Scarlett (23 page)

Scarlett stared at Mrs. Butler, then at Rhett. It wasn’t possible! Rhett couldn’t be older than her mother. Why, her mother was—her mother. She’d always taken it for granted that her mother was old, past the age of strong emotions. How could Rhett be older? How could she love him so desperately if he was that old?

Then Rhett added shock upon shock. He dropped his napkin on the table, stood, stepped to Scarlett’s side and kissed the top of her head, moved on to take his mother’s hand in his and kiss it. “I’m off now, Mama,” he said.

Oh, Rhett, no! Scarlett wanted to shout. But she was too stunned to say anything, even to ask where he was going.

“I wish you wouldn’t go out in the rainy pitch dark, Rhett,” his mother protested. “And Scarlett’s here. You’ve barely had a chance to say hello to her.”

“It’s stopped raining, and the full moon’s out,” Rhett said. “I can’t waste the chance to ride the tide upriver, and I’ve just enough time to catch it before it turns. Scarlett understands that you’ve got to check up on your workers if you go away and leave them—she’s a businesswoman. Aren’t you, my pet?” His eyes glittered from the candle flame reflected in them when he looked at her. Then he walked into the hall.

She pushed back from the table, almost upending her chair in her haste. Then, without a word to Mrs. Butler, she ran frantically after him.

He was in the vestibule, buttoning his coat, hat in his hand. “Rhett, Rhett, wait!” Scarlett cried. She ignored the warning in his look when he turned to face her. “Everything was so nice at supper,” she said. “Why do you want to go?”

Rhett stepped past her and pushed the door from the vestibule to the hallway. It closed with a heavy dull click of the latch, shutting off the rest of the house. “Don’t make a scene, Scarlett. They’re wasted on me.”

As if he could see inside her skull, he drawled his final words. “Don’t count on sharing my bed, either, Scarlett.”

He opened the door to the street. Before she could say a word, he was gone. The door swung slowly closed behind him.

Scarlett stamped her foot. It was an inadequate outlet for her anger and disappointment. Why did he have to be so mean? She grimaced—half anger, half unwilling laughter—in grudging acknowledgment of Rhett’s cleverness. He’d known what she was planning easy enough. Well then, she’d have to be cleverer, that’s all. She’d have to give up the idea of having a baby right away, think of something else. Her brow was furrowed when she went back to join Rhett’s mother.

“There now, dear, don’t be upset,” Eleanor Butler said, “he’ll be all right. Rhett knows the river like the back of his hand.” She had been standing near the mantel, unwilling to go into the hall and risk intruding on Rhett’s farewell to his wife. “Let’s go into the library, it’s cozy there, and let the servants clear the table.”

Scarlett settled into a high-back chair, protected from drafts. No, she said, she didn’t want a throw over her knees, she was just fine, thank you. “Let me tuck you in, Miss Eleanor,” she insisted, taking the cashmere shawl from her. “You sit down now, and ease yourself.” She bullied Mrs. Butler into comfort.

“What a dear girl you are, Scarlett, so like your darling mother. I remember how thoughtful she always was, such beautiful manners. All the Robillard girls were well behaved, of course, but Ellen was special…”

Scarlett closed her eyes and inhaled the faint whisper of lemon verbena. Everything was going to be all right. Miss Eleanor loved her, she’d make Rhett come home, and they’d all live happily together forever and ever.

Scarlett half-dozed in the deep-cushioned chair, lulled by the soft reminiscences of a gentler time. When the disturbance erupted in the hall beyond the door, she was jerked back to confused consciousness. For a moment she didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there, and she blinked, bleary-eyed, at the man in the doorway. Rhett? No, it couldn’t be Rhett, not unless he’d shaved off his mustache.

The big man who wasn’t Rhett stepped unevenly across the doorsill. “I came to meet my sister,” he said. The words slurred together.

Margaret Butler ran towards Eleanor. “I tried to stop him,” she cried, “but he was in one of those moods—I couldn’t get him to listen, Miss Eleanor.”

Mrs. Butler stood up. “Hush, Margaret,” she said with quiet urgency. “Ross, I’m waiting for a proper greeting.” Her voice was unusually loud, the words very distinct.

Scarlett’s mind was clear now. So this was Rhett’s brother. And drunk, too, by the look of him. Well, she’d seen drunk men before, they were no special novelty. She stood, smiled at Ross, her dimple flickering. “I declare, Miss Eleanor, how could one lady be so lucky as to have two sons, each one handsomer than the other? Rhett never told me he had such a good-looking brother!”

Ross staggered towards her. His eyes raked her body, then fastened on her tousled curls and rouged face. He leered rather than smiled. “So this is Scarlett,” he said thickly. “I might have known Rhett would end up with a fancy piece like her. Come on, Scarlett, give your new brother a friendly kiss. You know how to please a man, I’m sure.” His big hands ran up her arms like huge spiders and fastened themselves on her bare throat. Then his open mouth was over hers, his sour breath in her nose, his tongue forcing itself between her teeth. Scarlett tried to get her hands up to shove him away, but Ross was too strong, his body too closely pressed against hers.

She could hear Eleanor Butler’s voice, and Margaret’s, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. All her attention was focused on the need to break free of the repulsive embrace, and on the shame of Ross’ insulting words. He had called her a whore! And he was treating her like one.

All of a sudden Ross thrust her away, tumbled her back into her chair. “I’ll bet you’re not so cold to my dear big brother,” he growled.

Margaret Butler was sobbing against Eleanor’s shoulder.

“Ross!” Mrs. Butler hurled the name like a knife. Ross turned with a clumsy lurch, sending a small table crashing to the floor.

“Ross!” his mother said again. “I have rung for Manigo. He will help you home and give Margaret decent escort. When you sober up, you will write letters of apology to Rhett’s wife and to me. You have disgraced yourself, and Margaret, and me, and you will not be received in this house until I have recovered from the shame you’ve caused me.”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Eleanor,” Margaret wept.

Mrs. Butler put her hands on Margaret’s shoulders. “I am sorry for you, Margaret,” she said. Then she moved Margaret away from her. “Go home now. You will, of course, always be welcome here.”

Manigo’s wise old eyes took in the situation with one look, and he removed Ross, who surprisingly said not a word in protest. Margaret scuttled out behind them. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated again and again, until the sound of her voice was cut off by the closing of the big front door.

“My darling child,” Eleanor said to Scarlett, “there is no excuse I can make. Ross was drunk, he didn’t know what he was saying. But that is no excuse.”

Scarlett was shaking all over. From disgust, from humiliation, from anger. Why had she let it happen, let Rhett’s brother revile her and put his hands and his mouth on her? I should have spit in his face, clawed him blind, hit his nasty, foul mouth with my fists. But I didn’t, I just took it—as if I deserved it, as if it was true. Scarlett had never been so ashamed. Shamed by Ross’ words, shamed by her own weakness. She felt defiled, dirty, and eternally humiliated. Better if Ross had hit her, or cut her with a knife. Her body would recover from a bruise or a wound. But her pride would never be healed from the sickness she felt.

Eleanor leaned over her, tried to put her arms around her, but Scarlett shrank from her touch. “Leave me alone!” she tried to shout, but it came out a moan.

“I won’t,” said Mrs. Butler, “not until you listen to me. You’ve got to understand, Scarlett, you have to hear me. There’s so much you don’t know. Are you listening?” She drew a chair close to Scarlett’s, sat in it, only inches away.

“No! Go away.” Scarlett put her hands over her ears.

“I won’t leave you,” said Eleanor. “And I’ll tell you—again and again, a thousand times if need be—until you hear me…” Her voice went on and on, gentle but insistent, while her hand stroked Scarlett’s bent head—comforting, caring, insinuating her kindness and her love through Scarlett’s refusal to hear her. “What Ross did was unpardonable,” she said, “I don’t ask you to forgive him. But I must, Scarlett. He is my son, and I know the pain in him that made him do it. He wasn’t trying to hurt you, my dear. It was Rhett he was attacking through you; he knows, you see, that Rhett is too strong for him, that he’ll never be able to match Rhett in anything. Rhett reaches out and takes what he wants, he makes things happen, he gets things done. And poor Ross is a failure at everything.

“Margaret told me privately this afternoon that when Ross went to work this morning, they told him he was fired. Because of his drinking, you see. He always drank, men always do, but not the way he’s been drinking since Rhett came back to Charleston a year ago. Ross was trying to make the plantation go, he’s been slaving away at it ever since he came back from the War, but something always went wrong, and he never did get a decent rice crop. Everything was about to be sold up for taxes. So when Rhett offered to buy the plantation from him, Ross had to let it go. It would have been Rhett’s anyhow, except that he and his father—but that’s another story.

“Ross got a position as teller at a bank, but I’m afraid he thought that handling money was vulgar. Gentlemen always signed bills in the old days, or simply gave their word, and their factors took care of everything. At any rate, Ross made mistakes at his cage, his accounts never balanced, and one day he made a big mistake, and he lost his job. Worse, the bank said they were going to law to get the money from him that he’d paid out in error. Rhett made it good. It was like a dagger in Ross’ heart. The heavy drinking started then, and now it’s cost him another job. On top of that, some fool—or villain—let it slip that Rhett had arranged the job for him in the first place. He went right home and got so drunk he could hardly walk. Mean drunk.

“I love Rhett best, may God forgive me, I always have. He was my first-born, and I laid my heart in his tiny hands the moment he was put in my arms. I love Ross and Rosemary, but not the way I love Rhett, and I’m afraid they know it. Rosemary thinks it’s because he was gone for so long, then came back like a genie from a bottle and bought me everything in this house, bought her the pretty frocks she’d been longing for. She doesn’t remember what it was like before he went away. She was only a baby, she doesn’t know that he always came first with me. Ross knows, he knew all the time, but he was first with his father, so he didn’t care overmuch. Steven cast Rhett out, made Ross his heir. He loved Ross, he was proud of him. But now Steven is dead, seven years this month. And Rhett is home again, and the joy of it fills my life, and Ross cannot fail to see it.”

Mrs. Butler’s voice was hoarse, ragged from the effort of speaking the heavy secrets of her heart. It broke, and she wept bitterly. “My poor boy, my poor, hurting Ross.”

I should say something, Scarlett thought, to make her feel better. But she couldn’t. She was hurting too much herself.

“Miss Eleanor, don’t cry,” she said ineffectively. “Don’t feel bad. Please, I need to ask you something.”

Mrs. Butler breathed deeply; she wiped her eyes and composed her face. “What is it, my dear?”

“I have to know,” Scarlett said urgently. “You’ve got to tell me. Truly, do I—what he said—do I look like that?” She needed reassurance, had to have the approval of this loving, lemon-scented lady.

“Precious child,” said Eleanor, “it doesn’t matter a tinker’s dam what you look like. Rhett loves you, and therefore I love you, too.”

Mother of God! She’s saying that I look like a whore but it doesn’t matter. Is she crazy? Of course it matters, it matters more than anything else in the world. I want to be a lady, like I was meant to be!

She grabbed Mrs. Butler’s hands in a desperate grip, not knowing that she was causing her agonizing pain. “Oh, Miss Eleanor, help me! Please, I need you to help me.”

“Of course, dear. Tell me what you want.” There was only serenity and affection on Mrs. Butler’s face. She had learned many years before how to hide any pain she felt.

“I need to know what I’m doing wrong, why I don’t look like a lady. I am a lady, Miss Eleanor, I am. You knew my mother, you must know it’s so.”

“Of course you are, Scarlett, and of course I know. Appearances are so deceiving, it’s really not fair. We can take care of everything with practically no effort at all.” Mrs. Butler gently disengaged her throbbing, swollen fingers from Scarlett’s grasp. “You have so much vitality, dear child, all the vigor of the world you grew up in. It’s misleading to people here in the old, tired Lowcountry. But you mustn’t lose it, it’s too valuable. We’ll simply find ways to make you somewhat less visible, more like us. Then you’ll be more comfortable.”

And so will I, Eleanor Butler thought silently. She would defend to her dying breath the woman she believed Rhett loved, but it would be much easier if Scarlett stopped wearing paint on her face and expensive, ill-considered clothes. Eleanor welcomed the opportunity to remake Scarlett in the Charleston mold.

Scarlett gratefully swallowed Mrs. Butler’s diplomatic assessment of her problem. She was too shrewd to believe it completely—she had seen Miss Eleanor manage Eulalie and Pauline. But Rhett’s mother would help her, and that was what counted, at least for now.