I think the fic is all revised. If you guys find spots that conflict with the dates/ages I posted in chapter 1, can you just yell them at me. I don't want to read this fic again. Lol. No one be surprised if a few days pass without chapters this week.

Fic has been revised with the help of you guys and Pansy O'Hara's blogspot.

Revised to this (please yell if you find spots that I missed):

Starting Date: July 1871, Current Date: Late August 1871

Married 3+ years

Bonnie (February) 2.5 years old

Ella (November) almost 5 years old

Wade (Late January) 9.5 years old

Baby due at Christmas 1871

To be noted I definitely found Ashley's birthday in the book at the start of writing this, that was why it was set in spring…I just forgot to move it out of spring. I do not do well when I don't include dates at the top of my chapters. Thanks to everyone who reached out with the timeline (I seriously tried googling that several times at the start, why the hell did I never get it when it is everywhere. Like I know grad students have done their theses on the novel, so I knew it was out there).

Ninigi: Are Pork and Dilcey not married anymore? Pork is in the Butler household and Dilcey is in the Wilkes. Lol. If they aren't, I give up. Maybe they have an on again/off again thing.

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Part Thirteen

August 1871

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"I believe I was hasty with my demand for no late suppers," Rhett said as they sat alone at the dining room table after a particularly trying meal with the children, who had seemingly been fighting for no reason all day.

"Really Rhett, wrong, you?" They had decided to allow the children to only suffer through a few hours in the schoolroom in the morning. Apparently, all the extra time actually interacting with each other, despite the governesses, had led to their children interacting too much and being unable to turn it off.

"Hasty, not wrong," he corrected. "I do believe you had several new evening gowns made before we left the city, it would be a shame to let them go to waste."

"What do you propose Rhett?"

"The days we take afternoon meals with the children, we banish them to their nursey or playroom as soon as they've eaten their evening meal. Perhaps even take that meal in the nursery."

Scarlett laughed, "Banish, really?"

"To be quite frank my dear, today I understand boarding and finishing schools," he stood to get the brandy from the sideboard in the dining room and sat back down with it.

"Rhett, you know they're waiting for us in the parlor for acted charades."

"I know," Rhett said remaining seated and taking a long sip.

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Scarlett felt a great sense of unease with the children's new light skinned nanny, Estelle. Estelle formerly of the Beaumont Plantation, likely settled several generations back because of the small hill that the mansion sat upon so aptly fit the last name belonging to the family. Estelle and her siblings were the worst kept secret in Clayton County. Jonathan Beaumont had purchased their mother in Louisiana, over three decades prior to be a housemaid, some said for Adele Beaumont, his wife, some said for their children well past the age of needing a nanny. Every few years that passed there would be a new light skinned baby counted amongst the slaves.

In the years that followed Adele's passing as their children left the house, gossip began to circulate about those light skinned slaves, some so pale, Scarlett had heard they had moved north after the war and begun passing as white. The children being taught in everything their white counterparts were instructed in. History, language, decorum, music and the arts.

Scarlett had attended a house party there once shortly after old man Beaumont died, from a heart attack, days after a fever that took Estelle's mother. They had been greeted by one of Estelle's sister playing a harp.

Paul Beaumont had seemed to take great pride in showcasing his half-sisters as the perfect help. Scarlett wondered about the cruelty of it, of Paul riding off to fight in a war that would keep his sisters his property since Old Man Beaumont had set the only surviving boy free at the age of 17 and rumor had it, escorted him personally to France. Then again, the more Scarlett thought about it, she wondered if the entire country wouldn't go to war to keep their womenfolk their property and not merely half.

Rhett had been astonished that Scarlett hadn't wanted Estelle as her own personal maid, considering how often she complained about Prissy. Scarlett couldn't stomach the thought of having a maid with better manners than her, like having the Old Guard watching her constantly.

However, Scarlett was hardly an ignorant or foolish woman and recognized while her pride wouldn't allow Estelle to serve as her personal maid, her pride wouldn't allow her to not have the woman as her children's nanny.

o~o~o

Scarlett smiled as she saw Rhett awaiting her at the bottom of the stairs, somehow looking even more dapper than that first day over a decade ago.

"Mrs. Butler," he said as she reached the last stair, "you look breathtaking." He saw in her eyes that she already knew that. In an emerald gown and dripping in diamonds he had purchased during her pregnancy with Bonnie. This child just as their last had only enhanced her beauty, adding a fullness to her face, similar to that 16-year-old girl at Twelve Oaks.

"You look quite dashing Captain Butler."

He offered her his arm and escorted her to the dining room where the table was set for two.

o~o~o

Scarlett recognized their manners were atrocious as they often laughed loudly at the table and there may have been one or two loud outbursts. She felt drunk as she often had that first year as they stayed up late talking, only there had been no night out, no brandy on the table, only a glass of wine that she barely reached the bottom of and he hadn't had much more than her.

Rhett Butler was captivating and charming, a rogue and a born southern gentleman all at the same time. He had made his own way and it showed with the ease he could conduct a conversation.

"Shall we retire to the parlor?" Rhett asked with a smile.

"Which parlor?" Scarlett questioned as he pulled out her chair.

"Yours of course my dear, seeing as mine is in the process of having wallpaper hung."

She smiled at him as he escorted her to the room. Scarlett smiled up at Rhett as she spotted Estelle in the corner at the grand piano.

"Mrs. Butler, may I have this dance?"

"Of course, you may Captain Butler," Scarlett smiled.

Rhett gave a subtle nod to Estelle, who began to play a waltz.

"A waltz?" Scarlett questioned.

"Do not think I missed how you needed to sit after the last reel we danced in Atlanta?"

"Our first waltz," Scarlett said recognizing the tune, it had quickly gone out of favor when the war ended and so many of the boys didn't return home.

"I am impressed you remembered."

"I thought I would never waltz again. Hard to forget getting to find out maybe my life hadn't actually ended at 16. Rhett, you're holding me too close."

"Not as close as I'd like to, our son is in the way."

"Estelle-" Scarlett began.

"Is looking at the sheet music," her husband allayed her concerns. "Do you know what I was thinking as you walked down the stairs?"

"Same thing you always think, what I look like without my shimmy," she spoke softly as she smiled up at him.

"My pet, I am so glad you only look like a lady," he had made slight inroads with her in that first year of marriage, but they had paled in comparison to the changes within her after the night of the party. He supposed showing her his most vulgar side had shown her no matter what she said or did, it would pale in comparison to his base nature.

She smiled up at him, "What were you thinking Rhett, aside from the speed in which I took the steps?"

"I don't think there has ever been a moment where I was so perfectly in two places at once. That young girl escaping up the staircase, carefully playing every young beau, so full of spitfire, hiding beneath that sweet demeanor. And that powerful woman, who refuses to bow to anyone, refused to let them bury her at 16. Your spirit is still the most remarkable thing about you and considering how exceptionally beautiful you are, with and without the shimmy-"

Scarlett let out an unexpected laugh, startling herself and Estelle who hit the wrong keys and struggled to regain her place in the song. She looked up to find Rhett in an unguarded moment, his face full of pride and joy, "Hold me closer Rhett," she whispered.

"It would be my pleasure."

Thanks for reading!

PS- Estelle exists so I can have someone playing the piano for Rhett and Scarlett and I banished the governesses to town. :-P I think she will continue to pop up until I can figure out the name of the movie based in Louisiana that made me think of her.