Scarlett set off for the long-awaited hunt with the Galway Blazers on a Tuesday. She wanted a day of rest for herself as well as her horses before Thursday’s hunt. She wasn’t tired; on the contrary, she was almost too excited to sit still. But she wasn’t about to take any chances. She had to be better than her best. If Thursday was a triumph, she’d stay for Friday and Saturday as well. Her best would be good enough then.


At the end of the first day’s hunting, John Graham presented Scarlett with the gore-gummed pad that she had won. She accepted it with a court curtsey. “Thank you, Your Excellency.” Everyone applauded.

The applause was even louder when two stewards came in bearing a huge platter that held a steaming pie. “I’ve been telling everyone about your sporting bet, Mrs. O’Hara,” said Graham, “and we’d devised a small joke for you. This is a pie of minced crow meat. I will now take the first bite. The rest of the Blazers will follow. I had expected you to be doing it unaccompanied.”

Scarlett smiled her sweetest smile. “I’ll sprinkle some salt on it for you, sir.”


She first noticed the hawk-faced man on the black horse on Friday when he made an impossible jump ahead of her and she reined in abruptly to watch, nearly losing her seat. He rode with an arrogant fearlessness that made her own recklessness seem tame.

Afterwards, people surrounded him at the hunt breakfast, all of them talking, the man saying little. He was tall enough for her to see his aquiline face and dark eyes and hair almost blue it was so black.

“Who is that bored-looking tall man?” she asked a woman she knew.

“My dear!” The woman said with excitement. “Isn’t he too fascinating for words?” She sighed happily. “Everyone says he’s the most wicked man in Britain. His name is Fenton.”

“Fenton what?”

“Just Fenton. He’s the Earl of Fenton.”

“You mean he doesn’t have any name of his own at all?” She’d never understand all this English title rigmarole, Scarlett thought. It made no sense at all.

Her companion smiled. A superior smile, it seemed to Scarlett, and she became angry. But the woman quickly disarmed her. “Isn’t it silly?” she said. “His Christian name is Luke; I don’t know what the family name is. I just think of him as Lord Fenton. No one in my circle of friends is important enough to address him any other way, except ‘Milord’ or ‘Lord Fenton’ or ‘Fenton.’ ” She sighed again. “He’s terribly grand. And so outrageously attractive.”

Scarlett made no comment aloud. Privately she thought he looked like he needed taking down a peg or two.


Returning from the kill on Saturday, Fenton walked his horse alongside Scarlett’s. She was glad she was on Half Moon; it put her almost at eye level. “Good morning,” said Fenton, touching the brim of his top hat. “I understand we’re neighbors, Mistress O’Hara. I’d like to call and pay my respects, if I may.”

“That would be very pleasant. Where is your place?”

Fenton raised his thick black eyebrows. “Don’t you know? I’m on the opposite side of the Boyne, Adamstown.”

Scarlett was glad she hadn’t known. Obviously he’d expected her to. What conceit.

“I know Adamstown well,” she said, “I have some O’Hara cousins who are tenants of yours.”

“Indeed? I’ve never known my tenants’ names.” He smiled. His teeth were brilliantly white. “It is quite charming, that American candor about your humble origins. It was mentioned in London, even, so you see it’s serving your purposes very well.” He touched his crop to his hat and moved off.

The nerve of the man! And the bad manners—he didn’t even tell me his name. As if he was sure I must have asked someone. Oh, I do wish I hadn’t!

When she got home she told Mrs. Fitz to give instructions to the butler: she was not at home to the Earl of Fenton the first two times he called.

Then she concentrated on decorating the house for Christmas. She decided they really should have a bigger tree this year. Scarlett opened the parcel from Atlanta as soon as it was delivered to her office. Harriet Kelly had sent her some cornmeal, bless her heart. I guess I talk about missing corn bread more than I know I do. And a present for Cat from Billy. I’ll let her have it when she comes home for tea. Ah, here it is, a nice fat letter. Scarlett settled herself comfortably with a pot of coffee to read it. Harriet’s letters were always full of surprises.

The first one she wrote when she arrived in Atlanta had brought—among eight tightly written pages of rhapsodic thanks—the unbelievable story that India Wilkes had a serious beau. A Yankee, no less, who was the new minister at the Methodist church. Scarlett relished the idea. India Wilkes—Miss Confederacy Noble Cause herself. Let a Yankee in britches come along and give her the time of day and she’ll forget there ever was a war.

Scarlett skimmed the pages about Billy’s accomplishments. Cat might be interested, she’d read them aloud later. Then she found what she was looking for. Ashley had asked Harriet to marry him.

It’s what I wanted, isn’t it? It’s silly for me to feel a twinge of jealousy. When’s the wedding? I’ll send a magnificent present. Oh, for heaven’s sake! Aunt Pitty can’t live alone in the house with Ashley after India’s wedding because it wouldn’t be proper. I do not believe it. Yes, I do. It’s just what Aunt Pitty would swoon over, worrying about how it would look for her, the oldest spinster in the world, to be living with a single man. At least that gets Harriet married pretty soon. Not exactly the most passionate proposal in the world, but I’m sure Harriet can do it up with lace and rosebuds in her mind. Too bad the wedding’s in February. I’d have been tempted to go, but not tempted enough to miss the Castle Season. It hardly seems possible that I once thought Atlanta was a big city. I’ll see if Cat would like to go to Dublin with me after New Year’s. Mrs. Sims said the fittings would only take a few hours in the mornings. I wonder what they do with those poor zoo animals in the winter?

“Have you another cup in that pot, Mistress O’Hara? It was a chilly ride over here.”

Scarlett stared up at the Earl of Fenton, her mouth gaping in surprise. Oh, Lord, I must look a sight, I hardly even brushed my hair this morning. “I told my butler to say I’m not at home,” she blurted.

Fenton smiled. “But I came the back way. May I sit down?”

“I’m amazed you wait to be asked. Please do. Ring the bell first, though. I’ve only got one cup, seeing I wasn’t at home to visitors.”

Fenton tugged the bellpull, took a chair close to hers. “I’ll use your cup if you don’t mind. It will take a week for another to get here.”

“I do mind. So there!” Scarlett blurted. Then she burst out laughing. “I haven’t said ‘so there’ in twenty years. I’m surprised I didn’t stick out my tongue, too. You’re a very irritating man, Milord.”

“Luke.”

“Scarlett.”

“May I have some coffee?”

“The pot’s empty . . . so there.”

Fenton looked a little less overbearing when he laughed as he did then.

84

Scarlett visited her cousin Molly that afternoon, throwing that socially ambitious creature into such a frenzy of gentility that Scarlett’s oflhand questions about the Earl of Fenton were barely noticed. The visit was very short. Molly didn’t know anything at all, save that the Earl’s decision to spend some time at his Adamstown estate had shocked his servants and his agent. They kept the house and stables ready at all times, just in case he might choose to come there, but this was the first time in nearly five years that he had arrived.

The staff were now all preparing for a house party, said Molly. There had been forty guests when the Earl last came, all with servants of their own, and horses. The Earl’s hounds and their attendants had come, too. There had been two weeks of hunting, and a Hunt Ball.

At Daniel’s cottage, the O’Hara men commented on the Earl’s arrival with bitter humor. Fenton had picked his time badly, they said. The fields were too dry and hard to be ruined by the hunters, like last time. The drought had been there before him and his friends.

Scarlett returned to Ballyhara no wiser than she’d left it. Fenton had said nothing to her about a hunt, or about a house party. If he gave one, and she wasn’t invited, it would be a terrible slap in the face. After dinner she wrote a half dozen notes to friends she’d made during the Season. “Such a fuss in these parts,” she scribbled, “about Lord Fenton popping up at his place near here. He’s been absentee for so many years that even the shopkeepers don’t have any good gossip about him.”

She smiled as she sealed the notes. If that doesn’t bring out all the skeletons in his closet, I don’t know what will.


The next morning she dressed with care in one of the gowns she’d worn at her drawing rooms in Dublin. I don’t care a fig about looking attractive for that irritating man, she told herself, but I will not let him sneak up on me again when I’m not ready for guests.

The coffee grew cold in the pot.

Fenton found her in the fields exercising Comet that afternoon. Scarlett was wearing her Irish clothes and cloak, riding astride.

“How sensible you are, Scarlett,” he said. “I’ve always been convinced that sidesaddles are ruinous to a good horse, and that looks like a fine one. Would you care to match him against mine in a short race?”

“I’d be delighted,” Scarlett said, with honeyed sweetness. “But the drought left everything so parched that the dust behind me will probably choke you half to death.”