"You read my letter?" Scarlett whispered. Her entire body felt paralysed by fear.
"I did." he answered quietly, looking into her frightened eyes until she could no longer meet his gaze and had to look away. "I assume you hadn't meant for me to see it."
"Lord no! I never wanted you to find out that way unless, well, only if I died. I didn't want you to- " What could she say to him? That she didn't want him to know about their child? Of course she did, but only on her terms, at some predetermined, much later date.
"You didn't want me to come here and take the baby away from you, like I did Bonnie," he finished for her.
"Oh Rhett, I-" She faltered under his gaze and turned away.
Is that what he was going to do now? Take Cat from her? He couldn't, she would kill him before she'd let him take her baby! Scarlett closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. If ever there were a time to panic, it was now, but she had to think rationally. Besides the fact that this man was her child's father, she also happened to be in love with him. They would have to behave like mature adults for once in their lives and come to some sort of arrangement.
The gears ground slowly in her sluggish mind. She would have to go back to America. No, she thought indignantly, why shouldn't he come to Ireland. Oh but if he wanted Cat for months at a time, Scarlett would have to be close. She couldn't be away from her for such long periods. She'd have to move nearer to Charleston. Scarlett balked at the thought. She loathed the place and the people would shun her. This was all his fault!
No, she had to admit, that wasn't true. As much as Scarlett wanted to lay all the blame on him for her situation, they had created this mess together. If she had gone back as soon as she realised she was expecting he wouldn't have married that whey-faced little ninny Anne and they could have been husband and wife again before anyone even knew they'd divorced. Would they have been happy? She didn't know, but perhaps not. After all the misery they had caused one another, maybe they were better off apart, regardless of how much it hurt. When she was able to put her own feelings on the matter aside she could admit that she wanted Rhett to find happiness, even if it meant he was with someone else.
Anne. He must love her or why else would he have married her? It baffled her. How could he have been interested in her when she was barely more than a child? To Scarlett's annoyance, she immediately thought of her parents, of Frank Kennedy and her sister. Yet somehow they didn't count. Ellen Robillard had been quite the beauty in her youth, so it was only natural that she would have turned Pa's head. And Frank was too much of an old woman to get himself a better belle than the fifteen-year-old Suellen.
But Rhett, Rhett was different. What possible interest could a man with his worldly experience have in that innocent girl? She had no physical charms to recommend her to him as Scarlett had. She may look like Melanie Wilkes, but Rhett had never shown any interest in Melly in that way. What could possibly have induced him to marry her? Or maybe that youth and innocence was the attraction. It wasn't as if Anne could have trapped him into marriage with a pregnancy, not even Rhett would have gone that far. But for all Scarlett knew she might be carrying his baby right now. The thought of Anne bearing Rhett's children made her sick. And the thought of that woman raising her child …
Rhett, who had been closely watching the play of emotions on her face saw the shutters close behind her eyes.
"I won't let you take that child out of this house, Rhett." she whispered, "I'll fight you tooth and nail if I have to, don't think that I won't."
"Scarlett, calm down, please and let me explain." He peeled off his damp coat and draped it over the back of the chair nearest the fire, then took a seat next to her.
"Don't you tell me what to do, Rhett, you don't have that right any more," she warned, pushing herself up on the sofa, and then swinging her feet onto the floor. "And who said you could make yourself comfortable? You're not welcome here, so I suggest you go find that horse of yours and leave." She waved her arm in the direction of the door. "I don't need you Rhett Butler. I was doing just fine on my own up until now. If you want to see your child, have your lawyers contact mine. I won't be unreasonable."
"I'm not here to take the baby away from you, Scarlett," he tried to reassure her.
"You're not." She eyed him suspiciously.
"No. Now for once in your life just be quiet and listen to me. Please."
"Fine," she scowled at him, folding her arms defensively across her chest. Her panic was subsiding slightly as her mind processed his words, but her eyes still betrayed her wariness. "Why are you here?"
"I came here for you," he said simply.
"Oh really!" she cried, jumping up off the sofa. "So what, Rhett, you just expect me to give up the life I've made for myself here and come back to Charleston with you?" Oh he was insufferable! "I suppose you've already bought the house. Nice little cottage for the ex-wife and her bastard baby to live in, while you and Anne have proper respectable Charleston children. Or were you planning on asking me to be your mistress again? Well, you can just forget that mister. If you think I'm going to go back and live in that ghastly town in disgrace, like some kind of fallen woman, you have another thing coming! People respect me here, I have family and friends who love me and don't sit in judgment. I won't give that up for you."
"Scarlett, please sit down and let me explain. Truly, you look very pale." He took hold of her upper arms and attempted to lead her back over to the couch.
"Get your hands off me dammit!" She twisted out of his grasp and backed away from him. "Fair skin is called fashion Rhett, I am not going to faint! I wasn't going to faint the first time! You just used that as an excuse to get into my house. Why couldn't you just come out and say what you knew instead of feigning concern for my well-being?" He held up his hands in surrender, hoping she would calm down.
"Speaking of Anne," she sneered, her voice dripping with venom, "did you bring her with you on your little mission to Ireland?"
"No. I don't think it would have been appropriate for me to travel with a woman who isn't my wife."
"What do you mean she isn't your wife?" she asked, her fear and anger abating somewhat as surprise and confusion took their place. He couldn't, wouldn't have divorced her. It was not possible. "Did she die?"
"No," he smiled, bemused, at her question. "She's quite well as far as I know."
Oh, he couldn't have! Scarlett was aghast. "You divorced her as well? Oh, Rhett, how could you! That poor girl! Lord knows, I hate her, but still!" Of all the things Rhett had done in his life, this had to be one of the worst.
"Scarlett, stop. I never married her." He should have known she might jump to some such conclusion, not knowing what else to think.
"What? But-" She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. She was at a complete loss for words. 'But' what? She allowed Rhett to take her by the arm and lead her back to the sofa where he sat down next to her.
As her mind began to function once more, Scarlett frowned at him, an accusatory expression on her face. "But you wrote to me. You told me you had married her." Rhett sighed and shut his eyes for a moment.
"That letter was forged Scarlett," he said bitterly, "by my darling little sister. I knew nothing about it until you mentioned in yours that I'd written you. I couldn't understand it and then Rosemary came to me and confessed her deception. She forged a letter to you from me, telling you I had married Anne."
"I don't believe it!" she cried. "That little snake!"
"Quite," he concurred, with a twisty half-smile. "Do you know I compromised Anne? Did Rosemary write that in her letter?" Scarlett shook her head. "We took her orphans out for a picnic one afternoon and one of them wandered off. We didn't find him until after nightfall. That's what started the whole mess." He paused. "There was talk of marriage for a while. By everyone other than me. "
"I knew you would never have married a girl like that!" she crowed, triumph momentarily winning out over fear. "If you hadn't done it thirty years ago, why would you bother now?"
"That's exactly what I said."
"And yet I believed the words in front of me. I believed you wanted to make peace with Charleston, that you wanted a chance at contentment, if not happiness, in marriage. That you had fallen in love with her. I'm such a fool, the words was so convincing I never even thought to check."
"Well, why should you, when you got it straight from the horse's mouth?"
She sat in silence, shaking her head as she absorbed this piece of information. Had she been on better terms with her aunts she might have received information from them and this whole mess would have been avoided. They could have contradicted it immediately.
"I still have it you know," she said looking up at him.
"What?"
"That letter from Rosemary. I use to read it when I was sad or lonely, when I was missing you. It made me so angry to read those words when you said you loved her that I'd stop feeling any of those things."
"A very useful tool. May I see it?"
"Later. Carry on with what you were saying." She was suddenly eager to hear what his intentions were. Was there hope for them after all?
"I'd confided in Rosemary some of the circumstances of our relationship after she overheard us quarrelling one evening when you were in Charleston. Subsequently, when she overheard Mama and I talking about my having made a mistake in divorcing you, about wanting you back," he didn't miss the light that flickered in her eyes at his words, "she decided to take it upon herself to prevent that from happening. She thought she was protecting me from you by letting you think you couldn't get me back after I'd divorced you. She wanted me to marry Anne, but you know me well enough I would hope, to believe that I never entertained the thought. How could I marry someone I didn't love, Scarlett, after having spent seven years in a miserable marriage myself?"
"I just assumed you were off your head at the time," she said dismissively.
"Well, yes." He smiled. "I don't deny that I was out of my mind after you left, but not that far out. I do care for Anne, and I think she probably loved me, but she's better off where she is." Scarlett raised her eyebrows in query. "She's Mrs Edward Cooper now," Rhett supplied.
"But besides making the decision not to marry her for my own selfish reasons, I couldn't allow her to suffer as I had in a relationship with a partner who was in love with someone else. She may have been young and naive, but she isn't stupid. She would have realised eventually that she would never have my heart and it would have broken her to know that. I couldn't knowingly do that to her."
"What I did to you." Scarlett said quietly, looking away.
He turned her face back towards him. "I did it to myself as well. I knew you didn't love me when we married, Scarlett. You told me so yourself." The intensity of his dark gaze made her uncomfortable. She shifted away from him slightly on the sofa and cleared her throat.
"So you are not married?" She thought it worthwhile to check.
He smiled at her and gently took her hand in his. "No."
"Oh." Scarlett stared at him, her mouth slightly open, not certain what else to say. What did it mean for her and Cat? He had said he was here for her, but just because Rhett wasn't married didn't mean he that he loved her. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You divorced me."
"Yes, I did," he said quietly.
A sudden and resounding slap stung his face and took him by surprise. He picked up her hand and placed a kiss on the palm.
"You're not going to apologise for that, are you?" She pulled her hand away.
"Scarlett, it's something that at the time I felt I had no choice but to do."
"Why Rhett? I still don't understand how you could do that after-" She trailed off and he knew she was thinking of their union on that rain-swept shore. "I waited for you for two months in Savannah and you didn't come. I was so sure that you would come for me. I thought after you'd cooled down a bit, once you'd had time to reconsider, you would change your mind. I couldn't believe you meant the things you wrote in that awful note you left me following the accident. After those words you said to me on the beach- I knew you loved me then, despite your taking it back afterwards. I was so convinced of it and then you didn't come. Why Rhett? Why didn't you come?"
A stray tear spilled down her cheek and she swiped at it angrily. She shouldn't be crying now. Rhett reached into his jacket pocket, produced a handkerchief and handed it over. She sniffled a little, and dabbed her eyes dry.
"Scarlett, I didn't know where you were. Not until your aunts came back to Charleston after your grandfather's birthday."
"But why ever not?" she asked crossly. "I left a note for your mother."
"Rosemary burned your note." Her mouth fell open slightly in surprise, before she snapped it shut.
"I'm going to have a few choice words to say to that girl the next time I see her."
"You may want to throw one of those slaps in as well," Rhett suggested. She rewarded him with a watery smile and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like 'sorry', although he could not be sure.
"Scarlett, when you left without word I assumed you were punishing me for treating you the way I had. I convinced myself that you were not in love with me, despite all your claims to the contrary, and that I was once again the fool in the tragedy that had been our life together. I got the divorce to prove to you, but mostly to myself, that I didn't care about your leaving. My mother, who was very supportive of your cause by the way, tried to convince me not to go through with it, not until I at least knew where you were. But I thought I knew why you'd disappeared, that you were just playing your same old games with me, and I was determined to call your bluff. I was so hell bent on getting the better of you for once, that I wouldn't listen to Mama, or anyone else for that matter. I am truly sorry for causing you such heartache, Scarlett, but can you at least understand why I felt I had to do it?"
"I suppose. But it doesn't make it any easier. You hurt me so badly Rhett." He was holding her hand again and this time she didn't try to pull away.
"I know," he said quietly. "If it's any consolation I began to regret it almost before the ink was dry."
"It's not," she huffed. "Everyone knows I'm a divorced woman. Do you honestly think I'm just going to be welcomed back into Charleston society? Or Atlanta? Suellen's probably told everyone who would listen all about her sister's failed marriage!"
"Only if she knows about it."
"Please, Rhett, it's probably half way to California by now. You know what those old peahens are like where gossip's concerned. Even if they have nothing to corroborate the story, it'll be out there just the same."
"There's the rumour, yes, but I've been quite careful about not to air our dirty laundry. I'm not saying nobody knows, Scarlett. It would be naive to think that, but the general consensus is undecided. No-one's actually been brave enough to ask me and when I didn't marry Anne, well people started to think perhaps they had been misinformed. Besides, as you know, there is no divorce in South Carolina."
"I'm going to pretend you didn't sound just a little bit smug when you said that, Rhett Butler." She glared at him, but some of the intensity was gone. He ignored her comment and continued.
"I went to Dunmore Landing after the whole Anne debacle had resolved itself, to try and clear my head, make some decisions. But by the time I was ready to admit my mistake and fetch you home, you were gone from Savannah. After your grandfather told me you'd moved in with the O'Hara's, I tried over there. Spoke to a priest, who I now believe to be your cousin."
"Colum?" She looked surprised.
"The very same. I recognised his name when I read your letter. He said he'd tell you I was looking for you if he ever saw you again."
"He never mentioned it to me."
"That doesn't surprise me. He was very evasive about your whereabouts, but I'm assuming he knew exactly where you were, and was simply protecting you because he thought I was married."
She nodded in agreement.
"He suggested perhaps I should look for you in France. He was trying to throw me off the scent, I suppose."
"Why would I go to France?" she asked, confused.
"To see Paris maybe. Or meet your Robillard relations?"
She raised her eyebrows. "Rhett, I can't stand most of my mother's family and I speak almost no French."
"That's exactly what I thought. What's your point?"
She shrugged and smiled at him.
"Of course I'd also tried Atlanta. Your Uncle Henry didn't know anything, and when no-one at Tara knew where you were, France started to seem like a viable option. You did an excellent job of covering your tracks, my pet, and after continually running into dead ends I- Scarlett?"
She had stopped listening, as something he had said that had become lost in the turmoil that was her mind slowly rose back to the surface.
"You said you couldn't marry Anne because you're in love with someone else," she choked out in a whisper.
"Did I?" He quirked an eyebrow.
"You did." She stared up at him wide-eyed, almost afraid to ask. "It is me?"
"Is what you?" he teased, feigning confusion, then sobered.
"Scarlett, there has never been anyone else." He looked intently into her green eyes until an attractive blush started to creep it's way into her face. He smiled tenderly at her and brushed a stray tear from her cheek with his thumb. "Yes, my darling," he said softly, "it's you."
TBC
Thanks for reading. J.