is there anything I can trade for the life I've made myself and my children?"
He took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the tears on her face and then handed it to her to blow her nose. "You're all teary."
"It's as though I'm leaking. I dare say I'm leaking from other places at the moment, too. Tell me, Rhett." She was not to be shifted to a different conversation. "Cash on the barrel-head, as you told me in Texas, Captain Butler. What is your price?"
"I don't think there's anything, Scarlett, outside of what you've done by responding to her suits and coming here to stake your claim."
She bit her lip and looked up. "I swear, Rhett, that if it comes to it, I'll be everything you want from your wife."
He gave her a grim smirk. "You know I never go to my wife's bedroom."
"I wouldn't keep you out of mine, not any more. I know that…"
"I won't force myself on you, Scarlett."
"I didn't say that you would. I do know that you feel a certain way, and I will probably want to—" She broke off in embarrassment.
His mustache twitched as he regarded her and she squirmed. "May I interest you in dinner?" he asked deferentially. "I wanted you to experience this house as the home we might have here."
"Didn't you say we'd go to Texas if it turned out that you and I were married?"
"Indeed I did, but when we visit my mother, we could stay here."
Scarlett took a full turn around the room and then looked ruefully at him. "I think we should just go back to the hotel," she answered.
Scarlett endured the rest of the week, wondering if her odd interview with her ex-husband's wife would make a difference. She said nothing to him of meeting her at the park. Scarlett never planned to set eyes on the woman again and was just as happy not to think of Mrs. Rhett Butler any more than need be. There weren't enough tomorrows to put that off.
Instead, she concentrated on making sure Ella enjoyed her stay. She listened to the girl speak of the various people she visited, and making small comments about comportment. There weren't many comments to make, Scarlett knew well that the girl was more attentive to her training than Scarlett had been.
Rhett was attentive and sweet in ways that evoked memories Scarlett couldn't quite place. The closest she could fit it to was when she was pregnant with Bonnie, but it wasn't quite the same. Always in the past, there were sarcastic and caustic reminders that she was a disappointment, that she could never be good enough for him. There was none of that, now. She wasn't sure what was different, but she was happy enough that it was.
Scarlett didn't realize how much of the difference was due to her own behavior. She allowed a certain amount of affection from Rhett, feeling that it wasn't inappropriate if it turned out they were married, and returning in kind to the extent that didn't make her long for Ewan. Sometimes she woke in the night, wishing for her husband so much her chest hurt. Rhett was sleeping on the bed, not touching her but close enough to soothe her when she had a nightmare.
Rhett wondered at the difference, himself. He had always thought that the part of Scarlett that was closed off from himself was because she was saving it for Ashley Wilkes. Yet although he knew that McLure firmly had a piece of her heart Rhett could never touch, Scarlett was open in a way he'd never before seen in their lives.
It was not what Rhett was expecting, this new Scarlett, who know how to love and be loved. Once again, he was thrown on his heels by the realization that what he always assumed about her was false. He had to admit to himself that the attitude that had often thrown him into a murderous rage wasn't that she had been so tied up in her Ashley. It was that she didn't know how to love at all. Would it have been enough for him if this openness of hers had been available back then? If he could have found a way to unlock her heart, as he had to admit McLure had done, could he have possibly gone farther still and taken even the part that had belonged to the other man? If given the opportunity, was that something he might do now?
"Rhett, you can't let those pictures be published."
He looked at Rosemary in their mother's parlor. She was tearful and trembling. "They can't possibly hurt you."
"Your father-in-law has been all over Columbia. He has something on Clayton, and you know Clay hopes to run for Governor in a few years."
Rhett grunted in exasperation. "Everyone with a few dollars to spare knows your husband's aspirations," he said.
"Charles Bell told Clay that he will ruin him, I don't know with what, and then he showed Clay the pictures. Clay says if the pictures come out, he'll have to divorce me."
"And what of Scarlett?"
"She'll be all right. You've always said nothing keeps her down."
"What about your nephews? Do you understand what would happen to them if that family gets their hands on them?"
"How bad could it be if you're here as their father, Rhett? Mother is here, too, and you know she misses them. Scarlett should never have kept them away from us."
Rhett puffed on his cigar for several minutes, glaring at his sister. "Your life with that slimy politician is more important than my happiness?"
"Oh, Rhett, what does your marriage matter? Everyone knows you'll just go off with other women anyway. Clay says the Democrats are finally able to do something, after all those years of Yankees and Republicans. It needs to be fixed. How can Clay do that if he's mired in scandal?"
How indeed. It seemed, then, that Rhett and any aspirations he might have had for happiness in his life were disposable. He revised that thought. It wasn't so with Scarlett. Of everyone he knew, she was at least aware of a sense of obligation. She wasn't in position to give him what he wanted, but she was willing to square whatever accounts were between them.
Rhett darkened his own doorstep on Thursday afternoon. His wife was in the parlor, working on some endless bit of handwork that would no doubt be forced upon some unsuspecting beneficiary of the local charities. Scarlett had always descried the foolishness of making such items, which were never quite what was wanted. Yet there was no way around it. Ridiculous items of useless clothing must be made, and the unfortunate must be forced to accept them.
Caroline wasn't actively working on her little shirt of whatever that thing was. She was staring out the window. Her attention shifted when she saw Rhett enter. "She has no interest in you."
Rhett would not be coy. He knew what Caroline was talking about. "Just the slightest, as one would a person they were required to meet from time to time. How did you come upon your knowledge?"
"I just did, Rhett, but I know what I know. Did you actually… have relations with her?"
"Obviously. We've had children together."
"I mean last winter and spring."
"I never said that I did. You made the assumption."
"So it must be her husband's child," she mused under her breath. The item in Caroline's hands was twisted and starting to look mutilated. She set it aside and looked up with watery blue eyes. "I expected children from our marriage."
"If you had told me that before we got married, I would have told you it would be impossible. Given the way we were contracted together, I will never be able to look upon you in the necessary manner."
Caroline took a deep breath and heaved out the accompanying sigh. "That's why I want the boys, Rhett. I really expected to have children."
"It's not going to happen, Caroline. The boys will not be taken from their mother. If you insist upon it, I'll have to insist that we've never been married, and then a great many bad things will happen. Four little boys will be torn from the father they've known from their respective births, my sister will be divorced, and my brother-in-law will never be the governor of South Carolina. I'm willing to sacrifice a great many things, but not the children."
"And I'll be left in the cold."
"I'm sure your father has a little money, but not very much, and the scandal will follow you to Timbuktu. You'll be very much colder than you are now in several ways."
"You'll be mired in scandal as well."
Rhett chuckled. "You know that scandal doesn't trouble me, and where I'll be with my family, it's fashionable to be a little scandalous."
Caroline sighed again. "So my choices are to drop the cases immediately and keep things the way they've been between us…"
"… or lose your status as my wife and all of the reputation in Charleston that you have," answered Rhett.
A/N: "Put a Lid on It" is from a North Carolina band called Squirrel Nut Zippers. Their female lead singer has this amazing Billy Holiday sort of sound. It's not a group for everyone. I love their sound which hits a sweet spot between ragtime and swing, but some of the songs are really dark.
I had no intention of Scarlett and Caroline meeting up, but a moment became available, and here were are.
Thanks to the readers and reviewers out there, including kanga85, gabyhyatt, COCO B, Truckee Gal, samandfreddie, Guest 1 & 2, WhitmanFrostFiend, Aethelfraed, Tdtd2012, Phantom710, Melody-Rose-20, romabeachgirl, and whoknows3.