Scarlett (123 page)

“Past the fireplace. That door that’s open. That’s the scullery. The door to the tunnel is open, too. I opened it in case I had to run. Momma was in Dublin.”

“Come on, Scarlett, you can bawl your eyes out later. Cat is going to save our unworthy necks.”

The tunnel had high grated windows. There was barely enough light to see, but Rhett moved at a steady speed, never stumbling. His arms were bent, his hands under Cat’s knees. He jounced her in a gallop, and she shrieked with delight.

My lord, our lives are in terrible danger, and the man’s playing horsie! Scarlett didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Was there ever in the history of the world a man who was as crazy about babies as Rhett Butler?

From the servants’ wing Cat directed them through a door into the stable yard. The horses were maddened with fright. Rearing, neighing, kicking at the gates to the stalls. “Hold Cat tight while I let them out,” Scarlett said urgently. Bart Morland’s story was vivid in her memory.

“You take her. I’ll do it.” Rhett put Cat in Scarlett’s arms.

She moved to the safety of the tunnel. “Kitty Cat, can you stay here for a little while by yourself while Momma helps with the horses?”

“Yes. A little while. I don’t want Ree to be hurt.”

“I’ll send him to the good pasture. You’re a brave girl.”

“Yes,” said Cat.

Scarlett ran to Rhett’s side, and together they released all the horses except Comet and Half Moon. “Bareback will do,” said Scarlett. “I’ll get Cat.” They could see torches moving inside the house now. Suddenly a ladder of flame raced up a curtain. Scarlett raced to the tunnel while Rhett calmed the horses. When she ran back with Cat in her arms, he was on Comet’s back, holding Half Moon by the mane with one hand to keep him steady. “Give Cat to me,” he said. Scarlett handed his daughter up to him and climbed the mounting block then onto Half Moon.

“Cat, you show Rhett the way to the ford. We’ll go to Pegeen’s, the way we always do, remember? Then we can take the Adamstown road to Trim. It’s not far. There’ll be tea and cakes at the hotel. Just don’t dawdle. You show Rhett the way. I’ll keep up. Now go.”

They stopped at the tower. “Cat says she’ll invite us to her room,” said Rhett evenly. Over his broad shoulder Scarlett could see flames licking into the sky beyond. Adamstown was on fire, too. Their escape was cut off. She jumped from the back of her horse.

“They’re not far behind,” she said. She was steady now. The danger was too close for nerves. “Hop down, Cat, and run up that ladder like a monkey.” She and Rhett sent the horses running along the riverbank, then followed.

“Pull up the ladder. They can’t get to us then,” Scarlett told Rhett.

“But they’ll know we’re here,” he said. “I can keep anyone from getting in; only one can come up at a time. Quiet, now, I hear them.”

Scarlett crawled into Cat’s cubbyhole and drew her little girl into her embrace.

“Cat’s not afraid.”

“Shhh, precious. Momma’s scared silly.”

Cat covered her giggling with her hand.

The voices and the torches came nearer. Scarlett recognized the boasting of Joe O’Neill, the blacksmith. “And didn’t I say we’d kill the English to a man if they ever dared to march into Ballyhara? Did you see it, then, the face of him when I raised my arm? ‘If you have a God,’ says I, ‘which I doubt, make your peace with him now,’ and then I drove the pike into him, like spitting a grand fat pig.” Scarlett held her hands over Cat’s ears. How frightened she must be, my fearless little Cat. She’s never nestled close to me this way in her life. Scarlett blew softly on Cat’s neck,
aroon, aroon
, and rocked her baby in her lap from side to side as if her arms were the safe tall sides of a sturdy cradle.

Other voices overlapped O’Neill’s. “The O’Hara’d gone over to the English, did I not say it long ago?”… “Aye, that you did Brendan, and fool I was to argue”… “Did you see her, now, down on her knees by the redcoat?”… “Shooting’s too good for her, I say we hang her with a choking rope”… “Burning’s better, burning’s what we want”… “The changeling’s what we’ve to burn, the dark one that brought the afflictions, I say the changeling spelled The O’Hara”… “spelled the fields… spelled the rain from the clouds themselves”… “changeling”… “changeling”… “changeling”… Scarlett held her breath. The voices were so close, so inhuman, so like the yowling of wild beasts. She looked at the outline of Rhett’s shadow in the darkness beside the opening to the ladder. She sensed his controlled alertness. He could kill any man who dared to climb the ladder, but what could stop a bullet if he showed himself? Rhett. Oh, Rhett, be careful. Scarlett felt a flooding, tingling happiness in every part of her. Rhett had come. He loved her.

The mob reached the tower and stopped. “The tower… they’re in the tower.” The shouts were like the baying of hounds at the death of the fox. Scarlett’s heart hammered in her ears. Then O’Neill’s voice cut through the others.

“… not there, see the rope still hanging down?”… “The O’Hara’s clever, she’d be tricking us that way,” another argued, and then all joined in. “You go up and see, Denny, you made the rope, you know its strength”… “Sure, go see for yourself, Dave Kennedy, since it’s your idea”… “The changeling talks with the ghost up there, they do be saying”… “He’s hanging still, his eyes open cutting right through you like a knife”… “Me old mother saw him walking on All Hallows’, the rope was dragging behind blighting all it touched to shrivelled backness”… “I feel a cold wind down my back, I’m leaving this haunted place”… “But if they’re up there, The O’Hara and the changeling? We need to kill them for the ill they’ve done us”… “Ach, isn’t slow starving a death as good as burning? Put your torches to the ropes, then, lads. They’ll not get down without breaking their necks!”

Scarlett smelled the rope burning, and she wanted to shout in jubilation. They were safe! No one could come up now. Tomorrow she could make a rope from strips of the quilts on the floor beneath her. It was over. They’d make their way to Trim somehow, when daylight came. They were safe! She bit her lips to stop herself from laughing, from crying, from calling Rhett’s name so she could feel it in her throat, hear it in the air, hear his deep, sure, laughing response, hear his voice speak her name.

It was a long time before the voices and the sound of trampling boots faded completely away. Even then Rhett did not speak. He came to her, and to Cat, and held them both in his strong embrace. It was enough. Scarlett rested her head against him, and it was all she wanted.

Much later, when Cat’s heavy looseness told of deep sleep, Scarlett laid her down and covered her with a quilt. Then she turned to Rhett. Her arms circled his neck, and his lips found hers.

“So that’s what it means,” she whispered shakily when the kiss ended. “Why, Mr. Butler, you fairly take my breath away.”

Muted laughter rumbled in his chest. He unlocked her embrace and gently separated them. “Come away from the baby. We have to talk.”

His low, quiet words did not make Cat stir. Rhett tucked the quilt closely around her. “Over here, Scarlett,” he said. He backed out of the niche and walked to a window. His profile was like a hawk’s against the fire-lit sky. Scarlett followed him. She felt as if she could follow him to the ends of the earth. He had only to call her name. No one had ever said her name quite the way Rhett did.

“We’ll get away,” she said confidently when she was beside him. “There’s a hidden path from the witch’s cottage.”

“From what?”

“She’s not really a witch, at least I don’t think so, and it doesn’t matter anyhow. She’ll show us the path. Or Cat will know one, she’s in the woods all the time.”

“Is there anything Cat doesn’t know?”

“She doesn’t know you’re her father.” Scarlett saw the muscles tighten in his jaw.

“Some day I’ll beat you black and blue for not telling me.”

“I was going to, but you fixed it so I couldn’t!” Scarlett said hotly. “You divorced me when it was supposed to be impossible, and then before I could turn around you had gone and gotten married. What was I supposed to do? Hang around your front door with my baby wrapped in my shawl like some kind of fallen woman? How could you do such a thing? That was rotten of you, Rhett.”

“Rotten of me? After you went charging off to God knows where without a word to anybody? My mother was worried sick, literally ill, until your Aunt Eulalie told her you were in Savannah.”

“But I left her a note. I wouldn’t upset your mother for the world. I love Miss Eleanor.”

Rhett caught her chin in his hand, turned and held her face in the uneven garish light from the window. Suddenly he kissed her, then he put his arms around her and held her to him. “It happened again,” he said. “My darling, hot-tempered, pigheaded, wonderful, infuriating Scarlett, do you realize we’ve been through this before? Missed signals, missed chances, misunderstandings that need never have happened. We’ve got to stop it. I’m too old for all this drama.”

He buried his lips and his laughter in her tangled hair. Scarlett closed her eyes and rested against his broad chest. Safe in the tower, safe in Rhett’s embrace, she could afford her fatigue and relief. Luxurious weak tears of exhaustion ran down her cheeks, and her shoulders slumped. Rhett held her close and stroked her back.

After a long time, his arms tightened with demand, and Scarlett felt new, thrilling energy race through her veins. She lifted her face to his, and there was neither rest nor safety in the blinding ecstasy she felt when their lips met. Her fingers combed his thick hair, grabbed, held his head down and his mouth on hers until she felt faint and at the same time strong and fully alive. Only the fear of waking Cat kept the wild cry of joy from bursting out of her throat.

When their kisses grew too urgent, Rhett broke away. He gripped the stone sill of the window with corded, white-knuckled hands. His breathing was ragged. “There are limits to a man’s control, my pet,” he said, “and the one thing I can think of that’s more uncomfortable than a wet beach is a stone floor.”

“Tell me you love me,” Scarlett demanded.

Rhett grinned. “What makes you think that? I come to Ireland on those damned clanking chugging steamships so often because I like the climate here so much.”

She laughed. Then she hit him on the shoulder with both fists. “Tell me you love me.”

Rhett trapped her wrists in a circle of his fingers. “I love you, you abusive wench.” His expression hardened. “And I’ll kill that bastard Fenton if he tries to take you from me.”

“Oh, Rhett, don’t be silly. I don’t even like Luke. He’s a horrible, cold-blooded monster. I was only going to marry him because I couldn’t have you.” Rhett’s skeptical raised eyebrows forced Scarlett to continue. “Well, I did sort of like the idea of London… and being a countess… and paying him back for insulting me by marrying him and getting all his money for Cat.”

Rhett’s black eyes glinted with amusement. He kissed Scarlett’s imprisoned hands. “I’ve missed you,” he said.

*   *   *

They talked through the night, sitting close together on the cold floor with their hands clasped. Rhett could not get enough of learning about Cat, and Scarlett delighted in telling him, delighted in his pride in what he learned. “I’ll do my best to make her love me more than you,” he warned.

“You don’t stand a chance,” Scarlett said confidently. “We understand each other, Cat and I, and she won’t put up with babying and spoiling from you.”

“How about adoring?”

“Oh, she’s used to that. She’s always had it from me.”

“We’ll see. I have a way with women, I’ve been told.”

“And she has a way with men. She’ll have you jumping through hoops before a week’s out. There was a little boy named Billy Kelly—oh, Rhett, guess what? Ashley’s married. I did the matchmaking. I sent Billy’s mother to Atlanta…” The story of Harriet Kelly led to the news that India Wilkes had finally found a husband, which led to the news that Rosemary was still a spinster.

“And likely to stay one,” Rhett said. “She is at Dunmore Landing, plowing money into restoring the rice fields and getting to be more like Julia Ashley every day.”

“Is she happy?”

“She glows with it. She would have packed my things herself if it would have hurried my departure.”

Scarlett’s eyes questioned him. Yes, Rhett said, he had left Charleston. It had been a mistake to think that he could ever be content there. “I’ll go back. Charleston never gets out of the blood of a Charlestonian, but I’ll go to visit, not to stay.” He had tried, he’d told himself that he wanted the stability of family and tradition. But in the end, he began to feel the nagging pain where his wings had been clipped. He couldn’t fly. He was earthbound, ancestor-bound, Saint Cecilia–bound, Charleston-bound. He loved Charleston—God, how he loved it—its beauty and its grace and its soft-scented salt breezes and its courage in the face of loss and ruin. But it wasn’t enough. He needed challenge, risk, some kind of blockade to be run.

Scarlett breathed a quiet sigh. She hated Charleston, and she was sure Cat would, too. Thank heaven Rhett wasn’t going to take them back there.

In a quiet voice, she asked about Anne. Rhett was silent for what seemed to her a very long time. Then he spoke, and his voice was heavy with sorrow. “She deserved better than me, better than life granted her. Anne had a quiet bravery and strength that puts every so-called hero to shame… I was more than half crazy about that time. You’d gone, and no one knew where you were. I believed you were punishing me, so to punish you, and to prove that I didn’t care about your leaving, I got the divorce. An amputation.”