She moved the glasses from side to side. It was fun to be able to watch people when they didn’t know you were looking. Hah! There was old Josiah Anson dozing off. While Emma was talking to him, too. He’d get an earful if she found out he was asleep! Ugh! Ross! Too bad he had come back, but Miss Eleanor was pleased. Margaret looked nervous, but she always did. Oh, there’s Anne. My grief, she looks like the old woman in the shoe with all those children she’s got with her. They must be the orphans. Does she see me? She’s turning this way. No, she’s not looking high enough.

My stars, she’s positively glowing. Has Edward Cooper proposed at last? Must be; she’s looking up at him as if he could walk on water. She’s practically melting.

Scarlett moved the glasses upward to see if Edward was being as obvious as Anne . . . a pair of shoes, trousers, jacket—

Her heart leapt into her throat. It was Rhett. He must be talking to Edward. Her gaze lingered for a moment. Rhett looked so elegant. She shifted the glasses, and Eleanor Butler came into view. Scarlett froze, not even breathing. It couldn’t be. She scanned the area near Rhett and his mother. Nobody was there yet. Slowly she moved the glasses back to look at Anne again, then again at Rhett, then back to Anne. There was no doubt about it. Scarlett felt sick. Then searingly angry.

That miserable little sneak! She’s been praising me to the skies all this time to my face, and she’s wildly in love with my husband behind my back. I could strangle her to death with my bare hands!

Her hands were sweating, she almost lost hold of the glasses when she swung them back to Rhett. Was he looking at Anne? . . . No, he was laughing with Miss Eleanor . . . they were chatting with the Wentworths . . . greeting the Hugers . . . the Halseys . . . the Savages . . . old Mr. Pinckney . . . Scarlett kept Rhett in view until her eyes blurred.

He hadn’t looked in Anne’s direction even once. She was staring at him like she could eat him with a spoon, and he didn’t even notice it. There’s nothing to fret about. It’s just a silly girl with a crush on a grown-up man.

Why shouldn’t Anne have a crush on him? Why shouldn’t every woman in Charleston? He’s so handsome and so strong and so . . .

She looked at him with yearning naked on her face, the glasses in her lap. Rhett was bent down to adjust Miss Eleanor’s shawl across her shoulders. The sun was low in the sky and a cold fitful wind had begun to blow. He placed his hand under her elbow and they began to climb the steps to their seats, the very picture of a dutiful son with his mother. Scarlett waited eagerly for them to arrive.


The partial roof over the grandstand cast an angled shadow over the seats. Rhett changed places with his mother so that she could be warmed by what sunlight there was, and Scarlett had him beside her at last. She forgot Anne at once.

When the horses came out on the track for the fourth race, the spectators stood up, first two, then several groups of people, then everyone, in a tidal wave of anticipation. Scarlett was almost dancing with excitement.

“Having a good time?” Rhett was smiling.

“Wonderful! Which horse is Miles Brewton’s, Rhett?”

“I suspect Miles rubbed his down with shoe-polish. It’s number five, the very glossy black. The dark horse, you might say. Number six is Guggenheim’s; Belmont managed post position; his pace-setter is number four.”

Scarlett wanted to ask what “pace-setter” and “post position” meant, but there was no time, they were about to start.

Number five’s rider anticipated the starter’s pistol shot, and there were loud groans from the stands. “What happened?” Scarlett asked.

“False start, they’ll have to line up again,” Rhett explained. He tilted his head in gesture. “Look at Sally.”

Scarlett looked. Sally Brewton’s face was more monkey-like than ever, contorted with rage, and she was shaking her fist in the air. Rhett laughed affectionately. “I might just jump the fence and keep going if I were the jockey,” he said. “Sally’s ready to use his skin for a hearth rug.”

“I don’t blame her one bit,” Scarlett declared, “and I don’t think it’s one bit funny either, Rhett Butler.”

He laughed again. “May I dare assume that you put your money on Sweet Sally after all?”

“Of course I did. Sally Brewton’s a dear friend of mine—and besides, if I lost, it was your money, not mine.”

Rhett looked at Scarlett in surprise. She was smiling impishly at him.

“Well done, madam,” he murmured.

The pistol shot sounded, and the race had begun. Scarlett didn’t know that she was shouting, jumping up and down, pounding on Rhett’s arm. She was even deaf to the shouts of the people all around them. When Sweet Sally won by a half-length she let out a yell of victory. “We won! We won! Isn’t it marvelous? We won!”

Rhett rubbed his biceps. “I think I’m crippled for life, but I agree. It’s marvelous, truly a marvel. The swamp rat over the best bloodstock in America.”

Scarlett frowned at him. “Rhett! Do you mean to tell me you’re surprised? After what you said this afternoon? You sounded so confident.”

He smiled. “I despise pessimism. And I wanted everyone to have a good time.”

“But didn’t you bet on Sweet Sally, too? Don’t tell me you bet on the Yankees!”

“I didn’t bet at all.” His jaw was hard with resolve. “When the gardens at the Landing are cleared and planted, I’m going to begin bringing the stables back to life. I’ve already retrieved some of the cups that Butler horses won when our colors were known all over the world. I’ll place my first bet when I have a horse of my own to bet on.” He turned to his mother. “What will you buy with your winnings, Mama?”

“That’s for me to know and you not to find out,” she replied, with a jaunty toss of her head.

Scarlett, Rhett, and Rosemary laughed together.

27

Scarlett received small spiritual benefit from Mass the next day. Her whole focus was on her own spirits, and they were very low. She’d hardly laid eyes on Rhett at the big party given by the Jockey Club after the races.

Walking back after Mass, she tried to make an excuse that would get her out of eating with her aunts, but Pauline wouldn’t hear of it. “We have something very important to discuss with you,” she’d said. Her tone was portentous. Scarlett braced herself for a lecture about dancing too much with Middleton Courtney.

As it turned out, his name wasn’t mentioned at all. Eulalie was mournful and Pauline censorious about something else altogether.

“We’ve learned that you haven’t written to your grandfather Robillard for years, Scarlett.”

“Why should I write to him? He’s nothing but a crabby old man who’s never lifted a finger for me in my whole life.”

Eulalie and Pauline were shocked speechless. Good! thought Scarlett. Her eyes gleamed triumphantly at them above the rim of her cup while she drank her coffee. You don’t have an answer to that, do you? He’s never done anything for me, and he’s never done a thing for you, either. Who gave you the money to keep body and soul together when this house was about to go for taxes? Not your precious father, that’s for sure. It was me. It was me who paid for Uncle Carey to get a decent burial when he died, too, and it’s my money that puts clothes on your backs and food on your table—if Pauline can bear to open the pantry door on the stuff she hoards in there. So you can gape at me like a pair of goggle-eyed frogs, but there’s not one single thing you can say!

But Pauline, echoed by Eulalie, found plenty to say. About respect for one’s elders, loyalty to one’s family, duty and manners and good breeding.

Scarlett set her cup on its saucer with a crash. “Don’t you dare preach over me, Aunt Pauline. I’m sick to death of it! I don’t care a fig for Grandfather Robillard. He was horrid to Mother and he’s been horrid to me, and I hate him. And I don’t care if I burn in Hell for it!”

It felt good to lose her temper. She’d been holding it in too long. There’d been too many tea parties, too many receiving lines, too many calls, and too many callers. Too many times when she’d had to curb her tongue—she who’d always said what she thought and devil take the hindmost. Most of all, too many hours of listening politely to Charlestonians brag about the glories of their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers, on and on, all the way back to the Middle Ages. The very last thing Pauline should have mentioned was respect due to her family.

The aunts cowered before Scarlett’s outburst, and their frightened faces gave her an intoxicating joyful feeling of power. She’d always been contemptuous of weakness, and in the months she’d spent in Charleston she had had no power, she’d been the weak one, and she’d begun to feel contempt for herself. Now she unleashed on her aunts all the disgust she had felt at her own craven desire to please.

“There’s no need to sit there staring at me as if I had horns on my head and a pitchfork in my hand, either! You know I’m right, but you’re just too lily-livered to say it for yourself. Grandfather treats everybody like dirt. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that he never answers all the mealymouth letters you write him. He likely doesn’t even read them. I know I never once read one all the way through. I didn’t have to, they were all always the same thing—whining for more money!”

Scarlett covered her mouth with her hand. She’d gone too far. She’d broken three of the unwritten, inviolate rules of the Southern code of behavior: she’d said the word “money,” she’d reminded her dependents of the charity she’d given, and she’d kicked a downed foe. Her eyes when she looked at her weeping aunts were stricken with shame.