When Scarlett arrived in Charleston that bright, spring day in April 1861, she paused on the lower step of the train and looked out at her new home, her youthful face a reflection of the hope and fear energizing the south. The noon sun beat down on her head, welcoming her with a pleasant but brutal warmth. The air smelled like a strange witch's brew—tangy from sweat and bodies, sweet from moss and magnolias, and the scent of the sea blowing in from the east, texturing everything and everyone with the flavor of salt. Throngs of men and women crowded the platform, a mess of wagons, buggies and carriages clustered around the station, and everywhere her fierce gaze turned more people and animals and wheels were pushing their way through the deliberate chaos. She had never seen so many people gathered together at one time.

Taking a deep breath, she braced herself, her apple-green "second day" dress swaying in the breeze. Her eyes still tingled from the excess of tears, her throat was raw, and her slender shoulders sagged ever so slightly. She wanted to shed the heartbreak from last night, and the weariness of the last two weeks, but she didn't know if she could summon the will, not here, not where the voices shouting over the commotion were flat, not where even the horses turned their noses up. And then her gaze caught sight of Rhett, his tall head bobbing above the teeming horde, and she raised her chin.

There was something evocative about seeing him, something that emboldened her to brave this new world of the old south. He was so much taller than most of those around him, so much broader and stronger, gracefully snaking his body through the maze of people as a tiger would through the reeds. She blushed as she remembered waking up this morning, his chest smeared with the imprint of her cheek and her nightgown hiked up to her thighs. She had immediately tried to yank it down, but his hand had covered hers, and with a flush on her skin and a growing simmer in her abdomen, he had slowly glided the silk back down her legs. He had stared at her then, sweeping his eyes across her face and brushing back her hair that had become unruly in the night.

They hadn't spoken much during the rest of the morning, the longest conversation consisting of him telling her, as the train had chugged into the station, that he would hurry out to ready their ride and send their luggage on ahead to the hotel where they would be staying. The prospect of spending another night with him, of spending most of her nights with him stirred her curiosity, a nudging of interest mixed with trepidation.

Rhett easily blazed a trail straight to her side and a soft, carefree grin spread over her lips. It was the first genuine smile she had worn for weeks, the first real smile Rhett had ever seen on her. In that instant, for an instant, she was the bride, glaringly fresh and beautiful, unaware of her glory, utterly ignorant of the glow in her groom's eye.

She clapped her hands together and beamed. "Is it always so crowded?"

"No, but if you haven't heard by now, we started a war here a few weeks back."

She giggled, gathering up her skirts to descend, when Rhett smiled wickedly and scooped her up off the train without another word. She cried out in surprise, a wallow that was immediately swallowed up in the cacophony of noise, and covered her face.

"I'm perfectly capable of walking myself," she fumed into his ear.

"Time is money, my pet," he said, knocking her feet into a pole. "And I need more of the former, because I want more of the latter."

She dropped her hands away from her face and scowled. "Didn't your mother ever teach you that it's rude to talk about money in public?"

"Didn't your mother ever teach you to say thank you when a gentleman offers you his assistance?"

"Yes, but you didn't offer me anything, and you aren't a gentleman."

He threw back his head and laughed so loudly that she shrank back behind her hands again. Vaguely she wondered if there was anything that embarrassed him, or mattered to him. Cradling her as a baby against his chest, he continued to carry her through the crowd, only mortifying her further by whistling an Irish lullaby.

"Here we are," he said, swinging her into an open buggy, not bothering to take care that her petticoats remained hidden underneath the billows of green fabric.

Onlookers saw a flash of lace and stockings, the men ogling the slender ankles and the women pretending not to have noticed. Scarlett gasped, frantically smoothing down her dress and covering her legs, as Rhett loped around to the other side, picked up the reins, and sprang the horse, which had been chewing on a sad, little patch of grass, trampled mostly into mud by spurs and boots, to life. The buggy rocked forward and she bumped into Rhett's hard shoulder.

"You could have given me some warning," she grumbled.

"You could have waited in the compartment like I told you to," he answered, tipping his hat at two teamsters still winking at his wife. "This depot's no place for you today."

She crossed her arms and scooted away from him. Rhett quickly maneuvered the buggy away from the train station and the Charlestonian streets fanned out before them, streaks of cobbled stone leading to high-rise walls draped in wisteria. The sidewalks were less crowded as they jostled their way through town, Rhett pointing out this historical site or that ancient church. She let his slow drawl wash over her, remembering the last and only time she had visited here.

Several years ago her mother had taken her and her sisters to stay with their aunts. Scarlett must have been six or seven years old and the only impression that had remained with her was how creepy her Aunt Pauline's plantation was, with those dangling vines that twitched in the wind and made her have nightmares about gigantic claws reaching out to catch and strangle her. For days she had cried to go home, throwing tantrums and refusing to play with her older boy cousins, until her demands had been met and she had been safely returned to her pa.

Observing the heavy tree boughs that drooped all the way to the ground and the flower buds that stubbornly forced their way through the tiniest cracks in the stone, Scarlett felt the same nauseating revulsion that had frightened her as a child, and the sinking realization that no amount of kicking and moping would deliver her from this encroaching country. Her troubled gaze jumped from the scenery to the faces of the people walking by, and after three consecutive passersby abruptly changed direction or crossed the street opposite to their buggy, the pangs of loathing in her gut sharpened with anxiety.

"Why are they doing that?" she asked, interrupting Rhett mid-sentence.

"Why are who doing what?"

"That."

She pointed discreetly at an elderly woman who had immediately stumbled to halt and spun away, pretending to be interested in a dying shrub, the moment Scarlett had locked eyes with her.

Rhett stared at the woman's back for a second, and then clicked the horse to a trot and picked up from exactly where he had been cut off, telling Scarlett about the St. Cecilia ball. Scarlett had to cling onto her bonnet and the side of the buggy to steady herself, darting her eyes back between Rhett and the woman who was shrinking from her view, his steady voice at odds with the speed of their ride, and the panic rising in her chest.

"Aren't you going to answer me?" she said, gulping in a mouthful of her own hair as the buggy whirred around a corner.

Rhett ignored her, dryly droning on about this family and that plantation. She sputtered, bristling from his obstinate deafness, and glaring out at the street that had now burst into the town square.

The hub of Charleston was breathtaking, the architecture refined, and the vibrancy of the bloom of spring and the fervor of war brightening its weathered, elegant structures, with banners and flags flapping next to swags of blossoms. But everywhere Scarlett turned, it was dull and grey. Cheeks were averted and eyes were downcast. Her annoyance battled with her alarm, that thing she had dreaded so much she had forgotten to remember, that thing she had told herself time and time again to think about tomorrow. With each passing person, she feared that tomorrow had come.

Her eyes flitted this way and that, meeting cold stares and mirthless lips, and Rhett blathered on and on about people she didn't know and already hated. She felt the wind seeping out of her and soon she was suffocating, her stays pinching shut her lungs. Rhett parked the buggy under the eaves of a tall building, but she didn't bother glancing up. Not now. The world had pitched into a darker, angrier hue and she couldn't see anything but her dread, could barely breathe. He was still talking and she whipped around and seethed at him.

"I don't want to hear about your—history or your balls or your stupid cathedrals. I want to know why no one will even nod at me. I want to know why I feel like my face has gone purple or my hair's caught on fire."

Finally he stopped talking and lounged against the buggy's back board, smirking in that careless way of his that made her palm itch to slap him.

"Is that so?"

"Yes, that's so, and if you had any raising at all you would have answered me ages ago. I don't know why I started to believe you weren't a complete rascal. Great balls of fire! How am I ever going to put up with you for an entire lifetime?"

Somehow just unburdening herself made her start to feel a little better. The tightening in her chest was lessening, the air around her lightening. She scanned the hotel's driveway, one of the bellhops tipping his hat at her, and she felt a tremor of hope. At least some people in Charleston were kind. She blew out a deep, staggering sigh and with her fury deflating, fixed her gaze back on Rhett.

The light wind fluttered against his suit and the sun shined down on his back. A patch of shade had drifted over his half his face, casting a beard-like shadow across his jaw. His black eyes sparked with a carnal, dangerous light and she thought he looked like a wild mountain man.

He cocked one eyebrow up and his head to the side. "I'll wager you'll find a way to put up with me, pet. You are remarkably resilient, despite your complete inexperience in the ways of the world."

"I have experience enough for you to give me a straight answer, thank you very much."

"Really? One innocent night with me and you are experienced?"

A speckle of heat hit her cheeks and she glimpsed the bellhop choke on a laugh. "Can you at least pretend to have some decency? You can't just go around saying things like that."

"Things like what?"

"You know what. I may just be a country girl from Georgia, but I'm not as ignorant as Eve."

"Oh, I would have to disagree, and speaking from experience, I think Adam would be more tempted by you to eat the fruit."

He grinned, tapping his hand against the buggy and shooting her one of those impish, disrobing looks. Only this time, even in her aggravation, her heart raced and a thick emotion she could not name coursed in her veins. Confused, she fidgeted with her bonnet's ribbon, tying it more firmly underneath her chin.

"I think you're a conceited blackguard," she said distractedly.

"Quite prescient of you to bring up Eve, though. In all your years of catechisms and Hail Mary's did you learn what happened to her son after he murdered her other son?"

"I have an idea something similar might happen to me after I murder you," she muttered.

He chuckled and sat up, reaching out his hand and tilting up her chin. "If you break my heart, I hope you follow through with that threat."

Her eyes widened at his words. This wasn't the first declaration she had heard, but this was the first she wasn't sure was a declaration at all. Break his heart? Did he have a heart to break? She longed to feel triumphant, to command him with a wave of her arm or a flicker of her finger, but she couldn't tell if he was only teasing her. And her mind could hardly focus on trying to figure it out now, not with the bustle of a town square all around and his skin touching her skin. He dropped his hand and lazily reclined back.

"Answer my question, Scarlett, and I promise you, I'll answer yours. What happened to Eve's son, to Cain, when he murdered his brother?"

She blinked a few times, that bubble of fear starting to come back. "He…he was cursed."

"More than that, he was cast out. In Charleston, amongst the pure and virtuous folk, just think of yourself as the wife of Cain."

"Why? What do you mean?"

He smiled at her, his black eyes crinkling around the edges. "I realize that most of my lesson, yes lesson, fell on fallow ground, but if you could let one thing take root in that pretty, empty head of yours, let it be this—not one of those old blood, God-fearing, true Charlestonian women—nor most of their men—whose tales and histories and homes I have talked to you about and shown to you today will look at you, will talk to you, or will receive you, at present. So, as I said, my dear Mrs. Butler, you'll find a way to put up with me as a companion, because frankly you don't have a choice."

She let out an almost-silent "oh," a faint grunt of despair. He hadn't sounded mean or hurtful, but the words had pierced her straight through. All her fear realized in a single, bland statement. Unthinkingly she grabbed hold of his hand, her panic shining out of her green eyes and paling her cheeks.

"Then I am ruined. You have ruined me."

"No Scarlett, I've rescued you."

Her eyes flashed with annoyance and she pulled her hands back into her lap. "Rescued me? How? By tricking me into marriage and stealing me away from my home?"

"Of course not. I didn't steal you, and while I admit there was a bit of a dare when I proposed, I didn't trick you either. I believe you actually told me you would kill me if I didn't marry you. But however questionable the circumstances were that led to our connubial bliss, one outcome remains undeniable. Our marriage freed you from your prison."

"Prison?"

"Yes, prison—the archaic, lovely jailhouse you and I grew up in, built on arbitrary rule after arbitrary rule, brick after brick of how you should think, what you should say, whom you should marry and who you should be. The sanctity of your reputation is your fetters. The judgment of others is your cell. It's the deadliest prison on earth; the walls are invisible, to all but the most enlightened of souls."

"And I suppose you think you are an enlightened soul?"

"Naturally, even Kant would agree. And as such, I am duty-bound to set the captives free, especially ones with emerald eyes, tiny waists, and lips the color of cherries."

She tossed her head at his compliment and rolled her eyes. "How you do run on. You can't sweet talk me into thinking I was raised in a prison—I'm married to you, aren't I? If I'd been in prison, my parents would never have let me run off with you."

"True, but why are you here Scarlett? Stop and think about it. Ironically, it was those meaningless expectations of society that landed you with a scoundrel like me. Your parents would rather you wed an infidel than tarnish the mere idea of your virtue. Better be married and actually, er, deflowered, than to be single and untouched, but impure."

She frowned at him. Most of what he was saying rushed through her brain as articulated nonsense. She knew he thought she was a fool, knew he was smarter than she was, and she despised his superiority. For during the last two days, as much as he was dissimilar to Ashley Wilkes, the unfathomable, layered way he spoke reminded her of him. Except, except when Rhett talked on and on about something she sensed he had a grain of truth on his side, some tangible, hardened practicality. But did that mean he was right about this? Had she lived her life behind unseen prison gates?

She had always been stifled by the lists and lists of rules, straining against the constricting codes of conduct, her true, unchecked self constantly running up against the prim, proper southern lady she was supposed to be impersonating, and very often breaking loose, the stays of her societal corset being ripped apart by her vivacity and vigor. The idea that she could be free of those binds was new, but also perilous, putting at risk her sense of security. The columns that upheld her world, the world where she felt safe, as far away from it as she was right now, might be bars in her prison cell, but they were also her protection, and she wasn't ready for them to be toppled.

She shook her head, pushing away the blasphemous thoughts to corners of her mind where they would not bother her, not today, pushing aside too the fact that polite, pretentious society would snub her. She summoned her charm to worry about it all tomorrow, or maybe even the next day. It hurt or baffled her too much to do anything else today.

"You can go on and on about imagined prisons and unsuspecting prisoners," she airily said, "but I'm not going to buy a word of it."

"But as you so aptly phrased it," he jeered. "You are going to have to put up with me for a lifetime. I'm sure I'll convince you of it over the years. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the pleasures of liberty for the both of us. For instance, your new prison."

He gestured behind her and at last she craned her neck up. Towering above her was a tall, ornate building, with buttresses shooting out from the roof and stained glass windows shimmering in the afternoon sun. Her breath caught and Rhett whispered into her ear, his breath dancing pleasantly across her skin, "Shall I carry you all the way through the lobby or just over the threshold into our room?"

~Souffle~

Scarlett stood on the balcony of her honeymoon suite, the warm, navy night cloaking her skin and staving off the chill of a late rain shower. Her room was on the hotel's top story, and looking out across the wet rooftops and steeples, she could just perceive the glittering ocean as its waves caught the light from the bright moon. The overpowering vastness of Charleston both awed and diminished her. The place was as alive and deadly as the sea which lapped against its shores, impenetrable as its depths and uncompromising as its tides. She hated it, instinctively, because it was so different from Tara, hated it because it sprawled where it should narrow, and crept up where it should open wide. She hated it because she would be all alone here, as alone as she had been since Rhett had left to complete some urgent business.

She had never really been alone like this, never known what loneliness tasted like. Tara had always been full of people and noises, the songs from the cotton fields drifting in with the breeze, the thumps and bumps of feet on the stairs, the humming of her mother, or the chattering of her sisters. She had taken it for granted, just as she had taken everything in her life for granted, never questioning what the rest of the dreary, solitary masses did with their time or to whom they confided. And she didn't like it, couldn't take it. She was too energetic to find solace in a book, too young to enjoy stretched-out hours of tranquility. She craved movement and laughter and fun. And all she had was a lump of cold, hard solitude.

Boredom was not for her, idleness a danger to a young girl nearly shaking with life. She had tried to find something to do. She had walked around the hotel lobby, she had made an effort to talk with Rebekkah, the slender, chestnut-toned maid who apparently knew everything about Charleston and its people, according to Rhett, but who deigned not to share anything with Scarlett, she had even attempted to write a letter to her mother. Nothing would take.

The clouds rolling in from the coast had kept her inside for the day, or she would have braved the chilly shoulders and marched through town. Out of sheer dullness, she had gorged herself on everything on the hotel menu, ordering a banquet fit for a king and all his subjects. The food had been delicious, and she had packed as much of it into her stomach as she could possibly fit, but it had left her with a bloated belly and a bitter aftertaste.

The evening had worn on in this soft, listless way, broken up only by the brief, thunderous storm. After helping Scarlett out of her dress and into her nightgown and robe, even Rebekkah had excused herself and disappeared to the far reaches of the hotel, making Scarlett's abandonment complete. Rhett had promised her he wouldn't be too long, but he hadn't promised her when he would return.

It had been hours since he had carried her—against her protests—all through the gilded lobby and up the stairs to their room. That little antic by him had been too much for her and she had steamed at him for the half hour he had remained. She had assumed he might be obnoxious, had known he would be odious, but she had been unprepared for his evident disregard for all things ordinary. Still, as the minutes of isolation had stuttered by, she had started to wish for him to come back. He was better than no one.

She had been staring off into the distance for a while, drumming her fingers on the balcony's ledge and tapping her feet to a melody running through her mind, when she heard him enter the room. He chuckled, his deep voice mumbling something she couldn't make out, and called her name. A shiver that had nothing to do with the weather shot up her back and she twirled around to greet him.

He had a biscuit halfway to his mouth when he noticed her. His hand stopped and he looked at her from top to bottom, his bold gaze lingering on her legs. She glanced down and blushed at how her nightgown clung to her body, uncertainly stepping back into the room.

He took a bite and slowly chewed, his unreadable eyes never wavering from her face. She hugged her robe and waited, swiveling her gaze between him and the fireplace. She had wanted him to return, but now that he was here, she wasn't so sure. She had been so bored and desperate for some distraction all afternoon and evening, depressed by the unfriendly welcome in Charleston, and still reeling from all the other unwanted changes in her life, that she had forgotten to worry about what would actually happen when Rhett came back to their room. Her tongue suddenly felt dry, her skin clammy, and the feast in her stomach sloshed around, threatening to come back up.

Rhett smirked, as though he had read her mind as easily as he had read her body, and popped the rest of the biscuit into his mouth. "I was ready to apologize that you had to wait for supper, but I see you availed yourself of enough food to feed the troops—for both sides."

She wiped the perspiration from off her forehead, relieved, irritated, and, if she was entirely honest, a little disappointed, by his caustic hello. She pulled the collar of her wrapper closer to her neck, groping for some retort and was forced to settle for the truth.

"I saved some for you."

He glanced down at the messy table. "Yes, thank you for your crumbs Mrs. Dives."

"Well, you can't have expected me to starve for you, can you?"

"Starve? You were eating honeycakes when I left. I'd hate to think how much food you would devour if I left you alone for an entire day. Keep eating like this and I'll have to call in the calvary—to warn them that their food stores are in danger."

She glowered, and he laughed. Dusting off his fingertips, he brushed past her and sank down into a large chintz chair turned toward the fire.

"Come, have a seat Scarlett. You must be exhausted."

She squared her shoulders and sat down in the chair across from him, trying to appear as cool and unbothered as he seemed. She didn't want to start their evening off with a spat. From their first conversation together, he had managed to rankle her good moods, to contort them into something twisted and unrefined. Breathing down her temper, she watched him pour himself a drink from a decanter resting on the stand next to him. He threw the brandy cleanly back and then, with a wink, titled the tumbler in her direction.

"Care for a nightcap?"

"I would never!"

"You must be curious. Go on. I won't judge you. It might even do you some good. Who knows?"

"No, thank you," she elegantly refused.

He shrugged and poured himself another drink. "Your loss."

Sipping from it slowly, he watched her from over the rim of his glass, his eyes glinting with amber and gold from his drink and the firelight. Scarlett pleated the edges of her robe and straightened her back, trying not to wriggle too much under his quiet scrutiny. She had never met a man like him, and something visceral tugged her towards him, but despite his patience last night, or his tenderness this morning, from arms length away, she viewed him only as a mystery, and not one she was particularly interested in solving. She didn't think it was normal, or right, that a single look from him could simultaneously drench her in sweat and parch her throat. Rhett laughed quietly and she jumped at the sound.

"Does your pensive silence mean you missed me?" he asked, swirling the contents of his glass and looking up at her from beneath his heavy brow.

"What?"

"Your silence must mean something. For the brief time I've known you—and I know you better than you would think or time would suggest—you're only ever quiet like this when you're plotting or moping."

"I am not. I mean, I like quiet."

"Really?"

"Yes. I'm not some chattering ninny."

"True, you're not particularly talkative, but nor are you especially contemplative. You're quiet when you're bored or uninterested, like you were earlier today during my tour of Charleston, and when that happens your eyes just sort of gloss over and look like two pristine ponds of green water. But when you're sulking, or even better, when you're scheming, the most delicious gleam suffuses them. I first saw it at the barbecue, when you seduced every man there while pining for the only man you actually wanted to seduce. I was amused no one else noticed. You'd be a terrible poker player. Your eyes are dead giveaways to your thoughts."

"And what about now?" she sneered, riled by his smooth, sharp musings into her mind. "What are my eyes telling you this time?"

He smiled, swilled down the rest of his drink, and setting it aside, stood up. With his hands slid casually inside his pants pockets, he strode right up to her and stared down.

"Stay away," he said softly.

There was something in his gaze and voice that made her heart race, and changed her burning anger into a burning heat. She didn't know what he would do next. She didn't know if she wanted him to do anything. But when he began to undo his tie, she knew her world was about to change and she started to tremble. The hairs on her skin rose, each leisurely loop stealing away her breath, as he unhurriedly slipped off his tie and dropped it onto the floor.

Slowly he knelt down in front of her, unbuttoning his shirt and gliding his gaze from her hair down to her slippers. Looking back into her face, he reached out his hand and caressed her cheek.

"Whatever you do," he urged, "don't close your eyes."

His hand slid around to the back of her neck, her skin melted, and he drew her to him.

Note-I'm treating myself more than I should. So I've had to ask myself, "When did Rhett really fall in love with Scarlett?" What do you think? Thanks for the reviews. Cheers.