AN: Thanks so much for still reading guys! I know gentle growth of a relationship is not super riveting and fascinating. So it means so much to me that you are sticking around for it!

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Part Twenty One

Mid-November

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Rhett viewed Ashley Wilkes walking down the curved staircase hoping for an accidental misstep. It wouldn't take much for Rhett to be free of that man. For Scarlett to be free of him and certainly Miss Melly would fare better free of having such a man for a husband. He knew they lived paycheck to paycheck because of the swine's behavior outside of the house, leaving his wife and son to struggle. Rhett had found himself buying several items for Miss Melly and Beau while shopping for Scarlett and the baby, items that they would never be able to have due to Ashley's selfish behavior.

Scarlett had invited them out for Thanksgiving, but they hadn't wanted to leave Henry and Miss Pitty alone for the holiday. So they had decided to come out earlier in the month for a few days. Ashley seeming the hero for having brought the mills' and Kennedy's books for Scarlett to review. Not that she had, there had been a sigh, a hand on her back, no Rhett would not make his heavily pregnant wife review the books that he could do without any discomfort. They discussed them, but he allowed her to leave her body out of it and use only her mind.

Rhett imagined leaving Scarlett's body out of it was the current motivator behind wanting Ashley Wilkes to take a sharp fall down the stairs. Rhett had certainly not been bothered by the lack of full intimacies between him and his wife, until the arrival of their guests. Watching her talk to Ashley, laugh with Ashley, smile with Ashley.

Rhett wanted to watch Ashley take his last breaths.

Rhett was driven by a need to possess his wife fully, to drive all thought not him out of her mind. They had a month until the baby's arrival and several weeks if not months after that for Scarlett to be allowed to resume intimate relations if she ever chose to resume them at all.

After they returned to Atlanta, he would procure every tool there was to prevent conception. Once she allowed him to return to her body, he would make sure he would never be forbidden access again.

The logical part of his mind reminded him he had been happy days ago, content. He enjoyed watching and feeling his child grow and move within Scarlett. Staying up with her when she couldn't get comfortable enough with the baby to sleep. He had taken to bathing the parts she could no longer reach instead of a maid, and had even taken to washing her hair. He loved seeing her full with their child. She surpassed that 16-year-old by more than he could have ever fathomed. He imagined he would have enlisted with the rest of them if he had any idea that loving and wanting Scarlett could get any worse than it had with that first sight.

The logical part of him was quickly squashed by the lovestruck fool.

He wanted Ashley Wilkes gone.

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"You look wonderful," Ashley smiled at her as they were alone in the parlor. Melly had been summoned by the children and Rhett had done his best to frequently disappear, lest he give in to the urges to kill his wife's brother-in-law.

"I thank you for false compliments," Scarlett laid a hand on her stomach, her very large stomach.

"I mean it Scarlett, I don't think I've ever seen you looking as breathtaking, as womanly, as God intended when he created women."

"I imagine, despite what men think, God intended a great deal more for women than having children," she tried to dissuade the topic from her looks.

"I respectfully disagree. I imagine it was his exact purpose when he created both man and woman."

She wondered if the silvery blue of his eyes had always lacked warmth and depth. Rhett's eyes were so dark they seemed to go on forever. "I imagine my husband disagrees with me as well," she cast a look to her stomach.

"Rhett is a lucky man."

"I don't imagine luck had a single thing to do with the type of man Rhett is, persistent is more likely."

"11 years to win your favor," Ashley supplied.

"6, he won my favor when he proposed."

"Of course, that's what I meant. I simply hadn't seen you while you were carrying Bonnie, I hadn't realized how you bloomed. The love for your husband and child is evidenced completely."

"I am exceptionally happy with my husband, if not for Wade and Ella and having Melly as my sister, I would regret not marrying Rhett instead of Charles."

"You have certainly grown over the years."

"Yes Ashley," she smiled, "that is the beauty of us having survived the war when so many did not. We got to grow, mature and change. To see the world before us and not just the one we lost."

"It was a beautiful world."

"Not as beautiful as this one," her hand as nearly always present on her stomach, on the sweet and beloved child that lay within her.

"I imagine you only say that because Rhett built his fortune off the loss of our old world."

"Rhett had already been building his fortune," Scarlett shrugged, "I imagine I say it because of Rhett though. I certainly wouldn't have before him. I've been remiss in never thanking you for Rhett."

"Thanking me?" Ashley looked beguiled.

"He admired my spirit that first day. I imagine the memory of me stayed with him because of how furious I was with you." Scarlett was suddenly annoyed with herself for how petty she was being with Ashley, but his continued encouragement of her infatuation with him, while all she had been to him was a vibrant body. She could have been happy years earlier if not for Ashley. Why had it taken so long for the lure of him to wear off.

"Glad I was of some service with my cowardness. I allowed your greatness to shine. Again if only for the selfish reason of you dragging me along behind you."

The flash of anger she had felt with him lifted. There was comfort with Ashley, a piece of the past in the new. He had survived it. They had survived it. "I'm glad you found where you wanted to be." Perhaps they had clung to the memory of each other in order to survive their new and frightening world.

"I am for you as well Scarlett. Do you mind if I excuse myself to see if Beau and Wade would like to take a ride?"

"Not in in the least, enjoy."

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"Please don't do this Rhett," Scarlett asked of him after he dismissed the maid that had tried to come in to get Scarlett ready for bed.

"Did you wish to sleep in your dress?"

She turned away from him, causing his fingers to slip away from the deep green silk, "I let Ashley taint our marriage for long enough. I let him go Rhett, why can't you?"

Rhett took in his wife's confession, not one of her declarations about Ashley being a good man that always led him to know that those looks weren't in his imagination. An actual confession. There was a logical part of him deep down that was proud of her for actually speaking the plain truth for once regarding Ashley Wilkes, mostly though there was the same love struck fool that he had been for over a decade. Why that coward had ever deserved her devotion, still stayed with him as it had that day at Twelve Oaks. "Why did you let him go?"

"Because I love you, Rhett," she shook her head at him like he was a fool. She had done better using those words, they were often still soft and small, but she had been using them.

"Why now," Rhett wanted to stop himself, he wasn't drunk he had no reason to be asking that. Their life was good. It was better than good. It was more than he had ever expected from a life with Scarlett. Had it been the scorn of Atlanta, the fear he had put into her that night…

"It was dark Rhett. My world it was dark and cold. That night when you wouldn't stop calling Ashley the moon. You weren't wrong. Sometimes the moon is so bright it can get you through dark spaces. Those memories of the life I was supposed to have, the life I'd had. That night with us Rhett, it was so dark. It was like sinking into oblivion. We were this long dead fire. All you could see was gray ash where there had once been warmth. Then a small breeze feeds it and there's a flash of warmth in that cold night. It was the first time I'd felt warmth in so long."

"That is almost poetic for you."

"It was a long three months," she informed him.

"It was," he agreed.

"It was a longer two years before it."

"That it was," he agreed and moved in to hold her.

"Rhett, you said you didn't want my body," she said as his fingers trailed along her back.

"I believe I told you that I wanted your mind and your love more."

"Well your baby currently has my body and if I ever get it back, I sincerely doubt, I will ever want to share it again."

He laughed and placed a kiss on her lips.

"Rhett, I mean it."

"You'd not deprive your husband of a kiss."

"Only a kiss," she told him before surrendering to it.

Thanks for reading!