Merry Christmas to everyone, and thank you for the thoughtful reviews. Hat tip to those of you who caught the bow to Jane Austen's incomparable style in the opening paragraph, and the nod to "Downton Abbey" in the name of one of Rose's Suitors.
This chapter has been tweaked, and will be tweaked further - because in retrospect, it was too much a stylistic break with the rest of the story.
To the surprise of no one, Mr. Beauregard Wilkes called at the Butler residence the very next morning.
At twenty-seven, he was a young man still, immune to the after-effects of a long night's dancing, especially when inspired by as lovely a vision as he had encountered the night before. But Rose, he was informed by James, the Butler's formidable maître domus, had risen even earlier, and could be found taking her morning ride in the Park.
He turned his horse back around, with every intention of meeting her again.
~~oo~~
Scarlett had been full of the encounter on the ride back.
"Just think that Beau and Ashley are back in town! You won't remember that they moved to Boston, Rose, not long after we left for Texas. After all, you have never met them. But our families used to be very well acquainted! Beau says both his father and he are in the banking business, now." She shook her head, a reminiscent gleam in her eyes. "Apparently, they ...have been doing well for themselves."
Rose had smiled noncommittally, leaning back against the soft fabric of the carriage. Only the slight flutter of her eyelashes betrayed that she knew this to be more than ideal chatter. Her mother had, whether from modesty or embarrassment, never disclosed the more salient details of her somewhat volatile past to her youngest daughter. But Rose had always had a way of knowing things.
For a brief moment, she'd regarded her father with speculative eyes. He'd looked down at her, and she saw a kaleidoscope of subtle emotions pass over his face, fed by springs reaching decades into the past. Unlike most other people who had had the fortune - or sometimes, the misfortune - to run across Rhett Butler in their life-time, she could see through his masks with ease.
Her mother, who did not share Rhett's blood, noticed nothing, and continued her reminiscences with unbroken animation. "To be sure I was happy to see Beau – how much he's grown! – but I could honestly do without ever seeing Ashley Wilkes again. A more wooden-headed ninny you'll never have occasion to meet, Rose. Now that Beau has run into us, we can't in all politeness avoid Ashley, should he decide to come 'round. But I, for one, will attempt not to be home if he calls!"
There was undeniable sincerity in her tone, and something tense in Rhett's frame relaxed. Rose glanced at him again. She had been in love, fiercely, and hopelessly, but she had not yet been jealous, and she studied the unfamiliar emotion with the avidity of an entomologist pouring over a particularly fascinating species of beetle.
"Beau, at any rate, is sure to come 'round! You must have made quite an impression, Rose. He wouldn't stop asking questions about you." Scarlett regarded her daughter fondly. The young girl was the image of what she herself had been like at sixteen.
"What did you think of Beau, Rose?" Rhett drawled, with suddenly resurfaced amusement.
His daughter laughed. "A bit of a chatterbox, is he not? He said he feels faint when left alone, and his tongue becomes tied up in the face of beauty."
"Oh Rose," chided her mother. "Those are just the kind of things men say to a pretty girl! You should pay it no mind. My beaux used to tell me the most outrageous things when I was a Belle!" Her reminiscent smile conjured them up again, the long-lost Tarleton boys, the swarthy Fontaines, Cade Calvert, Charles Hamilton….how young they had all been!
"I've learned that when a man tells you who he is –believe him," said Rose, shaking her head. "In most cases it turns out to be true, and if it doesn't it might as well be, for he will attempt shape himself after his own ideas." Seeing the abstraction utterly lost on her mother, she switched to the prosaic, a hint of deviltry touching her mouth. "I saw no harm in him, aside from what he accuses himself of - except for a certain carelessness with his charm that may, at times, do as much damage as willful intent to do ill."
Her father made a sound that could have been a cough. Rose eyed him, but let it pass. After all, the night had become damp and foggy.
"Rose!" admonished her mother, somewhat scandalized at this representation of the sweet little boy she remembered bouncing on her knees, almost half a lifetime ago. "Beau was always...the best-behaved little boy in all of Atlanta!"
Again, the slightly mischievous smile. "He's just a little bit too old to be as paralyzed by my looks as he professes himself to be, and a little bit too handsome to believe himself without the power to do mischief. But I will not mind seeing him again. Which I have no doubt I shall."
Her mother, who had after all never been careful with her charm, shook her head firmly. "You have nothing to worry about, Rose, darling. As I've said, he seems like he's grown into a very nice boy - very open and friendly, just like his mother. You've never met Beau's mother Melly, for she died before you were born, but she was the best-loved woman in Atlanta, and a veritable Saint. It isn't surprising that Ashley had never remarried, for who could compare to her?"
A glance at her father showed her that her parents were once more in complete agreement, at least with regards to the late Mrs. Wilkes. She encouraged her mother to expand on the topic of her one-time sister-in-law, for talking about her seemed to give both parents pleasure. She also added new colors to her mental portrait of the small house on Ivy Street, and to her mother's erstwhile admirer, the enigmatic Ashley Wilkes.
"It appears they still lives with Ashley's sister," her mother continued. "India ...well...India never married either, and it seems they get on quite well together."
"How nice," said Rose, noncommittally, but her ears were pricked. India Wilkes. Talking about India Wilkes made her mother feel guilty, even after all these years. She could hear it. It was the same tone she used when talking about her sister, Suellen. Rose wondered about the late Stuart Tarleton, and the equally late Frank Kennedy, and what they had really been like.
Her inner picture of Ashley Wilkes remained somewhat hazy. Having now met the son, she tried to imagine her vibrant mother obsessed with an older, even less worldly version of Beau, and shook her head.
Her father lifted his heavy lids, and gave her a full blown smirk. Yes, those black eyes said. Me, either.
~~oo~~
Beau caught up with her with effort, for the dark grey gelding was swift, and beautifully trained. His gait was as soft and smooth as water, and Beau pulled in his own horse for a moment to admire both steed and rider. A young stable boy, on a more commonplace Saddle horse, followed her at a short distance. She rode well, even gracefully, but her movements were rehersed, and not instinctual. His mind groped for an analogy, and he thought of a piano player who had learned his instrument just a little bit too late in life.
He did not recall that she had danced in the same way - gracefully, but as if each separate movement had been practiced, and later pieced together like a mosaic. When she merely walked, and forgot herself, she had the angular gawkiness of a young filly.
"Hullo," he called, galloping up to her, momentarily diverted from the pursuit of romance. "What kind of horse is that?"
She smiled. The question was understandable enough. "A Puerto Rican Paso Fino. His name is Shadow."
"Never heard of the breed."
"No one has," she replied. "It doesn't exist here in the United States. My father had them imported from Puerto Rico under great difficulties, when it became clear that we would insist on riding at some point. Their gait is peerless, and they never jostle you. My sister …. you will have heard. He also insisted that I learn to ride astride."
He sobered. In his interest with the horse, he had failed to notice she was indeed eschewing the traditional side saddle, and that what had looked like a skirt was actually a ballooning pair of trousers she had pulled up half-way to the top of the saddle.
"Interesting... dress."
"It's essentially a modified bicycle attire," she replied. "Turkish trousers, they are called. They work very well for the purpose."
"But don't the knees …"
"A pair of leather breeches, beneath the trousers." She didn't blush, and he had the decency not to laugh.
"Very ingenious. But don't the busybodies wag their tongues at you? In Atlanta, you'd probably never hear the end of it," he teased.
"Oh no," she said gravely. "They are very sympathetic to my family's fears of losing yet another daughter to a fatal riding accident. One may flaunt convention from time to time without repercussion, my father says, as long as one makes clear one does so for a good reason – and that reason not being simply to annoy."
He looked at her oddly. He'd been old enough when they left Atlanta to remember Rhett Butler both in person, as well as by reputation – and this sounded like a different man. He didn't comment, however.
"I remember your sister," he said suddenly. "Terribly sad thing, that. Your father took it very hard."
"So I've heard." Something about her face told him it would be unwise to pursue this topic much further.
"Have you been here long?" he asked, instead. "My father told me you were living in Texas."
"About two years." A sudden wave of homesickness swept over her. At times, it seemed like it was another person entirely, who was going to balls, accepting proposals and compliments, and attending placidly to the social conventions of Charleston. She steeled herself, remembering the distant look in Thad's eyes when they had said good-bye. And the fact that he had never written her, except for the briefest of notes.
Thad.
She turned the conversation abruptly, asking Beau about his father, and his life in Boston.
"I still live with my father," he said, unapologetically. "Thought about striking out on my own, but never saw a reason to. Father and I get along famously, and I'm all he has, aside from my aunt India." He smiled at her, very proud of his nearest connections. "Father is the nicest fellow ...you would like him. And Aunt India can be a bit of a mother hen, but she loves us dearly."
Rose did not wonder at such an arrangement. Widowed parents and unmarried children, or relatives, often shared house-holds in the South.
"I understand perfectly," she said softly. "It is important to spend as much time as possible with one's family. One never knows ...how long they will be around."
He wondered if she was talking about the sister she had never known. Indeed, from what little he remembered of Bonnie, they shared a remarkable resemblance, and he told himself they would have been very close. He watched her light frame out of the corner of his eye. There was something ethereal about Rose, as if she were not quite of this world. But the romantic young man decided there was also a hidden pain in her blue eyes - as if she were guarding a secret grief.
Being a Wilkes, and a Hamilton, he tested her education. He tossed her Byron, and Shakespeare, and Donne, and she tossed them all back with eloquence, but when he asked her her favorite poem, she smiled, as if her mind were elsewhere, and she were answering at random. "Sonnets from the Portuguese."
"Which one?"
"The sixth."
"Ah, yes!" he cried, eager to demonstrate his memory, and his taste. "One of my favorites." He quoted, softly:
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforth in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door...
He stopped, as any further recollection of the lines deserted him. He glanced at her again, wondering if it reminded her of her sister, and attempted, albeit incorrectly, to connect the poem with the name of her horse, and with Bonnie. He was left with the after-glow of tragedy, and like with most young men, it heightened his attraction to her. If there is one thing even more taking than Beauty, is Beauty haloed by Grief.
He left her in front of her home after an hour, more determined than ever to see much more of her in the future.
*Elizabeth Barret Browning. What we read, when we're sixteen, and in love.