Part Two
Chapter 19
The morning following the longest, most exhausting day of Scarlett's life passed by in a flawless succession of perfect ease. Rebekkah had packed the trunks, laid out traveling clothes, and arranged for a morning bath to be drawn. The only task Scarlett had to do on her own was to request for one of the hotel maids to fix her hair and tie her stays. Around midday, Rhett arrived from his rooms, clean and casual, dressed in tailored impeccability and smelling of masacar oil and cigars. She had not seen him since their return. Last night after their wild escape, they had entered the hotel via the back way, windswept and winded, and gone to their separate chambers. Scarlett couldn't even recall how she had undressed or wound up under the sheets of her bed.
Viewing him in the sunny room now, she began to wonder if yesterday had all been a nightmare. Rhett complimented her with his roguish gaze, kissed her perfunctorily, and informed her that they would be taking the evening train. Without any more explanation, other than a passing aside that he had sent a telegram to her family with their train schedule, he departed. Home! He would still take her home en route to New Orleans! A bubble of pure joy swelled and burst in her heart. Nothing could steal that precious emotion from her. She frittered away the afternoon, sighing heavily, and staring longingly out the open balcony, chin in hand and fingers tapping impatiently on the molding. Soon though not soon enough, Rhett returned and escorted her from the ornate hotel, neither Scarlett nor her husband sentimental about wishing farewell to the only home they had shared together.
The buggy ride to the train depot consisted of that polite, inconsequential conversation at which all southerners excel; the majority of the trundling trip aboard the railway marked by the same indifferent discussions and forgettable pleasantries. A hedge of discomfort cropped up between Rhett and she should she broach anything regarding what had transpired in his final conversation with Kingsley or when she might expect Rebekkah to return, and as he was behaving with so much courtesy and kindness, almost like a well-mannered gentleman—apart from the inevitable snide remark on her lack of education or a sarcastic cut indicating his gauche views on the world—she decided to let the questions rest in the byways of her mind. She didn't want to think about Rhett's family, or his home, anyway. She had done plenty of that yesterday while in the doldrums of the late afternoon amidst the creepy, moss-choked trees. All that misery and murkiness could be laid aside, not forgotten, but blessedly forsaken.
The night of travel chugged by in restless anticipation. The verdant scenes of the Carolinian and then Georgian landscapes whisked by the window of their private train cabin, ever and ever more visible with the rising sun. An unexpected stop occurred along the way as the militia commandeered one of the luggage cars for ammunition. Otherwise there wasn't a single hitch. The promise of Tara and Ellen and all the comforts of her home blinked happily at her, mere hours and shortly, minutes away.
Scarlett almost bowled Pork over when she saw him waiting for her at the Jonesboro station, glad that the telegram had found its timely way to Tara. He had come in place of the laid-up Toby, the usual driver. His wrinkled, grave face was the first of home she had seen in over three months and she alighted from the car with few graces, thankful that no one seemed to care or notice the scandalous flash of her ankles and petticoats in her excitement to greet him. She squeezed his old, papery hands and babbled at him, gobbling up each and every answer he offered on what was new in the county and who had come and gone. Rhett took over the task of loading their trunks in the back of the wagon, balancing their luggage in between sacs of feed and planting supplies.
As they drove from Jonesboro, Scarlett soaked in every familiar sight, the hardiness of the north Georgian faces in town, the raw, overgrown forests which crept over the red, packed road, the hilltops of rich, lush color. Her eyes glowed with the brilliance of undimmed hope and sublime happiness, and when she finally put her green gaze on the sunlit avenue of cedars which framed the white-column house, tears curled over her bushy lashes. Instinctively she smiled at her husband, the radiance of her expression lighting something long-since buried in him.
"Welcome home, Scarlett," he said, kissing her fully but briefly on the mouth.
Her smile faltered as she tried to guess at that strange, glint in his black eyes, but the cries of her sisters and friends drew her away. There was a happy throng on the sweeping porch. Everybody from the neighborhood has come, she thought. That was not strictly true. By chance or custom, the Tarleton girls and Cathleen Calvert were paying a social call, and hugged and fawned over her as if she were their own blood, the Tarleton sisters more enthusiastically than her own sisters, the ladies known as much for their flaming red hair as for their exuberance. Cathleen pursed her lips when she placed her hands on Scarlett's waist, and blushed for the both of them. She was one of the few female acquaintances Scarlett might call friend—and by far the worldliest of any of the crowd on the porch, not excepting the pregnant bride.
Ellen joined the giggling group on the porch. All of Scarlett's worries about how she would view her mother on this day fled. Ellen stood as quietly elegant as ever, bathed in the late morning sunlight, the golden rays shimmering on her smoothly tied-back hair as haloed headbands. Whatever had been shrouded in secrets at Rhett's home was now gilded anew in the simple beauty of her mother. Until this moment, Scarlett had not realized the depth of her homesickness, the depth of her sickness for Ellen.
Quickly Scarlett disentangled herself from the others as Ellen came to her, arms extended and smile warm. Her luminescent brown eyes took in her daughter, as her arms took her body into her embrace, grazing her lips across her brow. Scarlett breathed her in, the scent of lemon verbena and gardenia wafting into her nose, filling her senses with peace. What did it matter who her mother had loved as a young girl? She loved Scarlett now. Her mother pulled back from her and sighed, glancing down at her curved stomach. "Oh, Scarlett, my dear." She graced her fingertips across the small swell of her daughter's womb, cupping her cheek. "You have grown up so much already."
Scarlett batted her lashes downward at a loss for words, and her mother moved away, welcoming Rhett to Tara. He had been unusually quiet, and answered Ellen's polite inquiries in a soft, respectful tone Scarlett had never before heard from him. Perhaps he might have spoken like this at their wedding, but that day might as well have passed in an autumn fog. She remembered nothing of it.
Gerald came bounding from the side yard then, three huge, slobbery hounds weaving around him, jumping and nipping for the treats he was sure to be carrying in his coat pocket. He exclaimed at his daughter and son-in-law's early arrival, despite the fact that the train had been an hour behind its original schedule, racing up the steps and crushing his "Puss" into a jovial hug, pounding Rhett on the back after Ellen had whispered in his ear that their daughter was expecting, and bellowing for cigars and brandy for the gentleman, and sherry for the ladies, in celebration.
With practiced deftness, Ellen persuaded her husband to postpone the congratulations until a later time, noting the pink cheeks of her daughters, the Tarleton girls, and Cathleen, and the dust on the clothes of their guests from their travels. Everyone bustled into the house with the general excess of goodwill and curiosity which a visit by a newlywed couple may excite. Scarlett basked in the sweetness of it all, genuinely pleased to be flattered and the undeniable envy of her sisters and neighbors after all the coldness and complexity of her visit to Rhett's home. The contrast between the two homes could not be any greater than when one of the hounds daringly licked the face of its master and Gerald responded by rewarding the beast with a handful of dried meat.
The remainder of the day twittered away in a flurry of gossiping and catching up, of settling in and exploring, and of eating and resting. Scarlett reacquainted herself with the tempo of Tara, the demands of the war effort upticking that leisurely rhythm of her beloved home. Ellen always had some chore to be completed, some distraction to draw her away from the moment, more so than before, despite her constant activity prior to secession and all that had followed. The gaggle of guests stayed on for lunch, pelting Scarlett with eager questions about Charleston and innocent ones about married life. They did not lolligag long afterwards, and Scarlett suspected the entrance of Rhett with her pa into the day parlor had everything to do with their flight. Not one of them could glance at her husband with any degree of composure. She wished them goodbye with an uncommon amount of cordiality, downright pleased with their fascination of her husband, for once relishing his enigmatic allure, and smug about the jealousy for herself. Steered by Gerald, the conversation went to the obvious, odious subject of war. Her pa wanted to talk of nothing else, asking pointed queries of Rhett—which with each reply Scarlett had to hold her breath, grateful when Rhett responded with ambiguous platitudes which she knew he did not believe, but for whatever reason, was choosing to promote for the sake of peace with her pa. In fact, the most shocking thing about Rhett's conduct was how little it shocked.
He oozed with charm and inoffensive wit, complimenting her parents on everything under the sun or the roof, teasing her sisters about their beaux—Carreen blushing bright red and Suellen begrudgingly accepting Rhett's playful nudging, and demonstrating his superb talent, he rarely deigned to reveal, of making everyone around him deliriously at ease with themselves, with him, and with their surroundings—in short, being the idyl of the southern visitor. Once or twice, Scarlett actually gaped at her husband. She had held zero expectations about Rhett's potential behavior amongst her kin, caught up in her own yearning for home and anticipation for her arrival, but was relieved that for whatever reason, he was choosing to adopt a more approachable demeanor and amiable tact. That his real character had undergone any great change she never once considered. This was an act, polished to the point of caricature. Still, it quelled something of apprehension in her that he was opting for the gentleman's code. Perhaps she might pester him on his sudden conversion to the more predictable fold of manners later when they were alone in her room, but at that thought, her skin prickled with mortification. The prickle acted as a premonition.
The only real awkwardness that arose on her homecoming happened after supper. Gerald was full in his cups, reminding everyone of his declaration to share in celebratory cigars with his scamp of a son-in-law, winking at his oldest Missy that she was in the family way, and joked that it was a good thing, a very good thing indeed that the two t'would be enjoying separate rooms during their stay at Tara—the accommodation discretely provided once Ellen had learned of her daughter's physical state. Rhett thanked him for the liberality of their guest room, but in equal disregard for decorum, told Gerald and all the souls in the drawing room that he would not impose on their hospitality in that way, but would very happily stay in his wife's bed—so as to minimize the impact of their intrusion.
"Oh-ho!" Gerald hooted. "'Tis a fine rogue of an Orangeman me son-in-law! I had it in me head to give you a talking to, lest you drag me sweet daughter down with you, but I might be persuaded you're no more than a regular laddybuck in love with talk such as all that." The grin on Rhett's piratical mouth had been little more than a leer. Scarlett did not take the time to chew over whatever mischief her husband might be cooking up from making comments like that, and was spared more humiliating allusions to her present condition and the cause behind it by her pa, with the immediate supplication by Ellen for him to lead the family in their nightly prayers.
All the O'Haras and all the house servants knelt down, the floorboards sagging under the increased, concentrated weight. Wordlessly Rhett retreated to the unlit hallway. Scarlett supposed religion must be where his reversal of obliging behavior concluded. A slight crease puckered between her brow, when she noticed the deeper, much more disapproving frown fold over Mammy's high forehead.
Scarlett had been almost as giddy to see Mammy as she had been to see her mother, but her high spirts in that regard had deflated somewhat under the sharpness of Mammy's look whenever Rhett would dare enter the same room. The implacable woman had been the sole resistant to every trick, every courtesy, every attempt by Rhett to soften her liking towards him—and to Scarlett's perplexed amusement, there had been many. When applied to directly by her husband, Mammy was as brisk as deference would permit, glowering something terrible if Ellen were out of sight and blank-faced if her mistress were at her side, and despite a specific entreaty by Rhett, he was "Cap'n Butler," never "Mista' Rhett."
Vaguely Scarlett recalled how she had wept on Mammy's broad, sloping shoulder on the eve of her wedding, inconsolable and unable to articulate her grief that the Butler man had reappeared to force her to go through with the hasty engagement, dashing those last proverbial hopes by his ill-bred attendence at his own marriage. Surely Mammy wouldn't resent Rhett for that crying jag. Scarlett would set her straight if that were the case. Most brides must sob wretchedly for the death of their maidenhood. If some other cause had hardened her against Rhett, something she had perceived on her own, well, there was nothing to be done for it. Scarlett knew that if Mammy's mind were made up, Rhett could butter her up with a bucketful of sweet cream, and it wouldn't make a dent in her stubborn, immovable heart.
Prayer time had always been an interval for Scarlett's mind to wander, and it was aimlessly roaming through the events of the day, resting longest on the futility she saw in her husband's apparent determination to make Mammy his ally. He would have a much easier time conscripting the son of a Yankee general to join Confederate ranks than to inspire Mammy's loyalty—especially if he couldn't even pretend to be a marginal believer, goodness—even a Protestant! Eyes open and head unbowed, she scolded her heathen husband with slanted eyes, receiving an elbow for her troubles from Suellen as it was her turn to pray. Despite her recent absence of religious practice, the words fell from her lips as readily as if she spoke her own name. The fervency of her prayer this evening was infused with the warmth of familiarity and the contentment of nostalgia, her lips wavering upward at the edge, her dimples flickering charmingly, and her voice deepening with the adoration of simpler, fearless times.
Ellen embraced Scarlett in a tender, lasting hug, an unusually long display of affection, before the ladies all headed up to bed. Scarlett smirked as her pa cornered her husband, his stalky frame a full foot shorter than the man whose back he had pushed against the wall, as he explained in his melodious, raspy brogue the dangers of a wartime siege and the injustices suffered by the Irish under the heel of the English. Scarlett felt no pity or inclination to save Rhett. It served him right to be browbeaten in an innocuous way by Gerald for excusing himself from genuflecting before God.
Earlier, Scarlett had planned on being frigid with Mammy while she assisted her out of her stays, but couldn't keep up the smarting humor under the woman's gentle administrations and humming voice, calling her "lamb" and speaking to her of what a blessing that baby would be. It felt too marvelous to be soothed by her beloved hands and husky voice. Scarlett didn't quite believe the assurance on the benefits of the child, but she wouldn't contradict the woman if she had decided to be as light of touch with her as she was stand-offish with Rhett. Some goodwill for her husband came over her, however, and she tempted to paint him in a more attractive light.
"You know, Mammy dear, I'm not at all bothered that Rhett is my husband. I know he can be a rascal, and he irritates me—and oh how you wouldn't believe what a mess his family is!" Here something fiery and fierce, something truly alive animated her young face. "But he is my husband, and well, you see—"
"Plain as day, Miz Scarlett dat you done fallen in love wit' Cap'n Butler. Plain as da day is long. Don' need to tell me none of dat." Her scowl smoothed and she patted Scarlett's arm. "Ah worry for you, dat all, my lamb. Ah worry he don' know how to love a young miss like yo'self."
Scarlett worried about the same thing, the flames dwindling to wisps in her smokey eyes. Blackguard that he was—why should he enlist Mammy? She, Scarlett, needed her for her own support! Rhett was on his own in overcoming the ebony rampart of a woman. Mammy wished her goodnight and lumbered through the door. The creaking exhale of the wood and the rustle of Mammy's stiff skirts as she went down the hall to attend to Scarlett's sisters was such a welcome orchestra of sounds, such a wonderful regularity of Scarlett's former nightly preparations that she smiled without real understanding, only feeling settled in a way she had not since Rhett had whisked her away from the wedding party many months ago.
Abloom in the predictable comforts of home, Scarlett emerged from her dressing room to discover Rhett already lounging in a corner chair of her bed chamber, languidly smoking a cheroot. The sight of his swarthy face, his unbuttoned shirt, and his long legs propped up on the edge of her footboard upended all that bouncing belief in sweet constancies. Here was proof that her life would never revert to what it had been before her marriage. As if to mock her, that particular sensation in her belly swirled.
Flustered she refrained from skittering across the floor by the slimmest of degrees. She removed her wrapper, pausing as she normally laid it on the chair filled by Rhett, switching it between her hands a few times, and pivoting uncertainly before deciding to toss it onto the floor. Aware of his silent observation, she climbed into her bed, taking meticulous care in smoothing out her comforter and fluffing her pillow. At last, she rested her eyes on the jarring presence of her husband in her girlhood room.
His gaze glistened with the glow of his cheroot's embers. A spiced, charcoal cloud hung in the air between them, evaporating toward the open window. He inhaled deeply, exhaling slowly, speaking in a voice as luxuriously oblique as the smoke which wreathed his head.
"Your family seems surprised that you're pregnant."
A flush peppered her skin and she groaned. "Oh, do you really have to be so vulgar about it?"
"If describing your current state in the most direct way possible is vulgar, then I concede the moral high ground you undoubtedly esteemed me to have occupied until this very moment."
She frowned. The solicitous, thoughtful stranger had disappeared, at least in front of her, and she replied with the appropriate mixture of affront and dismissiveness. "I could hardly write home about it."
"You didn't consider it glad tidings?"
"I didn't it consider it proper tidings to write in a letter." If she were totally honest—he had hit closer to the mark, and something in his black eyes made her believe he was letting her untruth slide by his notice.
"I would have imagined Eulalie and Pauline do not share in your scruples, and might have passed the news along."
"Aunt 'Lalie? Why! She's more prudish than a nun! And Aunt Pauline doesn't know."
He favored himself a long drag on his cheroot, while Scarlett flicked her green gaze over his face, hunting for something which she didn't have a name to give but would recognize on sight, finding nothing but smoke. Still there must be more going on beneath his blank exterior: the line of questioning was too precise to be random.
"Does it bother you that I wasn't chomping at the bit to spill my secrets?" she asked primly. "I didn't know I'd married a gossip."
He laughed so loudly at the joke that she shushed him with fear-rounded eyes pinned on the door. "Mother of god! Do you want my father to charge in here? Keep your voice down!"
"Oh what do I care, Madame? You're the one who likes to pretend your parents are unaware that we share a bed. In case it has escaped your notice, they share one as well, and while it is taboo to speak of, as I have already been demoted from my lofty pedestal, I am not above mentioning that they are well aware of how babies are made." Scarlett's magnolia face bled a deep shade of maroon as Rhett laughed softly, tapping the end of his cheroot into a tin cup on her dresser. "On that note, I don't believe I fully appreciated until tonight how extraordinarily similar you are to your father."
"Pa?" Scarlett asked, grappling for some calm as she toyed with her sheets. "I don't see how I'm anything like him. I'll grant you that I did inherit something of his temper, but he's a sweet, selfish, silly darling, and I'm..." Her thought floundered under the indulgent grin on Rhett's lips, and she couldn't quite finish the objection.
"I couldn't have framed it better myself, and am impressed you owned up to your very Irish up."
"I did nothing of the kind."
"It makes me think there is hope for you yet."
"I have no idea what you mean by that, but knowing you as I do, I am sure it is both nasty and untrue."
"Do you know me then, my pet? Pray tell me what it is you know about me."
There was a tenseness to his languid pose, a hardening of his features that she failed to see, despite suffering an inexplicable frisson of worry at these infinitesimal shifts in her husband's mood. Oh! She should have bitten her tongue. Making a claim in front of him that she could not prove was like waving a red banner in front of a bull. He had given her one pass; he wouldn't give her two. Rhett could be the most finicky person about trifling deceits or inconsequential brags, never turning the mirror on himself. Not possessing a mind for analyzing, it took her a moment to realize that she was in the middle of contemplating at least one thing she knew about him—the words of his father circling in her thoughts to second her observation.
"I know you demand honesty from everyone, but yourself," she said, parroting her father-in-law.
"Interestingly put, my dear. Was it your own perspicuity that provided the insight, or do you stand on the shoulders of lesser men, or should I say a lesser man, to have arrived at this conclusion?"
He knew! Somehow he knew she had quoted Kingsley. Good heavens! What was the use in lying to him? She shrugged prettily, that streak of practicality winning over her pride. "I may have not come to the idea on my own, but I was quick enough to judge the truth of it when I heard it."
"Ah! The herald-hoarding lady divulges one of her manifold secrets. Care to enlighten me on any other panegyrics on my character you have been privy to hear?"
Scarlett wasn't entirely certain what a panegyric was, but she could infer he meant it as the opposite of its true meaning. Her face adopted an expression of supreme indifference. "I gathered from your behavior on the train that you didn't care to discuss anything to do with your father."
"For the most part, your gathering has paid off. I have no wish to speak of what I discussed with my father, but I am very open to listening to a fuller account of what you discussed with him." Rhett crushed the end of his cheroot into the cup. "As I am certain you omitted the better parts of the conversation."
"I didn't omit anything," she lied vehemently.
"Indeed. So my father was lying when he told me that you had professed no qualms about giving up the baby in exchange for me?"
Believing that Kingsley must have revealed to Rhett her admission that she would go to bed with another man—for his well-being—she was out-of-sorts that he had chosen to confide this tidbit. Scarlett hadn't said anything about it because she had forgotten it. Rhett waited for an answer and had leaned forward, planting his feet on the ground. She caught an eagerness in his face which she couldn't explain, and which cleared away as soon as her expression creased.
"I didn't mention it because, well, because..."
"Because?"'Rhett prodded, reclining back in his chair.
"Because you know why." She crossed her arms in frustration, scowling at the bedsheets. She didn't intend on making a fool of herself for a third time, set against throwing herself at his head only to be rebuffed and her declaration unreciprocated.
"Scarlett, will you look at me?"
A tremor of gentleness, which he sometimes permitted, thickened his voice; it would call her to him no matter the distance or difficulty. Often she would hear it when making love, but not always, not even most memorably. She had first noticed it during their wedding night together on the train as her tears had dampened his shirt and her cheeks, and her sorrow for home, for this very space, and this very room, had overwhelmed her, convinced that life with him had meant damnation for her. It wasn't her life with him that was damnation, however; it was her love for him. He repeated his request, and reluctantly she tipped her face in his direction, roaming her covetous eyes over him—his fine, proud features, his strong, broad chest covered in matted curls, his thick, lithe legs, a real, breathing pirate, the recklessness of his gaze adding a certain fillip of danger.
She wanted him in a way she had never wanted anything or anyone. Her love for Ashley had been a child's infatuation, a toy she would have broken once she had trapped it in her hands, but her love for Rhett was a woman's love, despite her age, despite her inexperience. It had been this way since the spark which had lit her heart on seeing him walk down the gangplank to her on that fateful evening, his raven hair long and tousled in the sea breeze, his skin sun-kissed a golden olive, his daring, wicked smile.
Lost in her own longing for him, she could not see the effect of her unchecked hunger on her husband. Rhett bent one eye brow up, and the side of his mouth down. An odd glimmer of humor awoke in his deep gaze, the look of a man who knows himself well but who can nevertheless surprise himself.
"Have you ever considered the possibility that you frighten me, my pet?" he asked quietly.
"Frighten you? Nothing frightens you, least of all me."
He smiled and folded his arms. Scarlett watched the play of his chest muscles at the movement, wondering what on earth he was going on about now.
"Of course things frighten me. Only fools are devoid of all fear."
"You weren't frightened the other day, even though by all accounts, you should have been terrified."
"My childhood inured me to the usual fears of physical harm, to a certain point, but—"
"How is your back?" she meekly interrupted.
He studied her, measuring how much genuine sympathy lurked beneath the blush. "It hurts, Miss Nightingale," he admitted with a wave of his hand, "and in spite of your eyes already glossing over with disinterest, I will allay any unseen, lingering worries for my injuries by reassuring you that based on past experience, the pain should be on the decline and my back on the swift road to recovery by tomorrow."
"I'll have you know that I have been worried. I just didn't think you wanted to be reminded of all that ugly business."
"I hardly need to be reminded of the condition of my back, but I appreciate your unnecessary and uncharacteristic delicacy on the matter, particularly as it dovetails nicely into what I was attempting to convey, which is that as difficult as it is for you and your densely literal brain to appreciate, there are fears far worse than the deprivations or injuries which can afflict the flesh, namely, those that can wound the spirit."
"Fiddle-dee-dee, I'm not a ninny. I know what heartbreak is."
"You know the word; I'd wager you don't know the cost."
"Oh, and I suppose you do."
"As a matter of fact, yes."
Scarlett stopped fidgeting with the comforter, suddenly unable to meet his eye, peeking at him through the bristle of her lashes.
"It's not what you think, Scarlett," he went on in his bland tone, "My life has afforded me opportunities to experience certain unpleasantness. I'm not confessing to any great love tragedy—although given what you said to my father, I did wonder if you might fulfill the role of Medea, when I had always pegged you for a Helen of Troy."
"What do either of those women have to do with me?" Scarlett asked waspishly, annoyed as always when he waxed lyrical about things he knew she had no understanding.
"Nothing of consequence." Rhett smiled ruefully, muttering, "But for her own part, it was all Greek to her."
"You know, I believe you've got more hot air than most men have breath."
"And I believe that you have once again delayed me from my point."
"And what would that be? Is this where you tell me how I'm too young to understand about love? Too naive?"
"No, this is where I tell you that I had planned on breaking you in, and instead, you are breaking me in—and I find the unexpected bit between my teeth uncomfortable."
The denial she had already been forming in her mind died there. Breaking him in? Into what? He'd used this language before—comparing her to a wild horse which he intended on taming. She hadn't understood it then and she didn't now. Why couldn't he just speak plainly? He talked round and round, as indirect as only one other man—Ashley. Even his horrible father had at last come to the frank point. Distracted again, but from bewilderment, she jumped when she realized that Rhett had approached the bed and was stripped down to his undergarments. Usually he wore at least a dressing gown, if not pajamas. He chuckled at her pale lips and rosy cheeks.
"And here I thought having my way with you in the woods had finally freed you from all your cumbersome ideals on modesty."
"Why do you have to say such ill-bred things?"
"Why do you enjoy doing such ill-bred things?"
Fuming while flushing, Scarlett slouched down into the center of the mattress, yanking up the sheets. "You should cover up before you go to bed. I would hate to imagine what my baby sister would do should she see you in the hall with hardly a stitch of clothing on you."
"Are you really so squeamish in your parents' home that you want me to sleep in another room?"
"You do whatever you prefer, you always do."
"I prefer to sleep with my wife."
There was just enough sincerity that it stole from her the will to fight him. Curse him! He knew she wanted him beside her—at Tara, at a hotel, in the woods. Unwillingly her gaze floated over his toned and tanned flesh, his muscles of deep divots and evocative shadows, flowing as rivulets across his solid body. He cleared his throat, a devil in his grin at her guilty, glowing expression.
"It's all the same to me where you choose to go to bed," she said with false resignation, rolling away from him. "I'm so tired, I doubt I'll even notice either way."
He dimmed the light on the bed stand, and she felt the weight of his body press down on the mattress, the heat of him behind her, and his breath on the back of her neck as he whispered: "I might not be the god-fearing one between us, my dear, but I daresay I can make a believer out of you yet."
A hot, sweaty hour later, he had more than proven his point. Without a doubt, she had noticed where he had chosen to go to bed.
Note: One of my favorite lines from GWTW is from their honeymoon period: "She learned everything about him except what he really was." And that pretty much sums up the inspiration for this chapter, and the entirety of their canonical relationship. I am a greedy writer and want all the reviews you lovely readers are willing or even unwilling to give me. I am imperfect and unpolished in my writing but if I can claim anything for myself, it is that when on a hot streak, I can be prolific. And nothing fans the fire in my fingers, as it were, more than your comments and thoughts on the story. So please review, review, review. I know you're there...One of my favorite things to do is see from where my readers hail. Especially during this time of social distancing, it is a fun thing to know that I might have made someone a world away from me smile. I hope this chapter does just that. Stay safe and sane and healthy! Cheers. Another shameless plug for reviews. Have a happy weekend!