She ran to the bell pull and yanked on it. Pansy came to the door, tried it, turned the key and opened it.

“Tell Mr. Butler I want to see him, here in my room,” Scarlett said. “And bring up a supper tray. I’m hungry after all.”

She changed into a dry nightdress and a warm velvet dressing gown, then brushed her hair smooth and tied it back with a velvet ribbon. Her bleak eyes met themselves in the reflection of the looking glass.

She had lost. She wasn’t going to get Rhett back.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Too much—too fast—her whole world had turned upside down in only a few hours. She was still reeling from the shock of what Sally Brewton told her. She couldn’t stand staying in Charleston after what she’d learned. It would be like trying to build a house on shifting sands.

Scarlett pressed her hands to her forehead as if to contain the maelstrom of confused thoughts. She couldn’t make sense of so many things spinning through her brain at one time. There had to be one thing she could concentrate on. All her life she’d been successful if she put all her attention on one goal.

Tara . . .

Tara it would be. When she finished gaining control of Tara then she would think about all the rest . . .

“Here’s your supper, Miss Scarlett.”

“Put the tray on that table, Pansy, and leave me alone. I’ll ring when I’m done with it.”

“Yes’m. Mr. Rhett he say he’ll be along after he eats.”

“Leave me alone.”


Rhett’s expression was unreadable except for the wariness in his eyes. “You wanted to see me, Scarlett?”

“Yes, I do. Don’t worry, I’m not looking for a fight. I want to offer you a trade.”

His expression did not change. He said nothing.

Scarlett kept her voice cool and businesslike when she continued. “You and I both know that you can force me to stay in Charleston and go to the balls and receptions. And we both know that once you get me to one, there’s not a single thing you can do about what I might say or do. I’m offering to stay and to act however you want me to act, if you’ll help me get something I want that has nothing to do with you or Charleston.”

Rhett sat down, took out a thin cheroot, clipped and lit it. “I’m listening,” he said.

She explained her plan, growing more intense with each word she spoke. She waited eagerly for Rhett’s opinion when she finished.

“I have to admire your nerve, Scarlett,” said Rhett. “I never questioned whether you could hold your own against General Sherman and his army, but trying to outwit the Roman Catholic Church might be biting off more than you can chew.”

He was laughing at her, but it was a friendly laugh, even admiring. As if he, too, were back in the early days when they were friends.

“I’m not trying to outwit anybody, Rhett, just make an honest deal, that’s all.”

Rhett grinned. “You? Make an honest deal? You disappoint me, Scarlett. Are you losing your touch?”

“Honestly! I don’t know why you have to talk so ugly. You know very well I wouldn’t take advantage of the Church.” Scarlett’s prim outrage made Rhett laugh even more.

“I don’t know anything of the kind,” he said. “Tell me the truth, is this why you’ve been trotting off to Mass every Sunday rattling your beads? Have you been planning this all along?”

“No I haven’t. I can’t imagine why it took me so long to think of it.” Scarlett covered her mouth with her hand. How did Rhett do it? He always could surprise her into telling more than she meant to. She lowered her hand and scowled at him. “Well? Are you going to help me or not?”

“I’m willing to help, but I don’t see how I can. What if the Mother Superior turns you down? Will you still stay through the Season?”

“I said I would, didn’t I? Besides, there’s no reason for her to turn me down. I’m going to offer much more than Will can possibly send her. You can use your influence. You know everybody in the world, you can always get things done.”

Rhett smiled. “What touching faith you have in me, Scarlett. I know every rascal and crooked politician and dishonest businessman within a thousand miles, but I have no influence at all with the good people in this world. The best I can do for you is give you a little advice. Don’t try to pull the wool over the lady’s eyes. Tell her the truth if you can, and agree to anything she asks. Don’t bargain.”

“What a ninny you are, Rhett Butler! Nobody pays asking price except a fool. The convent doesn’t really need money anyhow. They’ve got that big house and all the sisters work for no wages and there are gold candlesticks and a big gold cross on the altar in the chapel.”

“ ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels . . .’ ” Rhett murmured with a chuckle.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Just quoting.”

He forced his face into a serious expression, but his dark eyes were gleeful. “I wish you all the luck in the world, Scarlett,” he said. “Consider it my benediction.” He left her room with his composure intact, then he laughed with genuine delight. Scarlett would keep her promise, she always did. With her help, he’d smooth over the scandal; then, in only two weeks the Season would end and Scarlett would be gone. He’d be free of the tension she had brought to the life he was trying to build in Charleston, and he’d be free to get back to the Landing. There was so much that he wanted to do on the plantation. Scarlett’s bullheaded assault on the Mother Superior of Carreen’s convent should be a good entertainment to divert him until his life was his own again.

I’d bet on the Roman Catholic Church, Rhett said to himself. It thinks of time in aeons, not in weeks. But I wouldn’t want to bet much. When Scarlett takes the bit between her teeth she’s a formidable force to reckon with. He laughed quietly for a long time.


As Rhett had expected, Scarlett’s relations with the Mother Superior were far from simple. “She won’t say yes and she won’t say no and she doesn’t even listen when I try to explain the good sense of selling!” Scarlett complained after her first visit to the convent. And her second visit, third, fifth. She was baffled and frustrated. Rhett listened with kind, patient attention while she raged, keeping his laughter inside. He knew that he was the only person she had to talk to.

In addition, Scarlett’s efforts provided him with fresh delights almost daily as she escalated her assault on the Holy Mother Church. She began going to Mass every morning, confident that word of her devotion would get back to the convent. Then she started visiting Carreen so often that she learned the names of all the other nuns and almost half of the students. After a week of gentle, noncommittal responses from the Mother Superior, Scarlett was so desperate that she even began to accompany her aunts when they paid calls on friends of theirs who were also elderly Catholic ladies in straitened circumstances.

“I believe I’m wearing my rosary beads down to half their size, Rhett,” she exclaimed angrily. “How can that awful old woman be so mean?”

“Maybe she thinks this will save your soul,” Rhett suggested.

“Fiddle-dee-dee! My soul is just fine, thank you very much. It’s making me gag at the smell of incense, that’s what it’s doing, all this church stuff. And I look like a hag because I never get enough sleep. I do wish there wasn’t a big party every single night.”

“Nonsense. Those shadows under your eyes make you look spiritual. They must impress the Mother Superior enormously.”

“Oh! Rhett, what a horrid thing to say. I’ll have to go powder right this minute.”

In fact the lack of sleep was beginning to show on Scarlett’s face. And frustration was etching small vertical lines between her eyebrows. Everyone in old Charleston was talking about what they assumed to be some kind of religious fervor. Scarlett was a different person. At receptions and balls she was polite but abstracted. The belle-temptress had retired. She no longer accepted invitations to play whist, and she’d stopped calling on the ladies at whose at-home days she had become a fixture. “I’m all in favor of honoring God,” Sally Brewton said one day. “I even give up something I really love for Lent. But I think Scarlett’s going too far. It’s extravagant.”

Emma Anson disagreed. “It makes me think much better of her than I did before. You know I thought you were foolish to sponsor her the way you did, Sally. She was obviously an ignorant, vain little climber. Now I’m willing to eat my words. There’s something admirable about anyone with serious religious feelings. Even Popish ones.”


Wednesday morning in the second week of Scarlett’s siege was dark and cold and rainy. “I just can’t walk all the way to the convent through this downpour,” she moaned, “I’ll ruin my only pair of boots.” She thought with longing of the Butlers’ former coachman, Ezekiel. He had showed up, like a magical genie from a bottle, on the two rainy nights they were going out. All this Charleston pretense is crazy and disgusting, but I’d be glad to put up with it today if I could just ride in a nice warm dry carriage. But I can’t. And I have to go, so I will.

“Mother Superior left this morning early to go to Georgia for a meeting at the Order’s school there,” said the nun who opened the convent’s door. No one knew exactly how long the meeting would last. Perhaps one day, or several, or maybe a week or more.

I don’t have a week or more, Scarlett shouted inwardly, I can’t even afford to waste a day.

She plodded back to the house through the rain. “Throw away these damned boots,” she ordered Pansy. “And get me out some dry clothes.”