A/N Again, thanks to all of you who have left reviews for my story. Anyone else who writes knows exactly how much they mean and inspire us to continue. I wanted to write a fic so I could say I that I have done it - one more thing that can be crossed off 'the list' - but of course I want everyone who takes the time to read it to enjoy it as well. I hope you do. Here's part 3.

Her words swam on the page in front of him before the tears spilled over and rolled down his cheeks. In a matter of seconds, the world had disintegrated around him. Scarlett O'Hara was no longer a part of it, and only an unbearable void remained. His mind was in turmoil, his entire being rebelled against the knowledge. The great love of his life, his reason for being these past 14 years, however much he had tried to deny it, was dead. The thought of it made him sick to his stomach.

When his mother had sent word for him to come home from Dunmore Landing, this was the last thing Rhett had expected to find. A tearful Rosemary had handed him the letter and fled the room sobbing without a word. He knew she had read it, opened it in error she had said, thinking it was addressed to her, and her reaction to it's contents frightened him.

When his mother had told him as gently as she could what to expect, he had merely stared in disbelief. Here was a letter that was clearly written by Scarlett, addressed to him. How could she have written him if she were dead? It simply could not be true. His mother had touched his arm gently, her eyes filled with sadness and sympathy, then left the room, closing the study door softly behind her.

--

And there still he sat, clutching the pages and trying to make sense of what he had read. Trying to rid his mind of the horrors he was imagining she might have gone through.

Her letter raised far more questions than it answered, and a spark of hope had ignited itself in his chest. Parts of it made no sense to him, and the more he read it, the more it confounded him. It was possible she had been delirious, but she seemed so convinced of the veracity of what she wrote. She mentioned a letter from him regarding his marriage to Anne. He hadn't written any such letter telling her he had remarried, simply because it was not true. Where would she have gotten such an idea?

And why had this nightmare come in the post, more than five weeks after it was written? Had it been sent immediately, it would have arrived in mid November, not three weeks later than that. Why the delay? Had she survived the birth and lingered, only to die later? His mind went back to four years earlier, and the severity of her illness following her tumble down the stairs. He had been so convinced that she would die. But she had not. Maybe…

Was the miscarriage the reason she had experienced a difficult pregnancy, one that by the sound of things she should never have gone through? It was his fault. He had killed her. It was on his shoulders as surely as if he had taken out a pistol and pulled the trigger himself.

Rhett took a shaky breath trying to calm himself and steady his jumbled mind.

She had written that her cousin would deliver the letter. Surely if he had been unable to come for some reason, he would have enclosed a cover note explaining what Rhett should expect to find in her letter? Warning him to brace himself against it's contents. Telling him what had in fact become of her and the baby.

Could it have been sent in error? Was she still alive? What about the baby?

Oh God, why had he been such a fool to let her leave his mother's house. He should have at least made sure that she was recovered before ordering her to honour their agreement and leave. He should have found out where she was going, let her know that he cared for her. Made sure she wasn't expecting. That thought had not entered his mind.

He should have stayed after the accident instead of leaving her that accursed note and disappearing into the night without a backward glance. What sort of man deserted a woman under those circumstances? Rhett Butler. That was his answer. Damn his foolish pride and stubbornness.

But he knew that had he stayed, Scarlett would have seen it as an opening, a way to worm her way back in, and he hadn't wanted her. No, that wasn't true. He had wanted her, he'd just been unable reconcile himself with that fact. He'd needed more time, just a few weeks to sort his head out, and oh, what that time had cost him.

Why hadn't he tried harder to find her after she left? He'd run into a series of dead ends in his attempts to locate her and had eventually concluded that if she wanted him to find her, she would not have gone to such extraordinary lengths to conceal from him her whereabouts.

He had simply concluded that she did not love him, and had once again hardened his heart against her. If she did not care, then neither would he.

--

Much later he was still sitting in the study staring blindly into the fire, when he heard a soft knock and Rosemary spoke in a shaky voice from the doorway.

"Rhett, please, I must speak to you about Scarlett. There's something you need to know." He turned to see his sister standing at the door, red-eyed, nervously twisting a handkerchief in her hands. He put his untouched glass of brandy down on the small table beside him and rose.

"Come in, Rosemary," he said quietly. He bent to add another log to the fire and stoked it into life.

When she hesitated Rhett reached out and, taking her hand, led her into the room.

"Sit," he said, gesturing to a chair, "please." When she was settled, he seated himself opposite her and sighed.

"What about Scarlett, Rosemary?"

For several moments she could not answer him, her heart starting to pound even harder, and hot blood settling in her cheeks as she felt his eyes upon her. He was waiting.

"I've-" she swallowed hard, struggling to get the words out. "I've done something Rhett, something I know you'll hate me for when I tell you." She studied the carpet, her face flushed, refusing to look at her brother as she spoke.

"You're my sister Rosemary, I could never hate you."

"Rhett, please, let me say this to you before I lose the courage." She turned to him, a myriad of emotions in her face. "And before you make assertions that you are sure to take back before I have finished."

"All right. What do you want to tell me?" he asked gently, leaning forward and taking her hand in his.

"She-" Rosemary pulled away from him, took a deep breath and spoke in a rush before she could turn coward. "Scarlett didn't just disappear without word when she left here in February. She gave me a note to give to Mama."

"What?" He was on his feet immediately. "But you said you didn't know where she'd gone."

"That part is true. I burned the note without reading it. I didn't want her to keep hurting you."

"My God Rosemary, do you have any idea what not knowing where she went has cost me? Of course you do. You read my letter!" She winced at his outburst and shrank back deeper into her chair. She knew that worse was still to come.

"I'm so sorry, Rhett. I know what I did was wrong. I can't live with myself anymore, without telling you this. It's been eating away at me for months and now with everything that's…" she trailed off. " I have to get it off my chest. I feel like it's all my fault things have turned out the way they have." She swiped at a stray tear making it's way down her cheek.

"Oh really," he sneered as he approached her. "And why, my dear, do you think that might be?" He leaned over her, his hands on the arms of her chair effectively trapping her in it, and she didn't dare look at him as more heated blood make it's way into her face. He jerked her chin upward and her dark eyes met his.

"Perhaps it is because you realise that I may have been able to find her before she disappeared. That if I had known she was in Savannah, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to divorce her. And if I hadn't divorced her, she wouldn't have hidden herself away from me in Ireland."

Rhett glared at her for several long moments, struggling for control, his breath coming harsh and fast. Then he turned away and walked over to the fireplace, running a hand through his ruffled hair.

He looked back at her, studying her intently as she sat with her head bent, then sighed heavily.

"I shouldn't have frightened you like that, Rosemary," he said quietly. "I apologise. As much as I would like to lay all the blame on you for this, that would be wrong. I certainly don't condone what you did, you've played a big part in this mess, but this isn't all your fault. Scarlett's the one that chose not to tell me she was expecting and stay away. And I'm the one who gave up looking for her. I waited too long to go after her, even once I knew she was in Savannah. And then when I couldn't locate her, I just assumed she didn't want me anymore." He flopped back down in his chair. "I didn't try hard enough to find her."

She knew he was being kind to her by shouldering some of the blame for the sake of maintaining peace within the family. She couldn't bare it. She knew how hard he had looked for Scarlett, how defeated he had been when he had come back home without her.

She had to tell him the rest, no matter what it cost her.

"It isn't just the burnt note Rhett." She studied her lap, her instinct for self preservation warring with the desire to do the right thing. She could feel his eyes upon her. "There's more."

"More?"

"I didn't open your letter by mistake. I knew it said 'Mr' R Butler and not 'Ms'. The address was poorly written, but not so that it was illegible. I recognised her writing and I wanted to know what she had to say to you."

When he said nothing she ploughed on.

"I forged it Rhett," she said in a barely audible whisper.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I started to practise at school, when I was bored during lessons." She twisted her handkerchief around her fingers, still refusing to look at him.

"What the devil are you talking about, Rosemary? What did you forge?" he moved to the edge of his seat, watching her closely.

"The letter Scarlett spoke of, the one she received informing her you were married to Anne. I wrote it. I forged your handwriting and sent it to her."

He was out of his chair in an instant at her words and she shrank back, suddenly afraid of what he might do.

"What? Why? My God, Rosemary, whatever possessed you?" He stared at her in disbelief.

"I could see how miserable you were, Rhett," she pleaded with him. "I overheard you talking to Mama that evening in April, about not marrying Anne. You said that you were thinking of going after Scarlett. I couldn't let you do it, Rhett. Not after the things you told me, the things I'd heard, after all the misery she had caused you. She would only have-"

"What did it say?" He cut her off abruptly. "Your letter."

"Please, I only wanted to spare you any more pain." She reached out a hand to him in an attempt to assuage his anger. He glared down at the offending limb and she hastily withdrew it.

"What did you write her?" he repeated. "The truth, please, if that's not too much to ask." His black eyes glittered dangerously and for the first time in her life she was truly afraid of her brother.

"I," she stumbled over her words, "well you, technically, told her you had married Anne. You told her to stay away. That you wanted nothing more to do with her."

For several long moments he said nothing. The crackle of the fire and his heavy breathing were all that broke the silence in the room.

"Why the ruse, Rosemary?" He asked in deceptively calm voice. "Why such an elaborate deception? Oh, of course," he didn't give her time to answer, continuing his train of thought aloud, "you thought it would be more… convincing, if it came from me. You thought she'd be more likely to stay away if I had told her to. If you wrote her yourself, she might in turn have written to me and your lies," he spat the word, "would have been uncovered."

"Rhett, I thought I was- Oh Lord," she groaned, "I don't know what I was thinking. I just couldn't bare to see you as you were when she was here in Charleston. It was so obvious she was making you miserable. I hoped that once she was gone you would be your old self again. Happy, I mean. But you weren't, and it was her fault. I wanted her out of your life for good. I thought that was what you wanted too, but then you started talking like maybe you'd made a mistake in divorcing her, and I knew I had to do something. In all the years you were married to Scarlett, you'd never been happy, not really. I blamed her for it without knowing the full story and took it upon myself to do something about it. I didn't want you to become entangled in her web again. I thought that, given time, you would get over her. But you didn't. It's all my fault, Rhett. I made her believe that you didn't want her. I did it, and now she's dead, and you're going to hate me forever." Tears were streaming down her face as she finished.

"Good God, Rosemary! This is my life you were interfering with! Mine and Scarlett's, not yours! What right could you possibly have had that would entitle you to meddle in my affairs?None!" he shouted. "You had no right!"

"Rhett, please, I'm so sorry. I feel terrible with everything that's happened. If I had even for a moment thought she was expecting, I would never have- Oh, will you ever be able to forgive me?"

"Forgive you? I should kill you for this. My own sister for Christ's sake!" He threw his hands up in disbelief.

"I can't even look at you right now. I need to find out what's become of them. But I can promise you, Rosemary, that I will deal with you later. This isn't over." He stalked passed her towards the door, then stopped as if he had changed his mind, and came swiftly back to her. Rosemary recoiled at his sudden advance, and he bent down and grabbed her upper arms, roughly jerking her to standing.

"You better hope to God they're both alive Rosemary, because if you've cost me the last few months of Scarlett's life I will not be held responsible for what I might do to you. If they are not," he leaned in closer and whispered to her, "you better run, and hide, and pray."

With that he released her abruptly, and she stumbled backwards as he stormed out of the room.

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Thanks for reading. Please review. J