A/N 2/27/21 - Guys, I really did have Chapter 24 nearly finished a week ago - and then it took another turn - and then I started struggling with the dialogue between Scarlett and Belle. And there's a LOT of dialogue between Scarlett and Belle. I'm not sure I've ever seen significant interaction between these two, and I want it to be just right. So a little longer, please. I'm just not quite happy with it, but I'm getting there.

So I see the traffic stats and I know peeps are getting impatient - here's a blurb I am happy with to hopefully tide you over a few more days - stay with me, folks there's rocky road ahead -

Chapter 24 teaser

If Eleanor Butler was shocked when she opened her front door on a Sunday morning to find two burly longshoremen carrying her half-naked, sunburnt eldest son on a wide wooden plank between them up the sidewalk of Charleston's Battery, her expression did not show it. A slight change could be detected, however, as she regarded his gash of a head wound, deeply bruised torso, and oddly bent, bleeding nose.

"Go get a doctor," she instructed her husband's valet calmly, just before Rhett rolled over and vomited in her prize-winning camellia bushes.

A sudden giddiness and pin-pointed vision that she foggily recognized as a precursor to her somewhat recurrent bouts of hemicrania overcame her, and she sat down heavily on the brick steps.

"Bring two if you can."

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Margaret Mitchell's.

A/N Thank you for all the lovely reviews in the last chapter. Writing Mr. B's point of view is a stretch for me and your words were so very kind and gratifying.

I apologize in advance for the density of this chapter. It had to be done. Next one is much fluffier.

A few examples of my inspirations lately:

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. - Mark Twain

"We are the breakers of our own hearts." - Eudora Welty

I'm so mean I make medicine sick. - Muhammad Ali

"The voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust

Chapter 23

Sunday morning came early just as Saturday had, and Scarlett and Prissy struggled to get the children fed and ready for church and a full day of visiting with Pittypat and Henry. Uncle Peter picked them up on the way which left Pork to drive Scarlett and Prissy over to the Robillard. Scarlett felt herself wake up the moment they pulled into the hotel drive. So proud of this place!

She planned the long day ahead as she drank her coffee and Prissy helped her move boxes from the vault to her desk before wandering off in the direction of the kitchen while Scarlett worked. Leif intended to hold job interviews all the coming week for restaurant and hotel personnel, including desk managers and a night watchman, so whatever they'd brought out would have to be packed back up that night.

The ledgers would mean little to her without the stories behind them, so she started with the notes from investigators and major players - politicians, businessmen, generals. A folder simply entitled 'Blockaders' under 'Profiteers' ' grabbed her attention right off. The name Butler was mentioned, as well as several others. A Charleston name - George Trenholm - kept popping up. Everyone knew who Trenholm was - he had been the king of blockade runners, much bigger than Rhett. Also, Treasurer of the Confederacy at the end of the war when the gold disappeared. He'd been arrested and released right after the war, and no more news had been made of it as far as she knew.

She cross-referenced his name on the list of profiteers and their net worths, and she nearly fainted. Everyone else - including Rhett - looked like a pauper in comparison. Hmm. She set the file aside. Trenholm was powerful, but very likely completely untouchable. Currently, he held a position in the senate, and a rumor had floated around for years that he'd received a presidential pardon for any possible wartime transgressions, although no one could actually find proof of that.

A banker's box marked merely 'Railroad' next took her attention. Fake bonds sold to Confederate widows and elderly desperately trying to regain some financial footing had been a huge money-making scandal. She thumbed through copious Reconstruction notes and newspaper article clippings rife with mention of scalawags and carpetbaggers on the matter. Who actually profited? Rhett had made some money off that, but many people had. She tried to remember names Rhett had mentioned, even a few men who they socialized with for a brief time early in their marriage.

How she wished she had paid more attention. Who was behind it all? More than a little embarrassed by her ignorance, she resolved to make a list of questions for the general. She didn't know where to start and since the Confederacy was no more, as Rhett had pointed out - as to why he kept the 'leftover gold' with no compunction - just how could these people be prosecuted to pay back a government that doesn't exist?

There were a few questionable entries in ledgers of the Confederacy treasury - all at the end. After a couple of hours, she found several accounting errors that quite frankly pointed to fraud - perhaps five thousand dollars, not nothing, but not earth-shattering, either. What did General Hampton really want?

She turned back to the box of clippings and notes. The newspaper articles were the worst - stories of guns blowing up in soldiers' faces, boats that sunk as soon as they launched, shoddy uniforms falling apart in the rain.

She sat back and rubbed her head. It was a huge debacle, a right mess, as Tate would say. A great deal of the money was lost to industries hell-bent on stealing no matter what the cost to their country or the soldiers. The Union's War Department had a rough machinery for renegotiations of inflated contracts; many of these acts were discovered during the war, but just as many after. Lincoln's Law - The False Claims Act - worked against crimes against the Union, but they didn't apply to fraud committed against the Confederacy.

War crimes had no statute of limitations, but again, who would prosecute against a defunct government? She was learning a lot about where the money went and wasn't completely wasting her time, necessarily, but she had been given no framework, and General Hampton had been so vague on what he was looking for.

She could do the math but the history behind it - she'd have to go somewhere else. She needed to talk to some other people interested in the business end of war - which would most likely all be men. Ennis, Leif and Tate wouldn't know that much about what had gone on in the South. Uncle Henry, Ashley, and Rhett would be the best tools at her disposal - if she could consider her errant husband ever at her disposal, that is.

A knock on the door raised her from her musings. Babette poked her head through the opening. "Scarlett, are you going to work through Sunday dinner? I have so much food left from last night I could provide you with six courses if you'd like."

The mention of food perked Scarlett up. "Would you care to join me in the kitchen for a simple plate? I need a break and I don't want to eat alone," she admitted.

Babette nodded and motioned her back. "I have some cold duck and salade Paysanne left, several gelee stuffed oranges, and plenty of bread pudding, which keeps very well."

Scarlett felt slightly guilty as she followed Babette across the lobby. "It's your day off, Babette, I didn't expect you to be here. Where's Prissy?"

"I sent her back to your house with Sunday dinner for Pork and Dilcey, I hope you don't mind. Leif needed to work out the new table arrangements in the dining room for a little while so I came in with him. Don't know anyone in town yet, nothing else to do," she shrugged.

Scarlett shook her head as she sat at the table. "No, I don't mind. I should have thought of taking dinner to them since the children are gone and they have the day off as well." She toyed with a water glass. "So Leif is here?"

"Yes." Babette didn't try to contain her smirk.

Scarlett smirked back. "I wish I knew some more people to introduce y'all to, but the fact is, I - well, I'm a little on the outs with society for the moment."

"You told us Friday night." Oh yes. The Too Much Wine Night.

"Are you getting any work done on your project?" Babette asked as she buttered an already-buttered roll. The French and their butter, Scarlett thought.

"I don't know if I can do what I'm trying to do, don't know if I'm the right person for it."

Babette studied her, wondering idly why a woman of Scarlett's means and appearance would work so hard.

"I think you can do whatever you want, chere," she said kindly. "What have you ever failed at?"

Getting and keeping the men I love. Protecting my children. Earning the respect of society. This list is endless, actually.

"I am alone, in my marriage, and in this town. I spend a lot of time by myself, thinking about my failures. What I've been through has changed me," Scarlett tried to smile. She didn't know exactly where this gloomy mood had come from, though she suspected all the war reading might be to blame.

"Look at what you've done here, with this place, and I've heard of your other accomplishments. Don't worry about what Rhett Butler told you. It's just his opinion, nothing more."

The way she said his name caught Scarlett's attention.

"I have been meaning to ask - do you know my husband? Have you met him before, perhaps in New Orleans?"

"I have seen him before, but I don't know him personally, although I think Leif might have met him," Babette said carefully. "Being a hotelier and restaurateur, he meets many people. And your husband makes sure that he stands out."

She shrugged. "That kind of man, who thinks the world is his oyster, you know the type, who has to keep moving from place to place, bed to bed… what I mean is, perhaps he's the kind who makes a woman happy for a while but not forever."

For a while might have been nice … What was Babette not saying here about what she knew concerning Rhett?

"There is one man who thinks you are quite wonderful," Babette added, a sly twist to her lips, just as Leif walked in the kitchen, all huge and golden and blue-eyed as usual. "Good morning Scarlett," he said, helping himself to the coffee pot on the stovetop while she prayed he hadn't heard their conversation regarding him.

Babette offered him dinner and he declined. He leaned against the table with his big cat grace and chose a handful of leftover kumquats from the fruit bowl, holding them out to Scarlett balanced on his palm.

She chose one and started to pop it in her mouth when he touched her wrist lightly to stop her. "No, no, not like that," he said, smiling. He deftly plucked the kumquat from her hand and rolled it across the table under his palm and fingers.

"You have to warm it up, break up the flesh inside so the fruit mixes with the rind," he explained, then handed it back to her and nodded as she brought it again to her lips. "If you temper the bitter with the sweet that way it's not nearly so harsh," his voice dipped just ever so slightly here. "And the bitter might then not detract, but only add depth to the experience."

Their eyes met and for a moment Scarlett forgot to breathe. She sank her teeth slowly into the warmed fruit and found Leif's words to be true; the bitter was tempered by the sweet, and as a result, did, indeed, enhance and deepen the taste. A lesson, so it would seem.

Ah. Lessons. Sometime today - and were there ever enough hours in the day anymore? - Scarlett needed to take a break and look over the lessons for that evening with Prissy, Phoebe and - Belle.

So much to do.

"You are doing too much," Babette the apparent mind reader said. "And you are exhausting yourself, and will soon be good for nothing to no one."

"I will be just fine," Scarlett replied briskly.

She stood up to leave, thanking Babette again as she did so. Leif regarded her in a thoughtful manner. "Let me know if you need any help, or any company," he said, rising from the edge of the table. "I'll be in the dining room working out seating details and reading letters of recommendation for the new hires." He brushed past her and, ever so lightly, squeezed her arm as he passed. The kindness and genuine affection in the gesture buoyed her spirits, and, lifted by the food and fellowship, she went back to her office, ready to look at the work again with new eyes.

She sighed as she sat down, thinking of Leif, and Tate, and Ennis, and Babette. They all liked her, and she considered them her friends, real friends, something she hadn't had since before the war, besides Melly, that is. Her eyes went back to that time of friends, a time when she didn't know war or that Rhett Butler existed.

She remembered Ashley's words that second disastrous day at the mill, and the memories he'd brought up with the images he conjured, the green countryside and fragrant bridle paths and barking possum dogs, the dances and barbecues, the friends she'd lost - not just Brent and Stu, but Cathleen and Cade and Rafe - she hadn't thought of Rafe in so long but there he was in front of her mind's eye now, with all his languid grace, and her parents, and her home, the happy, happy home, so warm, and full of light, so safe, cocooned in it, always safe.

And her mind went forward from there to those dark days, the days of working in the dreaded hospital with all the sad men missing all the bits and parts - and then farther back to the road to Tara with Melly and Prissy and the babies - for Wade was still a baby in so many ways - the dead soldiers rotting in the sun and their horses, the smell, dear God the smell, the horror, the civilizations laid to waste, gray coats and blue coats alike ripped up and blown apart. One boy right next to the road, his eyes looking right at her and then, waiting under the bridge in the cold and pouring rain, terror as the Yankees crossed above ... .

Then the two pictures in her head juxtaposed - the days before the war and the days during death and destruction - and to top it off, that day in the carriage with Uncle Peter, when he had been dishonored by the unthinking Northern women, women who knew nothing of their lives before, not during, not after, and certainly not what she felt for the people she considered her family as much as any blood family ever could be.

And a rage filled her, to the brim, at first a helpless, pointless rage, at all the pointlessness of it all - then narrowed down to a pinpoint, as her mind, her beautiful, terrible, ultra-focused mind, worked and shuffled and always, always in a straight line to the solution, to the best use of her time and money and every single asset God or the devil had ever gifted her - to the greatest possible outcome, this time for all involved.

And then they came - praise God, they came! The names of the people, all that riff-raff she and Rhett had met when they were living at The National - as if she'd conjured the thoughts with sorcery the names started drifting back, back from those parties she'd given at the first of her marriage after Rhett told her to receive the scalawags and carpetbaggers, and she'd done so, with much more enthusiasm and much longer than he'd intended, but she'd done so, and now she remembered!

The Deals sold cardboard shoes, the Elerts - professional swindlers, wanted in other states - the Conningtons, who took advantage and money from the Freedmen's Bureau - the criminal Hundons and their falsified state contracts - and finally the Caravans, who 'built' the fake railroads with state money - not federal money, but Georgia money.

Most of these crooks packed up and ran like the rats they were when Governor Bullock left but the names of the corporations, names that she'd been reading without comprehension popped up in her head again - Dupont, Colt, Brooks Brothers, Etowah Iron Works - a Georgia company! - had all sold sub-rate materials and weapons for highly inflated prices. They had profited disgracefully, and they had factories that were currently in operation and were still highly profitable. Companies that were headed by men.

Men that she could visit, could talk to, bargain with, flirt with and charm, with the general at her back. What could not be threatened with legal action perhaps could be cajoled, perhaps even shamed - Southerners were excellent at shaming, after all - into making some right of the wrongs.

If they were the bees, then she'd be the honey. All of the tactics she'd learned in business, all of the skills she'd learned as a belle, all the hard lessons the war and her marriages had taught her, to be brought together, to help her people, to heal her reputation, her family, and herself.

Scarlett's organization skills had always been above par. She needed to make her own notes and plans of action. She bent her head and worked then, furiously, nearly breathlessly, trying to write as fast as her mind worked, until her fingers cramped and her wrist numbed.

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

A full twenty-four and some-odd hours later Rhett came to, groaning and disoriented, flat on his back on the deck of his schooner. His senses were somewhat behind. Something bright, too bright; a coppery smell. He squinted as he tried to open his eyes, closing them again against the brilliance of the noontime sun. Tiredness, pain. He tried to turn over and let out a scream. He'd been beaten, battered. It hurt to breathe. He rubbed his eye and felt blood, both dried and warm, on his hand.

He rolled his head to the side and saw more blood on the deck, then felt around on his face for the source, a gash on his forehead he must have re-opened when he rubbed it, and a big knot at the back of his head, covered by hair. His head and his rib - no his ribs hurt. He must have hit the helm when the boom knocked him down.

He lay there, remembering the storm, and how he'd foolishly tried to run with it. How he'd screamed and cried into the torrent, the wind and the waves. How he'd felt peaceful and - forgiving, of all things - right before the boom struck. He'd have to revisit that sometime when his head wasn't quite so muddled.

There were birds now. Seagulls crying, dipping, diving all around him. Too many birds to be far out to sea. He felt his boat bobbing, bobbing, then hitting, hitting against something solid behind him. He rolled over and tried to look, then groaned again as he realized he'd have to stand up to see.

Stumbling to his feet, nearly retching with pain, he grasped the rail and laid with his head against the railing, catching his breath. He felt sunburned on his front from lying on his back. Woozy. Mindful of his boat, always the sailor. The mainsail still up and catching wind. His boat knocking up against something still.

He turned around and looked at the blackened brick and mortar behind him. His eyes went up and up in disbelief as he stared at the three-tiers, the artillery holes, the fortified walls left unfinished and in permanent ruin.

A Charleston boy would always know. Fort Sumter, or what was left of it. His schooner had sailed of its own accord into the middle of Charleston Harbor.

Rhett Butler believed in making his own luck, which had appeared to run out some time ago. Yet for the first time in many years, he felt grateful for the tides of fate.

He then heard a shout - he'd been spotted - before he turned toward it too quickly, both for his head and his ribs, and fell back down to the deck, this time on his face.

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

Fun facts:

The Civil War marked the pinnacle of profiteering in American history. The term 'shoddy' originated with recycled materials used by Brooks Brothers (still making men's clothes today) during the war for Union uniforms. It was an actual industry term for that type of material. Sadly, the guns blowing up in soldiers' faces and the boats sinking as soon as they were launched are true stories, and this is only skimming the surface.

I've seen the brutality of this war attributed to the Napolean-style battle tactics coupled with the then-new technology of firearms and artillery advancement. It was a terrifying combination in terms of what it did to the soldiers. The profiteering hurt them in uncounted ways, as well.

From Wikipedia - The second leading cause of death on sailboats is directly attributed to the use of booms. Booms can cause injuries directly, sweep people overboard, and their associated hardware and lines represent tripping hazards.

My take on the above: I've read that sailors get 'bonked' by booms quite often. Sometimes it's fatal, sometimes serious, sometimes just really painful. Rhett's hard-headed, as we know. He was lucky this time. Margaret Mitchell's grandfather was struck by a bullet at Sharpsburg during the Civil War and walked fifty miles with his skull fractured in two places to get help, so Rhett being able to float on into Charleston seems doable to me. Sailboats travel at an average of 6-10 miles per hour, so he was a hundred miles out, with storm winds in his favor, but down a sail so I tripled the ETA to make sure he had time to get there.

And yes, I realize the irony of giving Rhett a concussion and a couple of fractured ribs. I'm allowed to have a little fun, aren't I? Please reference the Muhammed Ali quote at the beginning of the chapter.

Warning: Slight random rant ahead - FYI as beautiful as Vivien Leigh was, she is not the ideal I have of Scarlett in my head. Her hair's all wrong, and her eyes aren't green enough or big enough. I have a mental picture of a raven-haired, glass-green-eyed Angelina Jolie type going on, with magnolia white skin and a Gerald O'Hara jawline that keeps her face from being classically beautiful when she's very young but softens with age. Curvier and not nearly as tall, but yeah, striking and stunning. Think of Jolie in Gia. She's half-French and her father is blond and blue-eyed so it works for me. Also, the lips. Gotta have those lips.

As far as Rhett - I imagine a hybrid of a younger George Clooney for the elegant, distinguished, and handsome/Burt Reynolds for the raw and hairy with a little swarthy Depp thrown for good measure. It's the pirate thing. Google George about 10-15 years ago and Burt back in the day - way back for Burt - and see what you think. I'm not a hundred percent happy with this description, however. Gable's great and all but not quite there - not muscular and raw enough for me going by the book.

I am NOT denigrating the actors here. They were cast perfectly, performed flawlessly, and were overall simply magnificent. I'm just saying the book conjures different images in my mind, and these images are what I have in mind when I write. Feel free to share your vision!

Also quite randomly, I will denigrate some casting right here - I don't think I'll ever get over Joanne Whalley-Kilmer (at the time she was a Kilmer) and Ann-Margaret cast in Scarlett as Scarlett and Belle. That was just stupid and mean. I cannot accept that mousy Scarlett, and Belle can't be better-looking than Scarlett. She just can't. Also, who exactly wanted to see Belle and Rhett in a bathtub together? I despised every minute of that dumbly-plotted book and mini-series, and furthermore, Timothy Dalton my ass.

Enough of my kvetching and enough about all that.

Additional A/N - Next chapter - which is definitely about Belle and the lessons - I swear - is about done and should be posted within the week, perhaps even sooner since you all have had to wait so long for it. Thank you all for your patience. My personal life is very busy, and I have many plans for this story. To be frank, I get a little overwhelmed when I think about everything that I need to happen here. Especially as each chapter seems to take on a life of its own. Plugging along is all I can do, however. Isn't that all any of us can ever do?

Please know that this story and the readers of this story are never far from my mind, and please feel free to send me a message or drop a line in a review; your thoughts and words mean the world to me. Peace, my friends. And Happy Hump Day tomorrow! As the Scarlett in this story says, open up and greet the morning like a daisy. Every damn day.