Scarlett Read online

She sipped her third drink. How pretty the candlelight was, lovely golden flames reflected in the polished tabletop. The empty glass was pretty, too. Its cut facets made rainbows when she turned it in her fingers.

  It was as quiet as the grave. The clink of glass against glass made her jump when she poured the brandy. That proved she needed the drink, didn’t it? She was still too jumpy to sleep.

  The candles burned low and the decanter slowly emptied and Scarlett’s usual control over her mind and memory was loosened. This was the room where it had all begun. The table had been bare like this with only candles on it and the silver tray that held brandy decanter and glasses. Rhett was drunk. She’d never seen him really drunk like that, he could always hold his liquor. He was drunk that night, though, and cruel. He said such horrible hurting things to her, and he twisted her arm so that she cried out in pain.

  But then . . . then he carried her up to her room and forced himself on her. Except that he didn’t have to force her to accept him. She came alive when he handled her, when he kissed her lips and throat and body. She burned at his touch and she cried out for more and her body arched and strained to meet his again and again . . .

  It couldn’t be true. She must have dreamed it, but how could she have dreamed such things when she’d never dreamed they existed?

  No lady would ever feel the wild wanting she had felt, no lady would do the things she had done. Scarlett tried to push her thoughts back into the crowded dark corner of her mind where she kept the unbearable and unthinkable. But she’d had too much to drink.

  It did happen, her heart cried, it did. I didn’t make it up.

  And her mind, so carefully taught by her mother that ladies did not have animal impulses, could not control the passionate demands of her body to feel rapture and surrender again.

  Scarlett’s hands held her aching breasts, but hers were not the hands her body longed for. She dropped her arms onto the table in front of her, her head onto her arms. And she abandoned herself to the waves of desire and pain that made her writhe, made her call out brokenly into the empty, silent, candlelit room.

  “Rhett, oh Rhett, I need you.”

  8

  Winter was approaching, and Scarlett grew more frantic with every passing day. Joe Colleton had dug the hole for the cellar of the first house, but repeated rains made it impossible to pour the concrete foundations. “Mr. Wilkes would smell a rat if I bought lumber before I’m ready to frame,” he said reasonably, and Scarlett knew he was right. But it made the delay no less frustrating.

  Maybe the whole building idea was a mistake. Day after day the newspaper reported more disasters in the business world. There were soup kitchens and bread lines now in America’s big cities because thousands more people lost their jobs every week when companies went bankrupt. Why was she risking her money now, at the worst possible time? Why had she made that fool promise to Melly? If only the cold rain would stop . . .

  And the days would stop getting shorter. She could keep busy in the daytime, but darkness closed her in the empty house with only her thoughts for companions. And she didn’t want to think, because she could find no answers to anything. How had she gotten into this mess? She’d never deliberately done anything to turn people against her, why were they all being so hateful? Why was it taking Rhett so long to come home? What could she do to make things better? There had to be something, she couldn’t go on forever walking from room to room in the big house like a pea rattling around in an empty washtub.

  She’d be glad to have Wade and Ella come home to keep her company, but Suellen had written that they were all under quarantine while one child after another went through the long itchy torture of chicken pox.

  She could take up with the Barts and all their friends again. It didn’t matter that she’d called Mamie a sow, her skin was as thick as a brick wall. One reason Scarlett had enjoyed having “the dregs” for friends was that she could use the rough side of her tongue on them any time she liked and they’d always come crawling back for more. I haven’t sunk to that level, thank God. I’m not going to go crawling back to them now that I know what low things they are.

  It’s just that it gets dark so early and the nights are so long and I can’t sleep like I ought. Things will get better when the rain stops . . . when winter’s over . . . when Rhett comes home . . .

  At last the weather turned to bright, cold, sunny days with high wisps of cloud in brilliant blue skies. Colleton pumped the standing water out of the hole he’d dug, and the sharp wind dried the red Georgia clay to the hardness of brick. He ordered concrete then, and lumber to make the forms for casting the footings.

  Scarlett plunged into a celebration of shopping for gifts. It was nearly Christmas. She bought dolls for Ella and each of Suellen’s girls. Baby dolls for the younger ones with soft sawdust-stuffed bodies and chubby porcelain faces and hands and feet. Susie and Ella had nearly identical lady dolls with cunning leather trunks full of beautiful clothes. Wade was a problem; Scarlett never knew what to do about him. Then she remembered Tony Fontaine’s promise to teach him how to twirl his six-shooters, and she bought Wade his own pair, with his initials carved in their ivory-inlaid handles. Suellen was easy—a beaded silk reticule that was too fancy to use in the country, with a twenty dollar gold piece inside it good anywhere. Will was impossible. Scarlett searched high and low before she gave up and bought him another sheepskin jacket like the one she’d given him the year before, and the year before that. It’s the thought that counts, she told herself firmly.

  She debated for a long time before she decided not to get a present for Beau. She wouldn’t put it past India to send it back unopened. Besides, Beau wasn’t lacking for anything, she thought bitterly. The Wilkes account at her store was mounting up every week.

  She bought a gold cigar-cutter for Rhett, but she lacked the nerve to send it. Instead, she made her gifts to her two aunts in much nicer than usual. They might tell Rhett’s mother how thoughtful she was, and Mrs. Butler might tell Rhett.

  I wonder if he’ll send me anything? Or bring me something? Maybe he’ll come home for Christmas to keep gossip down.

  The possibility was real enough to send Scarlett into a happy frenzy of decorating the house. When it was a bower of pine branches, holly, and ivy, she took the leftovers down to the store.

  “We’ve always had the tinsel garland in the window, Mrs. Butler. No need for more than that,” said Willie Kershaw.

  “Don’t tell me what’s needed and what’s not. I say wrap this pine roping around all the counters and put the holly wreath on the door. It’ll make people feel Christmassy, and they’ll spend more money on presents. We don’t have enough little pretties for gifts. Where’s that big box of oiled paper fans?”

  “You told me to get it out of the way. Said we shouldn’t use good shelf space for fripperies, when what people wanted was nails and washboards.”

  “You fool, that was then and this is now. Get it out.”

  “Well, I ain’t exactly sure where I put it. That was a long time ago.”

  “Mother of God! Go see what that man over there wants. I’ll find it myself.” Scarlett stormed into the stockroom behind the selling area.

  She was up on a ladder looking through the dusty piles on a top shelf when she heard the familiar voices of Mrs. Merriwether and her daughter Maybelle.

  “I thought you said you’d never set foot across the threshold of Scarlett’s store, Mother.”

  “Hush, the clerk might hear you. We’ve looked every place in town, and there’s not a length of black velvet to be found. I can’t finish my costume without it. Who ever heard of Queen Victoria wearing a colored cape?”

  Scarlett frowned. What on earth were they talking about? She quietly descended the ladder and walked on tiptoe to press her ear against the wall.

  “No, ma’am,” she heard the clerk say. “We don’t get much call for velvet.”

  “Just what I should have expected. Come on, Maybelle.”

  “
As long as we’re here, maybe I can find the feathers I need for my Pocahontas,” Maybelle was saying.

  “Nonsense. Come on. We should never have come here. Suppose someone saw us.” Mrs. Merriwether’s tread was heavy but rapid. She slammed the door behind her.

  Scarlett climbed up the ladder again. All her Christmas spirit was gone. Someone was having a costume party, and she wasn’t invited. She wished she’d let Ashley break his neck in Melanie’s grave! She found the box she was looking for and threw it down to the floor, where it burst, scattering the brightly colored fans in a wide arc.

  “Now you pick them up and dust off every single one of them,” she ordered. “I’m going home.” She’d rather die than start boohooing in front of her own clerks.

  The day’s newspaper was on the seat of her carriage. She’d been too busy with the decorations to read it as yet. And she didn’t much care about reading it now, but it would hide her face from any nosybody looking in at her. Scarlett straightened out the bend in it and opened it to the center page for “Our Charleston Letter.” It was all about the Washington Race Course, newly reopened, and the upcoming Race Day in January. Scarlett skimmed over the rapturous descriptions of Race Weeks before the War, the customary Charleston claims to have had the finest, most elaborate everything, and the predictions that the races to come would equal their predecessors if not surpass them. According to the correspondent, there would be parties all day every day and a ball every night for weeks.

  “And Rhett Butler at every one of them, I’ll bet,” Scarlett muttered. She threw the newspaper on the floor.

  A front-page headline caught her eye. CARNIVAL TO CONCLUDE WITH MASQUERADE BALL. That must be what the old dragon and Maybelle were talking about, she thought. Everyone in the world except me is going to wonderful parties. She snatched the paper up again to read the article:

  It can now be announced, planning and preparations being complete, that Atlanta will be graced on January 6th next with a Carnival sure to rival the magnificence of New Orleans’ famous Mardi Gras. The Twelfth Night Revelers is a body lately formed by our city’s leading figures from the worlds of society and business, and the instigators of this fabulous event. The King of Carnival will reign over Atlanta, attended by a Court of Noblemen. He will enter the city and transverse it on a royal float in a parade that is expected to exceed a mile in length. All the city’s citizens, his subjects for the day, are invited to view the parade and marvel at its wonders. Schedule and parade route will be announced in a later edition of this newspaper.

  The day-long revels will conclude at a Masked Ball for which DeGives Opera House will be transformed into a veritable Wonderland. The Revelers have distributed almost three hundred invitations to Atlanta’s finest Knights and fairest Ladies . . .

  “Damn!” said Scarlett.

  Then desolation took hold of her, and she began to cry like a child. It wasn’t fair for Rhett to be dancing and laughing in Charleston and all her enemies in Atlanta to be having a good time while she was stuck by herself in her huge silent house. She’d never done anything bad enough to deserve such punishment.

  You’ve never been so lily-livered that you let them make you cry, either, she told herself angrily.

  Scarlett rubbed the tears away with the backs of her wrists. She wasn’t going to wallow in misery. She was going to go after what she wanted. She’d go to the Ball; somehow she’d find a way.

  It was not impossible to get an invitation to the Ball, it wasn’t even difficult. Scarlett learned that the vaunted parade would be made up largely of decorated wagons advertising products and stores. There was a fee for participants, of course, as well as the cost of decorating the “float,” but all those businesses in the parade received two invitations to the Ball. She sent Willie Kershaw with the money to enter Kennedy’s Emporium in the parade.

  It reinforced her belief that just about anything could be bought. Money could do anything.

  “How will you decorate the wagon, Mrs. Butler?” asked Kershaw.

  The question opened up a hundred possibilities.

  “I’ll think about it, Willie.” Why, she could spend hours and hours—fill up lots of evenings—thinking about how to make all the other floats look pitiful next to hers.

  She had to think about her costume for the Ball, too. What a lot of time it was going to take! She’d have to go through all her fashion magazines again, have to find out what people were wearing, have to select fabric, schedule fittings, choose a hairstyle . . .

  Oh, no! She was still in ordinary mourning. Surely that didn’t mean she had to wear black for a masquerade ball. She’d never been to one, she didn’t know what the rules were. But the whole idea was to fool people, wasn’t it? Not to look like you usually did, to be disguised. Then she definitely should not wear black. The Ball was sounding better every minute.

  Scarlett hastened through her routines at the store and hurried to her dressmaker, Mrs. Marie.

  The corpulent, wheezing Mrs. Marie took a sheaf of pins out of her mouth so that she could report that ladies had ordered costumes to represent Rosebud—pink ballgown trimmed with silk roses—Snowflake—white ballgown trimmed with stiffened and sequined white lace—Night—deep blue velvet with embroidered silver stars—Dawn—pink over darker pink skirted silk—Shepherdess—striped gown with lace-edged white apron—

  “All right, all right,” said Scarlett impatiently. “I see what they’re doing. I’ll let you know tomorrow what I will be.”

  Mrs. Marie threw up her hands. “But I won’t have time to make your gown, Mrs. Butler. I’ve had to find two extra seamstresses as it is, and I still don’t see how I’m going to finish in time . . . There’s just no way on earth I can add another costume to the ones I’ve already promised.”

  Scarlett dismissed the woman’s refusal with a wave of her hand. She knew she could bully her into doing what she wanted. The hard part was deciding what that was.

  The answer came to her when she was playing Patience while she waited for dinnertime. She peeked ahead into the deck of cards to see if she was going to get the King she needed for an empty place. No, there were two Queens before the next King. The game was not going to come out right.

  A queen! Of course. She’d be able to wear a wonderful costume with a long train trimmed with white fur. And all the jewelry she wanted.

  She spilled the remaining cards on the table and ran upstairs to look in her jewel case. Why, oh why had Rhett been so stingy about buying her jewelry? He bought her anything else she wanted, but the only jewelry he approved was pearls. She pulled out rope after rope, piled them on the bureau. There! Her diamond earbobs. She’d definitely wear them. And she could wear pearls in her hair as well as around her throat and wrists. What a pity that she couldn’t risk wearing her emerald and diamond engagement ring. Too many people would recognize it, and if they knew who she was, they might cut her. She was counting on her costume and mask to protect her from Mrs. Merriwether and India Wilkes and the other women. She intended to have a wonderful time, to dance every dance, to be part of things again.

  By January fifth, the day before Carnival, all Atlanta was gala with preparation. The mayor’s office had ordered that all businesses be closed on the sixth and that all buildings on the parade route be decorated with red and white, the colors of Rex, the King of Carnival.

  Scarlett thought it a terrible waste to close the store on a day when the city would be jammed with people from the country, in for the celebrations. But she hung big rosettes of ribbon in the store window and on the iron fence in front of her house, and just like everyone else she goggled at the transformation of Whitehall and Marietta streets. Banners and flags bedecked every lamp standard and building front, making a virtual tunnel of bright, fluttering red and white for the final leg of Rex’s parade to his throne.

  I should have brought Wade and Ella in from Tara for the parade, she thought. But they’re probably still puny from the chicken pox, her mind quickly added. And I don’t have
ball tickets for Suellen and Will. Besides, I sent great piles of Christmas presents to them.

  The incessant rain on the day of Carnival soothed any vestige of compunction about the children. They couldn’t have stood out in the wet and cold to see the parade anyway.

  But she could. She wrapped herself in a warm shawl and stood on the stone bench near the gate under a big umbrella, with a clear view over the heads and umbrellas of the spectators on the sidewalk outside.

  As promised, the parade was more than a mile long. It was a brave and sorry spectacle. The rain had all but destroyed the medieval-court-type costumes. Red dye had run, ostrich plumes dropped, once-dashing velvet hats sagged over faces like dead lettuce. The marching heralds and pages looked cold and wet, but determined; the mounted knights struggled grim-faced with their bespattered horses to keep moving through the sucking, slick mud. Scarlett joined in the crowd’s applause for the Earl Marshal. It was Uncle Henry Hamilton, who seemed to be the only one having a good time. He squelched along in bare feet, carrying his shoes in one hand and his bedraggled hat in the other, waving first one hand then the other at the crowd and grinning from ear to ear.

  She grinned herself when the Ladies of the Court rolled slowly past in open carriages. The leaders of Atlanta society wore masks, but stoic misery showed clearly on their faces. Maybelle Merriwether’s Pocahontas was sporting dejected feathers in her hair that dribbled water down her cheeks and neck. Mrs. Elsing and Mrs. Whiting were easily recognized as sodden, shivering Betsy Ross and Florence Nightingale. Mrs. Meade was a sneezing representation of The Good Old Days in a billow of hoop-skirted wet taffeta. Only Mrs. Merriwether was unaffected by the rain. Queen Victoria held a wide black umbrella over her dry regal head. Her velvet cape was unspotted.

  When the ladies were past, there was a long hiatus, and the spectators began to leave. But then there was the distant sound of “Dixie.” Within a minute the crowd was cheering itself hoarse, and it kept cheering until the band came before them, when silence fell.