Jason Cross closed the kitchen door. He was a patient man; nothing in his life was rushed or executed in haste. He raised the drawn shade allowing sunlight to gleam though the spotless window of his kitchen door. He parted the kitchen curtains allowing more sunlight into the room. With the curtains taken care of he made his way back to the room he and Rosemary had just vacated.
Her perfume, borrowed from her far worldlier sister in law no doubt lingered softly in the air of the room and he smiled faintly at its presence, a tangible reminder that she had been in his home. When he had suggested the previous day to Rosemary that she meet him at his house for morning coffee he was sure that fear of her brother would form her refusal but she surprised him, something very few people did. She accepted immediately with a blush and a soft hand on his arm.
Their coffee tray sat on the baroque ottoman that he had bought in New Orleans and he picked it up without so much as rattling a cup. Bringing the coffee tray into the kitchen Jason debated for only a moment what to do about it. The idea of the dirty coffee cups and a crumb littered tray waiting for the better part of the day to be dealt with displeased him so he rolled up his sleeves and polished the Tremain silver coffee service till it gleamed. The service had been in his family since just after the Revolutionary war and he treasured it not only as a family heirloom but as a testament to his clever sister. She had it sent abroad along with many of their most treasured possessions just before the War started.
Replacing the silver set would have been impossible he thought as he deposited it on its shelf. Returning to the dry sink he then methodically washed each cup out and rinsed the saucers in a basin of clean water. Normally he had a girl, Tia, who kept house for him, but she had been given the morning off to further insure that Rosemary's visit would go unnoticed.
Domestic chores did not repulse Doctor Cross. The ability to pick up after himself was something that had been ingrained in his character from an early age. As a boy he had followed his older sister Virginia throughout the day as she tended to all the tasks required to run the plantation or maintain the Cross townhouse.
His mother had died just days after his birth, but her passing wrought no hardship in his small world. Virginia had always been completely dedicated to him while his mother, exhausted from the bearing of a child at her advanced age, had never had the time or energy to devote the sort of attention to him that he craved. His father, while pleased to once more have an heir to carry on the Cross dynasty wasn't a man who was particularly fond of children so he left everything concerning his young son in Virginia's adoring hands
It had been Virginia who spoiled him, who shopped for new toys and his clothes. Virginia who was no longer as flighty and silly as she had been in her youth. Scandal had changed, made her attune to the old adage "what will the neighbors say." Virginia who had met with tutors for the Cross heir, so many nights she could be found in the library studying late into the night so that she would have a basis for her questions probing the quality of the education her brother would receive.
He never had a governess or a mammy. It was Virginia who sang to him and bandaged his cuts and scrapes. Virginia was the one who spun bedtime tales rivaling the Brothers Grimm. Her tales were always in the same vein; a beautiful but naïve princess is dishonored by a dark knight. Her brother, the handsome prince does battle with the dark knight but is killed by the treachery of the dark knight.
For years, even when he was nearly too old to be told bedtime fairy stories, he had listened gap mouthed to her bedtime stories, always begging to hear one in which the murdered prince and dishonored princess are avenged.
Then on the night before he was to start school she told him about his older brother, also called Jason, who was murdered by an enemy of their family. She wept as she told him how the man who had dishonored her had shot their handsome, reckless, charming brother in the back.
Even now as a grown man he could feel the familiar white-hot flame of rage that had risen in him when he had discovered that the bedtime stories Virginia had woven night after night for six years had been an allegory, a way for Virginia to disclose the shame of being a young woman with a ruined reputation and the sister to a man six years in his grave, put there by a man who should have died for what he had done to her.
"Ginny, maybe your husband will get him," he had told her as he sat against his pillows his face flushed with anger.
His sister had sighed as she tucked the covers around him. Her ebony hair was piled high on her head and her earbobs glinted in the light. She was so dark of hair and pale of skin that he always thought she had the look of fairy tale princess about her, but she wasn't a princess but instead a tragic heroine in her own right. "No one is ever going to marry me love. No nice family would ever have me for a daughter in law even though our ancestors were of noble blood." She brushed his hair away from his smooth brow and kissed it gently.
He breathed deeply; covertly, a little ashamed at how much he loved his older sister. She smelled delicious, like roses in the heart of summer and though he was angry that someone had done something so terrible to her he loved her with all his heart and he was grateful that she was still at home to take care of him and father.
"When I'm big Virginia I'm going to kill the man who killed Jason," he declared fiercely.
"Little love, don't say such things. Besides he isn't received any more so I doubt you'll ever encounter him, at least not here in Charleston."
"But someone should punish him for what he did," he cried. Jason was six; his entire world was ruled by the idea that wrong doings always earned a punishment.
Virginia had blown out the candle before speaking, her voice coming out of the darkness like that of an unseen angel shaded from his human eyes by the darkness of night.
"Death is too good for Rhett Butler. If anyone were to ever want to truly punish him they would destroy him and then let him live. Let him live surrounded by the ruins of his life, just as I've had to." She paused before whispering, "Why should he be granted an escape through death."
She clutched his hand in the darkness, her grip so tight he wanted to cry out but he forced himself to grip her hand back. "Jason, promise me, if the opportunity ever presents itself you won't kill Rhett Butler. There are worse punishments than death. If you love me enough to want to avenge me and Jason too, you'll find something more lasting than a bullet."
"More lasting than a bullet," he murmured as he put the last of the coffee spoons in the silver chest.
How he loved her, his beautiful sister who had to grow old without a husband or children of her own. His sister who had never had a home to call her very own till he had bought her one when he had returned from France in 1865. His clever sister who had seen the writing on the wall and upon his early graduation from Harvard Medical School in 1859 had arranged through European relatives a slot for him in the surgery program at Université de Montpellier, packing him off to France in the fall of 1860.
With father dead just after his fourteenth birthday there had been no one to stop her when she sold the townhouse on the Battery and many of their possessions to give him a generous bank draft to deposit in the Crédit Mobilier in Paris.
When he had returned from France, a highly skilled physician, he had returned with all the money she had given him plus a sizable fortune he had accumulated treating the numerous ladies attached to Napoléon III and his courtiers.
He had come to the notice of the self-created emperor largely because of his native country. When the war had broken out in America Napoleon III had declared his unofficial support for the Confederacy. He had been informed by one of his court physicians, Doctor Claude Berte, that one of the Doctor's most brilliant students was an American from the city where the first shots of the war in the Americas had been fired
The Emperor had been most eager to have the young man come to speak with him. He found the young Doctor engaging and cultivated something of a friendship with the young man. He finally went so far as to extend an invitation to the young man to take up residency at his Paris palace.
Doctor Cross enjoyed the notoriety that came from being a palace intimate. It gave him a pleasant rush to be able to tell a shopkeeper to have his parcels delivered to Château de Fontainebleau, the crown jewel of all the residences of the Emperor. It smoothed over the other notoriety that was attached to his name, services he was expected to perform for the Emperor or rather for the Emperor's paramours.
He felt no heavenly contrition was required for the acts he performed in the Emperor's service. Religion was simply not an issue in his life. He was an atheist, after all how could he believe in a loving all powerful God. What sort of God would allow a woman like Virginia to suffer? What kind of God would allow his brave brother to be shot in the back by a scoundrel?
His mind was often on Virginia. He wanted to return to Charleston once war was declared but she forbad him and despite his natural arrogance a lifetime of obeying Virginia without hesitation was not so easily cast off. He had asked her if she instead wished to join him in France. He had more than enough money to bring her if she wished to come but she declined saying that she wanted to remain at Rose Vale.
Out of sight was, however; not out of mind. She wrote to him during their separation. When the mail became unreliable from South Carolina she sent her letters with blockade runners to be posted in England. Her letters were pure Virginia, filled with worry and love. But then there were other elements in her letters. Passages plainly denouncing the Emperor and his intentions toward the South and the Confederacy were commonplace.
Jason Cross, known in France as Docteur Croix, loved his sister but that love didn't make him blind to the disaster her letters could bring to his position in palace society. Telling her that he had set up housekeeping with several comrades from school he gave her an address on the Rue de Saint-Marie to send her letters to. A widow that cleaned the dormitories at the Université lived at the address and for a few francs a week she would send one of her sons, of which she seemed to have an endless supply, to the Château to deliver his letters for Virginia.
One letter that stood out as worrisome, it had been immediately consigned to the fire after he read it, had said that Napoléon was driven by a desire to keep the United States spilt in two not a belief in the rights and sovereignty of the Confederacy. Her letters were always filled with the glory of their Confederacy and its noble cause.
Though he tried to answer her letters with enthusiasm he felt so far removed from it all. Why should he care whether the Union triumphed or the Confederacy rose victoriously as a new nation? Free the darkies or lash them with buggy whips till they obey, what did it matter to him?
Still she was his sister and he loved her more than any other person in the world so he had been so pleased to write to her in the fall of 1861 that Napoleon had entertained the Confederate diplomats William Lowndes Yancey Pierre A. Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann. The French foreign minister Edouard Thouvenel received the group unofficially at Château de Fontainebleau with his Emperor.
Doctor Cross had been summoned by the Emperor to the secondary throne room. Once he arrived he was met by no less that Thouvenel himself. Taken aside by the second most powerful man in France he had been composed and cool waiting for Mousier Thouvenel to speak which he did with a mixture of imperiousness and pleading. To be spoken to thusly by such a powerful man had the same effect narcotics might. He felt an elation that was so great he had prayed that he'd never lose the feeling.
"Docteur Croix, thank God for you. My English is fair and the Emperor's is exemplarily after his years of exile in England but of the Americans only Mousier Rost speaks French but it is imperfect and the other gentlemen speak English with accents which are so heavy I cannot make how you'd say sixes or sevenths of it. Please Docteur, the Emperor asks will you attempt to smooth the way for us all?"
Oh how he had reveled in his importance during that week. Virginia had written him several weeks later to send him a clipping from The Liberty, the newspaper of the Confederacy, discussing in detail the meeting between dignitaries in the French government and the Confederate Diplomats. He had been mentioned as the voice of the Confederates not once but several times. He had been billed as a learned patriot of the Confederacy who after having been unable to return to the South after the session of states had used his unexpected exile to further the good name of the Confederacy abroad.
As a sort of joke of the people back in Charleston he then wrote numerous letters to the editors of dozens of magazines and newspapers in Paris and London supporting the Confederacy. He wrote of its bravery in the face of adversity, its struggle to maintain a way of life in the face of invaders forgiven to that way of life. His letters were a favorite of editors on both sides of the channel, not because of the subject manner but rather because of his eloquence and the seeming earnestness of the man writing in praise and defense of his homeland many of his letters were printed, some several times as they sparked debates.
He sent every one of his appearances in print to his sister, knowing that she would take great pride in being able to brag about her brother, the closest thing she had to a man at the front. And brag she had till every man and woman in Charleston heard of the service he had rendered to the Cause.
When he had returned to Charleston in October of 1865 he had been hailed as a sort of unofficial diplomat for the Cause and he had behaved according, speaking of numerous impassioned debates he had been involved in about the rights of the south and the majesty of the Cause.
He wanted to rebuild the Cross family and its place in Charleston society. Not that he gave a good God damn about Rose Vale, that had been his father's pride and joy and it had rankled him that the place hadn't been burned to the ground. Not entirely because it was where Virginia had stayed during much of the war but he hated the place and it didn't matter to him that it had escaped the torches of the Yankees.
If Rose Vale stood as a testament to disappointment that Dunmore Landing had been a boon beyond measure. He had ridden over to Dunmore Landing to gleefully to bear witness to the devastation that had befallen the once grand home of the Butlers. His elation knew no bounds as he looked at the burnt shell that had once been the main house.
That afternoon he had smoked a cheroot while idly appraising the damage. No it would never been the great house it had once been. It would take a man with foresight and force of will to bring the ruins of Dunmore Landing back to majesty once more. Even in his kitchen seven years later he could remember the charred smell of the entire place. He had been seated on Macduff, the horse he had brought back from France at great personal expense. Macduff had been a final gift to the young docteur from the Emperor of France and his papers bore the flures de lies of the House of Bonaparte. He could hardly wait to offer Macduff for stud and causally display the crest of the royal house of France when asked for documentation of the stallion's bloodlines.
It suited him to have a horse that had in its veins the blood of noble blooded animals. He enjoyed possessing the best of the best. From horses and his clothes to wine and women. One of the women he had taken to his bed in France had been a former mistress of the Emperor of France himself.
Jason Cross had appreciated all that an affiliation with the royal house had offered. He had sometimes accompanied the Emperor's nephews and Thouvenel's only son on their various adventures in the most exclusive of bordellos and gentleman's clubs. He had enjoyed the courtesans that came from Venice to make their fortunes in Paris where rich men married for love, or at least supported for lust. He had bedded young actresses and flawlessly beautiful opera dancers. Life in Paris had been a banquet and he had left the table a satisfied man.
There had been so many women, lost in a blur of techniques and variety. He had enjoyed Sweedes, Germans, Italians, and numerous other women of many nations but never so much as one married woman. A man could be excused for pursing beautiful woman of known easy virtue, but never had he met a single woman worth risking the inevitable scandal that came from bedding a woman who was already spoken for. Virginia's place as a virtual outcast for all practical purposes had taught him how dear the price of folly was.
Retiring to his library he began to translate his notes from French into English. One patient in particular was on his mind and he leafed through his notes on her adding a notation about her miscarriage. Was there no end to the tragedies one woman could be forced to endure?
Scarlett Butler was beautiful. Even pale and sick in bed she radiated a haughtier that was alluring. She was so very French whether she knew it or not. Perhaps that was part of her allure? He had enjoyed many French women, could her French blood explain why he felt such a strong rush of emotion when he thought of her?
But then it was not really necessary to examine where his attraction for her came from. Her expressions changed so rapidly that he sometimes felt as though he was involved in a discourse with three women not just one. Her hair begged him to run his hands through it; one minute gently like a lover come home to his beloved and then just as easily those thick locks would move him to thoughts of threading his hand in them to pull back her head to leave the pale long column of her neck exposed. Her lips pursed with displeasure at his prognosis made him dwell on what it might be like to take them in a kiss that would show her exactly what he felt.
But she was a married woman so she was out of reach. He treated her with far more deference than any of his other patients. She was a Butler by marriage which put her in the enemy camp but it amused him to be kind to her to watch Rhett Butler's distaste for him crack the surface of the carefully cultivated mask of ennui he always wore in public.
Scarlett was sadly not an option but Rosemary would do. She was lovely to look at and young. She was the cherished only sister of the man who had dishonored his own sister. She was the sister of the man who had murdered his older brother. She came from a bloodline that was every bit as pure as his own even if it was slightly tainted by her pirate ancestor.
Yes, Rosemary was one of the final pieces in his carefully laid out plans. With her on his arm in public and in his bed in private, Rhett Butler would be enraged. He had nothing as heinous as an eye for an eye in mind for pretty Rosemary Butler. No his intentions toward her could be in the right light considered honorable, after all what would be more honorable than marriage?