Thanks for the lovely reviews. FirthsDarcy, I hope this answers your concerns about Rhett's health. This is a transitional chapter ….it will move the location from Charleston to Texas. It also sets up some of the themes I wish to explore, so please pardon me for being somewhat all over the place. Dear guests who asked: No, I won't just reunite Rose and Thad and be like, "there, all done." They got lots of stuff to work through, if they can make it at all. One of the things I look forward to exploring is Scarlett using her new-found insight (not to mention her old tricks) when advising Rose in matters of the heart. Hope it'll be interesting, and that you enjoy!
Rose alighted out of the closed two-horse carriage that had picked Cherry and herself up from the train depot. She looked around. Down the elegant, tree-lined shadows of Rutledge Avenue, and back to the house. Everything about her old home seemed the same. The black wrought-iron gate with its fanciful, interlacing ornaments opened to a stone walk-way bordered with pansies. Early pink and purple azaleas spilled from the terraces, and ran in double circles around the house. The Camellia bush beneath her bedroom window was showing its first, reddish-white buds.
Cherry looked around as well. "This is it, then."
The two young women exchanged a glance – at once understanding, and resigned. They had lived almost as sisters for the last two years. Now, they would each step back into their respective roles, as iron-clad as they were inescapable.
"Yes. This is it." Some somber feeling added a dark undertone to Rose's voice. "Feel free to visit with your family, Cherry. I don't know what Mother's plans are, but I doubt I'll be needing you anytime soon." Cherry nodded.
They moved at precisely the same time. Rose towards the front door, Cherry towards the back of the house.
James was waiting for her looking more regal than ever. He had not left his post to greet his daughter. "Hello, Miss Rose. Or rather, it is Dr. Butler now, isn't it? It's good to see you." She smiled at him. "It is good to be home, James. How have you been?"
"Very well, Miss Rose. Mr. and Mrs. Butler are not home yet. There is tea in the parlor, should you desire refreshment. Prissy will be happy to serve you anything else you need."
"Thank you, James. Please visit with Cherry – she's gone to the back to see her mother. I assume Prissy is in the kitchen?"
"I will see Cherry later. When my duties permit." He started down the walkway, to assist Jim with the luggage.
Rose stood in the middle of the hallway, undecided. She felt strange and out of place. It was oddly quiet.
Suddenly, as if in response to an unasked question, a door upstairs burst open, and a boy hurled himself down the stairs at top-speed.
"Hello Rose," Perry said, breathlessly, after he managed to arrest his forward motion just before colliding with the front door. "Can you ask Mother to take us back to Texas? I had so much more fun there.". He eyed her, and added a perfunctuary, "hello, howhaveyoubeen?" Rose sighed.
A female voice from upstairs shrieked.
"What was that?"
"Miss Addy. Sounds like she found the mousetrap in the science project," Perry grinned.
"Perry!"
The shriek grew in intensity. Rose wasted no further time in reproaching him. She ran quickly up the stairs, and turned right into the school room. Miss Addy hopping on one leg, a small mousetrap stuck to the fingers of her right hand.
"Miss Addy," Rose said. The other woman continued to scream, without heeding her.
"Miss Addy." A lot louder, and firmer. Miss Addy stopped. "Give me your hand." Within seconds, the spring had been released by Rose's nimble fingers, and the governess was seated on the settee, cradling her hand. Rose went back downstairs to find ice, and tea.
"Oh dear," Miss Addy said, disjointedly, when she returned five minutes later, carrying a tray. "Sogoodofyou. Oh dear!"
Rose smiled. "I see some things never change." There was some relief in the thought. She gently wrapped a towel over the fingers, and applied the ice.
"Those boys!" Miss Addy sighed. "I'm sure I don't mean I don't love them dearly, but they turn into perfect hellions when they are bored! They were so much easier to manage at Tara. But dear Mrs. Butler refuses to take them back! You see – oh dear!- they set the stables on fire while she and Mr. Butler were in Atlanta. Mrs. Butler, she was not pleased, but Mrs. Benteen ….. Mrs. Benteen was furious!" Miss Addy's pale eyes conjured up an image of Suellen in her Wrath, and she shuddered.
"I can imagine," said Rose, evenly. She was not on intimate terms with any of her aunts. "Speaking of which - where are my parents?"
"Oh my dear, they are out," Miss Addy reported, still somewhat out of breath. "Mr. Butler is at the office, and Mrs. Butler had an engagement at the Mellons'. She said to tell you to rest, and then be dressed for a dinner party they will be giving in honor of your return tonight."
Rose sighed. She had hoped to have a day to settle back in. And she had hoped her parents would be home to greet her. She lifted the towel cautiously, and nodded. Miss Addy's slender fingers were still red, but there was no swelling.
"Will you be all right now, Miss Addy? And where are the other two hellions?"
"In their room. They were all supposed to be reading their lessons!" Miss Addy still looked shaken, but roused herself enough to add, "and how nice to have you back, Miss Rose. You have been missed!"
Rose smiled politely, if disbelievingly. She poured out the tea into a small porcelain cup on the tray, added sugar, and encouraged the governess to drink. Then she excused herself, and walked down the hallway to greet her two youngest brothers. They were seated at their desks as advertised, but the books in front of them were unopened.
"Did it snap at her hand?" Dan asked, hopefully, in lieu of a greeting.
"Yes," she said, ruffling Dan's hair. He was a lanky twelve-year old now, and twisted his head away from her caress. "I'm too tired to give you an entire monologue on why that was a terrible prank, so you'll just have to imagine I said it."
Gerry grinned. He, too, had grown in the year since she had last seen them. Neither of them seemed overly concerned with her return.
She smiled wryly to herself. It was to be expected, after all… life couldn't be put on hold merely because she was gone. Or because she was back. But some small childish part of her wished it had been - that her family could have been frozen in time, like a picture in a frame, until she was ready to step into it again.
After pointing her brothers firmly to their lessons, she walked downstairs again, not quite ready to retire. She checked on the library, the drawing room, the formal dining room, the kitchen, as if re-familiarizing herself. The yellow dog under Rhett's desk lifted its head, but did not bark. She walked outside into the terrace, and passed through the rose garden and the orchard to the stable to greet Shadow. He neighed when he recognized her, scratching his hoof on the floor. She buried her head in his grey mane.
"Hello boy" she whispered. She didn't know why she suddenly felt like crying.
After she fed him an apple and promised to return soon, she walked back into the house. Her earlier fatigue had returned with interest. She noted some new decorations …. brilliant oil paintings, and Greek vases, and Parisian side-tables. Things her parents had brought from their travels in Europe, and shipped back home. They were lovely, but they added to her sense of estrangement. Why could things not remain the way she had left them?
She climbed up the stairs, much slower this time, and walked through the hallway once more, stopping at the place where she had stood with Thad the morning after the ball. It felt like a lifetime ago. The memory of his hand on her cheek flooded over her, and she chided herself a silly fool, that recalling such a brief touch could make her blush like a schoolgirl. And she remembered how he had looked at her, before she had made such a mess of things. Before it had all gone wrong.
He returned from Houston only a few days after their last conversation at the Lake, infinitely more composed, and infinitely more remote. He had come into the kitchen while she was drinking tea at his large, round table. As soon as he entered, everything that was not he seemed to dim. To Rose's considerable dismay, her body appeared to have acquired as many eyes as a peacock's tail, all seeing nothing but him. Contrarily, he had looked at her blandly, and made an equally bland remark, and she had grown haughty in response, as was her way of being shy, and bewildered. Within the course of a few minutes, they had worked themselves up into a quarrel – a quarrel that Thad seemed to welcome, as if there were, after all, some unnamed emotions brewing under all that unnatural control.
"Good morning. Nice weather outside. If you're planning on riding by the Lake, now might be the time. It's set to heat up considerably later in the day."
She ignored his remark. "Cousin Thad," she said instead. "So kind of you to honor us with your company." She attempted a credible toss of the black curls, and a flash of the blue eyes. He was not to know that inside, she was a mass of quivering jelly. "We must really have irritated you, if you couldn't even stay for a week."
"I do have work to do, Rose. I can't spend all my time….."
"It's quite all right. Of course your business is more important than…..your family."
"Don't be such a child, Rose." He sounded annoyed now.
"I thought you'd just recently let me know that I wasn't a child anymore."
"Then stop acting like one. You knew I have responsibilities outside of this Ranch."
She rose from the table. "Don't worry. I will take my irksome presence elsewhere." She had many such quaint phrases and mannerisms, that she had gotten from books, which would have made him smile under other circumstances.
"Suit yourself."
They had parted in mutual frustration - frustration that hadn't quite dissipated by the time Scarlett took her children back to Galveston only two days later. Shortly afterwards, the Butlers had moved to South Carolina, and Rose had not seen him again until he showed up at her doorstep in Charleston that rainy evening in December of 1891.
Even now, looking back, she could not piece together the clues of that last encounter, as most women her age would have done with ease. Despite her vast experience with bodies, she still inhabited hers only imperfectly, and she could not connect his absence, or his irritation, to valid concern for their mutual safety. Like her father before her, she saw her formidable insight into others ending where love began. Now finding her contemplations too painful, she withdrew into the corners of her mind, where she then sat, perched like a bird with ruffled feathers, looking down on the world below.
Her bedroom was unchanged. She flung herself down on the dusky duvet cover, spreading her arms. For a brief moment, she felt like a girl again, protected and cherished in her parent's house. The fatigue had become overwhelming, and she gave in to the temptation to close her eyes. Within minutes, she was fast asleep.
~~oo~~
"Rose!"
Scarlett burst into her daughter's bedroom, a vision in mauve peau de soie and white ermine. "Darling! I'm so happy you're home!" She sank down on Rose's bed, enfolding her in a perfumed hug.
"Mother!" Rose laughed, untangling herself. She looked up at her critically, and pronounced: "You look well."
"Thank you, my love," Scarlett said, cheerfully. "Your father chose this dress for me. I've finally accepted I have no fashion sense, and since you were not here to help me …but how have you been?" She eyed her daughter with an equally critical gaze. "You look a bit …thin."
Rose laughed, evading the question. "You don't, for once, mother. The bit of extra weight looks wonderful. You're positively glowing."
Scarlett blushed, and as Rose lifted her eyebrows, she blushed even deeper. "I've done nothing but eat for the last year!" her mother confessed. "I tell your father to stop feeding me, but he does nothing but insist I eat even more! I swear he is trying to turn me into a cow! Not to mention that he insists I go riding with him every day, so now my skin looks as black as Prissy's! Any day now I expect he will tie a white apron on me, and suggest I start cooking for the family!"
That description made her daughter grin, for there was little more than a faint sun-glow over the famed ivory skin. "I doubt Daddy would go that far," she teased. "He has a spoiled palate." Her mother huffed. "You should have seen yourself before," Rose added, somewhat more seriously. "You look healthy now, mother. And …..happy. It warms the cockles of me old, burned-out heart. Speaking of which - where is Daddy?"
"Downstairs," Scarlett said, distractedly. "In the library. Do you want to see him?"
"Yes." Rose stood up, and offered her mother her arm. She smiled at her, like a proud teacher at a student who had exceeded her expectations.
Arm in arm, they descended down the stairs. Rhett, who had been reading a paper in the library, looked up as they entered.
"Rose!" he said, with obvious pleasure.
He put down the Times, and stood up, taking her hands. Rose smiled at him, and gave him the same searching glance she had given her mother. "You look much better too, Daddy," she pronounced finally, having taken in his tan, and his restored bulk. "As Night and Day, in fact, to when I last saw you."
He smiled. "Your mother has been hovering about me like a hen with one chick. Makes me eat more than I should, and insists I go riding with her every day. Then she complains that I look as swarthy as a pirate." The glance they exchanged was at once conspiratorial, and slightly sheepish.
Rose collapsed in peals of laughter. Scarlett blushed again, an even deeper hue than before. Even Rhett looked slightly embarrassed. They looked at each other, and all three of them burst out laughing. Suddenly, it no longer felt strange to be home.
Rose grabbed her parents by the elbow. "Come. Tell me everything that happened while I was gone."
~~oo~~
"….and then, we ran into Mrs. Merriweather in the Lobby," Scarlett exclaimed. "Rhett insists she must have been laying in wait for four days to catch us, which I can't quite believe, but there she was, just as we came out!"
The formidable Matron, now in her late sixties, was apparently still as regal as ever.
"Your mother was as sweet as apple pie," Rhett added, grinning. "And repeated the performance with even more aplomb with the rest of the Old Guard, who all managed to run into us somehow, over the course of the two weeks we were there."
"Well, the flood helped," Scarlett said, disjointedly. "Whenever people started to get on my nerves, I would mention the flood, and they would become all sympathetic, and back off! And I admit, they got on my nerves frequently! Though I'd much rather not have lived through it, and used something else to get rid of them. However, a good many people asked us to dinner, including the Picards, who have about twelve children now, and too many grandchildren to count. And then we went back to Tara ….and those dratted boys had just lit the stable on fire. I thought Suellen would succumb to apoplexy. Even though Will just laughed."
"You didn't yet tell me why it took four days for you to get down the lobby," Rose teased.
"Well…." Scarlett dodged, helplessly looking at Rhett.
"Your mother was very tired," her husband announced, helpfully. "She needed a lot of ….rest."
"Certainly," said Rose, arching her eyebrows in disbelief. "One does need a lot of ...rest on vacation."
Scarlett giggled, as if she were no more than Rose's age.
Rose rolled her eyes. "It's nice to know some things never change." But she smiled a cheeky benediction.
~~oo~~
At shortly after six, the guests began pouring in for dinner.
"Wade!" Rose squealed, throwing herself at her brother, who had just finished assisting his wife out of her overcoat. He grabbed Rose for a hug, and swung her around.
"Dr. Rose! Congrats, little one. I heard you did well on the Finals. We've missed you."
She laughed. "Yes, Finals went well. And the University of Glasgow is taking over the College …just think, Wade, if I'd gone in a year later I could have been the University's first female medical graduate!"
"History missed out," he agreed, looking at her fondly. "You look a bit thin, little Sis. Don't they have food in Scotland?"
"Don't ask," she said, and they all laughed. She smiled at Phoebe. "Where are the little ones?"
"Home with the nanny," Phoebe replied, cheerfully, and with habitual tact. 'I figured you'd have enough commotion tonight without them in the mix! I'll be happy to bring them by tomorrow afternoon. They've missed you."
"I bet I'll hardly recognize them." A faint echo of regret had returned to her voice. She was distracted by the arrival of Ella and Chase, as well as her aunt's family.
The sisters greeted each other heartily, and with pleasure.
"I hear you're in your own house, now," Rose said.
"Yes," said Chase, firmly, putting an arm around his wife, and casting a glance at his mother's back. Rose's gaze returned to him several times. His face was still the same, but his altered mannerisms aged him at least a decade. "I had to get Ella out of that household. I couldn't listen to the way mother talked to her anymore."
"And even mother has to admit they are coping much better than she expected," his sister added. She, too, seemed altered. She wore a light blue dress Rose had approved of years ago, and her hair was braided into becoming sea-shells.
"I'm glad," Rose said, sincerely. A look passed between Chase, Charlotte and herself, and swept across the room to include Cherry, who was dressed in a white apron, serving drinks. They did not know it, but a similar bond had built between them as the one that had united Wade, Thad and James ...forged like hot iron from the memories of a terrible day.
Rosemary, who had discussed things of import with Scarlett, now turned to her niece. Her all-encompassing glance swept over the simple grey velvet dress, and the girl's elegant form. At eighteen, Rose had Scarlett's well-rounded figure, and tiny waist. Not quite matching her mother in height, she still evoked the delicate fragility of a porcelain doll. Her style of dress remained flawless: rubies gave color and interest to her monochromatic ensemble, and a light red silk scarf cast casually over the slim shoulders added playfulness. Her aunt nodded, apparently satisfied. "You have been doing well for yourself, Rose. I am sure you are happy to be back among civilized people." Without waiting for a reply, she continued, "I hope you will now settle down, and get married. Of course, you can't expect a brilliant match anymore, what with being educated, not to mention breaking off an engagement - but you are still quite pretty, so we should be able to find you someone appropriate without too much trouble."
Rose smiled thinly. "I've been accepted by Anna Broomall at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia in September. I plan to specialize in Obstetrics and Gynecology, and they have an excellent outpatient maternity program. I'll be working with students, and furthering my own training at the same time."
"Dear God! You don't mean that you actually plan to work?" asked her aunt, horrified.
Rose started to look mulish, and it was fortunate that the arrival of further guests interrupted the conversation. Uncle Henry, an impossibly sprightly nonagenarian, walked in at the arm of his wife Emma. He pinched Rose's cheeks, and told her that the beaux would be on her door-step by tomorrow morning, and that his walking-stick was at her disposal. He did not quite seem to hear her reply, but nodded enthusiastically to whatever she told him. Even Charles Butler, who had become even more taciturn over the years, greeted her cordially. She looked around. Despite her relations' various short-comings, she was happy to be home.
Dinner passed cheerfully, stories of Scotland and medical school mixed with tales of her parents' European travels, minus the flood. Dan and Gerry talked avidly, and Perry contributed tales of his time in Texas. Had anyone been watching, they could have seen Rose flush whenever Thad's name was mentioned.
As it turned out, someone had.
~~oo~~
After dinner, when the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, an unexpected conversation took place.
Rose was standing by the piano, lost in thought. Her absentminded fingers ran over the instrument, without calling forth a sound.
"Rose."
She looked up. To her surprise, her uncle was standing next to her. "Uncle Charles?" She could not, for the life of her, imagine what he would have to say. He had always been one to chose silence over talking, unless it was about hunting, or hounds.
He seemed hesitant, but plunged ahead. "Been watching you," he announced, briefly. "Thinking you and I might help each other out."
Her blue eyes were all astonishment. "How so, Uncle Charles?"
"Been thinking about that boy," he said, vaguely. Rose's expression snapped closed immediately, but Charles Butler was staring at his shoes, and did not see it. "In fact, been thinking about him for the last two years. Ever since he left. Told me what he thought of me, he did." He brushed an imaginary crumb off his sleeve, his face still turned downward. "Was mad as a hornet at first, but he was right. About a lot of things. I'd like to see him again. See if we can, perhaps….."
"That's between you and Thad, Uncle Charles. I fail to see how I can be of use."
He glanced at her shrewdly. "Something tells me you been thinking about him too. Maybe even more'n me."
Shock battled with surprise in her face, and he almost smiled. "Saw right away you were sweet on 'im, and he on you." He winked at her, and added, "thought we might go to see him together. Thought, in fact, we might all go. Like I said, help each other out." He saw her expression freeze again, and he petted her shoulder encouragingly. "You think about it. Got a bit of time, I understand, before you're off to the North. Might as well use it."
As he turned to rejoin the others, she thought he mumbled, "wouldn't mind seeing his mother again either."
Perhaps it had been merely her imagination, she thought later. Perhaps not.