Scarlett’s mind jolted into consciousness, fleeing from horror, and she opened her eyes. Darkness surrounded her, and the unknown. The lamp had burned out, and Bridie was asleep in her chair, unseen in a corner of the huge room. Scarlett stretched out her arms over the expanse of the big, unfamiliar bed. Her fingers touched soft linen, nothing else. The sides of the mattress were too distant to reach. She seemed to be marooned on a strange vastness of softness, without definition. Perhaps it went on forever into the silent darkness— Her throat constricted with fear. She was alone and lost in the dark.

Stop it! Her mind forced panic away, demanded that she take hold of herself. Scarlett carefully pulled her legs up, turned over into a kneeling crouch. Her movements were slow, so as to make no sound. Anything might be out there in the darkness, listening. She crawled with agonized caution until her hands felt the edge of the bed, then down to the hard solidity of the wooden frame.

What a ninnyhammer you are, Scarlett O’Hara, she told herself when tears of relief ran over her cheeks. Of course the bed is strange, and the room. You fainted, like some silly weak vaporish girl, and Colum and Bridie brought you to the hotel. Stop this scaredy-cat nonsense.

Then, like a physical blow, memory attacked her. Rhett was lost to her . . . divorced from her . . . married to Anne Hampton. She couldn’t believe it, but she had to, it was true.

Why? Why had he done such a thing? She’d been so sure he loved her. He couldn’t have done it, he couldn’t.

But he had.

I never knew him. Scarlett heard the words as if she’d spoken them aloud. I never knew him at all. Who was it that I loved? Whose child am I carrying?

What’s going to become of me?


That night, in the frightening darkness of an unseen hotel room in a country thousands of miles from her homeland, Scarlett O’Hara did the most courageous thing she had ever been called on to do. She faced up to failure.

It’s all my fault. I should have gone back to Charleston as soon as I knew I was pregnant. I chose to have fun, and those weeks of fun have cost me the only happiness I really care about. I just didn’t think about what Rhett might believe when I ran away, I didn’t think past the next day, the next reel. I didn’t think at all.

I never have.

All the impetuous, unconsidered errors of her life crowded around Scarlett in the black silence of the night, and she forced herself to look at them. Charles Hamilton—she had married him to spite Ashley, she hadn’t cared for him at all. Frank Kennedy—she’d been horrid to him, lied to him about Suellen so that Frank would marry her and give her money to save Tara. Rhett—oh, she’d made too many mistakes to count. She’d married him when she didn’t love him, and she’d made no effort to make him happy, she’d never even cared that he wasn’t happy—not until it was too late.

Oh, God, forgive me, I never thought once about what I was doing to them, about what they were feeling. I hurt and hurt and hurt all of them, because I didn’t stop to think.

Melanie, too, especially Melly. I can’t bear to remember how nasty I was to her. I never once felt grateful for the way she loved me and stood up for me. I never even told her I loved her, too, because I didn’t think of it until the end, when there was no chance.

Have I ever in my life paid attention to what I was doing? Have I—even once—ever thought about the consequences?

Despair and shame gripped Scarlett’s heart. How could she have been such a fool? She despised fools.

Then her hands clenched and her jaw hardened and she stiffened her spine. She would not wallow in picking at the past and feeling sorry for herself. She would not whine—not to anyone else, and not to herself.

She stared at the darkness above her through dry eyes. She wouldn’t cry, not now. She’d have the rest of her life to cry. Now she had to think, and think carefully, before she decided what to do.

She had to think about the baby.

For a moment she hated it, hated her thickening waist and the clumsy, heavy body that lay ahead. It was supposed to have given Rhett back to her, and it hadn’t. There were things a woman could do—she’d heard of women who had rid themselves of unwanted babies . . .

. . . Rhett would never forgive her if she did that. And what difference did that make? Rhett was gone, forever.

A forbidden sob broke from Scarlett’s lips despite all her willpower.

Lost. I lost him. I’m beaten. Rhett won.

Then sudden anger coursed through her, cauterizing her pain, energizing her exhausted body and spirit.

I’m beaten, but I’ll get even with you, Rhett Butler, she thought with bitter triumph. I’ll hit you harder than you’ve hit me.

Scarlett laid her hands gently on her belly. Oh, no, she wasn’t going to get rid of this baby. She’d take care of it better than any baby in the history of the whole world.

Her mind filled with images of Rhett and Bonnie. He always loved Bonnie more than he loved me. He’d give anything—he’d give his life to have her back. I’ll have a new Bonnie, all my own. And when she’s old enough—when she loves me, and only me, more than anything or anyone on earth, then I’ll let Rhett see her, see what he’s missed . . .

What am I thinking? I must be crazy. Only a minute ago I realized how much I hurt him, and I hated myself. Now I’m hating him and planning to hurt him worse. I won’t be like that, I won’t let myself imagine such things, I won’t.

Rhett’s gone; I’ve admitted it. I can’t give in to regrets or revenge, that’s a waste when what I have to do is make a new life from scratch. I’ve got to find something fresh, something important, something to live for. I can do it if I put my mind to it.

Throughout the remainder of the night, Scarlett’s mind moved methodically along the avenues of possibility. She found dead ends, she found and overcame obstacles, she found surprising corners of memory and of imagination and of maturity.

She remembered her youth and the County and the days before the War. The memories were somehow painless, distant, and she inderstood that she was no longer that Scarlett, that she could let go of her, permit the old days and their dead to rest.

She concentrated on the future, on realities, on consequences, ler temples began to throb, then to pound, then her whole head ached abominably, but she continued to think.

Just when the first sounds began in the street outside, all the pieces fell into place inside her mind, and Scarlett knew what she was going to do. As soon as enough light filtered through the drawn curtains into the room, Scarlett called out, “Bridie?”

The girl jumped up from the chair, blinking sleep from her eyes. “Thanks be to God you’re restored!” she exclaimed. “The doctor left lis tonic. I’ll just find the spoon, it’s on this table somewhere.”

Scarlett opened her mouth meekly for the bitter medicine. “There,” she said firmly, “I’ll have no more of being sick. Open the curtains, it must be day by now. I need some breakfast, my head is aching, and I’ve got to get my strength back.”

It was raining. A real rain, not the misty showers that were customary. Scarlett felt a dark satisfaction.

“Colum will want to know you’re better, he’s been that worried. Can I tell him to come in?”

“Not now. Tell him I’ll want to see him later, I want to talk to him. But not yet. Go on. Tell him. And ask him to show you how to order up my breakfast.”

57

Scarlett forced herself to swallow bite after bite of food, even though she wasn’t even aware of what she was eating. As she’d said to Bridie, she needed her strength.

After breakfast she sent Bridie away, with instructions to return after two hours. Then she sat down at the writing table near the window and, with a small frown of concentration, rapidly filled sheet after sheet of thick, creamy, unmarked letter paper.

After she had written, folded, and sealed two letters, she stared at the blank paper in front of her for a long time. She had planned it all out in the dark hours of the night, she knew what she was going to write, but she couldn’t bring herself to pick up the pen and begin. Her very marrow shrank from what she had to do.

Scarlett shivered and looked away from the page. Her eyes fell on a pretty little porcelain clock on a nearby table, and she drew in her breath, shocked. So late! Bridie would be back in only forty-five minutes.

I can’t put it off any longer, it won’t change things no matter how long I do. There’s no other way. I’ve got to write to Uncle Henry, eat humble pie, and ask him sweetly to help me. He’s the only one I can trust. Scarlett gritted her teeth and reached for the pen. Her usually neat handwriting was cramped and uneven from strained determination when she put the words on paper that would turn over control of her Atlanta businesses and her precious hoard of gold in the Atlanta bank to Henry Hamilton.

It was like cutting the ground out from under her feet. She felt physically ill, almost dizzy. There was no fear that the old lawyer would cheat her, but there was no chance that he would watch every penny the way she always had. It was one thing to have him collect and bank the receipts from the store and the rent from the saloon. It was another thing altogether to give him control of store inventory and prices, and the amount of rent to charge the saloonkeeper.

Control. She was giving up control of her money, her safety, her success. Just when control was most needed. Buying Carreen’s share of Tara was going to dig a deep hole in her accumulated gold, but it was too late now to stop the deal with the Bishop, and Scarlett wouldn’t stop it even if she could. Her dream of spending summers at Tara with Rhett was dead now, but Tara was still Tara, and she as determined to make it hers.