“We’ll be sailing again at five o’clock,” said the steward, “after cargo’s loaded and the new passengers board. You ladies might want to take an excursion to see the town.” He began placing platters and lifting off their covers. “There’s a nice buggy with a driver who knows all the places to see. Only fifty pence or two dollars fifty American. Waiting at the foot of the gangplank. Or if you’d like some cooler air off the water there’s a boat over at the next wharf south that goes up the river. There was a big civil war in America some ten years back. You can see the ruins of big mansion houses burnt by the armies fighting over them. You’d have to hurry, though, she leaves in forty minutes.”

Scarlett tried to eat a piece of toast, but it stuck in her throat. The gilded clock on the desk ticked the minutes away. It sounded very loud to her. At the end of a half hour she jumped up. “I’m going out, Bridie, but don’t you dare stir a step. Open the portholes, use that palmetto fan over there, but you and Cat stay in here with the door locked no matter how hot it gets. Order anything you want to eat and drink.”

“Where are you going, Scarlett?”

“Never mind about that. I’ll be back before the ship sails.”


The excursion boat was a small rear-wheel paddle boat painted in bright red, white, and blue. Its name, in gold letters, was Abraham Lincoln. Scarlett remembered it well. She’d seen it passing Dunmore Landing.

July was not a month when many people toured the South. She was one of only a dozen passengers. She sat under an awning on the upper deck fanning herself and cursing mourning dress for its long-sleeved, high-necked sweltering effect in the Southern summer heat.

A man in a tall top hat striped red and white bellowed commentary through a megaphone. It made her angrier by the minute.

Look at all those fat-faced Yankees, she thought with hatred, they’re just lapping this up. Cruel slave owners, indeed! Sold down the river, my foot! We loved our darkies just like family, and some of them owned us more than we owned them. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Fiddle-dee-dee! No decent person would read that kind of trash.

She wished she hadn’t given in to the impulse to come. It was only going to upset her. It was already upsetting her, and they weren’t even out of the harbor and into the Ashley River yet.


Mercifully, the commentator ran out of things to say and for a long while the only sound was the thunk-thunk of the pistons and the splash of water as it fell from the wheel. Marsh grass was green and gold on both sides with wide moss-hung oaks on the riverbank behind it. Dragonflies darted through the midge-dancing air above the grass; occasionally a fish leapt from the water, then flopped back in. Scarlett sat quietly, removed from the other passengers, nursing her rancor. Rhett’s plantation was ruined, and he was doing nothing to save it. Camellias! At Ballyhara, she had hundreds of acres of healthy crops where she had found rank weeds. And she had rebuilt an entire town, while he just sat and stared at his burnt chimneys.

That’s why she had come on the paddleboat, she told herself. It would make her feel good to see how far she was outstripping him. Scarlett tensed before each bend, relaxed when it was past and Rhett’s house had not appeared.

She’d forgotten Ashley Barony. Julia Ashley’s big square brick house looked magnificently forbidding in the center of its unadorned lawn. “This is the only plantation the heroic Union forces did not destroy,” bawled the man in the absurd hat. “It was not in the tender heart of their commander to injure the frail spinster woman who lay ill inside.”

Scarlett laughed aloud. “Frail spinster,” indeed! Miss Julia must have scared the pants off him! The other passengers looked at her curiously, but Scarlett was unaware of their scrutiny. The Landing would be next . . .

Yes, there was the phosphate mine. So much bigger! There were five barges being loaded. She searched under the wide-brimmed hat of the man on the dock. It was that white-trash soldier—she couldn’t remember his name, something like Hawkins—no matter, around that bend, past that big live oak . . .

The angle of the sunlight sculpted the great grass terraces of Dunmore Landing into green velvet giant steps and scattered sequins on the butterfly lakes beside the river. Scarlett’s involuntary cry was lost in the exclamations of the Yankees crowded around her along the rail. At the top of the terraces the scorched chimneys were tall sentinels against the painfully bright blue sky; an alligator was sunning itself on the grass between the lakes. Dunmore Landing was like its owner: cultivated, damaged, dangerous. And unreachable. The shutters were closed on the wing that remained, the place that Rhett used for his office and his home.

Her eyes darted avidly from spot to spot, comparing her memory to what she saw. Much more of the garden was cleared and everything looked as if it was thriving. Some building was going up behind the house; she could smell raw lumber, see the top of a roof. The shutters of the house were fixed, or maybe new. They didn’t sag at all, and they glistened with green paint. He’d done a lot of work over the fall and winter.

Or they had. Scarlett tried to look away. She didn’t want to see the newly cleared gardens. Anne loves those flowers as much as Rhett does. And the fixed-up shutters must mean a fixed-up house where the two of them live together. Does Rhett fix breakfast for Anne?

“Are you all right, miss?” Scarlett pushed past the concerned stranger.

“The heat—” she said. “I’ll go over there, deeper in the shade.” For the remainder of the excursion she looked only at the unevenly painted deck. The day seemed to last forever.

70

Five o’clock was striking when Scarlett ran pell-mell down the ramp from the Abraham Lincoln. Damn fool boat. She stopped to catch her breath on the dock. She could see that the gangplank of The Golden Fleece was still in place. No harm done. But still, the master of the excursion boat should be horsewhipped. She’d been half out of her mind ever since four o’clock.

“Thank you for waiting for me,” she said to the ship’s officer at the head of the gangplank.

“Oh, there are more to come,” he said, and Scarlett transferred her anger to the captain of the Fleece. If he said five o’clock, he should sail at five o’clock. The sooner she got away from Charleston, the happier she would be. This must be the hottest place on the face of the earth. She shaded her eyes with her hand to look at the sky. Not a cloud in sight. No rain, no wind. Just heat. She started along deck towards her rooms. Poor baby Cat must be practically cooked. As soon as they got out of the harbor she’d bring her up on deck for whatever breeze the ship’s movement might cause.

Clattering hoofbeats and feminine laughter caught her attention. Maybe this was who they were waiting for. She glanced down at an open victoria. With three fabulous hats on the women in it. They weren’t like any hats she’d ever seen, and even from a distance she could tell they were very expensive. Wide brimmed, decorated with clusters of feathers or plumes held by sparkling jewels and swirled with airy tulle netting, from Scarlett’s perspective the hats were like wonderful parasols or fantastic confections of pastry on big trays.

I’d look simply wonderful in a hat like that. She leaned slightly over the rail to look at the women. They were elegant, even in the heat, wearing pale organdy or voile trimmed with—it looked like wide silk ribbon or was it ruching?—on cuirass fronts and—Scarlett blinked—no bustle at all, not even a hint of one, and no train either. She hadn’t seen anything like that in Savannah or Atlanta. Who were these people? Her eyes devoured the pale kid gloves and folded parasols, lace, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. Whoever they were, they certainly were having a good time laughing their heads off and not hurrying to get on the ship they were holding up either.

The Panama-hatted man with them stepped down into the street. With his left hand he took off his hat. His right hand reached upward to hand the first woman down.

Scarlett’s hands clutched the railing. Dear God, it’s Rhett. I’ve got to run inside. No. No. If he’s on this ship I’ve got to get Cat off, find a place to hide, find another ship. But I can’t do that. I’ve got two trunks in the hold with frilly dresses and Colum’s rifles in them. What in the name of God am I going to do? Her mind raced from one impossible idea to another while she stared blindly at the group below her.

Slowly her brain registered what she was seeing: Rhett was bowing, kissing one gracefully extended hand after another. Her ears opened to the repeated “goodbye and thank you” of the women. Cat was safe.

But Scarlett was not. Her protective rage had disappeared, and her heart was exposed.

He doesn’t see me. I can look at him all I want. Please, please don’t put your hat back on, Rhett. How well he looked. His skin was brown, his smile as white as his linen suit. He was the only man in the world who didn’t wrinkle linen. Ah, that lock of hair that annoyed him so was falling down on his forehead again. Rhett flicked it back with two fingers in a gesture that Scarlett knew so well she felt weak-kneed with possessive memory. What was he saying? Something outrageously charming, she was sure, but he was using that low intimate voice he saved for women. Curse him. And curse those women. She wanted that voice murmuring to her, only her.

The ship’s captain walked down the gangplank, adjusting the set of his gold epauletted jacket. Don’t make them hurry, Scarlett wanted to shout. Stay, stay just a little longer. It’s my last chance. I’ll never see him again. Let me store up the sight of him.