He must have just had his share cut, there’s the tiniest pale line above his ears. Is that more gray at the temples? It looks so elegant, the silver streaking his crow-black hair. I remember how it felt under my fingers, crisp and shockingly soft at the same time. And the muscles in his shoulders and his arms, sliding so smoothly under the skin, stretching the skin when they hardened. I want—

The ship’s whistle shrieked loudly. Scarlett jumped. She could hear rapid footsteps, the rumble of the gangplank, but she kept her eyes fixed on Rhett. He was smiling, looking over there to her right, looking up. She could see his dark eyes and slashing brows and impeccably groomed mustache. His entire strong, masculine, unforgettable pirate’s face. “My beloved,” she whispered, “my love.”

Rhett bowed once again. The ship was moving away from the dock. He put his hat on and turned away. His thumb tilted the hat to the back of his head.

Don’t go, cried Scarlett’s heart.

Rhett glanced over his shoulder as if there had been a sound. His eyes met hers, and surprise stiffened his lithe body. For a long, immeasurable moment the two of them looked at each other while the space between them widened. Then blandness smoothed Rhett’s face as he touched two fingers to his hat brim in salute. Scarlett lifted her hand.

He was still standing there on the dock when the ship turned into the channel to the sea. When Scarlett could see him no longer, she sank numbly into a deck chair.


“Don’t be silly, Bridie, the steward will sit right outside the door. He’ll come get us if Cat so much as turns over. There’s no reason for you not to come to the dining saloon. You can’t have your dinner in here every night.”

“There’s reason enough for me, Scarlett. I don’t feel easy among fancy gentlemen and ladies, pretending to be one of them.”

“You’re just as good as they are, I told you that.”

“And I heard you say it, Scarlett, but you don’t hear me. I prefer to have me meal in here with all the silver hats on the dishes and my manners my own business. ’Tis soon enough I’ll have to go where the lady I’m maiding tells me to go and do what I’m told to do. It’s certain that having a grand meal in private comfort won’t be one of my instructions. I’ll take it now while I can.”

Scarlett had to agree with Bridie. But she couldn’t possibly have dinner in the suite herself. Not tonight. She had to find out who those women were and why they were with Rhett, or she’d go mad.

They were English, she learned as soon as she entered the dining saloon. The distinctive accent was dominating the captain’s table.

Scarlett told the steward that she would like to change her seating to the small table near the wall. The table near the wall was also near the captain’s table.

There were fourteen at his table: a dozen English passengers, the captain, and his first officer. Scarlett had a keen ear and could tell almost at once that the passengers’ accents were different from the ship’s officers, although to her they were all English and therefore to be despised by anyone with a drop of Irish blood.

They were talking about Charleston. Scarlett gathered that they didn’t think much of it. “My dears,” one of the women trumpeted, “I’ve never seen anything as dreary in my life. How my darling Mama could have told me that it was the only civilized place in America! It simply makes me worry that she’s gone dotty without our noticing.”

“Now, Sarah,” said the man to her left, “you do have to take that war of theirs into consideration. I found the men to be very decent. Down to their last shilling, I’m sure, but never a mention, and the liquor was first rate. Single malt at the club bar.”

“Geoffrey, my love, you’d think the Sahara was civilized if there was a club with drinkable whiskey. Heaven only knows it couldn’t be any hotter. Beastly climate.”

There was a chorus of agreement.

“On the other hand,” said a youthful female voice, “that terribly attractive Butler man said the winters are quite delightful. He invited us back.”

“I’m sure he invited you back, Felicity,” said an older woman. “You behaved disgracefully.”

“Frances, I did no such thing,” protested Felicity. “I was only having some fun for the first time on this dreary trip. I cannot credit why Papa sent me to America. It’s a wretched place.”

A man laughed. “He sent you, sister dear, to get you out of the clutches of that fortune hunter.”

“But he was so attractive. I don’t see any point in having a fortune if you have to fend off every attractive man in England simply because he’s not rich.”

“At least you’re supposed to fend them off, Felicity,” said a girl. “That’s easy enough to do. Think of our poor brother. Roger’s supposed to draw American heiresses like flies, and marry a fortune to refill the family coffers.” Roger groaned and everyone laughed.

Talk about Rhett, Scarlett implored silently.

“There’s simply no market for Honourables,” Roger said. “I can’t get it through Papa’s head. Heiresses want tiaras.”

The older woman they called Frances said that she thought they were all disgraceful and that she couldn’t understand young people today. “When I was a gel—” she began.

Felicity giggled. “Frances, dear, when you were a ‘gel’ there were no young people. Your generation were born forty years old and disapproving of everything.”

“Your impertinence is intolerable, Felicity. I shall speak to your father.”

A brief silence fell. Why on earth doesn’t that Felicity person say something more about Rhett? Scarlett thought.

It was Roger who brought up the name. Butler, he said, offered some good shooting if he came back in the autumn. Seems he had rice fields gone to grass and the ducks practically landed on the barrel of your gun.

Scarlett tore a roll into fragments. Who gave two cents about ducks? The other Englishmen did, it seemed. They talked about shooting throughout the main course of dinner. She was thinking she’d have done better to stay with Bridie when her ears picked up a low-toned private conversation between Felicity and her sister, whose name turned out to be Marjorie. Both of them thought Rhett one of the most intriguing men they’d ever met. Scarlett listened with mixed feelings of curiosity and pride.

“A shame he’s so devoted to his wife,” Marjorie said and Scarlett’s heart sank.

“Such a colorless little thing, too,” Felicity said. Scarlett felt a little bit better.

“Out and out rebound, I heard. Didn’t anyone tell you? He was married before, to an absolute tearing beauty. She ran off with another man and left Rhett Butler flat. He’s never gotten over it.”

“Gracious, Marjorie, can you imagine what the other man must be like if she’d leave the Butler man for him?”

Scarlett smiled to herself. She was enormously gratified to know that gossip had her leaving Rhett and not the other way around.

She felt much better than when she’d sat down. She might even have some dessert.


The following day the English discovered Scarlett. The three young people agreed that she was a superbly romantic figure, a mysterious young widow. “Damned nice looking, too,” Roger added. His sisters told him he must be going blind. With her pale skin and dark hair and those green eyes, she was fantastically beautiful. The only thing she needed was some decent clothes and she’d turn heads wherever she went. They decided they’d “take her up.” Marjorie made the approach by admiring Cat when Scarlett had her on deck for an airing.

Scarlett was more than willing to be “taken up.” She wanted to hear every detail of every hour they’d spent in Charleston. It wasn’t difficult for her to invent a tragic story of her marriage and bereavement that satisfied all their cravings for melodrama. Roger fell in love with her within the first hour.

Scarlett had been taught by her mother that genteel discretion about family matters was one of the hallmarks of a lady. Felicity and Marjorie Cowperthwaite shocked her with their casual unveiling of family skeletons. Their mother, they said, was a pretty and clever woman who had trapped their father into marriage. She managed to be run down by his horse when he was out riding. “Poor Papa is so dim,” Marjorie laughed, “that he thought he’d probably ruined her because her frock was torn and he saw her bare breasts. We’re certain that she tore it herself before she ever left the vicarage. She married him like a shot before he could puzzle out what she was up to.”

To add to Scarlett’s confusion, Felicity and Marjorie were ladies. Not simply “ladies” as opposed to “women.” They were Lady Felicity and Lady Marjorie and their “dim papa” was an earl.

Frances Sturbridge, their disapproving chaperone, was also “Lady,” they explained, but she was Lady Sturbridge, not Lady Frances, because she wasn’t born a “Lady” and she’d married a man who was “only a baronet.”

“Whereas I could marry one of the footmen and Marjorie could run off with the boot boy, and we’d still be Lady Felicity and Marjorie in the foul sinks of Bristol where our husbands robbed poor boxes to support us.”

Scarlett could only laugh. “It’s too complicated for me,” she admitted.

“Oh, but my dear, it can be ever so much more complicated than our boring little family. When you get into widows and horrid little viscounts and third son’s wives and so on, it’s like a labyrinth. Mama has to hire advice every time she gives a dinner or she’d be guaranteed to insult someone fearfully important. You simply must not seat the daughter of an earl’s younger son, like Roger, below somebody like poor Frances. It’s all too foolish for words.”