The new deed arrived by train courier on Thursday. Scarlett completed her own negotiations for the Inman Park house (securing a particularly attractive price) and Ennis King handled the property transfer. It was time to pack and move the household. And therein laid a problem.

Prissy couldn't read. It was really getting in the way of progress. She wouldn't be able to go through new deliveries for the hotel or the new house; she couldn't even label the packing crates.

Dilcey and Pork were busy with the running of the house and keeping the children in order. That left Prissy to help Scarlett pack. She wasn't taking much furniture with her, just her favorites. It was mainly personal items that she didn't trust to a moving company. Pork could read but he was too busy. It would be easier on Dilcey if Prissy could read and do more of the shopping. The household was in enough uproar as it was.

And Scarlett was going to need her help more and more as she planned for the hotel. She could hire new people once the children and she were settled, but she really didn't want new people ensconced in her home right now for the comfort and sake of her family, until they got settled in the new house.

"Why haven't you learned before?" Scarlett all but fumed as she sweated over packing up linens and silverware in the Peachtree Street dining room. That room always put her in a foul mood anymore. She'd put Wade and Ella to loading the crystal from the cabinets onto the long dining table for now and she just knew they were going to break something any minute. "I know my mother taught most of the household when I was growing up, I remember her doing it."

"I was on the list at Tara for Miss Ellen to teach next but then I went to Atlanta with you and then she got sick and the war … ." Prissy drifted off.

Softly she continued. "But I would like to learn. People talk about things and I don't understand what they're sayin', and it makes me feel bad. I try to bargain at the market but I can't read the labels and I get scared that I look foolish, and then people laugh at me sometimes."

She stopped for a second before going on. "I can't go 'round all them free issue people, they don't like us that have stayed, and I'm too old to learn with children, Miss Scarlett, and—and I don't want no trouble."

Scarlett looked at Prissy, noting her downcast eyes and reddened cheeks. Oh lord—she knew exactly how she felt, didn't she? And Prissy was right about the trouble; there were white people who still made trouble sometimes over the learning, as horrid as that was. Shame, deep red, almost purple shame, filled her and welled up in her throat. It was hard enough just to be a female. Perhaps Prissy wasn't so flighty and slow, just had never been taught anything to change it. Ella loved her dearly and said she was fun with games and dolls and never pulled her hair or fussed at her. And she had always been loyal, if annoying.

"I'll do it," Scarlett said on impulse, but with conviction. "I'll teach you. No one will have to know."

Of course, Scarlett thought, I'm not much of a teacher, and I'm not patient, but surely I can manage to teach one person the basics of putting the alphabet together.

"I will help," Ella piped up like she knew just what she was thinking. Scarlett jumped, she had forgotten the children were so near. "After my studies, when she has a bit of time. I can help."

"Me too,'' Wade said. "I will help. Uncle Ashley …" he trailed off when he saw Scarlett's face. "Well Aunt Melly too, said we must always help people learn to read."

They were good children. How it happened that she had such good, sweet children, she had not a clue.

'I'll be so busy, taking on too much,' Scarlett worried, but then she supposed she could take some time perhaps on Wednesday and Sunday evenings, times that had formerly been devoted to church or charitable activities. This could be her charitable activity, she realized. She didn't go to church anymore, tired of the looks and whispers, just sent the children with Aunt Pitty and Uncle Henry on Sunday mornings. Besides, if she ended up divorced she'd be as good as excommunicated anyway.

As if she didn't have enough to worry about, but right now, there wasn't that much she could do with the hotel, with matters still so preliminary. She could squeeze out a couple of hours a week.

"Go upstairs and get your books ready to go into the crates," she instructed the children. "Go through them real careful and pull out any reading primers you might find, any simple little stories for a new reader you see."

After she finished in the dining room she went to check on the children. They had furiously looked through the old books but only found a primer or two left, and no teaching manuals like her mother had used.

She didn't want to alert anyone to this business, not that she cared, but Prissy could suffer. Couldn't be seen buying the books, she could order them from the store but that would take too long, and she needed to get on it right now while she had a lull.

Reluctantly she thought of Ashley. Just as Wade had pointed out, he and Mellie had been forever teaching people to read - even the convicts - at the mill! - and in their cellar, and their ragtag library. He was bound to have primers and instructional manuals. She hadn't seen him since she had borrowed those books a few weeks ago. She'd been avoiding him even more lately, after recently reading Ella an Aesop's Fable on the Dog in a Manger one night and realizing what Rhett had called Ashley all those years ago when she'd told him she wanted no more children. A spiteful dog who tried to keep Rhett from having Scarlett, even though he couldn't have her himself. Possibly didn't even want to. Rhett had been a nasty dog on first impression if she recalled correctly. That hadn't changed much.

'Although he doesn't look like a spiteful dog, really,' she thought when Ashley answered the door. 'More like a dog someone has half beat to death and then possibly runs over with a train.'

She'd dragged Wade and Ella along so they could visit with Beau while they spoke. And to appease India's fine sensibilities should she be at home, Scarlett thought with not a little bitterness. Thankfully it appeared she wasn't there at the moment.

But here was Ashley, still tired and gray and worn-out looking, but perhaps, just perhaps when she looked closer, a little less morose than the last time she'd seen him. It had been eighteen months since Melly died, maybe he was perking up a tiny bit. He certainly needed to, if only for Beau's sake.

Scarlett explained about Prissy and Ashley looked decidedly interested, always one for a noble cause. The children went outside to play as he went down to the cellar and brought back up all his teaching materials—an entire armload!–and placed them by the divan. He sat down and explained the order of instruction to her, although it seemed fairly straight forward.

"How have you been, Scarlett?" he asked. "I heard you purchased a house in Inman Park?"

Oh, how the words burst forward as she explained her new reason for living! Ashley's eyes widened as she went on and on about the hotel and her plans.

He smiled and nodded encouragingly, and so she ventured forth on a subject she had been pondering on their buggy ride over.

"I was wondering - well, I know things have been strained between us - but, well, I don't have any friends anymore, not since Melly and Rhett are gone," she swallowed. Harder to put in words than she thought. "And I am meeting with an architect and possibly another consultant, but, oh Ashley, I want this to be a fine establishment. I will be dealing with educated and cultured people and I don't want to make a fool of myself. By doing something stupid. By creating another," she hesitated. "Another Caveat Emptorium. I can't learn everything I need to know fast enough.

"Would you mind, well, would you mind just maybe looking at it every once in a while during the remodeling and construction? I'll buy the lumber from you. But really, what I need more is when it is finished, someone to make sure I don't make any glaring mistakes.

"I don't care about gossip or society opinions, really. Not about my character, or my conduct," she went on and he nodded, looking at her solemnly. "But I do want to be more educated. I don't want to embarrass myself or my children by my lack of knowledge anymore. And if this hotel is going to be what I want it to be—well, I have so much to think of, in so many ways."

Ashley pursed his lips. "And then there's the fact that your husband loves to lord it over you with complicated rhetorical arguments, both of the logos and ethos variety, but very rarely the pathos."

'Oh God,' she thought tiredly. 'He sounds just like him. And not for the first time.'

"What?"

"He'll see the hotel eventually, and he'll pick it apart, and you know it. He hides behind his knowledge and his sardonic turns of phrase. He attacks you with his quick wit and cultural superiority. Kicks you verbally like he would a puppy, again and again, so you never guess what he really thinks or feels. And you, a feisty beautiful little puppy, get meaner and sadder. I watched him do it for so long. It broke my heart."

All about the dogs today, she thought somewhat dazedly. We have a theme.

"He went after your love like it was a particularly dirty backwoods political campaign for sheriff," Ashley added.

"He never really told me how he loved me until he didn't anymore and left me, if that's what you're saying," Scarlett said. It hurt her pride, but she said it. "And he tried to buy me, for years," she continued. "Yet, don't politicians do that as well?"

And then, Scarlett, in the interests of transparency she didn't quite comprehend, conveyed Rhett's last words on that last fateful day. All of them.

Ashley listened, patiently. Snorted at a few places, asked a few questions. Looked angry, and sad, and everything in between. "On the day Melly died?" he finally asked, incredulously.

She nodded. "Within the hour of her passing. He was quite flippant about it—said he was only explaining in case I had questions in the future." She felt a little naughty relaying this part, like she was tattle-telling to the teacher about a boy who picked on her. A malicious boy. One she secretly liked.

Ashley cursed a streak of words under his breath—cursed!— and Scarlett thought she must be losing her hearing for a moment. "Pig," he said, at the end. "Worse than I had imagined.

"He used every dishonest tool in his power, and some honest to try to get you. Other than just anything but being straightforward about it. Because that would have exposed his belly, and he wasn't willing to do that. The chink in his armor.

"Then he called your hand and folded his at the same time."

Scarlett found herself losing patience. "And what about you? All those years you didn't exactly discourage me. When you talked to me that day I visited after Bonnie was born, in such a way that you knew how it would make me feel, without asking directly. Didn't you use my ignorance? Used me for years. I told Rhett I didn't want him - that way - anymore, and it hurt him, deeply. So he hurt me even more. It was the most moronic move I ever made in my marriage - perhaps even my life - and you pushed me to it."

"Well, that's his style, isn't it? He will always hurt you more. That's how he remains the victor, and you follow after him, still confused and hurt, never understanding … .

"We did what we did, Scarlett. You never let go of anything, and I couldn't let go of you."

Scarlett thought about telling Ashley about how angry Rhett had been that night after his birthday party, but refrained. No, that night was not up for discussion. Not even in part, not with Ashley, not now. Perhaps never.

He hung his head. "I'm not proud of what I asked, Scarlett. I manipulated you as well. Perhaps my lowest moment. There I was, poor as a church mouse, with a sickly wife and a little boy, my upbringing, my way of life destroyed. Not much of a man, but I had the devotion of this fierce, beautiful woman. A woman I desired and admired, if not outright loved. So yes, I took comfort."

Scarlett blinked. "A swinish comfort, perhaps? Is Rhett the only pig here?"

Ashley stared at his hands. He knew his words had stung, but he wouldn't take them back. Scarlett needed to hear them, even if it was years too late.

"I don't like hating you, Ashley."

"Then don't. Don't hate me, Scarlett. I never could handle the thought of it. Hating doesn't punish who you think it does. Open your heart, and try to understand. You can't truly love someone without understanding them. Let the pain flow over your heart and through it and out the other side, eventually. That's what Mellie said. It's what I'm betting on."

Scarlett scoffed. "Do you know what my heart looks like, Ashley? After Bonnie and Rhett? Let me share with you how I view it now. Find the muddiest, most crusted-over barnacled oyster at the bottom of a barrel. The one you can't open, no matter how much you try, just can't get the knife in. So you end up tossing it at the top of old shells like the trash it is."

"Look at you with the analogies and metaphors already after just a little Shakespeare," Ashley joked, chucking her on the chin.

"We can never be more than friends Ashley, with all that's happened, but I would like for us to be that. I need a friend, a true one. I - Rhett - well the things he's said to me over the years and on that day made me feel like the worst type of person and a total fool. Why, he said he only fell in love with me because I was just as awful as he was."

Bitterness overrode Ashley's face. "Yes, he told you he didn't care and showed you he didn't care and you believed him, what a fool you are. And then left you in a fit of apathy on the day that your best friend, and the greatest lady any of us has ever known, died a bloody and senseless death."

He looked so miserable Scarlett felt a little guilty about the turn of the conversation.

"Alright Ashley, I think that's enough for today," she rose from her seat and he followed.

He grabbed her hand. "I want you to know that you are more than what he's told you. You are a warrior. A champion. Perhaps Mellie was all heart, and perhaps I am all mind. But you, Scarlett, you're all heart, too, in your own way. Perhaps a ruthless heart, one that will improve with maturity, but an infinitely courageous one still.

"And that's the part I perversely enjoyed watching, how he tried to beat down your warrior heart, and never quite succeeded. Rhett's a victor. He always wins. Although what he values about that anymore, I'm not so sure. And I can't help but take selfish pleasure in how he wanted to conquer a champion and make her love him without giving himself up first, and it never really worked."

"Oh, it worked," she said with some difficulty. "You've expelled considerable effort figuring these matters out."

"I have a lot of time to contemplate past events when I'm not concentrating on running my business into the ground," he said dryly. They shared a comfortable, easy laugh. It felt good to them both.

She called for the children and gathered the instruction materials together. Ashley tossed a copy of Jane Austen's 'Emma' on top of the pile. "In case you need a break from the bard," he explained, then bid her goodbye at the door and wished her luck with Prissy.

"Doing good for good's sake can make you feel better Scarlett. Just wait, you'll see."

OoOOOOoooOOOooo

Two days after his arrival a late spring hurricane lashed Nassau and all surrounding areas unmercifully. Rhett's boat was turned upside down and the hull heavily damaged when the winds knocked it into another vessel moored nearby. It would be a month, maybe more before he could get it dried out and repaired. At the present time it was waterlogged and moldering in the bay.

Supplies were low as a result of the storm all over the island. His fair-weather sailing buddies hightailed it out on the first boat heading back, but as captain he elected to stay with his ship. His whiskey ran out as well as his good cigars. He was reduced to smoking his own hand rolls and drinking island-made rum. Most of his clothes were ruined and the living quarters in the boat's cabin would have to be refurbished. He still had the clothes he'd brought to the hotel until the island tailor got back to business.

Rhett tried to spend the extra time working on his divorce statement but found he curiously just wasn't motivated at the moment. He planned to get right to it when he got settled after this trip.

For now, though, he enjoyed the calm after the storm, which made the turquoise waters crystalline and the skies, clear, and bright. Made him think about new beginnings, and for some reason, how he needed to get back to Atlanta.

It had been a while since he had wanted anything quite as much. Energy burned in his psyche. He'd forgotten the feeling.

Must be the hut-made rum, he decided. That swill could turn the most seasoned sailor delusional.

OOOoooOOOOoooo

A/N - Do not worry, folks. I would never reunite Scarlett with Ashley. Just as she said, she needs a friend right now, but she's going to make more soon. A lot of groundwork had to be laid in this chapter, trust me! I have slowed down to work out the next few chapters so I wouldn't write myself into a corner. That's how stories are abandoned. Thank you so much for your reviews and comments. I haven't written fiction in so long, it has been incredibly gratifying. Onto the business dinner with some very intriguing men in the next chapter!