Note: I found on re-reading this in the light of day, that it had been much denser and more mysterious than intended. I have all the answers, and sometimes forget which ones I am hoarding. So I took it down, added some bits, though not nearly all the undisclosed details, and re-posted.
There was something wrong about this place, with its live, mossy oaks, those ancient, phantom Cyprus trees arching everywhere overhead, depressing the very air in this corner of the thicket where Rhett, Rebekkah and Scarlett now walked. The oaks swayed as something sinister and unknowable, as something which whispered to passersby to turn around, to seek out that quaintness of the mint leaves and berry shrubs, the festive familiarity of the pines and the kindness of the weeping willows. Scarlett held onto the crook of Rhett's arm, grateful that they had not traipsed this way immediately after the horrors of the dungeon, believing she may have cowered in abject terror should she have witnessed such macabre sights so soon after her experience with a man as equally formidable and frightening as the trees which populated his land.
Rhett and Rebekkah were carrying on a conversation which only partially impacted Scarlett, and therefore, it was a conversation to which she was only partially paying any mind. They had mentioned a number of people whom Scarlett knew nothing about, and from what she had heard, were persons with whom she wanted nothing to do, taskmasters and hired guns of Kinglsey Butler, who had apparently passed the afternoon terrorizing any soul, bond or free, who they believed may have held prior knowledge of Rhett's plans to attack his father. Scarlett's ears perked at the name Eli, an interesting figure to her now, as much as any individual could be interesting to her, including herself.
"I hadn't imagined you had traveled back here for your own amusement," Rhett said.
"No, not 'xactly, only came back after Cook told me how Eli languished in the castle."
"Damned if he isn't obvious," Rhett said.
"Always was."
Rhett glanced at Scarlett, cinching her arm with a slight squeeze of his elbow. "Always might take it too far."
Rebekkah harrumphed, while Scarlett was completely lost by their back and forth. Who was obvious? Eli? Someone else? After a few yards of silence, excepting the hum of insects and the burble of an unseen, nearby stream, Rebekkah asked: "What did he want from Miz Scarlett?"
"Not much, only our first born child, and any children who follow," Rhett drawled as smooth as butter, and Rebekkah harrumphed again, more loudly and pronounced on her second go around.
"We won' let him get his hands on that innocent. Not if we can help it," she said in a voice Scarlett had never heard from her stoic maid. Something about it reminded her of Ellen while she prayed: devoted, absolute, and fervent.
Understanding dawning that they were referring to Kingsley, Scarlett pinged her gaze between the two similar profiles, as she was sandwiched between them, an acrimonious speech on the top of her scratchy tongue, growing ever weary of their exclusionary style of discussing matters in her presence as though she hadn't the sense God gave a goat, when the pair of feet on either side of her halted abruptly, and she stumbled from the unexpectedness, a chestnut hand and an olive hand simultaneously catching her fall.
"I'm perfectly alright!" she huffed, extricating herself from their irritatingly helpful holds. Rebekkah's expression remained impassive, but Rhett's sparked with a smirk, his tanned cheeks almost rosy in the late afternoon sun which bled through the hairy oak branches.
"Dare I detect a hint of jealously?" he asked, sliding his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels.
"Not likely." She would have said more but her brows instantly knitted together as she noticed where they had stopped. "Why in tarnation are we back by your father's house? Have your brains become mud? Don't you think we've been through enough today?"
Rhett and Rebekkah stared blankly back at her, with their stinking obsidian eyes and their stinking inscrutable masks and their stinking unfathomable Butler minds. Rebekkah turned away without a word, fetching the canteens out of the bag, while Rhett patted the back of his neck, wandering his still gaze over the outline of the sweeping house, the opulent, oppressive front looming directly before them, the dominant facade reflected in a swelling pond about twenty yards away, which separated them from the front porch.
"I am not in the habit of explaining my actions, my pet, certainly not twice in one afternoon."
"And I am not in the habit of throwing myself within the reach of monsters, not twice in one afternoon," she hotly retorted, her tongue latching happily on to his own phrase and for once using his words against him, as he so frequently employed her speeches with the same aggravating knack.
"Aren't you, though?" Rhett quietly asked, an odd depth to his gaze. When she failed to answer with anything but a frown of perplexed fury, he obligingly went on: "All men are monsters, Scarlett, even the best of men. It is why men go to war and die in duels and beat the wives who bear their children, and beat the children who bear their name; it is why women do not dare walk alone after dusk, why they huddle in packs of conspiring minds at parties and balls and barbecues, to discuss how to fend off the men lurking about the edges of the dance floor or backyard; it is why the world is divided, at gunpoint and knifepoint and from the clashing of swords and the lashing of whips, into nations and classes and colors and castes; it is why you shake beside me at this very moment, and can't look me in the eye for any extended period of time; why you will not glance at Rebekkah now, though you know who she is and how she came to exist, and by what means anyone of her complexion and standing arrived on this godforsaken earth."
Rhett took a step toward Scarlett, who, to her consternated shame, took a step back, the instinct to recoil drawing a sad kind of smile to her husband's brown face. "It is why, despite what happened this morning, or what happened this afternoon, despite any amount of bad or good, I must go to my father now and settle matters before I can with any equanimity leave this place, or leave this town."
"Why now?" she asked, desperate to understand.
"Because I made a mess of things this morning, and am, as a rule, opposed to messes."
"But what can you do?"
"For starters, I can resist from breaking any more of my father's bones, and may have to go as far as using an oft-forgotten strategy of level-headed diplomacy. Not all Charlestonians would have fired at Sumter."
"What if—"
Rhett put his finger over her lips."I know this may be difficult for you to comprehend, considering the circumstance in which you found me this morning, but trust me when I tell you that to postpone confronting my father would be to his advantage, not ours. I have no intention of returning here tomorrow or sending word to my father with his requested reply. I do not want him aware of our location until we are far from his influence. I am here now. I know my answer, and if we hope to delay our departure by no more than a day—why, make hay while the sun shines, my dear."
He pinched her on the cheek, with a gentle touch but a rough texture, and turned away to accept a water canteen from Rebekkah. Scarlett stood, a tired, diminished set to her shoulders, soon leaning against the very trees she feared for comfort and support. She took the canteen which Rebekkah shortly afterwards offered her, avoiding the woman's piercing gaze as doggedly as she was now refusing to meet the eye of her husband. Right now she wanted nothing to do with either of them, stewing over another long-winded monologue by her husband that had left her with a feeling of wrongness, a feeling that everything she had once believed were no longer true, and angry with Rebekkah whose tacit judgement promoted that feeling as fact. No matter what Rhett had said, she couldn't see any reason to meet Kingsley in person. A note at the hotel desk or a letter or nothing at all would be more than he deserved.
The sounds of nature filled her ears as she filled her stomach with liquid, longing for the softness of her bed—not her massive, designer bed at the hotel, but the plush eiderdown quilt, the cool cotton sheets, and strong cedar frame of her bed at Tara. As she rested in the low crevice of the evil oak, her heavy lids fading closed in the heat, Rebekkah and Rhett discussed in a rapid, hushed conversation what to do about "her" during Rhett's imminent parlance with his father. This rankled Scarlett to no end, but in her muted mood and fatigue, she could muster nothing beyond a very dainty scowl and an elegant air of affront. From what she could gather or care to discern, the main problem arose from the fact that apparently Rebekkah could not stand guard as her sentinel, her presence required on some other battle front. Dozing as she was, they decided to leave her be, a fine solution to Scarlett, who had no desire to come face to face with Kinglsey Butler ever again.
Rebekkah quit the shady boundary of the thicket, heading in the opposite direction of the house. Rousing from the prospect of solitude, Scarlett watched the tall, proud silhouette retreat into a faraway shadow of piney overhangs, ignoring Rhett who stood at her periphery and waited for her to face him.
"Scarlett," he called to her, when it was clear she would not be the first to speak.
"I don't care for a conversation with you," she said coolly. "I'd just as soon talk to a rock."
"There's no accounting for taste and I've heard the Irish are partial to rocks—or stones, and kissing them, in fact. But, Scarlett, you don't need to kiss the Blarney Stone to earn the gift of gab in order to listen, which is all I want from you, for the moment."
Rhett stepped directly in front of her, boxing her into the v-shaped perch of the tree, so that she was forced to look at him or kiss the tree bark—which he would have loved after his blathering talk of Irish customs. Her cold-shouldered silence was not producing the desired effect: an apology and an immediate departure. It never did with him. Nothing ever went the way she wanted where he was concerned. In a pragmatic shrug and whip of her head, she gave up her purpose and matched his guarded gaze with her aggressive one.
"What is it you want to say? Go on. I'm all ears."
"I don't imagine you were listening very closely to any of my conversations with Rebekkah. You lack an astonishing amount of natural curiosity for someone who resembles a cat, dearest."
"Did you want to speak to me only to insult me? I'm sure you will have plenty of opportunity to be as foul and cruel to your heart's content when you're speaking to your father."
"Yes, but it is much more satisfying to be foul with someone who reacts with attractive frowns and pretty pouts. With that said, Rebekkah will likely return before me, and with a transport to take you back to town. Are you decent on a horse?"
"I have the most Irish seat, according to my pa." She picked at the lavish fineness of her dress. "You don't expect me to go riding in this, do you?"
"I expect you to do whatever I ask you to do, whether by my own voice or through Rebekkah's command. Whatever she asks you to do to obtain clear passage from my father's land, do immediately and without question. No tantrums or complaints."
"Do you believe I would be as big a fool as you and not jump at the chance to go back to the hotel?" Punctured pride choked further utterance. A temper she may have, and in spades of red and black, but she was no sissy or whiner. That was Suellen. As much as Rhett thought he had her number, he had missed some key calculations.
"I believe you are much more of a fool than me—only with purer intentions. The result is that you can be incredibly impetuous. I don't want you to wander around the plantation and wind up in the lion's den again, literally or figuratively. I can't leave you now unless I know you won't act rashly and choose to protect my worthless hide over yourself." His voice acquired a distinctive, gruff appeal. "You already did so once today, my darling hellion."
Scarlett couldn't trust herself that she had finally heard him say something that generous about herself, apart perhaps from the fool and hellion epithets, or as ungenerous about himself. As she had briefly done so in the berry thicket, she wondered at what mysterious, dark pain underpinned his veneer of sardonic calm. How deep lay the hurt from today, from a thousand yesterdays?
"Is that all you wanted to tell me, Rhett?" she asked, an unusual scrutiny sharpening her features, as for the first time in her life, she truly wanted to know the inner workings of another person. She had allowed herself moments of reflection on the man she had married before, had mused at the type of character he had, or struggled to define his boggled reasons for doing anything—from marrying her to his obsession with his neat appearance, but this was different. It was almost detached from her, removed from what she could gain from a deeper understanding of him, a desire to accept him as a human being with thoughts and feelings all his own.
Rhett cocked his eye brow at her, a quick gleam in his gaze. "Only this," he said. Then his large hands grabbed her waist and he pulled her from the tree into his arms, spinning them behind the huge, mossy oak. She felt the tight bulges of his muscles rub into her flesh and the heat of his mouth burn her lips and the brush of his mustache tickle her skin. That current of sweet electricity flowed from him, swallowing her up in the eddy of his passion, that surge of exhilaration drowning her once more. She went slack in his powerful embrace, eager to feel his lips on her neck, on her shoulders, in the slope of her bosom, wanting to be petted and pampered by him, by his tongue and his fingers and every beautiful, warm part of his body.
He must have heard her silent plea, for his mouth moved down to the delicate skin along the hem of her scooping neckline and his hand snaked up her rib cage, massaging her breast over the ephemeral fabric of her dress. Would he splay her open again, rocking her into tender madness against the grooves of this ancient, abominable tree? Would she let him raze her to the forest floor, his heedless, punishing lust crushing her bones to powder? This tide had come on so suddenly, Scarlett wished she knew the need which drove him.
She dipped herself back, deepening herself against him, more willing to give herself over. She loved him, and if he could only feel how much she wanted to keep him by her side and share in his life, he wouldn't go running off again. He was always running off, always running away from her.
"Stay with me, Rhett," she urged, pressing her palms against the whiskers along his jaw to turn his face up toward hers. His lips were moist from his kisses into the mounds of her cleavage, and his eyes glistened brown in the brassy rays of the lazy, late afternoon light.
For a precious instant she believed her supplication had worked. Then he gathered himself away from her body. "I'll see you soon," he said evenly and walked away from her, his hands in his pocket, his gait, slow but sure, his big shoulders lifting as his feet marched away from the spongey grass and onto the pebbled drive leading up to the house. She peered at him from the side of the wide tree trunk, her knees breaking away, and she faltered around to rest in the dip of the oak's connected center. He was gone from her view, gone from her.
Damn him for leaving her, and damn her for loving him!
She experienced a bubbling of something in her lower abdomen then, that thing within her swimming through her womb with more and more distinction. How long had this feeble life nourished from her body? Rebekkah had hinted that it had been as early as that first week of May during her honeymoon, even if she hadn't felt sick from it until over a month after Rhett had debarked for England. It was now the first week in August and her stomach hadn't lurched with nausea at the smell of fish, or expelled her meals—when not provoked by a musty, decaying dungeon aroma—for a solid, blissful few days. That lethargy which had plagued her energy had lifted from her as well; she could never have endured the sluggish outdoor humidity or the exacting events of the last two days even a week ago.
The unreal idea of her having a child was growing more and more concrete, with each new airy tumble in her belly and each new loathsome inch added to her waist. She preferred not to think about what changes were happening to her body in the same way she couldn't possibly envision what changes would happen to her life. Sitting in view of her husband's childhood home, however, she could no longer avoid contemplating the encroaching reality that she, Scarlett O'Hara, carefree belle of consummate skill in charming beaux, would be a mother, or that Rhett would be a father. Indeed she was compelled to go so far as to ask aloud: "What on earth kind of home will it have?"
Within the house which towered before her striking gaze, Rhett had received a bevy of toughening influences, learned in a privileged but harsh crucible of the pitfalls of human nature and the unpleasant realities of hierarchies for which his bride had only just begun to appreciate, and no amount of pointed concentration would unfold them more rapidly to her, or illuminate her darkened mind within the quarter hour while they occupied her thoughts. These were things experienced more than explained or examined. She had managed to perceive the presence but by no means the scope or breadth of the variable qualities Rhett had inherited, compared with those which he had earned in the refiner's fires.
Shaped by two complex figures, after losing his inheritance, he had molded himself into his own man, a man of rough adventures and rich experiences, over a decade of travels and travails of wild independence, a man educated and reared as a gentleman but self-made and self-taught due to circumstance and necessity. He had lived a life without restraint excepting the exigences of wealth, time and opportunity—the first being his chief inducement and constant star. His father had been right in claiming greed was his son's greatest weakness; it was not an appetite for money alone but for whatever things had been forsaken from him in his casting off, all the gold and privilege and power of a southern gentleman save one thing: the reputation as one.
Of all this, his young, innocent wife knew nothing, but that would not alter her current resolve to know him, to attempt to sort out the kind of man she had married, the kind of man she loved. She stared at the home in which Rhett grew to manhood, the place as hard and dangerous as a steep, stone precipice. It was such a complicated, unhappy, severe home compared with Tara.
To Scarlett, this house was entirely too defined by Kingsley, and cried out for the simplicities of Gerald's brash exploits with his horses, of his reverential deference to his wife, of playful banter between him and his children. Scarlett felt even the sounds of Mammy and Pork arguing, or she and her sisters bickering, or her pa's boisterous rants would add something of real peace to the place, something of comfortable sociality. It had all been too sterile, too manicured, too refined. There in the house above her, everyone bowed to the will of the king, deferred readily to his opinions, and, in the end, the meticulous, distinguished patriarch had his way, no matter the obstacle—with one exception, and now, two exceptions. Kinglsey Butler had never claimed free rein with his eldest son, and he would not have free rein with his wife. Scarlett, who had escaped her interview with him remarkably unscathed, decided with a grit to her mouth, not to submit to him.
With such a determined vow, she came back to herself, and within minutes, her mood returned to normal, as did the tenor of her mind. After her brief exercise in reflection, she fancied that she had achieved a passable grasp of the measure of her husband, too confident in her youth to remark on her failings and too selfish in her character to care to improve. She was only sixteen, she had robust health and energy, despite her carrying a child, an entire future of possibility within her vista, and Rhett's kin, his father most of all, would not make her unhappy. By sheer force of her will, she would ensure that they did not make her husband unhappy, either.
If she fell a little short of this personal oath, no one could blame her. She had never known cruelty of the kind she had seen today, never been forced to face the darker side of her life of wealth and wellness, to explore the possibility of her precarious perch on top of her own little world.
Love for Rhett, she thought with the optimism of her age and inexperience, more than a comprehension of his character, would bring them together, anyway. A connection of more than their bodies, though she craved that intoxicating coupling with an endless ache. It was a wonder to her why she had tossed him from her bed after his first night home from sea, a wonder she hadn't caved before last night to her constant yearning. The frequency of their unions since he had first torn her clothes and torn into her on the table at the cabin made her blush, made her weak, made her certain she lacked some moral fiber and some benediction of virtue—and made her want the immediate repetition of their shared intimacy. Rhett seemed vilely bent on breaching the bounds of that privacy barrier, and after her willingness in these woods, Scarlett doubted her own presence of mind when in the throes her husband's passion.
She sighed wantonly, for no one but herself, running her fingertips along the wrinkled ruffles of her borrowed gown. Sweat caked her body, puddling under her armpits and staining in a giant teardrop down her back. The sun was lowering in the sky, bobbing above the hills which arched thinly over the treetops in the west. Soon dusk would fall. She could not sit idle any longer. Rhett and Rebekkah had both been gone for far too long. She moseyed to the carpetbag, pilfering and devouring the last of the honey cakes. When she was satisfied but by no means full, she slumped against the curve of the ghastly oak, singing an old Celtic ditty and tapping her nails against the bark. Before long, she had fallen victim to the siren call of sleep.
Perhaps from the fog of heat or the toll of the day, her unconsciousness carried her into an immediate nightmare. It was the same dream that had risen to her mind on the day she had figured out why Rebekkah looked so familiar, the dream she had known as a child, but disfigured into an adult's more torturous landscape.
Scarlett stood on the porch of Tara, her tiny child body growing into her womanly form, filling out the frame and folds of Ellen's gown, her anxious mother morphing into a mocking Rebekkah, and a billowing, ominous storm blowing in from the horizon, nighting the day sky, the ropes of rain and walls of wind flattening everything in its path, decimating her beloved clay fields and spindled forests, and challenging her to cry out at the land-fallen hurricane: "You won't lick me!" There was a single, terrifying change to this iteration of her nightmare: a face was sculpted into the black castle of cloud, a face which she knew instantly although she could not identify. In the tenebrous contours of the misty substance, she could neither decide nor declare if the man's face was that of her husband, or that of his father.
Scarlett woke up with a start, toppling out of the oak, disoriented for a moment in the golden haze of sunset. The nightmare stuck in her brain as a festering thorn in her craw. Why was she all alone? Where was Rebekkah? Where was Rhett? From the slant of the sun, she knew she could only have dozed off for a half hour or less. She needed to relieve herself, and though dreading it, weaved her way deeper into the thicket to avail herself of more privacy and to find a spot out from under the creepy boughs of the twisted Cyprus trees.
As she came back around to where she had left the carpet bag and her canteen, she discovered that her bearings had been crossed at some point. Always good with directions and not prone to silly swoons, she corrected her pathway, eventually exiting the woods not far from the cluster of cottonwoods which obscured the entrance to the dungeon.
Terror instantly clawed at her heart. An uneasy thought pricked her mind, the nightmare perching too present and heavy with anxiety for her to think clearly. She could go back to the grove of oaks. She could wait for Rebekkah. She could try to tame the storm, and not cowardly weather it, because what if Rhett was in there again? What if Rebekkah was? Scarlett could be stranded in this horrible place!
Rhett had warned her not to behave impulsively, but that is precisely what she did. Why should she fear for herself? Kinglsey Butler wanted her alive and well and birthing babies, and with that assurance bolstering her courage, she ran toward the heavy oak doors of the dungeon and flung them open with a shoulder thrust.
The fetid air rushed into her face and her nostrils flared, but she quelled the sloshing in her stomach before it pumped up her throat. Covering her nose, she slowly descended the slippery steps, noting the key chain was absent from its hook. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the flickering dimness, the grainy light a deep amber hue in the fading hours of day.
Rhett was not in the dank prison, neither was Rebekkah, but nor was it empty. Two prisoners were chained to the imposing stone wall. The first, a huge man with skin as black as onyx, his hulking form lying on the floor, the second, a wizened, wiry man with creamy brown skin and startling pale blue eyes, who watched over the fallen man, and whose sky bright eyes now shined directly at her.
Scarlett could hardly think to breathe. Should she stay? Should she seek to help, to find help? Dilemmas of this kind were not her strength. These moral questions that pitted self-preservation against self-sacrifice morasses from which she would undoubtedly come out the survivor, though hardly the victor, rising from the muck with her life but with little else.
A cough interrupted her indecision, the disturbing, hacking coughs of the wheezing mess of a man on the floor. The sound blasted in Scarlett's ears, ricocheting loudly against the stone walls, rumbling in her stomach. The smells and the sounds swirled together as a noxious concoction.
"Can't you help him?" Scarlett cried out to the old man, hand on her mouth and arm clutching her gurgling belly, the irony of her request lost on her.
"Tout de suite, I 'ave been tryin'," he said in a thick creole accent as he reached out. Bound as he was, his straining was pointless, and his grizzled hands twisted back into his lap after one more futile attempt, and as the coughing spell ceased. Scarlett thought the massive man must have passed out, but she didn't have a moment to check as she retched pathetically into the corner.
She looked back at the audience members to her tumble into weakness, only one of whom had noticed, and with an elegant sniffle, held her head high. Her calm had returned, and with it, a sense of urgency. Oh! She couldn't stay here! It wasn't as if she could unchain them. She could do more by going and finding Rhett or Eleanor or anyone who might have some say in the fate of these captives. Another coughing fit broke into the small space, and her eyes looked to the shape convulsing on the floor. Scarlett wanted to drop down there too, to cover her ears and block out the horrifying gasps and coughs. Something had to be done.
She strode right up to the man on the floor, swallowed that threat of acid in her stomach which bubbled at the sight of his head wound, and bending down, heaved him up to lean against the wall. His coughing rattled to a halt, and she stood up.
"Now then," she said, panting. "I'll fetch you some water." Her eyes met the wretched gaze of the huge man. Something prickled in Scarlett, and she gave him a terse nod. She had never seen such a forlorn, yet fierce, expression.
"Careful," drawled a voice from the stairway, "someone might think you're on Abe Lincoln's side."
"Great balls of fire, Rhett!" Scarlett yelled, clasping her hand over her hammering heart, pivoting to her husband. "What are you doing sneaking up on us like that?"
He stood with a lopsided frown, in his sailor garb and ungroomed hair, that slight bowing in his posture from the injury to his back, the slope of his expansive shoulders only adding to the oddity of his appearance in the dungeon. Certainly he had not expected to see her here, as certainly as she had not expected to see him alone and unharmed.
"I wouldn't suggest I am the one sneaking around, for I come bearing gifts." He raised his hand showing the key chain, the metal jangling together in a wind-chime tune. "Although perhaps you were planning on breaking the chains with your prodigious charm? Tell me, my pet, is your southern belle simpleton merely an act to conceal the soul of an anarchist?"
"Fiddle-dee-dee," she said, unsure of Rhett's tone. Was he teasing her? Rebuking her? Praising her? Had he wanted her to do more or less? She didn't know. Fanning herself, she walked to her husband, her hips sashaying swiftly and her skin clammy. She brushed away that thing nudging at her brain. "No one with half a heart could have done nothing in a place like this, and why, I would take Abe Lincoln over your father any day!"
"Bénit le petit Jesus, and an amen to zat, Meez' Scarlett," the old man cackled from across the room.
She did a double-take at the sound of her name, but said nothing in reply.
"Mind, I would be bien pleased ef you did not spread Old Neb's particular politics of faith 'round ze upstairs," he added, with a sudden seriousness to his wispy, exotic voice.
"Don't worry about my wife, Neb, she doesn't listen to what anyone tells her. It must be a Georgian thing. In one ear, and out the other, with some cotton in between." There in the deep note of his last word, and somewhat in his face, lurked some hint of a simmering emotion, and she hesitated to take any more steps toward him. "Here, Scarlett." He tossed her the keys. "You do the honors. Bending is something I wish to avoid unless absolutely necessary."
"Are you—"
"Unlock Eli and Neb first."
"Eli?"
Scarlett scrutinized the man behind her with more care. It was hard to do, owing to the clotted gash across his temple and the grimness of the light. Delayed, she now pieced together the snatches of conversation she had only half-heartedly heard and recalled that during their walk in the thicket, Rebekkah had said her husband languished in the castle, which Rhett had wryly informed her in the morning was the nickname of the dungeon. Eli hadn't spared a glance in Scarlett's direction, or spoken so much as a yes to her. His gaze was loaded on Rhett. Collecting herself, Scarlett hastened to the two men. She unshackled Eli and then Neb. The frail one helped the younger, much larger one to his feet. Neb muttered "merci," and started tugging the deep, ebony behemoth of Eli away, but the man refused to budge, his sharp eyes still locked onto Rhett.
"Is that gonna be it Mista Rhett?" he asked in a gravelly voice.
"For now."
"How long is for now?"
"For awhile."
Eli barked a cough that tore at Scarlett's ears.
"You done promised, Bekkah," he wheezed when he could speak again. "Today's plan didn' go too good. None too good, if you ask me."
"I keep my promises, Eli."
"I 'spect you do. I just hope I'm gonna be here when it comes."
"As do I, but in order for me to fulfill my promise, things have temporarily changed," Rhett said. "Rebekkah is above, by the pines. She has some water and some food. I'm sure she will be glad to see you. She's the reason for your release."
Eli's face broke into a wide, shining-white smile, his eyes lost the anguish—though if anything, somehow, acquired more ferocity. "She's a fine woman," he said in that rocky bass.
"She's your woman; there isn't any doubt about that now," Rhett replied.
"On y va, Eli," Neb prodded. "You need water, mon fils. On zat wound and in your mouth. And cher Rebekkah will want to be seeing to you."
After a hasty look at Scarlett by the old creole man, the two men shuffled up the stairs, a feat Scarlett could hardly believe. Entranced with the tenacious hike toward the surface by the feeble and the injured, she forgot her husband until he called her name. Everything came rushing back to her, and she flew as quickly with her feet to Rhett, whose gaze was also toward those departing.
"What's changed Rhett?"
"Rebekkah will remain in Charleston and care for Rockwell's children, until the winter when Eli will no longer be required as much, and I can sign for him—and reclaim Rebekkah."
"She won't be setting up house with us in New Orleans? She will no longer be my maid?"
"Correct on both accounts."
"Rebekkah agreed to this?" she asked uncertainly. Rhett's eyes were still averted from her, his profile askew.
"I can't say she agreed so much as she read the writing on the wall and wanted Eli out of the castle today, and to stay within a short walk of him hereafter. Wives have funny loyalties to their husbands. Some wives, that is."
He finally turned his dark countenance toward her, and her hand cupped her neck, strangling any scream from escape. Saints preserve us! Something had at last visibly upset him. And that something was her!
"Don't be alarmed, Scarlett," he clipped lightly. "I haven't decided to punish you—yet."
Immediately he grabbed her by the hand and swiftly dragged her up the stairs. Whisking her behind him, as if whirling her in a reel, he carelessly threw the keys down the black stairwell and slammed shut the hatch. There was a power which vibrated about him, a hard, sinister set to his jaw. The patterns from the crescent, setting sunlight and the shape of the musical leaves of the cottonwoods shifted on his tanned face, conjuring the memory of that first day of the barbecue when he had emerged from the oak tree and revealed himself again as an eavesdropper to her conversation with another man, only then his expression had warmed with humor instead of barely suppressed rage.
"I shouldn't have expected either patience or common sense from you, but I had thought your instinct to protect your precious self would have prevented you from doing something as brashly idiotic as walking into the belly of the beast on your own accord."
Scarlett had tired of being handled, and fire fighting fear, she shot back: "The same could be said of you! At least I didn't go gallivanting off to patch things up with your father!"
"No, you went gallivanting off all over the plantation, ending up in the second to last place you should be, and one of the very places I told you not to go. I must amend my previous statement. You are as curious and eager to be killed as the damn cats with which you share an affinity and appearance. Do you know how long Rebekkah was looking for you, before she told me you had wandered off?"
"It couldn't have been any longer than I waited for her."
"Her plans had to change, as plans often do."
"I couldn't have known that," she said mulishly.
"True, just as Rebekkah couldn't have known that Neb was unavailable."
"Neb?"
"He drives the wagon of seafood and goods to and from the docks, and we had planned on him being your ride from here, with or without us." Rhett's voice thinned with a disturbing sharpness. "Thank God I found you. We would have called out the hounds, once we had seen to Eli and Neb. You should have stayed put, my fatuous feline."
"I stayed put for long enough. I didn't intend on getting lost."
"I see. It was accidental that you opened the hatch doors which weigh about as much as you do and meandered on down the stairs. You almost restore my boyhood wonder in the idea of serendipity."
"I never said that. This isn't all my doing. Or don't you recall that you left me? After I begged you to stay."
"Don't play the part of the injured wife, Scarlett. It's a hard act for you to do justice, particularly on a day when you fail to play the obedient wife."
"I don't have to listen to you. When have you ever listened to me?" she raged at him, for some reason even more bothered that he was checking his voice while she yelled like a banshee, when he was the one in a towering fury. Why couldn't he even erupt like the other men she knew? Volcanic and loud, spewing fire and spitting curses—that was the way of a hot-blooded man, but not this menacing, low-drawl, this wrath that burned with ice, this cruel controlling hatred that was the way of the men in his family.
He was bending a cool, long look at her, but she was in a high-flying temper and thoughtlessly shouted: "You are just like your father!"
The instant she blurted out this accusation, she regretted it. Her cheeks paled white, and she shielded her treacherous mouth with quaking, clasped fingers. This wasn't going as she had hoped. She wasn't really mad at him. He just always knew how to wind her up! She'd wanted to be sweet and for him to be sweet to her. Her eyes shook from left to right, noticing the three shaded figures of Rebekkah, Eli and Neb standing stock-still at the edge of the dusky thicket. They had heard every word of their quarrel, especially this last.
"Where 'ere thou art, act well thy part." Rhett took her by the elbow, tearing her hands away from her face, and began hurrying her toward the driveway, his hold firm not rough. "If you want me to take on that role, I certainly will."
"What, Rhett? You know I didn't mean what I said."
"You rarely do."
"Where are we going?"
"Away."
"Away from here? Away from Charleston?"
"Away from it all."
His retreat was fast, and she had to jog to keep a pace of him, his grip on her elbow unrelenting. Pebbles from the drive were seeding up into her slippers, the dirt from the gravel puffing into the air. She craned her neck around, catching the quiet gaze of Rebekkah in the crimson hue of summer dusk. "Isn't Rebekkah coming with us tonight?"
"I told you, Rebekkah is caring for Baby Lydia and Bobby for now."
The tall woman lifted a mellow hand and waved once at Scarlett, before dissolving into the blackness of the tree line. Her companions had already vanished. Things were happening in a blur, in a blink, even the sun had disappeared into the depths of the hillside. Twilight had fully settled; the tangerines and crimsons now dusted to violets and periwinkles.
Scarlett whipped her head back around, just as Rhett let go of her elbow and propelled her forward. She stumbled a few steps, balancing herself on a hitching post. One more step forward and she would have collided with a sixteen-hand stallion, a magnificent Appaloosa that would have made Mrs. Tarleton and her pa require smelling salts.
"Oh! He's gorgeous," she cried, momentarily swept up in awe.
"He's my mother's prized horse—on loan, to my disappointment, but a hell of an alternate plan. It seems I have the women in my life to thank for my present good luck."
She barely had time to mull on what he had said or to admire the beauty of Eleanor's beast before Rhett swung himself onto the saddle, and extended his hand to her. Trembling she placed her fingers into his palm and set her foot in the stirrup, and in a fluid, upward pirouette, she was sitting sideways on the muscular lap of her husband, her gaze so close to his unreadable face, her lashes nearly beat across his nose.
"Act the damsel in distress or the long-suffering wife," he said briskly, "but this is one night you will finally stop your poor act as a lady." His hands clenched around her waist, and he swiveled her in the saddle, forcing her to straddle the horse. She gasped as her hemline rose up to her knees and her slippers fell from her feet.
"My shoes!" she cried reaching down.
To her surprise, Rhett caught her hand, kissed it with an electric touch, and laughed softly in her ears. She twisted her head to study the man whose spirits had risen with the moon, whose black eyes now sparked with a midnight heat.
"What's so funny?" she asked with a genuine smile.
"You, thinking you're a damn Cinderella."
He wrapped his arms on either side of her, drew up the reins, and snapped the horse to a gallop. She yelled and shifted forward, holding onto the horn. The wind stripped down her bun and streamed coolly across her bare legs. The darkened house and sleepy land of Rhett's childhood whirred by in streaks of blue, and the awakening stars sparkled as strands of gold. Scarlett's eyes widened at the wonder of the speed, at the thrill of the arms tight on her hips, their warmth and safety the surest things in her life.
Away! They were finally going away! The life within her leapt, and she leapt with it. She would think about what Rebekkah must have sacrificed, what Rhett must have promised, what Kingsley must have demanded, and what Eleanor must have known, later—maybe tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that, but not right now, not in this exhilarating moment of release and freedom, secure in the hold of the man she loved, chasing the dawn of a new day, her heart singing and her lungs breathless.
End of Part One
Note: Just as a reminder "a bout de souffle" is French for breathless (uh boo duh soofle, if you want to know the phonetics). Tara and Atlanta and onward. I must give credit to Mitchell because I nicked quite a few structures of syntax and choice phrases from her in this chapter. My goal has ever been, well, since about chapter 3 when the plot became clearer and I had decided that this would not be a one shot (or two shot), to get to this point. And it only took six years, a quarantine, and a controversy to arrive.
The Butlers will return...all of them...the good and bad and in between in part two...
Thanks always to those who review. This is my little GWTW baby. And I can't believe I abandoned it for so long. But the muse is back. Like a Scarlett version of the Terminator. Or the popularity of Gaga on TikTok. Which reminds me though it has nothing to do with anything that for the last chapter I listened to Rhianna's 'Love on the Brain' about a million times. And this chapter was 'I'm gonna love you like I'm gonna lose you,' the Jasmine Thompson version, as well as Running up that Hill by Placebo, and a few others from Billy Eilish to Civil Wars (whose Poison and Wine is about my favorite GWTW song, after only Dion's 'All Coming Back', because dagnabbit it says gone with the wind in the lyrics!) Cheers! Stay safe and sane and healthy!