It had always been this one room that seemed impervious to the gaudy trappings of velvet and heavy chintz that seemed to suffocate and drown the rest of the house. Every room in the house was marked by Scarlett's relentless taste for cheap and tacky trappings, that seemed to spell out her need for praise and recognition in vivid hues of deep burgundy and rich reds. But this one room held its own among the sea of glittering chandeliers and obscenely plush rugs that pushed their way inwards along the marbled hallways, only to be rebuked abruptly by the towering oak door, painfully simple of structure and unassuming in its design, yet sturdy of build and overpowering in its presence, akin to a slap in the face to the opulent display of wealth around it. Like its owner, it seemed deceptively calm and impassive, from the outside but radiated a raw magnetism that seemed to beckon the uninitiated to enter and explore at their own peril, and just like its owner, the dark and gleaming wood called out an unspoken warning to those who did dare to do so.
On the other side of that door, the heavy mahogany writing desk that occupied much of the floor was as masculine as the lone figure that stood next to the open French window. With its stiff cotton drapes pulled wide open to reveal the shadowy dimness of the fading night, Rhett looked out at the eerily silent and deserted street with its neatly lined rows of wisteria and magnolia trees, the branches now barren and frost lined, signaling an emptiness that seemed to pulse through the sleeping city. That dinner was just a prelude to the misery of the coming days. He needed to get out of here and fast. He knew getting closeted with Scarlett in a barely empty house spelled trouble and for the first time in all the years that he had spent, baiting danger on the choppy seas and rugged lands alike, he was beginning to question his chances of surviving this. As he looked on, his eyes fixed on the silent unmoving trees, his bland face hiding dark thoughts that would have made a lesser man cringe, a clear and distinct knock on the aforementioned door had him almost reaching, by instincts long honed in the rugged ravines off the gold coasts of California, for a gun that was no longer strapped to a holster flowing along the brawny muscles of his well-defined waist. Rhett swore under his breath. This had been one room that Scarlett had never bothered much with, always preferring to stick to the formal parlors and reception rooms that crowded the front of the house, Before she banished him from her bedroom, she would be happy with random run-ins with him in the dining area and ball rooms, seeing as much that they would have ample time to talk to each other in the one bedroom they shared, And after he was labeled as persona-non-grata in her room, she had been content chatting him up on occasions that were unavoidable in the huge formal dining room or the library downstairs. But this was the first time that she had hunted him up in his office. As the knock sounded again, he paused at the window, frowning. Could he perhaps, be mistaken after all? Had the servants woken up with one of the children wanting something or maybe falling sick in the night? But even as his practical mind ran through the options, he knew it had to be Scarlett. The house was too quiet to have had any emergency of any sorts. The stark absence of pounding feet ringing an alarm on the stairs and the lack of raised anxious voices floating through the house steadied his quickening steps and he reigned in his razor sharp senses, even as the gun toting dangerous blockader faded into the background to allow the suave and debonair Captain of the seas to open the door outside to the storm that was brewing in the form of his green eyed wife.
Scarlett was irritated. Truth be told, she was more than irritated. She was annoyed and frustrated among a few other things that she could sufficiently describe in some of Gerald's choice curse words, if only she could speak them aloud and remain a lady! Between her husband glowering at her continuously from across rooms and her children, especially Bonnie screaming till their faces were blue at the prospects of having to make do without prissy, who along being with their nurse was also their playmate, Scarlett had spent an irksome afternoon, locked in her own house, denied of even the small comfort of having Melly to complain to. The afternoon had quickly played out as a preview of what was to come for the next forty odd days and it had scared her enough to stir her into swift action. She had decided she was not going to settle for this. She was not going to be handling the children on her own and her mind was already coming up with a plan to inveigle Melly into coming to stay at the house with Beau. "And maybe Ashley", her brain added with a twinge of guilty pleasure.
What had taken her aback was the slow realization that dawned with the fading of the late afternoon sun, that Rhett was intending to stay the night after supper. Since she had asked for separate rooms, Rhett had been frequenting the house less and less, disappearing often on extended "business trips" which she explained in great detail to Mrs. Merriweather (knowing well that the grapevine started there) and that seemed to take him to New York and London as far as the town's busy bodies were concerned. Inwardly she raged with suppressed fury. She was not a fool and was not immune to the hushed whispers reverberating with thinly veiled bawdy laughter that creeped along the bustling streets of Atlanta from Belle Watling's house that bespoke her husband's name. Alone in her empty bed at night, Scarlett seethed in silent rage while her feverish mind tried to quieten her bewildered heart with poorly framed images of Ashley. But try as she might to conjure up the warmth of Ashley's stolen embraces from memories now riddled unexplainably with the powerful pull of Rhett's shadowy presence lurking somewhere in the background, she found herself slipping into dreams that more often than not, featured her husband rather than her intended lover.
It was the dreams that disturbed and upset Scarlett. Not one to tax her brain with unwonted reasoning and analyses, especially that which required thinking of anything other than numbers she could tally up on an account, she woke up from these dreams with a thumping heart and burning cheeks stained red with the tell-tale signs of a night spent less in repose than of feverish rapture. Often on waking, she would find the room still dark, the early glimmer of dawn a good few hours away and after restlessly thrashing around in the twisted sheets that she wrapped around her, seeking the cool comfort of arms that she stubbornly refused to acknowledge, she would let the tranquil stillness that clothed the slumbering house lull her back into a restless uneasy sleep.
Now as she stood facing her long absentee husband, Scarlett was wracked with doubts. She had no idea how long Rhett intended to stay. She had observed him at dinner, surreptitiously casting sidelong glances at him from across the table in the glowing candle light. He had not been home for a month now and the sudden vision of his tall frame lounging across the front door this afternoon, his lips twisted in an arrogant greeting while his black eyes raked her with his insolent gaze as he took in her drab afternoon, stay-at-home beige dress had inflamed her temper even more. She had wanted to slam the door on his mocking face but the sun glinting off the polished band of delicate gold on his tanned finger, laughed up tauntingly at her until she stepped aside, her lips set in a thin line and her chin jutting out defiantly, to let him in.
Now she stood outside the one room that she had hated with all her heart- his office. For some reason that she did not seem fit to reason with, Scarlett loathed to enter this room. Rhett's office with its huge sprawling desk and the lightly shaded walls inlaid with oak panels and stacked with books from ceiling to floor, seemed to jeer at her from their lofty heights. "And their owner is just as bad!", she fumed as her eyes fell on his swarthy face, his eyes taking in her discomfort even as he bowed mockingly and stepped aside to let her in.