Thanks so much for all the kind words and comments, they made me feel very glad to be back! Now that Scarlett's had her say, I thought it was only fair to let Rhett have his. I was planning on this being more upbeat than the last chapter, but then I remembered Rhett's dad died too so it looks like no one was having much fun at this point in the book! Things should take a turn for the better from here on out though. Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading.
Rhett frowned as he stood up against the window of his hotel room and cast a critical eye over the miserable, grey world beneath. Just last month he had been enjoying the warm, muggy climes of New Orleans, soaking up the city's vibrant culture and enjoying the attentions of some of its more clandestine residents. It had been unseasonably warm for November and he had walked the streets in some of his finest suits, untroubled by the thought of rain.
After a long and mostly unpleasant visit to Charleston he had had to make a choice; return to New Orleans or come back to Atlanta. Or, at least, he'd told himself he had a choice, in reality his destination was never really in doubt. That said, he could not help but begin to regret it as he watched the rain pour so determinedly down outside his window. It had been like this ever since he got back, in fact, he had hardly managed to step off the train yesterday evening before being crudely assaulted with a face full of cold, piercing drizzle. Hardly the sort of welcome home greeting he had been hoping for.
Now, watching as the rain lashed down and turned the streets into sluggish, muddy brown rivers, Rhett laughed mockingly and cursed himself for being such a damned fool to return. There was nothing for him here. Not anymore. What little hope he had still held had died the morning he'd finally been released from jail only to discover their fortunes had been reversed and it was now Scarlett who lay locked up in a place he could not get at her.
If Rhett had ever felt regret as keenly as he did in the moment he was first informed of Scarlett's marriage to Frank Kennedy then he certainly couldn't recall it. To think that he had had her in the palm of his hand, asking, no begging, him to be the one to save her from her troubles only to turn her away, driving her into the arms of that fussy old maid as surely as if he'd marched her to the alter himself. Pride had been responsible for most of his misdeeds in the past and this was no exception. He had despised how easily she had fooled him, cavorting around his jail cell and playing with his heart as carelessly as a child does a new toy. He had hated her for exposing his adoration so plainly and so had seen fit to punish her most cruelly for her callousness. Yet in the end his actions had come back around to hurt him worst of all. They always did.
He had thrown away the best chance she was ever likely to present him with and there was no one else to blame but himself. As a result of his harsh words and hasty actions in the jail, she had sentenced herself to life with a husband she did not love and Rhett to one lived without the only woman he ever had.
It was cruel and senseless and unjust, but it could not be undone. He knew he should just let it lie. Should follow his gambler's instincts, cutting his losses and choosing to walk away from the table while he still could. There was nothing to keep him in this town now, nothing but unwanted reminders of the one woman he desperately wanted and would never be able to have.
He should leave, but of course he didn't.
Like a fool he had returned yet again. Returned for the very same reason he always had; to be close to her. Sometimes he felt like she was the only real thing in the entire world, that everyone else was a mere shadow and that only she was truly alive. He had been sleep walking through life for so long, fearing the same pain and rejection he had first felt at his father's hand, refusing to let anything truly touch him in life. For if nothing really mattered to him then nothing could ever hurt him again.
It had worked too. For years he had wandered aimlessly across this earth, never staying in the same place too long, always renting hotel rooms rather than buying a home, never putting down roots for fear that one day they would be ripped up from under him. But then she had come along. With her inappropriate day dress and eyes that effortlessly cut through every mask he'd ever fitted. She'd worn her young heart on her sleeve that day, yelling her love for all to hear, completely unafraid of the hurt that was surely to follow. He had been in awe of her bravery. In truth, he still was.
He couldn't believe his luck when he found her that night at the bazaar, her widow's weeds more precious to him than the finest of ball gowns. Against the odds he'd been rewarded with a second chance and he was determined not to let it slip through his fingers. He had called her out, daring her to cast aside the trappings of social reputation and take up her rightful place alongside him. It had been a test of sorts. A experiment undertaken with the sole aim of determining whether this young girl really was everything he had taken her to be on that memorable first meeting. The cowardly part of him had been hoping she'd disappoint him. After all, it would have meant a return to the reckless freedom he had enjoyed up until that point. But with a tossing of the head and a squaring of the shoulders she had stepped forward to meet his challenge, and from that moment on he had seen only her.
He knows now that he should have been more honest with her in those early days of their acquaintance, should have borrowed some of her courage and made his intentions known, claiming her as his own while he still had the chance.
He had been too cowardly though; unwilling to throw away the remaining scraps of his liberty and bind himself to her in holy matrimony, he had proposed instead only to make her his mistress, an arrangement he already knew her upbringing and wounded vanity would never allow her to accept and one which, though doubtlessly entertaining, had won him little in the long run. He had told himself that his obsession must pass, that it was madness to promise himself to a woman for whom in a few years he would probably have ceased even to respect, let alone love. He had been wrong of course, so very wrong. His love, rather than fading away over time, had only served to grow stronger with each passing season. He yearned for her now with a desire and a longing that was almost physically painful in its intensity and he cursed himself soundly each night for having not acted upon his feelings when there was still hope of success.
The mere thought of her with Frank was enough to make bile rise up in his throat and his hands clench up into angry fists. He remembered the last time he had seen her, just days after she had learnt of her father's sudden death. He could see that she was sorely affected by the news even as she fought hard to hide her pain from those around her. They had been sitting in the parlour of Aunt Pitty's house, mere feet away from each other and yet the space in between had felt like miles to Rhett. He had longed to take her in his arms, to press her small face into his broad chest and help her carry the burden of her grief by unloading the worst of it onto him. He had wanted to whisper comforting words into her ear and soothe the pain away with his reassuring presence. More than anything though, he had wanted to feel needed.
The idea that he couldn't do these things, that some scrap of paper meant that they were Frank's duties and not his own, was preposterous. What did Frank Kennedy know of Scarlett O'Hara? She was a stranger to him and she always would be. Only he knew her. Only he understood her. Only he could possibly love her for what she really was.
The impotent rage he had felt in that moment was like nothing he had ever experienced before and, sitting there in front of her, keenly aware of her pain and yet wholly incapable of doing anything to rectify it, he had realized he could not bear to be in her presence a moment longer. On the spot he had decided to leave, informing her of his decision almost the very second that it first entered his mind. She had been shocked of course, a part of him hoped disappointed, but he had known that it was the right thing to do. If he were to remain in Atlanta another minute he would surely have taken complete leave of his senses and shot that damned Frank Kennedy where he stood.
Initially, Rhett had not given much thought to where exactly it was that he was going to run off to, knowing only that he needed to take his leave as soon as possible, but back in his hotel room, something about the pain in Scarlett's eyes as she spoke of never being able to see her father again had pierced his heart and before he knew it he was packed and heading to the train station, his destination no longer in doubt.
What had been meant as a means of escape had gradually turned into something more for Rhett, his supposed break from Scarlett helping him to discover a part of himself he had willfully neglected up until now. Indeed these last six months would have been a surprising pleasure if not for the telegram he'd received a little over three weeks ago informing him of his father's death.
To say they had never been close would be a gross understatement. Rhett suspected his father had despised him from the moment he took his first breath in this world, certainly he could not remember a single kind word of loving gesture ever being extended to him as a child. Perhaps if he had he'd have felt less inclined to rebel, but one could not fear to lose the love of their father if they have never felt it in the first place. He had been almost wild as a youth, surrounded by a way of life that he hated on principle and suffocated by the mindless rules of a society which he already knew he'd never fit in to.
He had run away the first chance he'd gotten and, were it not for his mother and sister, then he would happily have never looked back. He had always done what he could for them, sent money through untraceable channels so as not to alert his father's suspicions and garnered what news he could of them from the few remaining friends he still held in that city.
It had not been easy to be cut off from people that he loved, but it had been a sacrifice worth making. To stay would have been akin to suicide, forced to repress his every natural instinct and inclination in order to toe the line, Rhett Butler as he knew him would have utterly ceased to exist.
Still, there had been many times in his life when he had regretted his choice, hating the fact that he'd chosen to save himself and thus abandon his mother and sister to a life lived entirely under his father's strict rule.
Unlike Scarlett, he had been glad when he learnt of his father's death, overjoyed that he could now return to the place of his birth without fear and begin providing far more fully for the rest of his family. If there had been a tinge of sadness, an echo of the young boy who had fought so hard to earn his father's approval and now knew once and for all that he would never obtain it, then he had suppressed it most violently. Thoughts like that did no one any good and he had never been one to allow himself to live in the past, perhaps because there was nothing of worth there for him.
These last weeks in Charleston had been a trial, though he had been pleased to get the chance to reconnect with his mother and sister, he had always hated the city and it's small-minded, bigoted inhabitants whose antics made even Mrs. Elsing and company look like the most tolerant of liberals in comparison. It was stifling to live once again in their midst and it had chafed at his patience most sorely until he had had no choice but to leave it behind once again.
His mother had been loath to part with him of course, though she did not approval of the way he chose to live his life, he was still her son and she cared for him as much as an almost twenty year absence from each other's lives allowed her to. It was time that could never now be made up between them, too much had happened in both their lives for them to ever become properly close, but now that Rhett's father was gone at least they had the chance to start bridging the gap.
Rhett for the most part was happy with the arrangement, after all he had gotten by without a mother for most of his adult life and was far too old to start needing one now. Yet it might be pleasant to be able to call on her now and again, to walk across the threshold of his old home without being thrown bodily back out of it by an enraged father, and to sit and spend some time in her company while he still could.
If he were honest with himself though, when he thought about women he wanted to build a family with, it was not his mother's or his sister's face that sprang to mind.
It had been so long now since he had last seen Scarlett, so long since he had last had the opportunity to hear her speak or to see her smile and yet he remembered each detail of her person so exactly that he may as well have had her before him in the six long months that he'd been away. She had haunted him constantly, appearing every time he shut his eyes or caught sight of a raven haired woman on the street.
He needed to see her again, needed at the very least to ensure that she was coping with her father's death and that married life wasn't grinding her too far down into the dirt. She had had so much to contend with in her short life; so much suffering to bear upon such slim shoulders and she needed to know that she wasn't alone. That even if her husband wasn't capable of helping her, then there was at least one man out there willing to pick up the slack. And for once Rhett Butler was determined to be that man, consequences be damned.
Many a night he had lain with a girl in some saloon or other and dreamed that it were her beneath him, that it was her voice calling out his name so breathlessly and her fine, small hands that clutched at him in a bid to get closer. He had seen her face in every woman that he took to bed, whispered her name at each moment of rapture and always pictured her sweat-soaked body wrapped around his in the moments afterwards.
In his darker moments, consumed with alcohol and a mindless, clawing jealousy, he had wondered if she'd ever thought of him in the same way, if perhaps late at night as she lay in Frank's bed she was wont to turn her head away and sigh longingly as she dreamed of him instead. The rational part of him knew that she didn't, that if she were to think such thoughts about any man it would be a certain golden-headed gentleman whose fine features caught her midnight imagination rather than his own rough, swarthy ones. But still, the possibility of it taunted him constantly and he could not help but wish that it were true.
Sighing, Rhett ran a weary hand through his hair and resigned himself to the fact that such thoughts were utterly useless. It was of no consequence whether or not Frank was the one she thought about in the darkness, he was the one she was married to and, like it or not, unless Rhett fancied revisiting his jail cell for a far lengthier stay, he had better learn to accept things the way they were.
Straightening up, he cast one last disparaging look at the rain outside before pulling away from the window in search of his cuff links. Reluctant as he was to leave the shelter of his hotel room, he knew he could put off this moment no longer; it was time to go out and face her.
After several laps around the room, he finally found them at the bottom of his travel bag next to a untidily folded piece of paper. Pulling both from the bag, he let his cuff links fall onto the unmade bed and opened up the paper, unable to prevent himself from smiling at the unexpected sight that greeted him.
It was a terrible drawing even by a seven year old's dubious standards, consisting as it did of little more than a hasty scribble of browns and pinks offset by two unnaturally large black circles that were doubtlessly meant to pass for eyes. Apart from that there were no recognizable human features, no eyebrows arched in disdainful sarcasm or closely trimmed mustache worn with a unrivaled sense of style and panache; hell the boy hadn't even taken the time to draw on a nose or mouth. And yet despite the picture's glaring discrepancies, Rhett knew that the drawing was of him and, more importantly, that it was meant as a show of love.
He knew it as surely as he knew his own name and it was this that brought the unwitting smile to his face.
Folding the paper up far more smoothly this time, he placed it carefully in the inner pocket of his jacket, fearing that the rain would find a way to spoil it yet being strangely unwilling to part with it nonetheless.
Fixing his cuff links, Rhett straightened his cravat in the vanity mirror and cast a critical eye over his hair, frowning at the thought of the damage the rain would surely wreck on his normally immaculate appearance. Casting about him for his panama hat, he reluctantly also pulled out his great coat from the very depths of his wardrobe. The thing was an eyesore, dark and bulky and so damn heavy that even holding it fast became a tiresome chore. He hardly ever wore it, swearing each spring that he would rid himself of the offending garment now that winter was through, and yet he had never actually managed to follow through with his threat, knowing that it was undeniably handy in weather as foul as this.
Throwing it on, he was halfway out of the door before he remembered the small red box lying on his bedside table, the one which promised to make up for his lengthy absence and bring a reluctant shine to those all-too stubborn eyes.
She had always had a soft spot for gifts and jewelry was undoubtedly her biggest weakness of all.
Placing the box in his pocket, Rhett spied a slight break in the clouds and hurried out of his room before the rain could set in again, hoping that his arrival would be met with the same enthusiasm as the sudden change in weather.