Sudden tears of happiness poured down her cheeks, and her hands flew down to cover her middle in a protective cradling of the new life growing within. Oh, how she wanted this baby. Rhett’s baby. Their baby. It would be strong, she knew it, she could feel its tiny strength already. A bold, fearless little thing, like Bonnie.

Scarlett’s mind flooded with memories. Bonnie’s little head had fit into her palm, hardly bigger than a kitten’s. She’d fit into Rhett’s big hands like a doll. How he had loved her. His wide back bent over the cradle, his deep voice making silly baby-talk sounds—never in all the world was there a man so besotted with a baby. He was going to be so happy when she told him. She could see his dark eyes flashing with the joy of it, his white smile gleaming in his pirate’s face.

Scarlett smiled, too, thinking of it. I’m happy, too, she thought. This is the way it’s supposed to be when you have a baby, Melly always said so.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered aloud. Melly died trying to have one, and my insides are all messed up, Dr. Meade said, after I had the miscarriage. That’s why I didn’t know I was pregnant, I didn’t even notice I missed my time of month, because it’s been so undependable for so long. Suppose having this baby kills me? Oh, God, please, please, God, don’t let me die just when I finally get what I need to be happy. She crossed herself again and again in confused entreaty, propitiation, superstition.

Then she shook her head angrily. What was she doing? Just being silly. She was strong and healthy. Not like Melly at all. Why, Mammy always said it was downright shameful the way she dropped a baby with hardly more fuss than an alley cat. She was going to do just fine, and her baby would be fine, too. And her life would be fine, with Rhett loving her, loving their baby. They’d be the happiest, lovingest family in the whole world. Gracious, she hadn’t even thought of Miss Eleanor. Talk about baby-loving! Miss Eleanor was going to pop her buttons with pride. I can see her now, at the Market, telling everybody, even the bent-up old man who sweeps out the trash. This baby’s going to be the talk of Charleston before it even draws its first breath.

. . . Charleston . . . That’s where I should be going. Not to Ireland. I want to see Rhett, to tell him.

Maybe the Brian Boru could put in there. The captain’s a friend of Colum’s; Colum could persuade him to do it. Scarlett’s eyes sparkled. She got to her feet and washed her face, then rinsed the sour taste out of her mouth. It was too early to talk to Colum, so she went back to bed and sat up against the pillows making plans.

When Kathleen got up, Scarlett was sleeping, a contented smile on her lips. There was no need to hurry, she had decided. No need to talk to the captain. She could meet her grandmother and her Irish kin. She could have her adventure of crossing the ocean. Rhett had kept her waiting for him in Savannah. Well, he could wait awhile to learn about the baby. There were months and months to go before it was born. She was entitled to have some fun before she went back to Charleston. Sure as fate, she wouldn’t be allowed to do so much as stick her nose out of the door there. Ladies in a delicate condition weren’t supposed to stir a stump.

No, she’d have Ireland first. She’d never have another chance.

She’d enjoy the Brian Boru too. Her morning sickness had never lasted much more than a week with the other babies. It must be almost over now. Like Kathleen, in a day or two she’d be just fine.


Crossing the Atlantic on the Brian Boru was like a continuous Saturday night at the O’Haras’ in Savannah—only more so. At first Scarlett loved it.

The ship soon had a full complement of passengers who boarded at Boston and New York, but they didn’t seem like Yankees at all, Scarlett thought. They were Irish and proud of it. They had the vitality that was so appealing in the O’Haras, and they took advantage of everything the ship had to offer. All day there was something to do: checkers tournaments, heated competitions at quoits on deck, excited participation in games of chance, such as wagering on the number of miles the ship would cover the following day. In the evening they sang along with the professional musicians and danced energetically to all the Irish reels and Viennese waltzes.

Even when the dancing was done, the amusement continued. There was always a game of whist in the Ladies’ Card Saloon, and Scarlett was always in demand as a partner. Except for Charleston’s rationed coffee, the stakes were higher than any she’d known, and every turn of a card was exciting. So were her winnings. The Brian Boru’s passengers were living proof that America was the Land of Opportunity, and they didn’t mind spending their lately gained wealth.

Colum, too, benefitted from their opened pockets. While the women played cards, the men generally retired to the ship’s bar for whiskey and cigars. There, Colum brought tears of pity and pride to eyes that were normally shrewd and dry. He talked about Ireland’s oppression under English rule, called the roll of martyrs to the cause of Irish freedom, and accepted lavish donations for the Fenian Brotherhood.

A crossing on the Brian Boru was always a profitable enterprise, and Colum made the trip at least twice a year, even though the excessive luxury of the staterooms and the gargantuan meals secretly sickened him when he thought of the poverty and need of the Irish in Ireland.

By the end of the first week, Scarlett, too, was looking at their fellow passengers with a disapproving eye. Both men and women changed clothes four times a day, the better to show off the extent of their costly wardrobes. Scarlett had never seen so many jewels in her life. She told herself she was glad that she’d left hers in the vault of the Savannah bank; they’d pale next to the array in the dining saloon every night. But in truth she wasn’t glad at all. She had grown accustomed to having more of everything than anyone she knew—a bigger house, more servants, more luxury, more things, more money. It put her nose decidedly out of joint to see display more conspicuous than hers had ever been. In Savannah, Kathleen, Mary Kate, and Helen had been ingenuously blatant in their envy, and all the O’Haras had fed her need for admiration. These people on the ship didn’t envy her, or even admire her all that much. Scarlett wasn’t at all pleased with them. She couldn’t bear a whole country full of Irish if this was what they were like. If she heard “Wearing o’ the Green” one more time she’d scream.

“You’re just not taken with the American New-Rich, Scarlett darling,” Colum soothed. “You’re a grand lady, that’s why.” It was exactly the right thing for him to say.

A grand lady was what she had to be after this vacation was over. She’d have this final fling of freedom and then she’d go to Charleston, put on her drab clothes and company manners, and be a lady for the rest of her life.

At least now when Miss Eleanor and everybody else in Charleston talked about their trips to Europe before the War, she’d not feel so left out. She wouldn’t say she’d disliked it, either. Ladies didn’t say things like that. Unconsciously, Scarlett sighed.

“Ach, Scarlett darling, it can’t be as bad as all that,” Colum said. “Look at the bright side. You’re cleaning out their deep pockets at the card table.”

She laughed. It was true. She was winning a fortune—some evenings as much as thirty dollars. Wait till she told Rhett! How he’d laugh. He’d been a gambler on Mississippi riverboats for a while, after all. Come to think of it, it was a good thing, really, that there was still a week at sea. She wouldn’t have to touch a penny of Rhett’s money.

Scarlett’s attitude toward money was a complex mixture of miserliness and generosity. It had been her measure of safety for so many years that she guarded every penny of her hard-earned fortune with angry suspicion of anyone who made any real or imagined demands for a dollar of it. And yet she accepted the responsibility to support her aunts and Melanie’s family without question. She had taken care of them even when she didn’t know where she’d find the means to take care of herself. If some unforeseen calamity befell, she would continue to take care of them, even if it meant that she had to go hungry. She didn’t think about it; it was simply the way things were.

Her feelings about Rhett’s money were equally inconsistent. As his wife she spent profligately on the Peachtree Street house, with its prodigious expenses, and on her wardrobe and luxuries. But the half million he had given her was different. Inviolable. She intended to give it back to him intact when they were once again truly man and wife. He had offered it as payment for separation, and she could not accept it because she would not accept separation. It bothered her that she’d had to take some of it out of the bank vaults to bring on the trip. Everything had happened so fast, there’d been no time to get any of her own money from Atlanta. But she’d put an IOU in the box with the remaining gold in Savannah, and she was determined to spend as little as possible of the gold coins that were now keeping her back straight and her waist small, filling the channels in her corset where steel strips had once been. It was much better to win at whist and have her own money to spend. Why, in another week, with any luck, she’d add at least another $150 to her purse.

But still, she’d be glad when the voyage was over. Even with all the sails bellied taut with wind, the Brian Boru was too big for her to feel the thrill she remembered from racing ahead of the storm in Charleston Harbor. And she hadn’t seen even one dolphin, despite Colum’s poetic promises.