Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chapter 12
"Hello," Scarlett returned warily. He was watching her again, in that old way. Why would he be doing that after last night?
Rhett carelessly tossed the package down on the bed.
"Have you looked in a mirror yet?" he asked with a sudden glint in his eye, and she immediately patted her hair; oh, no, it was a snaggled mess.
"I—oh," she grimaced as she tried to run her fingers through it and hit a tangle. "No, I haven't. I just woke up. I suppose it will have to wait until after I fix breakfast."
"Not to bother," he said as he walked the short distance to the kitchen, retrieving a mug of coffee for her before returning to the bed. "We had leftover cake and I fried the rest of the potatoes from yesterday. The girls wanted the remaining sardines and turkey but I declined to serve them, thinking you may have planned for another meal."
She took the mug from him with a quiet thank-you, wishing she had been awake to watch him frying potatoes. "No, we'll have them for dinner, and the children need to have a slice of the canned limes each today—"
"I already gave it to them."
"Thank you."
"There's water heating for your bath, I can help you wash your hair."
He gazed at it appraisingly again. "I think you might need considerable help."
She shrugged. It was a matted disaster. She winced as she continued to rub her head.
"What's wrong?"
"My scalp's tender. I seem to remember someone pulling my hair."
He flashed a wicked smirk. "Yes, and as I recall you directed me to pull it harder."
A mad flush enveloped her visage.
He stretched out in that elegant manner of his, always Rhett with the smooth moves, and gave her yet another measuring glance.
"Are you sore anywhere else?"
"Oh no," she lied. "I'm fine."
He rewarded her artifice with a skeptical expression.
"There's no need to hide it. As I recall," here he shifted those long, powerful thighs minutely, and it was all she could do not to stare, "I might have been a tad rambunctious and caused you discomfort." Another flash of animal white teeth. "Well, more discomfort than I intended. It's been some time."
"Not for you it hasn't." It was out before she could stop it.
"Don't believe everything you hear."
"Why not, when you make sure everyone in town hears it?"
"Why are you acting this way? Is it because you're injured?" he persisted, and she wanted to scream. He was the one who was acting strangely, so awkward … why was he so awkward? Not like they hadn't done that, at least some of that, before. But they had never done all that, not like that …
A flash of Rhett's face above her, intent, searingly dominant in one moment, beyond tender the next, his voice hoarse and demanding she forfeit her all to his sweltering dominion. And softly cursing when she did. So softly …
Well, she'd forfeited it. What did he want now?
"Tell me," he said.
"Tell you what?" she returned irritably, playing with her fingers. "I said I was fine."
He made a sound and she glanced up to find his eyes fixed on the flesh visible from the top of the gaping covers; specifically a pale bite mark in the shape of a half-moon, so very close to a most evocative location.
Instinctively she pulled the sheets higher. Didn't want to reveal marks, didn't want to be teased, not about last night.
"Do you regret it?"
"Why would I?" She stood up and grimaced, covering her face quickly with the back of her hand, but she knew she didn't fool Rhett, had anyone ever fooled Rhett? "Did you have a complaint you care to make known?"
"Why, no. The night exceeded my wildest expectations and you most shockingly demonstrated unknown talents," he all but leered. "You surprised me, my darling, and I'm not often surprised in that, er, area."
"Yes, I suppose nights like that are most common for you," she ignored the 'my darling' and attempted to comment in an arch manner, going so far as to fake stifling a yawn. Even though the thought that he experienced such nights as a matter of course tore her apart inside.
"No Scarlett, they are not common for me, or anyone else, I imagine."
She managed to expel a tiny breath of relief before he went on.
"It was most out of the ordinary. And I'm currently trying not to wallow in regret and resentment that we could have had that all along."
"No point in that," she said briskly, making to push past him. He smelled of smoke and leather and soap, laced faintly with whiskey. And it affected her in a visceral, clenching manner that took her off guard and nearly made her stumble.
He grasped lightly at her elbow. "I'll not go back," he said. She glanced up quickly enough to catch the shadow of vulnerability flash across his face before determination set his jaw.
Her eyes flickered to the thick dark hair visible above the opening of his shirt and for a moment she went back, back just a few short hours to when her breasts were crushed against that chest, every inch of her on fire, even the sore places electrifying, somehow making it all the better and how could she tell him she liked it that way, liked feeling the memory in the aches, how it made her live it again and she wanted to live it again, wanted to recall all the pleasure in the smarting and the sting …
"Who asked you to go back?"
"Just making it clear. I know now, even though I'd always suspected how we could be together. What we could be together if we ever had the chance, if you took the chance. And now I do. I'll not go back."
And there it was again, the flash of Rhett over her in the darkest of the night, the perplexingly, yet, as it turned out, completely mandatory deep swing of his hips, the measured desperation, the repetitive striking of the flint between her legs. Please, Scarlett, he'd all but begged in that rumbling, smoky tone that nearly did her in. Once more. I know you can, once more.
Rhett said please.
And the way she'd goaded, shouted right back at him when he got loud in turn, for more, for deeper, and the good lord save her soul as she gloried in the humbling, the punishment she inflicted on her own … her eyes flickered under his jaw, and she detected with no little satisfaction the dark purple love bite she'd left there blossoming under his skin.
"No shame," he said just as it flooded her.
"You said that you loved me," she blurted; there, it was out. A confession, an unloading. It felt good.
He laughed, but there was a hollow sound to it. "As I recall, you reciprocated. But no worries, I'll not hold you to it as men too often say such things in the, ah, heat of the moment." There was the slightest hint of trepidation in his voice, and as he pushed a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead back she detected the faintest ghost of a tremor in his hand. Such a whisper of a tremor she nearly missed it.
His words took on momentum as he continued. "I fear you may have taken my actions far too literally, my pet." And there it was. "Your lack of experience in the subject telling, no doubt. It's possible I may have forgotten myself, murmured a few sweet nothings.
"As I said, men do, you know. It's nothing to get yourself conceited about." He gave her a condescending grin.
She felt her heart sink and her ire rise simultaneously but put both aside; something more important, far more important, being at play here, and the predator in her stood on high alert. Why would Rhett's hand have a tremor? Why would he be nervous even the least bit? It was merely a conversation, even if concerning an improper topic— well, that was his favorite kind, after all.
He was still talking.
" … especially when they've been deprived and they've been drinking, or they're drunk."
Drunk? He was going to blame this on drink?
"You weren't drunk and you know it," she all but yelled, eyes flashing. "Why, there's still a third of the same bottle we've had all along left. There's not enough liquor on this entire mountain to get you drunk," she sat back down on the bed and bounced back against the pillows hard, truly put out.
"Are you going to open your gift?" He pushed the package toward her.
She studied him for a moment but of course, nothing in his expression gave her anything and she inwardly sighed as she pulled the parcel onto her lap.
Despite her dejection, she knew a moment of pure and unadulterated joy as the contents were revealed. Snowshoes, just like his, just like Wade's! She'd been so envious but now she had her own and it was like he had handed her freedom itself. She could go in the woods and forage, and hunt—oh, it was a glorious thing! She just knew there were considerable provisions she could cull from that dark forest, provisions that would not only feed her family but keep them all healthy as well.
"I didn't want to give them to you on Wade's birthday, not to steal his thunder, and they took longer to make, at any rate. His and mine I made over from the pairs I found in the smokehouse. Those," he nodded his head toward the shoes, " I had to craft from scratch."
She wanted to jump up and hug him but suppressed the urge, given their recent moody discourse. Instead, she thanked him prettily and examined the shoes more closely. They were of mismatched leather patched together with small, neat stitches, mixed with larger, less precise yet tight ones in the difficult places. Homemade, for sure, but painstakingly so.
She ran her fingers over them in wonder. Such an undertaking must have taken many hours to complete, and considerable time besides that to plan and study the construction for the project.
She glanced up and there stood Rhett, watching her again, this time rubbing his neck self-consciously with his left hand and looking for all the world and just for a moment, a split second in time, like a little boy presenting his mother with a picture he'd drawn and wasn't sure she would like. It tugged at all that was left of her heartstrings.
And destroyed her.
Scarlett O'Hara, who had scoffed at the tacky, homemade merchandise sold for the Cause at war bazaars; made fun of the 'old tat' the Old Guard continued to display in their post-war shabby gentility; who had lived only in silk for the past few years and thoughtlessly squandered more than her share of her husband's fortune on any and all the luxurious trinkets her heart could desire; had never gazed upon anything so beautiful in her life as these snowshoes and Rhett Butler's demeanor as he presented them to her.
She held them tightly to her chest as she realized they might be the greatest gift she'd ever received, and no one would have been more shocked than she at the concept.
A whirlwind of memories crashed down upon her. Rhett, asking her to be his mistress, saying that if he loved her she would be the last person he would ever tell; a month later at Rough and Ready 'for I do love you, Scarlett'. She hadn't thought of it since, but now she remembered, she remembered! Not to mention the ill-bred and ill-timed proposal, mocking, joking to be sure, but a profession of love buried in it all the same.
Rhett, digging sardines out of the frozen ground, once again; Rhett, running to the wagon like a stallion, dirt and snow dancing in the air as he beat the ground to get to her; Rhett, laboring over a tangled mess of old leather and wood, cobbling this gift together with worn-out tools, scraps for materials, in poor and fading light.
How could it be? She'd asked him, over the years several times, and after they were married if he loved her. He'd denied it, only admitting to 'wanting' her. His pet. An investment.
And then her traitorous mind drifted again to the night before. How ardent yet arduously he'd worked, labored to ensure her pleasure would be as great or greater than his own, the sweat so slick on his back from his efforts that her fingers scrambled for purchase.
Scarlett kept her head bent over the shoes, much as the man in front of her had once kept his during an infamously disastrous visit to a dirty horse jail; but when she lifted it, her eyes glittered and her lips curved in triumph.
"You lily-livered coward," she said, and she meant every syllable. "You deceitful, lying skunk." The words were icicles, glaciers, icebergs, knives.
He'd come in here feigning nonchalance and disinterest, throwing her off his scent. He'd been doing it for years. No more.
"You love me. You've loved me forever. You love me with a sickness, you love me so much. You said it yourself last night."
He stared at her unblinking. "Yes, I suppose I do. Though I'd be better off if I did not. Do you know how long I've waited for you to return the sentiment?"
"I imagine it's been close to ten years now."
"Caught that, did you," he snorted a laugh, but there was no humor in it. "Bravo, my sweet. It's not as if I haven't told you in a hundred different ways."
He'd told her, alright, yes, and couched it all in fallacies, the fantastic and theatrical … probably so he could claim it was a joke if she ever called him on it. Her blood boiled at the thought.
"Hush your mouth," she said, and she didn't bother to temper the harshness of her tone whatsoever. "Hush it this instant. I'll hear no more of your—your pre, your pre—"
"Prevarications?" he supplied helpfully. "Although 'equivocations' might serve your purpose better."
"Neither of those," she said, although she wasn't sure what 'equivocations' meant. "And none of your hogswallop, either." She glared as hard at her husband as any woman ever had glared at a man. "Wipe that stupid blank look off your face while you're at it. You'll not be needing it anymore. The jig is up."
"I rather thought it was up last night when I spoke of the woman I'd loved for nearly a decade."
As if she were someone else! Always with the finagling and trickery!
She started to throw the snowshoes at him but caught herself in time.
"My pa used to say that a lie told with the air of truth is the most dangerous lie of all. As we both know, you're a liar—you, the man who told me he could forgive anything from me but a lie. I know a bit about lying and what I know is people do it either when something is to be gained by the lie, or something is to be lost by the truth. You've buried me in your lies. So tell me, what did you have to gain by the lies, and what would you have lost by the truth?"
He turned his back to her and stared out the window at the children, still romping in the snow, and when his voice came it was detached, as if from far away. "I knew how you would use it against me if you knew. I'd watched you with your beaux, with Ashley, with anyone who loved you. And I refused to be like them, running after you like a besotted fool, playing the puppet to your whims and living under your whip, not until you realized you loved me back and evened the playing field."
What a ridiculous conversation, rife with perverse proclamations in what should be tender moments. Not what she had imagined, but it was Rhett wasn't it, and he would never do anything like other men. It was part of his appeal, she had to admit despite herself.
Scarlett knew a sharp pang of joy and then almost instantly the cold wash of reality; for she loved him as well, loved him with all her pickled heart and twisted soul. She loved the light and the dark of him, loved all that was so terribly wrong as well as all that was so very right.
And he had her there because she would have used his love against him, at least before she knew she loved him back, but who could blame her for all the ways he'd tormented her over the years with his preposterous habits, and how nasty he'd been, with the matrons and—
"Oh, so you're going to ruin it for me. You're not even going to let me gloat?" she huffed, wildly perturbed and tottering on the edge of a full-on sulk. "After all the years I've put up with you—"
"Are you mad? You put up with me? I waited a decade for you. Biding my time through marriages and mayhem and an absurd childish infatuation—"
That got her goat and good.
"Oh, you think you're so different from Ashley. Turns out you don't know a blasted thing about how to court a woman either. You blew hot and cold and acted distant, yet kept coming around, just as he did, but behaving oddly. Of course, with him, it was because he was strange anyway not to mention promised elsewhere, but you had no such excuse other than your natural contrariness—"
She ignored the nearly murderous expression on his face at the comparison and went blithely on.
"And you flaunted your—your doings with that woman quite distressingly and people laughed at me, Rhett, pointed at me on the streets and laughed." She looked down at her lap again, dejectedly toying with the shoestrings of the snowshoes. "You know how I hate to be laughed at, you have to know, you do it yourself so often."
He walked back to the bed and sat on the edge, lifting her chin with his index finger, those dark eyes searching.
"People laughed at me as well, Scarlett. The man who chased a woman for years and finally got her to the altar, showering her with several fortunes in the bargain, only to be tossed out of her bed for her lover as soon as their first child was born. How long did we last, less than eighteen months? Not much of a marriage."
Rhett stood again. "You may not have realized that I was hopelessly in love with you but I assure you the rest of the town had been well aware for some time. You're not the only person with pride. Belle served several purposes, but not a desire for love. And I thought if you truly minded you might do something about it."
"Do something about it? You thought you'd beat me by embarrassing me and making me jealous?" Scarlett nearly sputtered in her outrage. "Do you even know me at all? And that was all better than just admitting you cared for me? I wanted you to care," her voice faltered. "I wanted you back. But you made it so hard."
"Perhaps we could put Ashley and Belle aside." For a fleeting moment, Rhett's shoulders sank and he almost appeared defeated. Of everything they'd discussed, she hated that the most.
"Fine. I always thought if I knew I meant anything at all to you it might be fun to torture you some, but if you're going to get all riled up at the mere thought of it," she made a huffing sound before going on.
"I suppose I could just be happy that I love you and you love me." She threw her hand to the side in a dismissive manner. "If you're so hellbent and determined to deprive me of the enjoyment I have earned thrice over merely by associating with you."
His head lifted and turned toward her, a lion on a scent. "You love me. You admit it."
She knew one brief glorious moment when he looked at her with openness, all the openness he gifted upon his daughter on nearly an hourly basis before his face shuttered again.
Oh but my darling, I love you! And we could be so happy together now that we both know! She started to say it but something, some flash of cognizance, a shred of self-preservation, perhaps sent by her ancestors themselves because God knows she never possessed any on her own, stopped her and tempered her response.
It took all the strength of a woman who had known no reticence when it came to expressing matters of the heart—when she was aware of them, that is.
Possibly it was because she'd watched him so closely these last few weeks; perhaps because she'd had time to reflect. For whatever reason, she'd learned a trick or two from the master; oh, yes she had. If he saw she was weak he could do the same to her, as he'd feared from her.
Scarlett regarded her opponent, for that is what he still was.
"I too, am not thrilled at the realization," she lied again, coolly. "Yet at least I'm not foolish or—puerile enough to try to hide it." She inwardly smiled at the use of the term.
Was that a glint of amusement in his eyes? "How strange. As I recall, you are usually quite open with your professions of love." He made a show as if to survey the room. "Perhaps there aren't enough books here for your tastes. Or cherub-adorned china bowls."
"I thought we were setting others aside," she retorted hotly. "And we have been better here, on this mountain, and even at the resort, have we not? Away from all the people and the baggage …"
"Yes," he said, and his face became kinder. "Yes, we have been better away. I can only hope our rapport remains once we return home." Ah. That was what worried him still. "Nevertheless, we have agreements I intend to keep, and hope you would do the same."
She nodded and looked back down at the shoes, tracing the uneven stitches with a finger in a reverent manner, which did not go unnoticed.
"You love me," he repeated, and it wasn't a question.
She gave a small, tight nod.
"Only me."
Scarlett resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Yes. Only you."
Sunlight from the window bathed the bed in its glow, and the mood of the room softened.
"I'm going to get the children inside and warmed up. Perhaps they'll lie down to nap for a while before dinner. They've been playing rather hard since breakfast."
Rhett turned toward her again.
"We could argue about all the bitter water under our collective bridge for a few more hours, but there are other tasks I should see to—and speaking of water, your bath won't wait forever," and there was that happy look in his eyes again, and those dimples on the sides of his mouth she so rarely saw for herself, and damn him, he had to know it was irresistible.
The front door closed softly behind him. Scarlett wasn't sure, but she thought she detected the faint whistle of a jaunty tune she'd never heard before as he made his way up the path.
OOOOooooOOOOoooo
Fun Facts: The phrase 'The jig is up' has been around since Elizabethan times, when a jig was originally a dance. During these times, the word "jig" became slang for a practical joke or trick. Thus, if "the jig was up" it meant that your trick was found out, or exposed. - Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson. Sometimes it's spelled as 'gig' but it really should be 'jig' and the 'j' pronounced as you would in 'jolly'.
In the late 80s, when my late husband was my new boyfriend I bought him an English bulldog puppy for Christmas. The joke was on me, because I came to worship that dog. "You love that puppy with a sickness," the recipient of my gift often proclaimed, and I didn't know he'd made a literary reference until just recently. "Love is a Sickness Full of Woes' is a poem by Samuel Daniel, written in the mid-1500s, and is referenced by Dixie Cross, I believe, in one of her lovely stories. We're all about the sixteenth century here. Anyway, I think of that phrase often, but mostly with how I feel about dogs. It fit for this chapter though, so I used it.
Happy New Year my dear readers! This chapter was supposed to be for Christmas, and then for New Year's—well, it's only a day late for that goal, at any rate. Another round of the Virus That Shall Not Be Named derailed my holidays but somehow my family powered through. Seemed kinda minor compared to all the unrest in the world at the moment. The 'interesting times' continue whether we find them interesting or not.
I hope you are all managing to take care of yourselves as we stare down some hard winter months—which I usually enjoy, by the way. I love it when there's bad weather and snow and I have such good excuses to stay in bed and read. Or cook! Right now I'm into all the simple bread recipes on social media. Confession: I have never used instant yeast before in my life. Seriously. And it's been around almost as long as I have. I feel like Rip Van Winkle.
So anyway, progress in this chapter, eh? I know it won't be fast enough for some but we are dealing with Rhett and Scarlett, are we not? Nothing's easy with these two.
This site is still screwed six ways from Sunday. Thank you for all your kind words in the past, and do drop me a few more and let me know you're still out there! Wishing you all the best in the coming year with peace and joy abounding, misscyn