Happy Sunday all! Hooray for the football playoffs! Hope your teams are doing well today ~:o)

Chapter 37

Upon entering the station, Scarlett spotted Rhett off in the distance in the waiting area. She was thankful Pork had been the one driving that morning since her things for their trip to Baltimore had been inside the carriage. She bit her bottom lip and let out a deep sigh before she approached Rhett. Since he was focusing on his newspaper, she realized he was oblivious to her arrival and hadn't noticed her yet. She walked softly towards him and seated herself next to him. He looked up in surprised and let out a sarcastic, "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be attending to business on a workday instead of loitering about a train station?"

"Well, I suppose it would be a good deal more productive to be at the mill right now rather than wasting my precious life moments with you. However, I just wanted to let you know anytime you are ready for me to sign those divorce papers you'll know where to find me. Only, please don't run off to Ashville or wherever you're headed to and dillydally as I have a right to move on with my life, too. If you don't mind, Mr. Butler, I must make my exit. I don't want to keep Steven Breckinridge waiting. That would be quite discourteous," she announced with a calm, unemotional tone to conceal her mental wounds. It was the hardest thing she'd ever had to say in her life and she wished more than anything that she had never had to utter those words. Rhett looked back at her in disbelief. He felt sure she was there to beg him to let her go with him. Words failed him. Since he never felt she would love him in the way he had hoped for her, he truly believed a divorce was what she wanted. He was aching on the inside too and wished he could swallow his pride so he could be the one begging her to stay, but he just couldn't because he'd rather accuse her of rejecting him than to hear her verbalize it so he just watched as she stood to go and kept his cowardly silence. As her watched her vanish into the bustling crowd of train passengers, Chandler's words haunted him concerning a woman being vulnerable when she lost her husband. Of particular concern to him was Steven's attraction to her and the fact that he had conveniently escorted her to the station. He wondered if this was the reason Scarlett was suddenly so eager to sign the divorce papers. He waited until Scarlett had gone and quietly cashed in his ticket and slipped out of the station. He needed to find out what he could about Steven before he agreed to the divorce. He'd already had doubts about him when he'd heard he was Jack's son and was working at the mill. He knew Jack had a very lucrative business and it made absolutely no sense to him that he would have Chandler working for him, but not his own son.

His first stop after he left the station was a stop at the Walton Detective Agency. Their agency had a reputation around the South as being the best in the business. As he stepped into the agency he spotted a bald, bespectacled man with a gruff exterior poring through photographs on his desk. The gloomy atmosphere of the agency seemed to lend itself the element of mystery associated with this type of profession. The office was stark with no sort of visible decor and the dingy walls were a dismal shade of olive green. A number of spider webs accented the ceiling corners and the room smelled musty. The man at the desk finally looked up from his pictures and stared at him aloofly before he flatly said, "Yes! What exactly do you need?"

Rhett perceptively gathered he had walked in on him while he was in the middle of trying to resolve a very important case so he did not take his attitude personally. Besides, this man was just the sort of ruthless type of person he wanted on his side right now.

"I need your services and I am prepared to provide you a handsome bonus if you are successful in completing the assignment."

Suddenly, the stoic expression disappeared from the bald man's face and he became both animated and amiable. "Well! Well! Have a seat, Mr. … Uh… What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't. I am Rhett Butler from Charleston and I have need of your services to trace the history of one of my wife's employees. I've heard you are the best in the business in these parts."

"Please don't damn me with your faint praise, Mr. Butler. I'm not only the best in 'these parts' as you put it, but I'm the best there is on the whole Eastern seaboard. Put me up against those Cracker Jack detectives in New York and I'll put every last one of them to shame. Cigar?," he asked, pretending to act crusty, but extremely pleased a client who appeared to be extremely flush with cash had wandered into his agency.

Rhett took one look at the cigar and pulled out Upman cigars for both of them to smoke instead. "That's okay, sir. Let's just say this is an advance on your bonus," Rhett said spiritedly as he handed the detective a very expensive cigar.

"Mr. Butler, I think we can definitely do business together! Henry Walton is the name," he announced finally as he shook Rhett's hand warmly.