Scarlett (32 page)

Scarlett felt a chill of terror. She’d thought it was all talk. Surely no one was going to make things worse! “There’s nothing to manage!” she exclaimed. “The only thing to do is lie low till it blows over. Rhett must have gotten Ross away safely or we’d have heard.”

Mrs. Butler looked astonished. “We cannot allow the Union Army to get away with this, Scarlett, surely you see that. They’ve already searched our houses, and they’ve announced that curfew will be enforced, and they’re arresting all the black-market dealers in rationed goods. If we let them keep on the way they’re going, soon we’ll be back where we were in ’sixty-four when they had their boots on our necks, governing every breath of our lives. It simply won’t do.”

Scarlett wondered if the whole world was going mad. What did a bunch of tea-drinking, lace-making Charleston ladies think they could do against an army?

She found out two nights later.

Lucinda Wragg’s wedding had been scheduled for January twenty-third. The invitations were addressed, and waiting to be delivered on January second, but they were never used. “Terrible efficiency” was Rosemary Butler’s tribute to the efforts of Lucinda’s mother, her own mother, and all the other ladies of Charleston. Lucinda’s wedding took place on December nineteenth, at Saint Michael’s Church, at nine o’clock in the evening. The majestic chords of the wedding march sounded through the open doors and windows of the packed and beautifully decorated church precisely at the hour the curfew began. They could be heard clearly in the Guardhouse across the street from Saint Michael’s. Some officer later told his wife in the hearing of their cook that he had never seen the men in his command so nervous, not even before they marched into the Wilderness. The whole city heard the story the following day. Everyone had a good laugh, but no one was surprised.

At nine-thirty the entire population of Old Charleston exited from Saint Michael’s and went on foot along Meeting Street to the reception at the South Carolina Hall. Men and women and children, aged five to ninety-seven years old, strolled laughing in the warm night air, breaking the law with flagrant defiance. There was no way the Union command could claim to be unaware of the occurrence; it took place under their very noses. Nor was there any way they could arrest the miscreants. The Guardhouse had twenty-six jail cells. Even if the offices and corridors had been used, there was not enough room to hold all the people. Saint Michael’s pews had had to be moved to its peaceful graveyard to create enough space for everyone to crowd inside, standing shoulder to shoulder.

During the reception people had to take turns to get out onto the columned porch outside the crowded ballroom for a breath of air and a view of the helpless patrol marching in futile discipline along the empty street.

Rhett had returned to the city that afternoon with the news that Ross was safely in Wilmington. Scarlett confessed to him out on the porch that she’d been afraid to go to the wedding, even with him as escort. “I couldn’t believe that a bunch of tea-party ladies could lick the Yankee Army. I’ve got to say it, Rhett. These Charleston folks have got all the gumption in the world.”

He smiled. “I love the arrogant fools, every one of them. Even poor old Ross. I do hope he never learns that he missed the Yankee by a mile, he’d be very embarrassed.”

“He didn’t even shoot him? I suppose he was drunk.” Her voice was thick with contempt. Then it skidded high with fear. “Then the prowler’s still around!”

Rhett patted her shoulder. “No. Rest assured, my dear, you’ll hear no more of the prowler. My brother and little Lucinda’s hasty wedding have put the fear of God into the Yankees.” He chuckled with rich, private enjoyment.

“What’s so funny?” demanded Scarlett suspiciously. She hated it when people laughed and she didn’t know why.

“Nothing you would understand,” said Rhett. “I was congratulating myself on single-handedly solving a problem and then my bungling brother went me one better: he inadvertently gave the whole city something to enjoy and feel proud about. Look at them, Scarlett.”

The porch was more crowded than ever. Lucinda Wragg, now Lucinda Grimball, was throwing flowers from her bouquet down to the soldiers.

“Humph! I’d sooner throw brickbats myself!”

“I’m sure you would. You’ve always liked the obvious. Lucinda’s way requires imagination.” His amused, lazy drawl had become viciously cutting.

Scarlett tossed her head. “I’m going back inside. I’d a far sight rather be suffocated than insulted.”

Unseen in the shadow of a nearby column, Rosemary cringed at the cruelty she heard in Rhett’s voice and the angry hurt in Scarlett’s. Later that night, after bedtime, she tapped on the door of the library where Rhett was reading, then entered and closed the door behind her.

Her face was blotched red from weeping. “I thought I knew you, Rhett,” she blurted, “but I don’t at all. I heard you talking to Scarlett tonight on the porch of the Hall. How could you be so mean to your own wife? Who are you going to turn on next?”

R
hett rose quickly from his chair and started towards his sister with his arms outstretched. But Rosemary held her hands up in front of her, palms outward, and backed away. His face darkened with pain, and he stood very still, his arms at his sides. He wanted—above all things—to shield Rosemary from hurt, and now he was the source of her anguish.

His mind was filled with Rosemary’s short sad story and his part in it. Rhett had never regretted or explained anything he had done in his tempestuous younger years. There was nothing he was ashamed of. Except the effects on his young sister.

Because of his rebellious defiance of family and society, his father had disowned him. Rhett’s name was only an inked-over line in the Butler family Bible when Rosemary’s birth was recorded. She was more than twenty years his junior. He did not even see her until she was thirteen, an awkward girl with long legs, large feet, and budding breasts. Their mother had disobeyed her husband for one of the few times in her life when Rhett began the dangerous life of blockade runner through the Union fleet and into Charleston Harbor. She came by night to the dock where his ship was moored, bringing Rosemary to meet him. The deep vein of loving tenderness in Rhett was inexpressively moved by the confusion and need that he sensed in his young sister, and he welcomed her to his heart with all the warmth that their father had never been able to give. In turn, Rosemary gave him the trust and loyalty that their father had never inspired. The bond between brother and sister had never been severed, despite the fact that they saw each other no more than a dozen times from first meeting until Rhett came home to Charleston eleven years later.

He had never forgiven himself for accepting their mother’s reassurance that Rosemary was well and happy and sheltered by the money he lavished on them once his father was dead and could no longer intercept and return it. He should have been more alert, more attentive, he accused himself later. Then perhaps his sister would not have grown up distrusting men the way she did. Perhaps she would have loved and married and had children.

As it was, when he returned home he found a twenty-four-year-old woman with the same awkwardness of the thirteen-year-old he had first met. She was uncomfortable with all men except him; she used the distant lives in novels as a substitute for the uncertainty of life in the world; she rejected the conventions of society about how a woman should look and think and behave. Rosemary was a blue-stocking, distressingly forthright, and totally lacking in feminine wiles and vanity.

Rhett loved her, and he respected her prickly independence. He couldn’t make up for the years he’d missed, but he could give her the rarest gift of all—his inner self. He was completely honest with Rosemary, talked to her as an equal and, on occasion, even confided the secrets of his heart to her, as he had never done to any other person. She recognized the immensity of his gift, and she adored him. In the fourteen months that Rhett had been home, the over-tall, ill-at-east, innocent spinster and the over-sophisticated, disillusioned adventurer had become the closest of friends.

Now Rosemary felt betrayed. She’d seen a side of Rhett that she hadn’t known existed, a streak of cruelty in the brother she’d known as unfailingly kind and loving. She was confused and distrustful.

“You haven’t answered my question, Rhett.” Rosemary’s reddened eyes were accusing.

“I’m sorry, Rosemary,” he said cautiously. “I am deeply sorry you happened to hear me. It was something I had to do. I want her to go away and leave all of us alone.”

“But she’s your wife!”

“I left her, Rosemary. She wouldn’t divorce me as I offered, but she knew the marriage was over.”

“Then why is she here?”

Rhett shrugged. “Perhaps we should sit down. It’s a long, tiring story.”

Slowly, methodically, rigidly unemotional, Rhett told his sister about Scarlett’s two earlier marriages, about his proposal and Scarlett’s agreement to marry him for his money. He also told her about Scarlett’s near-obsessive love for Ashley Wilkes throughout all the years he’d known her.

“But if you knew that, why on earth did you marry her?” Rosemary asked.

“Why?” Rhett’s mouth twisted in a smile. “Because she was so full of fire and so recklessly, stubbornly brave. Because she was such a child beneath all her pretenses. Because she was unlike any woman I had ever known. She fascinated me, infuriated me, drove me mad. I loved her as consumingly as she loved him. From the day I first laid eyes on her. It was a kind of disease.” There was a weight of sorrow in his voice.

He bowed his head into his two hands and laughed shakily. His voice was muffled and blurred by his fingers. “What a grotesque practical joke life is. Now Ashley Wilkes is a free man and would marry Scarlett on a moment’s notice, and I want to be rid of her. Naturally that makes her determined to have me. She wants only what she cannot have.”

Rhett raised his head. “I’m afraid,” he said quietly, “afraid that it will all begin again. I know that she’s heartless and completely selfish, that she’s like a child who cries for a toy and then breaks it once she has it. But there are moments when she tilts her head at a certain angle, or she smiles that gleeful smile, or she suddenly looks lost—and I come close to forgetting what I know.”

“My poor Rhett.” Rosemary put her hand on his arm.

He covered it with his own. Then he smiled at her, and he was himself again. “You see before you, my dear, the man who was once the marvel of the Mississippi riverboats. I’ve gambled all my life, and I’ve never lost. I’ll win this hand, too. Scarlett and I have made a deal. I couldn’t risk having her here in this house too long. Either I would fall in love with her again or I would kill her. So I dangled gold in front of her, and her greed for money outbalanced the undying love she professes for me. She will be leaving for good when the Season is over. Until then all I have to do is keep her at a distance, outlast her, and outwit her. I’m almost looking forward to it. She hates to lose, and she lets it show. It’s no fun beating someone who’s a good loser.” His eyes laughed at his sister. Then they sobered. “It would destroy Mama if she knew the truth about my miserable marriage, but she’d be ashamed if she knew that I’d walked out on it, no matter how unhappy it was. A terrible dilemma. This way, Scarlett will leave, I will be the injured but bravely stoic party, and there’ll be no disgrace.”

“And no regrets?”

“Only for having been a fool once—years ago. I’ll have the very powerful solace of not being a fool the second time. It does a lot to erase the humiliation of the first time.”

Rosemary stared, unabashedly curious. “What if Scarlett changed? She might grow up.”

Rhett grinned. “To quote the lady herself—‘when pigs fly.’ ”

G
o away.” Scarlett buried her face in a pillow.

“It’s Sunday, Miss Scarlett, you can’t sleep late. Miss Pauline and Miss Eulalie is expecting you.”

Scarlett groaned. It was enough to make a person turn Episcopalian. At least they got to sleep later; the service at Saint Michael’s wasn’t until eleven o’clock. She sighed and got out of bed.

Her aunts wasted no time in beginning to lecture her about what would be expected of her in the upcoming Season. She listened impatiently while Eulalie and Pauline lectured her on the importance of decorum, inconspicuousness, deference to her elders, ladylike behavior. For heaven’s sake! She’d cut her teeth on all those rules. Her mother and Mammy had drummed them into her from the time she could walk. Scarlett set her jaw mutinously and stared at her feet as they walked to Saint Mary’s. She just wouldn’t listen, that’s all.

However, when they were back at the aunts’ house having breakfast Pauline said something that forced her to pay attention.

“You needn’t scowl at me, Scarlett. I’m only telling you for your own good what people are saying. There’s a rumor that you have two brand new ball gowns. It’s a scandal, when everyone else is happy to make do with what they’ve been wearing for years. You’re new in town and you have to be careful of your reputation. Rhett’s, too. People haven’t made up their minds about him yet, you know.”

Scarlett’s heart gave a sickening lurch. Rhett would kill her if she ruined things for him. “What about Rhett? Please tell me, Aunt Pauline.”

Pauline told. With relish. All the old stories—he was expelled from West Point, his own father had disowned him for his wild behavior, he was known to have made money in disreputable ways, as a professional gambler on Mississippi riverboats, in the brawling gold fields of California, and worst of all through consorting with scallywags and carpetbaggers. True, he’d been a brave soldier for the Confederacy, a blockade runner and a gunner in Lee’s Army, and he’d given most of his dirty money to the Confederate cause—