I didn't feel that this chapter was quite right somehow. So I have slightly tweaked it. Oh and thank you C122 for your helpful criticism. Although I was trying to be ironic - the conversation at the end of the chapter is Scarlett being very hypocritical. And she might well have done what Helene did if she had been pushed into Helene's situation (which was what I was trying to convey - but obviously failed!) But I do think she would never have abandoned her children.

Lawdy – thank you for using your fountain of knowledge and expert skills in research in pointing me to the various New Orleans asylums in the nineteenth century.

Chapter 43

They sat by the window, on opposite chairs, as Rhett told Scarlett the story.

"Ever since my father told me I was no longer welcome at his house, I decided I didn't need a home and drifted. From county to county, from city to city. From country to country. Gradually honing my talents as a poker player and gradually building up some money. But even a nomad needs roots occasionally, and, as I had always been fond of my uncle, Stephen, and as I knew it would rile my father if gossip ever reached him that I was spending time with him and in New Orleans of all places, I made sure to visit New Orleans once or twice a year – sometimes more frequently - and stay with Stephen. It was the antithesis of everything that my father had ever stood for. The decadence, the hedonism, the liquor, the saloons, the gambling, the bars. And the women. I revelled in it.

"My uncle had been living there ever since my father had kicked him out of the house in the summer of 1840. Stephen was…fun…A character. And he made his money by gambling – usually poker. He would have been a great player, if he had known when to stop….

"We made quite a pair when we went out. People often mistook us for twins – not realising that we were a generation apart. I certainly looked more like him than I did my own father.

"One day, we were stumbling back to Stephen's house, rather worse for wear from drink, when a beautiful, dark haired woman walked past us.

"She had poise…stature…even though she was slight and not particularly tall. It was the way she carried herself. She had an elegance that was quite out of place in New Orleans and she was on her own – which was unusual in those days. Still is, I suppose." He paused and shifted in the chair. He looked wistful but there was sadness, too, in his countenance. Scarlett wanted to reach out and touch him but something held her back, perhaps the fear that her touch might stop him speaking. So instead, she leaned forward and whispered.

"And this…woman…this was Hélène?"

Rhett nodded slowly, his eyes flickering as he scanned his wife's face for her reaction.

"Stephen ran after her and started talking to her. She was actually American – Southern - by birth. She had been born in Savannah to parents that, it turned out, had known my paternal grandparents, Stephen's parents. Stephen remembered the family name of Malet – he remembered Hélène's father. They had visited Charleston a couple of times before they had moved to Europe.

"When she realised Stephen knew her parents, she tried to run away. But even in his inebriated state he could run faster than she could. He caught up with her, whilst I remained in the background just watching. I remember how, as soon as he placed a hand on her arm, she started crying. In the middle of the street, she just started sobbing. Stephen coaxed her towards a discrete side street and there she told him her whole, sorry story. How she had run away from home to be with a lover. How her mother had died from the shock of it all. How her lover had got sick and died on the boat over. And how she was now on the other side of the world, with nothing except the clothes on her back, what was in her travelling bag and twenty dollars. And she couldn't go back to Paris for the shame she had already brought on her family.

"I could tell immediately that Stephen was attracted to Hélène and so, I found myself accompanying the two of them to a little hotel, away from the main thoroughfares. I paid for her accommodation for a week – Stephen had no money - and we left her there, although I soon discovered that every day, Stephen was meeting her for dinner and supper. Then, on the Friday, I came back to my uncle's house, earlier than I was expected back and she was there. Dressed in one of my uncle's old dressing gowns. It was rather obvious what had transpired between the two of them.

"That weekend, she moved in to our little house and into my uncle's bedroom. It wasn't the most…appropriate action for Hélène to take….to move in with my uncle and me…. But I guess she had no choice…and I had rather forced her hand by refusing to continue paying her hotel bills."

He looked up at his wife who had suddenly become very still. A faint blush had risen to her cheeks.

"Scarlett, you have to underst-"

"Oh I understand, Rhett. I was just thinking of my own situation. When I couldn't pay the taxes on Tara and I came to you. I would have ended up in the same situation as she was in – selling my body to you for a roof over my head."

He stared at her, contemplating her words and then he shrugged. "Well, anyway, I rather liked the idea of scandalising my father if he found out about it and Hélène was pleasant to be around. She had a carefree nature, a good spirit and she managed to cajole my uncle out of his early morning grumpiness brought on by his hangovers. And I've always enjoyed female company.

"For three months, we all lived rather companionably. My uncle's housekeeper was rather…liberal…as were most of my uncle's friends. And it was nice to have a female opinion on things. Many a night, we would stay up late, discussing literature, or politics or history, slavery. The possibility of war. She was educated, well-read although I often wondered whether she really held the views she purported to hold, or whether she just wanted to provoke an argument with my uncle. His temper always amused her.

"One weekend, my uncle had to go to Baton Rouge for some business, probably a poker tournament or something. I don't remember. Well, Hélène stayed behind and I happened to be in town, too. We went out to the local saloon to eat supper and then played cards together, getting drunker and drunker as the night progressed. I remember stumbling back to the house, carrying her, because her boots were pinching her feet and…well, one thing, led to another, and…she shared my bed that night." He paused and shook his head and then glanced back to his wife, whose pallor had gone ghostly. "It was a momentary lapse of judgment, Scarlett, on both our parts. The next day we carried on as if nothing had happened and we never breathed a word about it to each other again. I am not sure my uncle ever found out. Certainly I never told him and I don't think Hélène did either.

"Then, about six weeks later, my uncle met me in a bar – I had just returned from a trip to Nassau - and he told me Hélène was pregnant. I remember feeling sick as he prattled on about how he would probably marry her, how he had been thinking about marrying her anyway - with or without the baby - which I'm not sure was true. I was barely listening. Somehow, I managed to swallow the whisky in front of me and we went home and when I saw Hélène that evening, she was very quiet. She was sitting next to my uncle but she spent most of the time looking at me. You see-,"

"The child was yours?" interrupted Scarlett. "She was carrying your child?" Her voice came out strangled, half choked. She swallowed, trying to push down the lump in her throat. "You…you…have a child with…with…Hélène?"

She felt the hot sting of tears on her lashes and she turned away. Never in a million years had she expected this confession! Hélène wasn't just an old lover! Oh no! She was also the mother of her husband's child! Perhaps, perhaps she could have coped with the idea that there had been something between the two of them many years ago, before he had known her. But this! Oh dear God! A child! A…how had he described it? A momentary lapse of judgment? He talked of having felt sick! It was nothing to how she was suddenly feeling. Her hands had gone all clammy and she needed some air. She didn't want to hear any more. She couldn't hear any more. She went to stand up but she felt dizzy. She put her hands to her face and felt her body sway with nausea. Oh this couldn't be happening to her! Oh mother of God. Just when they had been making progress, he had to go and drop this revelation.

She felt his hand on her arm but she kept her face covered. "Scarlett, darling, please hear me out. Please let me finish," and then he got up from his chair and moved towards her, swept her up in his arms and sat down again, placing her in his lap. She felt too weak to resist. The emotion of the last few hours had caught up with her.

"So you have another child? Bonnie wasn't your only child?" she said as he began to stroke her hair.

He took a deep breath in and shook his head. "I don't know, Scarlett," he said simply. "I certainly treated him like a son, lovedhim like a son. Hélène never said he was my child. And she could have done. God, there were plenty of opportunities to say it, to laud it over me. But she never did. To all intents and purposes, he was Stephen's child. But perhaps she didn't know herself. It's not as if there is a test you can take to determine paternity."

"So anyway, I had decided to leave New Orleans and stay away until after the baby was born. But about a week after my uncle found out about her pregnancy, he got sick. Really sick - influenza or some variant - and a week after that he was dead. So Hélène was left pregnant, and almost a widow but not quite. He had left her with nothing. Not even his name. There wasn't even anything of my uncle's estate that could be given to her because he had no money, he owned no property, and the only horse he owned was old and decrepit and was unlikely to last even a year.

"She was twenty-two and she felt her life was ruined. She became very depressed. For weeks, she hardly got up in the mornings and if she did, she just moped around in her wrapper, didn't even bother getting dressed. Her spark had died and she was homesick for France, which didn't help, and she wanted to go back to dancing. And then, one morning, she announced that she had found out that she didn't have to have the baby and asked me for some money.

"We had the most almighty row and in the end, we agreed that she would have the child but I would support it and the child would become my ward.

"So, she had the baby and then six months later, she returned to France. We placed the child in the care of Saint Vincent's Infant Asylum, on Magazine Street, with me as the guardian. It was a…neat…asylum. A commodious brick edifice. I think that was how it was described. It wasn't unpleasant and it was clean and the women that ran it didn't seem out of a Dickens novel." Scarlett looked blankly at him. "But when I found myself back in New Orleans nine months later, it was obvious the child wasn't happy. He was crying all the time. And I began to fret that perhaps he wasn't being fed enough or his diapers weren't changed often enough. It wasn't as if I could check up on him. Without consulting Hélène, I sought out a young widow, with one child of her own, to care for the child and I paid her handsomely. And she looked after him, and well too, and whenever I returned from my travels, he seemed happy. When he was six, I sent him to Bellegrove Institute, a boarding school.

"Hélène didn't see the child again until he was eight – after the War had finished. By then, she was a successful dancer, had Paris at her feet and she managed to slip away from France for a couple of months. It was the first time I had seen her since she had left New Orleans, although I had been writing to her for years – initially to check up on her own well-being but then to tell her how her son was getting on. It was a strange correspondence. She barely wrote back and if she did, her letters were short. I suppose it was her way of coping with what she had done." He broke off suddenly and reached into his pocket for a cigar. He lit it and inhaled a few times before allowing the rings of smoke to waft over Scarlett's hair.

Scarlett sat motionless, her head on his chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart and trying to digest all the information and remembering the only other time he had mentioned his ward - one of the few occasions in her life when he had properly let his guard down around her. She had become jealous because she had thought his frequent visits back to New Orleans were because of a sweetheart - although she had refused to recognise the emotion at the time. And then just as swiftly as the shutters had come down, the shutters had gone back up – and he had terminated the conversation and asked her not to repeat its content to anyone else. She had resolved to ask him about his ward, after they had married but the opportunity had never arisen, and then after their marriage had begun to deteriorate, she had resolved not to ask him for fear of giving him satisfaction that she was curious about his life.

"I always wondered," she finally said, feeling numb. "I mean, who the boy was. Why he was your ward. How you – of all people – had come to have a ward."

"Me – of all people?"

"Well, it's not exactly something that one would normally expect of a rogue, Rhett." He didn't say anything and even though she wasn't looking at him, she felt his eyes on her. "I remember some gossip I heard. About Belle Watling having a child and the Old Cats suggesting that it might be your child. Her son lives in New Orleans doesn't he?"

"Yes," he replied slowly. "Yes he does. And I paid for his education. Belle is a good mother, better than Hélène was. She tries to visit her son – has always visited her son - at least once every three months or so. He's sixteen now and about to start an apprenticeship at a tailors. In New Orleans."

"But Belle's son…he's not yours?" she asked hesitantly.

"Good Lord, no! I met her on the day Hélène and I placed her son in the asylum. Belle was putting her own son in there but she intended to give him up for adoption. She couldn't stop crying. So I…helped her out…."

"What do you mean, you helped her out?"

"Well, unlike Hélène, she wanted to keep her child. So I made it possible. She had become pregnant by one of her clients – of course, the scoundrel didn't want to know - so I gave her some money and told her that she could move in to my uncle's house for the remainder of the tenancy. Another eighteen months or so. I had no use for it and it would only stand empty. There was another woman she worked with, who said that she would look after the child whilst Belle worked. And so that's how Belle got by. And when the child was two years old, she decided that the child would be better served if he didn't grow up in the household of a whore and so she placed him in another asylum and she moved to Atlanta. Her son went to the same school as my ward. I paid for both their educations."

There was another pause as Scarlett considered his answer. Then she asked,

"So how many other children might you have, Rhett?"

He shook his head and she saw him swallow. "None. So far as I am aware. It was just one of those things that happened. I wasn't careful but neither was my uncle and neither was Hélène. Call it the folly of youth."

Scarlett nodded slowly. This child – if he was born three years before he met her, if he was roughly the same age as Belle's son, he must also be about sixteen now.

"So what is his name Rhett? Is he still in New Orleans?"

"His name was James. And he's-" He stopped suddenly and a pained expression washed over his face.

And then she suddenly realised. She brought her hand to her mouth to stifle her gasp. Was. Thought. Might have been. Treated. Loved. All past tenses.

"He's dead isn't he?"

Rhett flicked his eyes up and met her emerald gaze. He nodded slowly. "He died in a bar fight ten days before Miss Melly. And I buried him whilst you were in Marietta."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~S&R~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somehow, they had managed to go down to supper, Scarlett feeling dazed and confused. Rhett had held onto her tightly as they had walked down the staircase and then he had closed the door whilst they had eaten. Scarlett barely touched the beef that had been specially cooked for them.

She had sat, in an almost numb-like state, as Rhett had told her how James had got into some gambling debts, how he had decided to cheat his way out of the money he owed, rather than ask Rhett for the money to pay it off, how he had been caught out by someone he should never have crossed, how the man had beaten him to death with bare hands in a murky saloon which the sheriff never frequented. "He had the Butler stubbornness, Scarlett," Rhett had offered as Scarlett had shaken her head in disbelief at the waste of such a young life.

"He can't have been little more than a child," she had said softly, thinking of her own son who was rapidly racing towards manhood.

"He was a child. He was only sixteen, Scarlett. And if I had had more energy, if I had been more myself, I would have shot the man who had struck the fatal blow."

He told her how he had received a telegram from the old widow that had looked after James all those years ago and how he had managed to stay sober enough to slip away to New Orleans on the overnight train and stay less than twelve hours – enough time to pay the undertaker and to bury the boy. It had only been him and the widow, Belle's son and three passers-by who had attended the funeral. "That's what bastardisation does to you. It robs you of friends too," he had pronounced, reading the unasked question that was on Scarlett's lips. "I felt angry that he had had the life he had had. My money couldn't give him respectability, however much I had tried. Even in New Orleans."

And then he had told her about writing to Hélène to break the news to her.

"You saw her again, though? When you went to Paris?" They had retired up to their bedroom and Rhett was sitting behind his wife, brushing her hair.

He caught her eyes in the mirror.

"Scarlett, you don't need to know everything."

"Yes I do, Rhett. I want to be sure that I know the person I am married to. Heaven knows, I didn't know you for the first six years of our marriage."

He looked at her reflection and shook his head. "I have always wished I didn't have the mental images of you and Charles together, of you and Frank, of you and Ashley…"

"I want to know, Rhett," she said with a steely inflection.

He put the brush down on the vanity counter, stood up and moved to the bed. He sat down. "I met her in Paris when I was there with my mother over Christmas. We spent an afternoon together. It was…good to see her…therapeutic. We remembered the good things about James. His sense of fun, the pranks he would get up to, his cockiness, his intelligence. We didn't talk of the bitterness he had always felt about being abandoned by his mother. About being born out of wedlock. We didn't talk of the awful argument he had had with Hélène the last time she had seen him, about six months before his death. When he had accused her of giving her this stigma that he would never be able to wash away. And then I had gone back to my hotel and took my mother out to a concert. I had no intention of seeing her again.

"But the next day, she wrote to me at the hotel I was staying at, telling me how she had enjoyed our time together and inviting me for supper the following night. My mother was busy seeing an old friend or something – I can't remember – and so I went. And I didn't leave until the next morning." Scarlett's eyes swivelled up to meet his own, to check that she hadn't missed his meaning.

"You mean…you mean…" she had to be sure. "You shared her bed?"

He nodded.

"Oh." She got up from the vanity stool and moved towards him. "But it was just the once?"

He emitted a heavy sigh. "Scarlett, why do you have to know?"

She swallowed, ignoring the pain that was beginning to rack her whole body. "So it was more than once?"

"It might have been more than once. I can't remember."

"It might have been? How many times Rhett?"

"Two or three more times."

"Two more times, Rhett, or three more times?"

"Three," he said quietly.

"And since she's been in Charleston?"

"Not once, Scarlett," he said. "I think she might have…wanted…something to happen…but… it happened in Paris because of our shared grief."

"Like it just happened to us in April? On Bonnie's birthday?"

"No, Scarlett. With us it was different. It's always been different with you. Maybe that's why I can never leave you. In April, I was confused. And scared. Because I thought in April that you might have been the only one to save me from myself and I didn't want you to have that power over me. And I ran away. Or rather, when we had that conversation the night of our dinner with Maybelle and René, I didn't try and stop you…evicting… me from our house. With Hélène, there has never been any love between us. Friendship, yes, occasional…er…lust…but not love. Not love in the true sense."

Scarlett smirked. "Maybe there was no love on your part, Rhett. But on hers? I'm not so sure. I saw the way she looked at you."

Rhett shrugged. "There's only one woman, Scarlett that I have ever loved."

"But what of the letter, Rhett? I don't know many women… in fact, I don't know any woman, who would call someone else's husband darling?"

"She started writing to me, Scarlett after I left Paris. What was I meant to do? And I felt strangely guilty. Guilty of how I had contributed to her grief and guilty that I had slept with her when she was vulnerable. Her choice of words escalated during the course of our correspondence, it became more extravagant, more flowery. She's always been one for slight melodrama. And she thought I was a free man. Hell, I thought I was a free man." He stared into his wife's eyes, trying to convey his sincerity. "You mustn't judge her too harshly, darling. She had no one. She was lonely."

"I'm not judging her, Rhett. I'm trying to understand." She pondered his words. "So, you haven't been with her since December?"

He shook his head.

"Good," she said.

She tossed her hair back and tied it loosely in a ribbon that was on her wrist and then she walked away from her husband, towards her side of the bed, removed her wrapper and climbed into the soft, silk sheets. Rhett watched her for a few moments and then did the same, discarding his dressing gown on the floor. When he was under the covers, he tentatively inched across the mattress towards his wife and then gently wrapped his arms around her.

She could sense his body twitching as though he was about to fall asleep. But Scarlett wasn't tired. Her mind was still swirling from the events of the last few hours and she still wanted to talk.

"I think what hurts most of all, is that you never told me. I only know now because I found an incriminating letter from Hélène."

Rhett sniffed derisorily. "Come now, Scarlett, don't tell me you would have welcomed my ward, and Hélène, with open arms."

"No…but…I might have understood Rhett. I would hope that I would have understood. He was a child. A boy." He yawned and then leaned across her and cradled her head in his hands, his dark eyes meeting her own.

"Do you realise how scared I was of asking you to marry me, without this additional albatross round my neck? I thought that perhaps, in time, we might have gone to New Orleans together again, and I could have introduced you to James and perhaps tried to tell you the story then. But it's not a pleasant story. None of us – Stephen, Hélène, me – behaved particularly well. Stephen could have married her, even when he was dying. He was lucid until the very end. He let Hélène down very badly. Maybe James would still be alive if he had? Who knows? And I…well, I perhaps should have made her stay in New Orleans with the baby, supported her. I had the money. And maybe if Hélène hadn't abandoned him, or given him that sense of abandonment… "

"And you know what else, Rhett? You know what else is painful in all of this. Realising how estranged we were that I didn't even realise that he had died. That someone as significant as your ward had died. And I didn't know! And you couldn't tell me! I mean what sort of a wife does that make me?"

"And what sort of a husband does that make me, Scarlett?" Rhett responded quickly. "That I didn't want to tell you."

Scarlett ignored him. "And then…the fact that you could gain comfort in Hélène's arms but not mine." She blinked away the tears that had gathered in her eyes. She was still unable to think of Bonnie without crying, even though the first anniversary had passed. "I used to hope that you would come to my bedroom…after Bonnie…"She paused and then hiccoughed. "I mean, I used to leave my door slightly ajar in the vain hope that if you wanted…intimacy…you might look for it with me…your wife…rather than…rather than…Belle." She still struggled to say the name of his mistress without virulence.

Rhett sighed. "I would have only been using you Scarlett, if I had come to your bedroom. If we had slept together in those weeks, I would only have hurt you. And confused you. I pretty much hated you at that time."

"Maybe I wouldn't have minded being hurt by you or used by you in that way. It would have salved my conscience. For saying what I had said when Bonnie died, for being such a terrible wife, for refusing to share my bed with you for all those years. It would have been my hair shirt. And I…" She started crying softly again, and twisted her body away from his. His hands dropped from her face and snaked round her waist, pulling her closer. "I wanted you, Rhett. I wanted you to hold me in your arms and reminisce about Bonnie. Try and keep those memories intact. Remember her as parents together."

"We're doing that now, Scarlett. We can do that tomorrow. We can do that next week, next month, next year. However much you want to talk about her."

"I know…it's just…" She paused as she allowed another bout of hiccoughing to take over her body. "It hurts Rhett that you went with…other woman…with Belle…with Hélène…maybe with others…but not with me. When I was Bonnie's mother. When I was your wife. It's all rather humiliating." She screwed up her eyes as she tried to remove the images of her husband with his various paramours. "How did our marriage disintegrate to such an extent that we didn't even touch each other after she died. Not once did we even…hug…each other. And we barely spoke. Even afterwards, after we had buried her, after the initial bout of that terrible grief and pain had subsided. I wanted to force you to talk to me but you were so…you were so…blank…"

"Honey, please stop all these recriminations. We were both at fault. Maybe the only way we could have got through it all, was to be on our own? I don't know. But just as you weren't yourself after she died, neither was I."

And then Scarlett started crying again, properly sobbing. She was crying for the dead boy she had never known, for the pain her husband must have gone through, for her actions after Bonnie had died, for Bonnie. And then finally she fell asleep as Rhett stared up onto the ceiling until the early hours of the morning.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~S&R~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scarlett slept badly, on the cusp of various nightmares and woke early. She crept out of bed whilst her husband was still sleeping, pulled on her wrapper and then grabbed the clothes she was going to travel in. Her new dresses were arriving today but she wanted to save them for the boat.

She walked into one of Wycliffe House's spare bedrooms and called for Mary to help her dress. Then she asked Clarence to get Miss Eleanor's carriage ready. She had decided that she was going to go and meet Hélène.

By nine o'clock, she was sitting in the main lounge of the hotel, drinking coffee, having left a note at the reception for Hélène. Twenty minutes later, she heard light footsteps on the wooden floor and she turned her head.

"Mrs Butler," Hélène said as she walked across the room.

Hélène was dressed in a lilac gown that was slightly too low-cut, emphasising her lack of bosom. The colour didn't suit her either, making her olive skin look washed out, almost grey.

Scarlett stood up from the chair as Hélène held out her hand. If they hadn't been in a public place, Scarlett wouldn't have taken it

"Mademoiselle Malet," Scarlett said tersely.

Their eyes locked for a few moments and then Scarlett looked her up and down. She was too thin to be considered attractive. Her cheekbones were too pronounced, too angular, her eyes were too deep set, sunken almost and her dark hair, which she had pulled back loosely in a chignon that brushed her nape, had flecks of grey through it. She looked all of her forty odd years.

Without waiting to be invited, Hélène took the chair opposite Scarlett and poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher that had been brought to the table.

"I wondered if we would meet again," Hélène said with a faint French lilt, after she had smoothed her skirt. "And I wondered in what circumstances." She paused as she scrutinised Scarlett's face. "And judging by your…expression, I imagine Rhett has told you about me." She picked up her glass again and sipped it, without taking her eyes off Scarlett. "And about James."

Scarlett sucked in her breath. This woman was either brave to throw the gauntlet down like that so soon or liked to deliberately provoke. Or Scarlett herself was too readable.

Scarlett nodded, her jaw hardening defiantly. She stared again at Hélène and then narrowed her eyes.

"Indeed. He has told me. Including what happened between the two of you at Christmas."

Hélène smiled faintly, almost nostalgically. "We were two lonely people, looking for comfort. It was…natural."

"And your moral conscience doesn't stop you sleeping with a married man?" Scarlett snapped.

Hélène's eyes widened at the slight. "Not if he doesn't want to be married and his wife won't give him a divorce."

"How dare-" Scarlett stopped and literally bit her tongue, tasting blood. She averted her eyes from the woman as she counted to ten, refusing to rise to her bait. Had she made a mistake in coming to see this woman? Somehow, hearing about her husband's carnal exploits from someone other than him was more painful than hearing his own confession. She wondered why it should be like that. What was so different about Hélène to all the other random women he had, no doubt, been taking to bed for years? Was it just that she was no longer nameless and faceless, as the other women had been?

Scarlett straightened her back and lifted her chin. Rhett had chosen her and, more importantly, she had chosen him. She was his wife, not this pathetic, bitter creature sitting in front of her.

"Rhett and I are going to Europe this evening," Scarlett said abruptly.

Hélène smiled at Scarlett. "I know," she said.

"Rhett told you?" Scarlett asked quickly, her brow furrowing in confusion and indignation, her cool composure evaporating.

"He sent me a note the other day, saying that he and you were trying to…reconcile…and that he was taking you away. He didn't give specifics but I suspected Europe."

Scarlett nodded. "And after that, we are returning to our home in Atlanta."

Hélène smiled again. "So you persuaded him to return?" The way she said it made it sound as though Scarlett was forcing Rhett to return with her.

"Persuaded, no. He wants to come home," said Scarlet, allowing irritation to creep into her voice. Rhett was willingly going back with her to Atlanta. There was no coersion involved.

A silence fell between them and Scarlett studied Hélène again. She remembered how the ladies on the train had talked of her tiny waist and so her eyes went down to her mid-section. It was small – not as small as her own had been, before she had had children, even after she had had Wade – but it was smaller than her own waist was now. Then she glanced back at her face. She had a petite, upturned nose, a high forehead and only a few wrinkles around her mouth. At a pinch, you could call her pretty Scarlett thought. But not beautiful or striking. And she wasn't old enough yet to be called handsome .

Hélène cleared her throat as she placed her glass down on the table. "Mrs Butler, why did you want to see me?" She raised her plucked eyebrows. "To check out your competition?"

"No…not at all. I…" Scarlett began but the directness of Hélène's question temporary stalled her.

Hélène leaned back in the chair, as though she was assessing Scarlett. Then she shifted her body closer to the edge of the settee. "I think you did want to see me for that very reason. And if I was in your position, I would probably do the same. I've always had a soft spot for your husband and if circumstances had been different then maybe…" Her voice trailed off. She closed her eyes and, after a moment, she shook her head. "But they're not." She moved even closer to Scarlett, so that Scarlett could see the powder that was creasing in her faint lines and could smell the mint on her breath. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I think you came here to warn me off your husband."

Now that she had been rumbled, Scarlett didn't hold back. "I want to make sure that you leave him alone, Mademoiselle Malet! Whatever might have happened to you in the past, will not happen again. He just feels sorry for you."

Hélène visibly bristled before she regained her composure. "Is that what he told you?" she smirked, which irked Scarlett. "Believe that if it makes it easier for you to accept. I admit that once, I might have had designs on him. But Mrs Butler, I can assure you that if you make him happy and he wants to be with you, I won't interfere."

"What of your letters, Mademoiselle Malet?" Scarlett hissed back. "I don't want you writing to him any more."

"Why?"

"James is dead and there is no need. Besides, he is not your darling, he is not yours in any shape or form. He was good enough to be the guardian of your illegitimate child whilst you gallivanted round Paris, pretending you had not a care in the world, when in fact you had a child. I might be many things, but I have never and would never abandon my children."

Scarlett heard Hélène breathe in sharply and then she saw her eyes mist over. "I think I've heard enough. I didn't think it would be a good idea to meet you but I thought it would have been rude to not hear what you had to say." She stood up and Scarlett rose with her, levelling her gaze. She turned towards the door but then over her shoulder she said bitterly, "What would you have done, Mrs Butler, if you suddenly found yourself pregnant, alone, unmarried? With your mother dead and your father having disowned you? I had no choice."

Scarlett stared at her and saw a single tear trickle down her face, leaving a groove in her rouge.

"I thought you might have understood," she continued. "After all, you lost a child, too, and from all accounts, you weren't a perfect mother."

Scarlett swallowed as she continued to stare at her. What had Rhett told Hélène about her? How much did she know about their own broken marriage? Her own disinterest in her children? Her own failure to properly bond with Wade and Ella. She didn't say anything.

"If I had my time again, don't you think I would do things differently?" Hélène said, her voice cracking. "Wouldn't you? Wouldn't you have done things differently? Don't you regret anything?"

Scarlett felt uncomfortable, startled by the woman's candour, startled by how she could voice her regrets so openly. Yes, Scarlett had regrets, too many regrets. And if things had been different between her and Rhett, maybe Bonnie wouldn't be dead. And she wouldn't have had to go through the last horrible year alone either.

They both looked at each other, neither blinking. It was like a stand-off, a duel. Rhett's words were ringing in Scarlett's head. Regrets, regrets, regrets. "Yes," she finally whispered, choking back her own tears which had seemingly sprung from nowhere. "Yes, I would have done things differently."

"But we don't get to, do we?" Hélène replied, her voice smoother and calm. "We don't get to do over, do we? And all I am left with, is regret. I didn't even make his funeral!" She turned her body fully round so that she was completely facing Scarlett. "My time with your husband in December last year…it wasn't…I mean…we comforted each other. Sometimes, physical intimacy helps. And he understood what I was going through. He had also lost James…"

For a moment, Scarlett wondered if she was about to confess and panic hit her. Was she about to reveal that James had been Rhett's child after all? Scarlett braced herself for the revelation, wondering how Hélène would say it, wondering how she, Scarlett, would handle it. She caught her breath and waited not really wanting to hear any more. She could cope with the narrative of the story that Rhett had told last night. It was the best it could be. She didn't want any amendments. She wanted that uncertainty. She alone wanted to be the mother of his children.

But no confession came. Instead she said. "James might have only been his…ward…but Rhett was the one person who I knew who came close to understanding how I felt. He had lost your daughter. He understood what it was like to lose a child."

Hélène reached into her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. She dabbed her eyes and wiped her nose. Then she faced Scarlett again and smiled, showing perfectly straight teeth.

"It's funny, Mrs Butler. In a different life, with different circumstances, perhaps we could have been friends. I don't think we are all that different," and she turned on her heels and left the room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~S&R~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N Since I have been writing this story, I have engaged in many messaging about whether the ward was Rhett's biological child. Some people believe that it was just too coincidental, but others thought that if Rhett had had a child, then he wouldn't have been so distant from it. He was, after all, besotted with children and very good with them. So I came to wonder whether there had been a question mark over the paternity of the child. Hence, this was my explanation. I obviously don't know what New Orleans was like in the 1850s, but I sort of imagined it as being hedonistic – and people might raise eyebrows about behaviour but that was about it.

The reason for me thinking that Rhett was uncertain about whether the ward was his child or not is pulled from: (a) Rhett talking to Scarlett about his ward in Atlanta after she had had Ella and him wanting her to keep quiet about it. He professed not to care about his reputation – so why would he care about people finding out he had a child if it was indeed his own child? (b) Rhett's conversation with Wade when Bonnie was born. He didn't answer Wade's question about Wade being his only "boy" – I think it was because he couldn't give a truthful answer because he didn't know. But if he had had a son already, then Rhett would never have said "Now, why should I want a boy when I've already got one?" to Wade. (c) I just can't believe that Rhett would have kept the child away from him (physically) for all those years. But I can see arguments on all sides and I understand why some people think the ward was his child (like Aramanth).

In any event, I (the romantic in me) likes to think Scarlett was the only woman he had children with.

Oh – and as for the ward being Belle's son. I like that idea (and Ondine of course you have done a great job with it) but for some strange reason when I read GWTW and watched the film, I never got the sense the ward and Belle's son were one and the same. Who knows why? I am sure MM meant us to think that. Too coincidental.

And as for the boy's death – maybe a bit far fetched, but I often thought "Was there something else that tripped Rhett over to make him leave Scarlett when he did?" Obviously MM was pretty rubbish at giving timelines. We know Bonnie was 4 when she died and that they had been married for 6 years when Rhett left her. But was she 4 and ½? How long was it after they got married did Scarlett fall pregnant? I always got the feeling it was a few months – maybe 3 or 4 months – maybe 6 months. Which means, how long had Bonnie been dead before Rhett left Scarlett? Weeks, months? And why did he wait? Why didn't he leave her after Bonnie's funeral? I know he was drunk - was he just constantly drunk that he couldn't think clearly? Perhaps so. But I wondered if there was some other trigger that forced his hand and so in my story, the other trigger is him hearing about James dying. It pushed him over the edge and he realised that really, his life was meaningless. Or that he still had a life to lead and he didn't want to do it trapped in a marriage to someone he no longer loved and who made him that's my reason for the boy's death.

And for those people that think Scarlett is too weak in this story, maybe. We are all entitled to our own opinions. But it wasn't my intention to make a weak Scarlett! She was definitely on the verge of a breakdown when Bonnie died and I think the double whammy of Rhett leaving her/and Melly dying might have pushed her over the edge. When you have witnessed breakdowns, mental health issues – you see that even the strongest can be broken. And even when they are fixed – there is still that vulnerability. Scarlett isn't exactly broken but she was clinging on to sanity , trying to take each day at a time before Rhett re-appeared at the end of March.

I hope I have portrayed Hélène with some degree of pathos. She isn't a villain, just a woman who was caught up in circumstances that weren't entirely her own making and she did what she had to do to survive. And if Rhett Butler suddenly walked into my life after several years away, slept with me a few times and purported to be through with his marriage, then maybe, just maybe, I would have pursued him too. That was all that she was doing. Rhett didn't encourage her – he just made a mistake in December.

Oh, and one last thing. Yes - a bit cringeworthy that I gave the French version of my name to the ward's mother. The only reason was I couldn't think quickly of a French name that had not been used by Amaranth in her story per aspera ad astra - and I am always hopeless at thinking of names of my characters (and my stories!) So forgive me that indulgence!

NEW PS Some of you have asked why Scarlett wanted to meet Helene. I think sometimes Scarlett acts before she thinks (this is another example of this) and Helene is right - she did want to check up on her competition. Scarlett needed to be satisfied that Rhett's relationship with the woman is dead and to make sure that Rhett had only slept with Helene in December - not since he visited Scarlett in Atlanta in March/April - and Helene confirms that. If Rhett had carried on sleeping with Helene after he had seen Scarlett in March/April, then I think his reconciliation with Scarlett would be on even shakier ground than it already is. BTW - I always think Rhett speaks the truth. The only time he didn't was re: his love for Scarlett. My Rhett does now speak the truth though he is still confused about his feelings - so he hasn't told Scarlett he loves her (and neither has she yet). Oh, and also Scarlett does want to warn off this woman - I remember a comment Dixie made to me once that Scarlett should be fighting for her man - this was meant to be in part addressing that comment. I am also conscious that at the end of GWTW Scarlett was so determined that she would get Rhett back (there had never been a man she couldn't get once she had set her mind to it) and apart from sleeping with him in Charleston, she hasn't really done much of that (I'll explain my reasons for that slight lack of action at the end of the story). And I also wanted to explore women of that time a bit - how times (thankfully) have moved on so that if a girl gets pregnant out of wedlock it isn't an ostracisable event! I am sure there were lots of women like Helene in the 1850s - from good families - who found themselves in the family way. I know some people on this site even think that Philippe and Ellen had slept together (though I am not sure I am one of them).

Enough of my ramblings.