Chapter 19
"I almost knew twice," Scarlett said later that night in their makeshift bed at the smokehouse, rolling on her side with her hands folded beneath her cheek, watching her husband as he lay on his back, naked with nothing but a sheet around his waist. He seemed lost in thought, broad fingers laced behind his head as he stared at the rough, grooved ceiling, the quiet of the forest beyond the window giving a peaceful glow, the ghost of a smile curving his lips in what could only be described as a smug post-relations expression of self-satisfaction.
Like he'd won something, she thought with a flash of irritation. Then again, perhaps he had.
"During the war," Scarlett went on, her mind drifting back to the mountain, the ice slide, Rhett's face as he tied her scarf under her chin in the moonlight a mere few hours before. "When you brought me the bonnet, I thought then that you loved me."
He gave her a dubious glance. "Because of a bonnet?"
She shrugged. "You had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense, and then to bring it to me such a long way—we weren't even that well acquainted at the time, and certainly not friends yet. It seemed that you would have to be in love with me to do all that."
"I give many people expensive gifts," he said. She leveled him with a look, and he relented, albeit reluctantly. "I hadn't meant to tip my hand, but it was so obvious no other girl could have worn it, and I knew it would have been a sin to let it go to someone else."
"True." Scarlett smiled in a feline manner and patted him on his leg, and he laughed.
"So what disabused you of this revelation that I had fallen madly in love with you so early on?"
"Funnily enough," she wrinkled her nose in distaste. "It had to do with another type of gift. Not long after she gave Melly money in your handkerchief for the hospital and then—"
"She?"
"You know who."
Rhett rubbed the corner of his mustache with his thumb. "Ah." He gave her a wry look. "Was that shortly after we gathered wildflowers together that day?"
"Yes." Scarlett's nostrils flared in remembrance of a sunny afternoon during the war before everything became so hard, when everyone still had hope. "She'd soaked it in half a bottle of her reeking perfume, just to drive home her point. During wartime," she added. "Such a waste of precious goods merely to attempt to rile me." She stuck her nose in the air. "Although I could hardly call that scent precious."
Scarlett shifted uncomfortably as it occurred to her that perhaps Rhett spirited that creature the stinking cheap perfume through the blockade. She'd smelled the very same scent on him as recently as three months ago. Perhaps he still bought for her—oh, she must banish such thoughts. No good would come of them.
"I see." Rhett wrinkled his brow in thought before continuing. "While I understand that you would find such a happening less than pleasant, I'm not sure why you assumed it meant I no longer saw you in a, let us say, amorous light, although I don't suppose it's that foreign considering your limited understanding of men being men, and all that." He leered at her then in that lurid and annoying way of his, which she promptly ignored.
"Because I thought you couldn't—wouldn't be with her, and love me, at the same time." She sat up, the peace draining from her. "And then you would be a skunk most of the time anyway, and after any time you behaved nicely for even one minute, the next you'd act like a complete varmint—"
That grin faded, replaced by a hardened expression she knew all too well. "I didn't want you to know. You had so many suitors, I refused to be part of the fawning fray trailing behind your every step or toss of your head."
She stared at him. "That is patently ridiculous. You weren't like them, you were always in a league of your own. Besides, you made it clear it wasn't a proper courtship—" What a tangled mess it all had become.
He shrugged. "Go on. You said there were two times."
"I used to wait for you to return to Atlanta after your many trips elsewhere—I looked forward to your visits and, well," she stopped, nearly embarrassed as she recalled. "I thought it was almost as if I loved you, but I talked myself out of that, too."
"Pray, what happened to discourage you from this conclusion?"
She hesitated for a beat. "Well, I figured I couldn't love two men at once."
A heavy pause ensued as Rhett's mouth drew down in an all-too-familiar expression, before he managed to compose himself and fix his face blandly again. "So again, you understood so little of men that you thought I couldn't have a mistress while I had feelings for you, and so little of your own heart that you mistook what you felt for him and for me as too similar to exist simultaneously—"
She gave a mirthless laugh. "It was the same mistake, don't you see?"
The spectres of Belle and Ashley darkened the corners of the room, and any lightness swooshed out. Both Scarlett and Rhett thought it had all been put to rest in the meadow, but as it turned out, not quite.
Silence reigned for another elongated pause before he spoke again.
"Mrs. Watling and I go far back, and as a result, she is far more attached than she has any right to be. There are reasons for it, complicated ones that I don't think you want to hear, and that I don't care to share. They have nothing to do with how I feel for you or how I have ever felt for you, for that matter."
The 'Mrs. Watling' bothered her more than anything else he'd said, for some reason she could not pinpoint.
She opened her mouth to push for the reasons, but then shut it, not sure she wanted to know. Even though she strongly suspected, nothing good would come out of discussing it, and she would never be able to return to her former innocence of such knowledge.
No others, he'd said, no others for you, or for me.
"Are you going to tell her?" It came out before she could stop it.
"Tell her what?"
"You know," she gestured between their bodies, in the general vicinity of their hearts.
"I don't believe I'll have to spell it out. You know so little of such matters. She'll realize when I cease to require her—"
Scarlett cut in. "I don't want you—" she closed her eyes against the humiliation of voicing it. "I don't want you spending your evenings there, even doing business—"
"Scarlett," he warned.
"Well, I don't," she set her face in defiance, the distance away from Atlanta giving her courage. Ladies didn't speak of such things, weren't even supposed to know of them, but of course they knew, and not speaking had certainly not helped her up to this moment. "And you know why."
"I didn't betray you before we became physically estranged, and I certainly won't now, are you satisfied?" he made a huffing sound and frowned. "Are you going to tell him?"
"There's nothing to tell. Not like I keep in a room at his house and roll around under the covers with him every chance I get—"
"Scarlett," he warned again.
She jutted her chin. "Well, I don't."
'In your mind and heart, you have, as he has in his own. Minus the heart on his end, I imagine."
She decided to let that last part go. "I can't speak for what Ashley Wilkes does in his mind, but I can assure you it's not something I indulge in or ever wanted to indulge in."
"No? You never breached your, ah, pure and chaste existence, the one for which you gave up your husband's presence in your bed, even in your head?" She knew him well enough to catch the bitterness underneath his seemingly neutral tone.
"Actually, no. You'd be surprised at where I did not go in my mind with Ashley Wilkes. It was all very innocent. I can walk away from him far more easily than you can walk away from her."
Rhett sighed. "Then you don't understand anything about it at all." After a moment, he sat up and faced her. "You thought of him when you were with me, and unfortunately, I knew it, my dear. You told on yourself when you'd always get misty-eyed with that ridiculous dreamy look on your face."
"I didn't think of Ashley when you and I were together in a physical sense, Rhett, only after, as I've told you before. And I never thought of Ashley like that."
"Like what?" That mocking tone had returned. Oh, she didn't like this, the way they were talking.
"You know."
"Oh, I see. The fine Ashley Wilkes would never lower himself to perform the earthy acts we indulge in that you like so well." She blushed, but of course, it did not slow him in the slightest. "Are you trying to tell me that you never imagined sleeping with your little gentleman, over all these years, naked and in bed and, ah, enthusiastically participating in that manner of yours—that I have to admit has even surprised a man as worldly as I—with your delightful responses and predilections," her blush grew deeper as he gestured toward the pillows behind with his head, smirking at her discomfort all the while, "for rampant and unbridled carnal activity?"
Scarlett ignored the last bit of his sentence for the surprisingly more perplexing words of the first. "Ashley naked?" She wrinkled her brow. "Why would I imagine Ashley naked?"
Such a preposterous proposition, yet for the first time she did imagine such a vision for a moment, or tried to: Ashley clothed in nothing save his downtrodden, beaten expression, his shoulders hunched, graying hair and lifeless demeanor—as well as other, rather key components that she'd recently come to appreciate in her husband—limp and lifeless, as well.
Scarlett's mouth dropped open and her brow wrinkled as if she smelled something very, very foul. She swallowed and looked as if she might be ill, then cleared her throat.
"Scarlett?" Rhett inquired as she struggled to compose herself, the revulsion genuine and apparent in her features. His lips twitched.
"It is unseemly and extremely distasteful to consider," she managed to spit out.
"Come now, don't bother with the moral outrage at this point, we both know you don't really feel it. Surely you have wondered—"
"No," she cut him off, again sounding slightly choked. "Dear God, no, and if you have any mercy at all don't make me think—" she stopped again, overcome by the mental image of Ashley awkwardly attempting to touch her in the ways Rhett did so spectacularly. Except it wasn't spectacular at all, and rather reminded her of several unpleasant couplings during her first and second marriages. Unwelcome images of Charles looking like a boy in a too-long nightshirt, crowing like a rooster after finally deflowering her, and Frank, wrinkled and shriveled, taking off those damnable pants and once again resembling a hermit crab changing his shell. She grunted in true distress, and not at all delicately.
None of the three compared in the least to the magnificent beast stretched before her in all his savage glory, and no one knew it better than she.
Rhett studied her face, his lips pressed tightly together as if he were suppressing laughter, before he gave in, and great, gasping peals of mirth erupted from his being. He tried to stop when he saw her displeasure; she could have sworn his eyes almost watered with the effort before he gave up and doubled over with unchecked hilarity.
"Oh my dear, dear Scarlett," he reached for the worn but clean handkerchief he kept by the bed and actually dabbed at his eyes. "Your inability to control your expressions has never served you better than this moment. Do not bother with purchasing any gifts for me for Christmas or even my birthday this year; I can think of no greater present than the one you just bestowed. I wish I had a daguerreotype of your face when you tried to imagine Mr. Wilkes sans his skivvies. I shall tax my own imagination to conjure it up in times of trouble and strife—"
"Oh, hush," she returned grumpily. "And is that what you call it, 'engaging in carnal activity'?"
"Not for us, though I suppose you would have thought of it as some type of ethereal and erudite lovemaking with him." His tone was light, yet despite his heightened mood, tension still laced the words. "However, since his nudity would be involved," he cast a glance at her and laughed again as her lip drew up in revulsion. "Perhaps those would be terms for us alone."
The laughter faded and Rhett's face soured a bit more as he went on. "Yet you still believed you loved him after all the years I called on you without fail, after I helped you out of Atlanta, and would have given you the tax money when I could. After helping you when you were married and pregnant with another man's child, and then after I married you, and stayed married to you, even when you chose your feelings for him over me in every way." The bitterness returned, and in spades.
Scarlett looked at Rhett helplessly. How could she make him understand? She cast her eyes about the room, looking for inspiration, and landed on a pile of wood and the whittling knife stacked neatly in the corner, with a few of her son's rudimentary carvings atop it.
"Rhett, did you ever have a treasure box as a child? Like Wade with that old cigar box of his pebbles and feathers and whatnot."
"Of course. It's a fairly common thing for boys to have in their possession, something to empty their pockets into at the end of a long day of play."
Scarlett briefly flashed to how Melly always seemed to know what was in Wade's pockets, and since the foray into this wilderness, she could say that she did too, and she smiled.
"Girls have such things too, although when I was a child mine might have looked more like something a boy would possess." She paused to gather her thoughts, to discern the best way to make her point. "And then later I was the belle of five counties and Ashley was the cream of the beaux crop, in a manner of speaking. I'd put what we found on our walks in there, little notes we exchanged, dance cards, whatever I found sentimental." Rhett made a huffing sound but she went on.
"He called on me every week for two years, not to mention escorting me to parties and such— so naturally I thought—well, since we were each the best of the best—" she waited on a derisive comment, and when it did not come hurriedly continued. "And then the war came and Charles and Wade and I'd lost so much of my life before and everything I held dear, I should have seen he wasn't for me when he came home from the war so useless and sad but then between saving Tara and marrying Frank and I had to keep my memories somewhere. I don't like to look back, but I had to keep them somewhere, don't you see? So I wouldn't lose them, wouldn't lose who I had been and where I came from." She gazed at him pleadingly, and he nodded, those dark eyes fixed on her face.
"And so after Ashley became my treasure box after a fashion, one that I could visit at the mill. He treated me like I was still that belle, like the fine lady I always wanted to be, and made me feel young and carefree for just a few minutes." She appeared to be far away in thought. "Not memories about people who are gone, that would surely make me sad. But things he knew about me, only he knows how I was as a child and then a young belle, how the days of our existence were so light and filled with laughter, and he made me feel that way again, innocent and gay with my entire life ahead of me."
Her eyes took on that dreamy quality Rhett had seen before, and he studied every nuance of her face, considering. "And then I could pack all that up and go back to reality, knowing it was waiting for me when I needed it, that I could live it and feel that way again when all the people who hated me and the fighting and struggling for mere existence became too much. Do you understand?"
Rhett nodded, his expression unreadable once again, although his eyes were kinder than she expected, considering the subject.
"And the fact that he's a rather handsome keeper of your memories — a pretty box, as it were—who always behaved like a gentleman didn't hurt."
She sighed, and he caught that as well. "It was my only source of happiness, or so I thought."
Rhett's visage darkened. "I imagine that day in the orchard, you weren't so disgusted when he lost control. Leave it to you to fail to realize that it's not the box that's important, but what is in it. "
"I realize it now, which is why I'm telling you," she snapped, then softened her tone.
"You are my source of happiness Rhett, and I think you always were. You just did such a good job of disguising it. And I feel safe here on this mountain with you, safe and secure in a way I never have before, despite being trapped. Please don't mock me for what I have revealed to you."
'There's been a frosty genius in our sanctuary, to be sure." Then he had the nerve to sound almost affronted. "Come now Scarlett, why would I mock you when you've bared your soul to me about something so important?"
She narrowed her eyes. "How am I supposed to know what you're going to be hateful about and what you're not? How you decide appears completely arbitrary to me."
"Arbitrary? That's a big word."
"I know some words, Rhett Butler." Secretly, she congratulated herself on using the term correctly. She daren't tell him she learned it from Ashley himself. "It fits."
A weighted silence ensued before he spoke again.
"We were on the edge of something before we came here. There was anger, anger and a rage building in me at the situation. Something had to give, and it's ultimately why I asked you on this trip."
He appeared to be brooding for a moment, and then inexplicably his visage lightened. "Make that face again."
"What?"
"Think of Ashley Wilkes naked once more." He gestured down the length of his body, that perfect, burnished, sinful body. "Think of him lying here before you just as I am."
She screwed up her face and gave an involuntary shudder. "Good lord. Stop."
He laughed and laughed until she punched his arm. "I thought you said what's inside the box is more important." And he still laughed, but she didn't say anything, because she knew Rhett had Ashley beat on the inside, despite all his aggravating behavior, even his cruelty; which she had seen little of, she suddenly realized, since they had been on the mountain.
But what would happen when they returned?
"As you can plainly see, there is a great deal of difference between your relationship with that creature and mine with Ashley—"
A sudden, frightening thought possessed her, and she gripped his arm.
"Did you give her what you give me?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, in, in her bed. Did you give her what you give me?" She couldn't say what she meant, all the gentle and tender gestures that meant so much, the softest kisses mixed with the not-so-soft, the motions that seemed to come from so deep … .
"My dear, surely you know by now that the mechanics of the act are somewhat similar and irrefutable no matter the parties involved—"
She gripped his arm harder. "You know what I mean, did you give her what you give me now?"
He saw the misery and fear in her face and took pity, unwrapping her fingers from his arm and kissing the back of her hand as gracefully and deftly as if they were joining a waltz at a ball.
"Of course I didn't, Scarlett. I've never given any woman what I give you."
He gave her a measuring look. "I think this train of conversation will only lead to misery, and there has been enough misery between us, has there not? I will accept what you've shared about Ashley if you can accept what I've told you of Belle."
Some of the unhappiness drained from her face, but not all. Rhett eyed her appraisingly and patted her hand again before drawing her close and tucking her head under his chin.
"As far as who Belle was to me—since the day of that bazaar dance and going forward—she's a woman I had because the woman I wanted wouldn't have me." His hand drifted down the back of her head as he spoke. "That's all you need to think of it."
Scarlett thought of all the pain his flaunting of that woman had caused her and she wanted to argue—oh how she did—but she reared back and looked at him, really looked, and saw the shadow of wounded masculinity in his eyes, and something about it reminded her of an expression she'd caused on Frank's face, more than once, and even farther back than that, on Charles'.
And something within her caught the meaning and implications of it, some shred of cognizance, and it was like a puzzle piece sliding into place that she hadn't any idea was missing, yet was priceless, all the same. One that she might have missed forever if it hadn't been for this time and place. And she knew right then, for the first time, the magnitude of not only how this man had hurt her, but what she had cost him in return.
"Al — alright, Rhett," she said, and the words came out gossamer soft. "Alright."
His chest moved as he breathed deeply and then smiled, a real smile, his eyes crinkling and joy breaking through like sun through black and threatening clouds. It lasted a split second before that cocky grin took over.
"As you said, it's in the past, and neither one of us likes to live in the past. Now that we are on the same page, and under the same sheets so to speak—"
He lifted a brow and lay back on the covers, the muscles rippling in his abdomen, looking nothing but wicked, dark, and inviting in his unclothed state. He smiled again, altogether rakish with the flash of white teeth against the darkness, and for a split second she imagined a blade held between them.
Scarlett giggled. Rhett cocked his head at her in question.
"There's a pirate in my bed," she laughed again, then bounced on the cornshuck-stuffed mattress beside him. "A scurrilous one who plans to sully me," she said, reaching for the descriptions in his stories.
"I'll show you a pirate," he flipped over and pulled her underneath him in a single smooth motion, burying his head in her hair before moving his lips lower. And then he plundered her quite thoroughly, to which she had no objection in the slightest.
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"It is all coming together rather nicely," Melly breathed as she made her report to her husband in front of the warm hearth the next evening. The funds are in place and I have quite a search party together."
She clasped her hands together. "And oh, Ashley, there's been a development! It's all so exciting."
Ashley regarded his wife indulgently. "Pray, go on, my dear."
"Well, with what Mrs. Watling gave me, I was able to add more reward money to Aunt Pitty's newspaper advertisement, and there was an answer. A Mr. Jeffrey Smith claims he sold a well-dressed, wealthy gentleman with a swarthy complexion a wagon and a horse right after the train wreck."
Ashley perked up visibly. "Did he see Scarlett or the children?"
"Well, no, but he said the man was tall and large and had dark hair and an unusually close-clipped mustache. Mr. Smith described his clothing as rather dapper. And said he spoke with a refined Southern accent."
Ashley's eyes lit with recognition. "That does sound indisputably like Captain Butler."
"There's more. After a few days, the horse came back, Ashley."
He frowned. "I'm not sure that's a beneficial development, Melly,"
"I know, I know, but it doesn't necessarily have to be bad, does it? They could have gotten where they could settle and then sent the horse down the mountain as a message—oh, I just can't say." She wrung her hands. "But I've decided to take it as a beacon of hope because all the plans are falling into place, and it just has to be. "
Her energy became once again infectious and Ashley smiled. "Is that so? What plans?"
"Yes, well, I sent a telegram to Tara yesterday and received a reply today. Alex Fontaine will be here the day after tomorrow, and then Will Benteen as well. Uncle Henry wants to accompany us, and Dr. Meade," she said happily. "Mrs. Meade won't let her husband go that far without her. Even India and Mrs. Elsing have expressed an interest."
"Surprising considering how none of those people are fans of the Butlers," his brow wrinkled in consternation. "How many tickets are you purchasing?"
"All of them," she said simply. "I've reserved an entire car."
Ashley looked at her blankly. "Is that the best use of the funds you were given, Melly? "
Melly shifted on her feet, looking like a child who'd been caught stealing sweets from the kitchen. "I may have been able to raise a little more."
"How much more?"
She hesitated only a beat. "I've doubled it."
Ashley lifted his eyebrows, waiting.
Melly took a deep breath and straightened her back. "I know it isn't proper but I went to the bank and met with the board members and I told them they should be ashamed of not helping with the funds, and now that we have the new evidence surely if and when Captain Butler returns he will be beyond angry at that worthless report from Pinkerton's and their lackadaisical efforts. So angry," she gave her husband a sideways glance. "So angry that he might pull all his money out of their coffers." She patted her sleeves into place.
"And they changed their tune almost immediately. So now that the bank is paying for the travel arrangements. We have the means to organize, provide meals, and any nursing that might well be required. We have to purchase bandages and supplies and warm clothing, much warmer than the men here are accustomed to wearing. The sheriff there can give us a few men, and we can hire more if need be."
The corner of Ashley's lip curved upward.
"You're reminding me of Scarlett."
"Scarlett isn't here," Melly's voice caught on the words. "Someone has to do what she would have done in my place."
"But Melly, as I said before, people don't care for the Butlers, and particularly Scarlett, since Mr. Butler's not-so-subtle campaign against her." Ashley's face stiffened, and a shadow of guilt crossed his countenance.
Melly brightened. "That's what is so wonderful—everyone has seemed to forget about all that in the spirit of the battle. They may love to hate Scarlett, I'm not a fool. But now we have this mission to get one of our own, well, several of our own, in fact, out of Yankee territory and back home, and do it in style. Something we couldn't do during the war." Her face fell a bit at that last.
Ashley still appeared doubtful. "You know how people treat her, how they talk about her. I'm not so sure." He stared out the window at the gray trees, remembering a winter in Pennsylvania and marching through West Virginia without boots. The snow, the godawful snow, the frozen miles and miles of it with bloody feet leaving tracks, the frozen bodies, the cold that would never end, his only hope that Mose somehow got away, got word to his wife that he was alive … and that Scarlett had honored her promise. Which she had, and in spades.
Melly prattled on, unaware of his dark introspection.
"Of course, we'll need a battalion leader. I will head up the nursing and Mrs. Merriweather will be in charge of food. Why, Mammy sent word she'd get on the train even after Prissy started recounting all the horrors of Yankee territory and the bitter weather. Mammy told her to just shut up, she wanted to see her babies again." She approached Ashley from behind and stood at his shoulder.
"Even the ones who don't like Scarlett at all are behind the cause."
"The cause?"
'Why, yes. The cause of bringing the Butlers home." She leaned her head on his shoulder. "I know how people love to hate her, how they revel in treating her so very poorly and tell themselves she deserves every bit of it and more, and that they'll say they're just going for the children." She made a small, delicate fist with her hand in her skirts.
"But still, despite their dislike, there's something about Scarlett that no one wants to see completely snuffed out. Oh, they'd like to see her suffer and humbled, and pay for at least a few of her perceived sins, surely, and perhaps that's why at least some of the women are making the trek. But if Scarlett were to die, in Northern territory and because of something as innocuous as hard weather—" her brow puckered at the thought. "Well, deep inside, it would be a bittersweet, if not painful loss in many ways, and I think they know it, to see that spirit gone, and that determination for survival to fail. We would all lose something intrinsic then."
"She might be gone, Melly. They all might be."
"She's not. They're not. I won't allow it."
It was that strength again, that rallying of spirit that got him. Ashley turned and regarded his demure and brilliant wife.
"I'll lead the battalion," he said, the words out before he could stop them.
Melly gifted him with a beatific and benevolent smile, and he felt keenly aware of her complete lack of surprise at his answer.
"Yes, you will, Ashley Wilkes," she said softly as she went into his arms. "Yes, you will."
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Hello my readers! I wanted to get this to you all for Easter, I'm a few days late, I hope you can enjoy it anyway. Almost there, folks. Stay with me, and drop me a few words if you would be so kind. Life is hard, but we still have reading, and language, and each other :). Peace, misscyn
