Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.
He dreamed of New Orleans, of his young wife. He dreamed of feeding her and dressing her and holding her long into the sweet nights. Then he fought with her and left her alone, until she screamed in her sleep. "No no no!"
Rhett sat up. He would know that cry anywhere. Scarlett was having a nightmare. He got up and cracked his door slightly open, to see the tall Texan standing at the door that the cries came from.
"Katie, darlin,' it's all right, I'm here."
"He always leaves," she said in a small voice.
"I'll be here every time."
"You're always so good to me."
The door clicked shut and Rhett could do nothing but return to his own bed.
"I thought the nightmares were gone for good." Kate burrowed into her husband's body. "I don't know why it's been so bad lately."
"I don't mind, Katie."
"Ewan, hold me."
"Is that all you want me to do?" There was amusement in his voice.
"You might… kiss me, too."
She loved his clean-shaven kisses. They never tickled like a mustache would, and there was never any question of whether any of his dinner was stuck in his facial hair.
He held back tonight, so she took his hands in her own and placed them on her body, enjoying the way he groaned and kissed her harder. He quickly understood that she wanted him, and he stroked and caressed and kissed her until they were both senseless.
Bedroom activities got more complicated as pregnancy went on, but they'd found a couple of positions that allowed them both to have gratification. He moved gently, to make sure it wasn't hurting her. She reached with her hand and ran it up his shoulder, pulling him toward her, signaling that he could move more forcefully.
"Ah, darlin'." It was all he needed to hold her tightly as he moved with abandon. She said his name and trembled even as he lost control of himself.
She was far too advanced for anything like him laying on top of her for a moment, so he slid to her back and held her closely.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you too," was the answer. They dozed until he decided he should go back to his own room. He rolled away and sat up.
"Stay?" she asked.
"Are you sure?" He slid back down behind her.
"It's better this way, isn't it?" She pulled his upper hand over her pregnant belly where there was some sort of faint movement.
He wasn't going to argue and sensed there was something on her mind. "He's a charming fellow. Is he so bad?"
"He wants me to go back east," she said.
"Does he want to marry you?" This came out slowly, reluctantly.
"No." It came out in a sort of sob. "He said he's been looking for me because he was hoping to form an arrangement. He wants me to be his paid woman or mistress. I can't figure out which. Is there a difference?"
Ewan was quiet for several minutes. His hand moved lazily over her tummy as the baby settled into a position he or she liked for the night. "You still love him."
"Not like that, Ewan." She rolled to her back and looked at him. Placing her hand over his she said, "This is real, and good. We're building something here at Tara and the people around us love and respect us. The love between us has given us this house, the farm, the ranch… these beautiful babies. All the things he did, and that I did when I was with him… We snubbed good people and I was vicious to people who loved me anyway. We tore a hole right through Atlanta. There were people who wouldn't speak to their own brothers or sisters because of us.
"We did have a beautiful girl, but she died. Sometimes I think it was because we couldn't be happy together. I came to realize I loved him, but I hate all of those things we did, I hate the person I became. He says he loves me, but there's something he loves more, will always love more, so he can't offer me anything real. And now I would always be his hidden woman, his dirty secret."
"So I don't need to help you pack?"
"Will you be serious? I'm married to you. You took me when I was nothing and you showed me what it's like to be loved as a woman and not as some sort of child or pet. I love you. I pick you, even if he could offer me what he did when he first proposed to me."
It was uncomfortable to lie on her back any longer, so she was forced to move to her side. After she arranged all of her pillows to give herself some comfort, she grabbed Ewan's hand and placed it on her tummy with her hand on his. He slid up behind her again and they fell asleep together, holding their child.
"No no no!"
Rhett Butler awoke to screaming again, but this time it was daylight and the screaming was accompanied by giggles. When he put on his robe and opened his door, a tow-haired child ran through it and slammed into Rhett's pajama legs.
"What's all this?" asked Rhett as he bent down and picked up Aiden. He held the boy and was overcome by the scent of whatever it was Scarlett used to wash her babies and their clothes. If he closed his eyes he would remember Ella at this age. He tickled the little tummy and was rewarded by the child's laughter. He laughed too and handed him to Olivia, who was coming down the hall.
"This little man is so much trouble!" she said. "I tell him it's time for breakfast and he runs away. Come Aiden."
Rhett watched them go and decided he should get dressed and find out what the day would bring. Ewan was at the breakfast table with the twins and Aiden. Olivia was feeding some sort of porridge to Aiden while Mahala was coaching Jerry and Bud to eat well.
"I don't need you to tell me what to eat, Miss Mahala," said Jerry. "I'm going to be five next week. I'll be a man, then."
"Son, I hate to say it, but you'll always need a woman in your life to tell you things," said Ewan over his coffee. He caught Rhett's eye and the coffee went down wrong. He started coughing and clearing his throat. Whose place was it to offer fatherly advice to these boys?
"I quite agree," said Rhett, reaching for the coffee pot. "What would we men be without women to remind us to do things like wash our faces and eat properly? Filthy and hungry!"
"Do you really mean that, Mister—Captain—What should we call you?"
Rhett had given a lot of thought and two cigars to this question the night before. He hated this more than anything about the current situation, but he would do it for Scarlett, at least while she was in her current condition. "Wade and Ella call me Uncle Rhett."
"You know Wade?" asked Jerry. "He's a big boy, 'bout as big as a real man."
"Yes, I saw him just a few weeks ago when he came to visit me in Charleston," said Rhett, smoothly neglecting to mention that Wade had left angry. Rhett had gotten what he wanted, after all. "He is indeed all grown up now."
"Did you know him when he was little, like us?"
"Even smaller than Aiden, actually," said Rhett. "We were all in Atlanta together during the war. Your mother and brother were living with their Aunt Pittypat Hamilton and I was in Atlanta a great deal in those days, too."
Only now did Rhett look McLure in the eye. "Where is the lady of the house, by the way?"
Ewan sipped his coffee. "Kate had a rough night, and I told her to go back to sleep. She won't get any extra once the baby is here. The planting is just about done and she doesn't need to do anything. I thought the boys and I might take you around while we check on the cotton fields."
"Pa, can we ride our ponies?" asked Bud.
"Well why didn't I think of that?" said Ewan with a wink. "That's a fine idea."
Rhett felt his heart constrict. His children called another man "Pa." New rage at himself for getting caught up in someone else's scheme and at Scarlet for keeping them from him made him to stab his sausage viciously.
Rhett finished his breakfast and watched McLure kiss Aiden goodbye for the morning. Olivia smiled and told the boy to wave goodbye to his father and promised to look after Kate when she got up. Mahala was already in the kitchen preparing a tray to take upstairs. Then the twins, McLure, and Rhett were out in the Texas sunshine.
"It's wonderful to be alive on a day like today," McLure said as they walked across the yard to the stable, the boys trying to match the long strides of the two men.
Rhett couldn't match the man's contentment, but he wouldn't argue against the clean air and general beauty of the land. "She picked a beautiful place."
They got the horses and boys' ponies saddled and headed out toward the fields. Rhett had learned to ride as every boy of his station did in Charleston, but McLure rode as though he'd lived in the saddle, moving with the horse in a natural way that was counter to Rhett's training. The boys were of course not nearly so experienced but already had the same look, clearly copying their stepfather's every move. Rhett thought that they looked as he felt on the deck of his ships, and it saddened him that he didn't have a son to teach how to sail. Would there be no end to the losses he would feel on this trip?
The cotton fields didn't look like much, just plowed fields, but McLure somehow knew which had been planted and which hadn't yet. He nodded to himself as they rode around. One field had several workers in it. "They'll be done with that one today," he said, "and the next one over will be done tomorrow. Just as Kate planned."
"She does like to plan," observed Rhett.
"The men in town will tell you they all had their doubts, but she knew what she was doing. She had to take a small mortgage to afford the whole thing and Mr. Collins down at the bank said he would have turned her down flat until he saw the scars on her hands. She obviously knew what it was to work cotton. She got the land, she got mules and workers, and she got more acres planted than should have been possible in the weeks before the boys were born. And now… hell, they come to her for advice now."
"Had you met her back then?"
"No, I was working full time as a Ranger until the day I met her. Now I only work with them when there's a manhunt in this part of the district."
"You're a Ranger?"
"Yep," answered McLure. "And you're still wanted in Missouri. Does your wife know you're an honest-to-God pirate?"
"It wouldn't surprise Scarlett if you told her," answered Rhett without thinking. "She knows I was a privateer and a bit of an outlaw."
"I meant your current, lawful wife. I'll never tell my wife unless I have to. She's under enough strain."
For the first time, Rhett looked his ex-wife's husband eye to eye and understood that he would not be able to charm, threaten or cajole him the way he had the Atlanta old guard. McLure couldn't be bought or blackmailed the way the carpetbaggers and scallywags could. Rhett wasn't expected to submit to this man, but he wouldn't be allowed to step out of line, either. McLure grinned, and the moment eased.
"I met Kate on the day the twins were born." The boys were well ahead of them, looking for some older boys they knew among the workers, so they wouldn't hear Ewan tell the story.
Ewan was canvassing every house in the county, asking if a certain wanted man had been seen in the area. He came to the small house across from where the big house now stood and heard a woman groaning and crying in pain. He knocked on the door, and a little strawberry-blonde girl came out, crying. "Mother's hurting bad. Wade went for the doctor, but she thinks the baby is coming fast."
For some reason, Ewan found himself in the bedroom and found a woman who managed to look pretty even in labor. "Are you all right, ma'am?"
"Do I look all right to you?"
Ewan stepped out of the room.
"Come back here!"
He took off his coat. His hat was already off, and he brushed himself down as well as he could. Stepping over to the kitchen area, he washed his face and hands and went back into the room.
"I just thought I'd clean up a little, darlin'."
She was in between pains and smiled at the sound of his voice. "Thank you. I just—I'm so alone and Ella—well she's a good girl, but she's not really much use at a time like this."
"I understand. My name is Ewan McLure."
"I'm Katie Scarlett O'Hara, and these pains are right on top of each other." As if to demonstrate her point, the next one hit, barely thirty seconds after the last one ended. She grabbed his hand, and he was forced to sit with her on the bed. The girl was standing in the doorway, clearly half taken in a fit of panic.
"Ella, could you bring me some of that water and a handkerchief or towel for your mother?" he asked.
Ella was, in fact, quite good at tasks that were appropriate or her to handle, and before this pain was over, Ewan was wiping the woman's face with a cool cloth.
"Oh, that's much nicer," said Scarlett. "Can you look and tell me if the baby's ready to come out? I feel like I should push."
"I've never done this… not with a human baby," he said. He tried to remember what the manual said about this. The captains mentioned it was more than likely he'd face this situation at least once all those years ago in training.
"Please, Ewan?"
"Where's your husband?"
The next pain was starting. "He divorced me," she groaned out.
Ewan wiped her forehead and neck down again.
"That's it, Katie, darlin'. You're doing so well. Keep going, keep going."
After a quarter hour, she was in the middle of pushing through one pain when she suddenly said, "Oh, oh, oh!" She fell backwards triumphantly. Ewan was holding her baby.
"It's a boy," he said. "Do you have any string to tie off the cord?"
"Over there," she pointed at the nightstand. "I forgot a knife or scissors."
"I've got one," he said, handing the baby to her before taking his knife out. He went to the kitchen and washed it with water from the kettle and came back.
"The blankets are over there," she said, pointing to the corner. The baby was crying by now. "I can feed him…"
Another pain hit her, as hard as the ones she felt when he arrived. It was a while before they realized there was a twin and another ten minutes until he was born. The doctor came soon after and took over delivering the afterbirth and checking the babies over. Scarlett fed them during this process, little caring that she'd never been properly introduced to Ewan, much less that he had no proper reason to be in her bed room.
Ewan held the baby she wasn't feeding and looked at her. She was radiant in motherhood. He felt himself being drawn to toward her.
"Where's your ex-husband? Should we send him the news?"
"He won't care," she said, looking at the doctor significantly.
Ewan understood. The husband must have already moved on with his life, not realizing that he had a beautiful ex-wife and two fine sons in Texas.
Doctor Zimmer pulled him out into the main room. "Everyone acts like she's a widow, but the two older children have let some things slip. It would be best for her if someone married her quick and gave the boys a name. People would stop talking about it fast enough."
"Are you suggesting I should marry her?"
"Do you have a wife or a sweetheart back home?"
"Dead in the war," he answered. Cholera had taken his entire family in Victoria while he'd been at Vicksburg. The life of a Texas Ranger suited him now.
"She's a pretty thing, and they say in town that she knows what she's doing. She's going to make a go of this farm. You could do worse."
"But would she take me? Obviously she's had a husband, and maybe she has a new sweetheart."
"There's no one in town who interests her. An old friend of hers lives up by Conroe, but they're not interested in each other like that."
Ewan looked down into the eyes of… Langston, he thought… and decided it was worth considering. He discussed it with Katie after she'd had a chance to rest and she promised to think on it.
The next morning, Doctor Zimmer came with the priest from town. Katie had made her decision and was waiting for them, dressed in a pale green dress that made her eyes glow and gave a little radiance to her wan complexion. A woman who came to help her during the days, Mahala, was there to help her dress while Mahala's husband Herman took care of the morning chores. They all stood together in the middle of the yard, Ewan's arm supporting Kate because of the ordeal she'd had only yesterday.
There in the Texas sunshine, Katie Scarlett O'Hara became Katie Scarlett McLure. He kissed her lightly there in the middle of the yard and whispered, "It's wonderful to be alive on a day like today." He thought that for just a moment she looked more awe-struck than shocked. When the priest and doctor went back to town, they went to the courthouse to file the marriage certificate and the birth certificates for Gerald O'Hara McLure and Langston Butler McLure. If the dates were fudged a little in order to make the names come out, no one would ever be the wiser.
Ewan went to town the day after that to telegraph to his headquarters and check in. It turned out that the man they were looking for had been found already. Within a month Ewan had met with his superiors and resigned his fulltime post in favor of being called upon as needed. He cashed in his back pay and some savings and bought acreage immediately adjacent to Katie's. He'd always wanted to raise horses and now he would start his ranch. Even there, Katie was a help to him. She knew horses quite well from her father and a woman in the county where she was raised, and she was willing to do much of the trading and book-keeping for Ewan, who was just as happy to deal mostly with the horses. He'd gotten a small start, and there was enough money from the first cotton crop to start the big house.
"And she decided not to contact me?" Rhett asked, swallowing away the sadness in his throat.
"Kate has two distinct minds about that. Some days, she wishes the gates of hell would open and swallow you now, and she doesn't think you deserve those fine boys. You divorced her without her having much recourse. When she's feeling gracious, she feels that she's taken up too much of your life as it is. You were so eager to get away from her. She thought you made a love match and it would only bring you harm to have her contact you about children with your previous wife. I wasn't going to argue against it. Love match or no, what you did to her was cold, and whoever left her with those boys, they've been mine since I helped her deliver them."
There was really only one more question. "How did you get from a marriage of convenience to two children, all with separate bedrooms?"
McLure grinned at him. "Are you asking me how to woo my wife?"
"She shouldn't be—"
"But she is, Butler. You abandoned her, and that woman is will never be defenseless, but you will admit you left her in a bad position without any protection whatsoever. The question I wonder about is how a man like you could lose her."
"There were separate bedrooms…"
"Damn, Butler, the question isn't how a man can get a woman like that pregnant so often. You only have to look at her to know the answer to that. The real question is how a man so interested in her could lose her, and you didn't even lose her, you threw her away."
"I went back for her."
"You were already gone, and when you went back you intended to do something dishonorable. How could she agree to that?"
"She's impossible to live with."
"No, she's not. I'll admit she gets ideas in her head and sometimes there's just so much of her that it won't all fit with someone else in the room. She just needs to have her head for a little while and then she's as calm as can be. We have two children because although we have two bedrooms, I frequently spend the night in her room, and every time she has one of those nightmares, I'm there. We have our little frictions between us, but they can't get in the way. She knows I'm here, and she trusts me to take care of her when she needs me."
"She was in love with another man the entire time she was married to me."
"Do you think I don't know what that feels like? Do you think I never see those boys and wish it could have been me in Atlanta six years ago?"
Rhett suddenly realized what the other man just said to him. "She still loves me."
"She tried to hide it from me, but you can't know how she held those babies and cried right after we got married, because she knew you were lost to her forever." McLure chuckled grimly. "It's a twisted, miserable love that makes her fear you and think of you in desperation. Play on that if you think it will help you. You had your chance, Butler. All you needed to do was let her trust you, but she never felt quite as though you were behind her."
"But you don't know what she's like."
"Next week is our fifth wedding anniversary. I'm not inexperienced in dealing with her. I've never seen a woman for worrying over things the way she does, and then she gets headaches and cross and we all have to be careful around her. Then she comes to me and gets apologetic, and for weeks after that she's so sweet that my heart bursts."
It was the Scarlett that Rhett remembered and yet not. Did Scarlett get headaches? Did she get apologetic when she felt better? He sighed. She was indeed sweet at times, sweeter than anyone would suspect from casually observing her. Her artless enthusiasm for life that he could see she still had... he missed it.
A/N: In real life, most country music makes my ears bleed, but this story has a lot of sad chapters that happen in places where country music is prominent, so it will pretty much cover what few songs I like. Today's chapter gets its title from a song written by Carmol Taylor, George Richey, Norris Wilson. It's a bit of an ironic choice because it contrasts so much with what Rhett's witnessing of Scarlett's now happy life. I believe George Jones sang the version most people are familiar with, but I'm partial to Aaron Neville.
I've been having a grand time reading all the reviews and seeing my hit counts skyrocket. I actually had over one thousand people look at my stories one day this week! So thank you to all my friends out there, including COCO B, Romabeachgirl1981, breakfastattiffanygs, samandfreddie, gogomohamad229, gabyhyatt, TheFauxGinge, Guest 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 , Truckee Gal, Phantom710, WhitmanFrostFiend, kanga85, LE06301226, annaPanag, AnnetheQueen83, and gumper.