Chapter Text
Scarlett knew the house was too beautiful the moment she saw it.
That was the first thing wrong with it.
It stood on Sullivan’s Island with its whitewashed face turned toward the sea, its wide piazzas wrapped around it like arms, its green shutters faded by sun and salt, its roof crouched low as if it had spent a lifetime bowing to storms. The sand road curved toward it through low myrtle and yaupon, past clumps of sea oats bending in the wind and palmettos that rattled their fronds like dry applause.
Beyond the house, the Atlantic flashed hard and bright in the late afternoon sun.
Behind them, across the water and marsh and memory, lay Charleston.
Scarlett did not turn to look back at it.
She had no use for Charleston. Charleston had made a fine art of looking down its nose at everyone and everything, and Rhett had learned too much from it. Even when he mocked the place, even when he swore he had been cast out of it and did not give a damn, there were parts of him that still belonged to its shaded rooms, its old names, its elegant cruelties, its beautiful manners wrapped neatly around rot.
Now he had brought her to one of its summer ghosts.
She hated the house immediately.
There was a little sign hanging near the steps, weathered gray, with the name carved into it.
Saltwind.
Of course it had a name. Of course Rhett had brought her to a house with a name, and not merely a name but one that sounded as if someone had spent half a morning sighing over poetry and sea air.
Scarlett looked at the sign, then at the house, then at her husband.
“Saltwind,” she said.
Rhett, seated beside her in the carriage with his gloved hand resting on the head of his cane, did not trouble himself to look innocent.
“A modest little place.”
“There is nothing modest about a house that has named itself.”
“I believe the blame lies with a Butler aunt of strong opinions and weak imagination.”
“A Butler aunt.”
“My father’s aunt, technically. A formidable woman. She once struck a bishop with a fan.”
Scarlett glanced at him despite herself. “Did he deserve it?”
“Almost certainly.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That wounds me deeply.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“No,” Rhett said. “It doesn’t.”
His smile came slowly, wickedly, the way it always had, but Scarlett saw the labor beneath it now. She saw how carefully he leaned back against the carriage cushions, how one shoulder rested too heavily, how his breath had gone shallow on the last stretch of road from the landing. He had dressed beautifully for the journey, dark coat, immaculate linen, gray waistcoat, gloves, hat tilted with careless precision. Rhett Butler had always known how to make clothes tell lies for him.
But Scarlett had been married to him too long to believe the clothes.
The second thing wrong with the house was that Rhett had known it as a boy.
He had told her that only after they had crossed from Charleston, when the city’s spires and rooftops were falling behind them and the wind off the harbor had taken liberties with her hat. He had said it lightly, almost idly, as if the fact mattered no more than the color of the sky.
“We came here in the summers, now and then, when Charleston became unfit for civilized life.”
“How often is now and then?”
He had looked out over the water. “Often enough.”
Which meant every summer. Or nearly every summer. Which meant memories. Which meant a piece of him he had not shown her before, not fully.
Scarlett had been furious ever since.
Not because he had brought her somewhere beautiful. Not really.
Not because he had made arrangements without asking. Though that was certainly irritating enough to justify murder under the right circumstances.
She was furious because she understood what he was doing.
He had brought her to a place where he had once been young.
Not merely to rest. Not merely to recover. Not merely to take the sea air, as if sea air were some obedient servant one could summon to mend a failing heart.
He had brought her to the beginning because they were nearing the end.
The thought struck at her so cruelly that for one wild second she wanted to fling herself from the carriage, march straight down the sand road, and keep walking until the island ran out beneath her.
Instead, she lifted her chin.
“I hate it,” she said.
Rhett looked at the house with grave consideration.
“Do you? I shall have it razed by supper.”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“I am trying to be accommodating.”
“You are trying to be amusing.”
“I had hoped for success.”
“You failed.”
“How distressing. I shall need a restorative.”
“You shall need soup and rest.”
He made a face of such profound distaste that, under different circumstances, she might have laughed.
“Soup,” he said, “is what people offer when they have lost all imagination.”
“Then you may have fish.”
“I withdraw my objection.”
“And bread.”
“A feast.”
“And whatever else Cook has made, because you are going to eat like a man who means to recover.”
There it was.
The word hung between them.
Recover.
Rhett did not laugh at it. That was the worst of it. He did not even smile. He only looked at her, and the softness in his eyes was so unbearable that Scarlett turned away before it could undo her.
The driver drew up before the house. Sand gave way to packed shell and pale gravel. A Negro man in a clean linen coat came down the steps, followed by a severe little housekeeper with gray hair and a ring of keys at her waist. Behind them, two maids hovered near the open door, and a boy took the horses’ heads.
Everything ready.
Every servant prepared.
Every room aired.
Every arrangement made.
Scarlett’s fingers tightened in her lap.
Rhett had arranged his own convalescence with the same maddening competence with which he had once arranged blockades, fortunes, scandals, dinners, and escapes. He had likely written ahead about linens, medicines, food, wine, pillows, doctors, servants, and every possible comfort except the one thing she required, which was for him not to die.
Rhett shifted beside her.
It was hardly anything. A breath. A pause. One gloved hand tightening around the cane before he moved to descend.
Scarlett saw it.
She had learned the geography of his weakness as unwillingly as she had once learned the roads out of Atlanta: where the danger lay, where the bridges burned, where one might still force a passage through. She knew now when his color changed beneath his tan. She knew when his humor sharpened because pain had. She knew when he was tired before he did, or before he admitted it, which amounted to the same thing.
She hated that knowledge.
She hated it because it was intimate.
She hated it because it was useless.
Before he could rise, she put a hand on his arm.
“I am getting down first,” she said.
“How gallant of you.”
“If you make a joke about it, I shall push you into the sand.”
“A widow’s prerogative, I suppose.”
Her hand went rigid on his sleeve.
The word had been lightly said. Too lightly. A flash of old Rhett, cruel because he had reached for irony before tenderness could make him defenseless.
Scarlett turned on him so sharply the ostrich plume on her hat trembled.
“Do not say that.”
The amusement vanished from his face.
For one instant they were not in the carriage, not in Sullivan’s Island light, not before the white house named Saltwind. They were in every room where the truth had waited behind a closed door. Every room where they had once been too proud, too wounded, too young, too late.
Rhett bowed his head slightly.
“No,” he said. “I beg your pardon.”
That almost broke her.
It was much easier when he was impossible.
She snatched her hand away and descended from the carriage without assistance, gathering her skirts as if they had personally offended her. The sea wind came at once to lift the loose tendrils at her temples and tug at her veil. The air smelled of salt, hot wood, drying marsh grass, roses, and that faint fish-sweet odor the coast carried no matter how grandly it dressed itself.
Roses grew near the porch.
Naturally.
Red roses, climbing stubbornly over a white trellis though the wind had knocked several blooms sideways. Roses had no business thriving in such a place. They should have wilted. They should have given up and gone brown at the edges. But there they were, vulgar and radiant, blooming as if salt and storm were minor inconveniences.
Scarlett hated those too.
The housekeeper came forward.
“Mr. Butler. Mrs. Butler. Welcome back to Saltwind.”
Welcome back.
Scarlett heard it.
Rhett heard her hear it.
His face remained smooth.
“Mrs. Pike,” he said. “You have made the place look very well.”
“It’s glad to have someone in it again, sir.”
Scarlett glanced from the woman to Rhett. “Again?”
Mrs. Pike hesitated.
Rhett smiled pleasantly. “Mrs. Pike has a sentimental attachment to drafty old houses.”
“Not drafty when properly kept,” Mrs. Pike said, with pride. “And I hope you’ll find everything comfortable, Mrs. Butler. Mr. Butler sent very particular instructions.”
“I am sure he did,” Scarlett said.
“Dinner can be served whenever you like. Cook has prepared a light meal, as Mr. Butler requested, but there is fish and ham and fresh bread if you prefer something more substantial.”
“I do.”
Rhett sighed. “An empire falls.”
Scarlett ignored him. “Mr. Butler will have the substantial meal.”
“I shall?”
“You shall.”
“I am standing directly here, my dear.”
“I know. It saves me the trouble of sending a message.”
Mrs. Pike’s eyes flickered with the bubbling possibility of amusement.
Scarlett fixed her with a look.
The amusement wisely died.
“Very good, ma’am,” Mrs. Pike said.
Rhett descended then, accepting the manservant’s hand with graceful irritation. He did it beautifully. That was what made Scarlett want to scream. Even now, even diminished, even with his heart betraying him beneath his perfectly cut coat, Rhett could make frailty look like condescension.
But when his feet touched the shell path, the color left his mouth.
Only for a moment.
Only long enough for Scarlett to see.
She stepped toward him before she could stop herself.
He gave her the smallest warning look.
Not here.
Not before them.
She stopped.
That was love too, she had discovered late and resentfully. Not doing the thing one wanted. Not fussing. Not exposing him when pride was all he had between himself and pity.
But oh, how she loathed having to be good at it.
Rhett turned toward the sea as if the pause had been admiration.
“There,” he said. “You see? Still standing. A medical triumph.”
“If you make another joke,” Scarlett said under her breath, “I will not wait for the sand. I will push you down the stairs.”
His mouth curved. “How I have missed your nursing.”
“I have been nursing you for weeks.”
“Then that explains my decline.”
She glared.
He looked delighted.
It was impossible to remain properly furious when he looked delighted. That had been one of the curses of her life. She had once believed Rhett Butler handsome because of his face, his eyes, his shoulders, his wicked mouth. But that was not the half of it. Rhett was most handsome when he was amused by her, and he had known it far too early.
Mrs. Pike led them up the steps and into the house.
Inside, Saltwind was cool and dim after the glare. The hall ran straight through to the back, where open doors framed a long slice of sea. The floors were old heart pine, polished to a honeyed gleam. The walls were white, the ceiling high, the air moving constantly through tall windows and louvered shutters. There were blue-and-white jars filled with grasses, a bowl of peaches on a side table, a fan-backed chair by the door, and the faint scent of beeswax and salt that no amount of scrubbing could remove.
It was not as grand as the Atlanta house.
It was not as rich as the New Orleans rooms Rhett favored when he wished to be wickedly comfortable.
It was not Tara. Nothing was Tara.
But it had the confidence of old things that did not need to impress anyone.
Scarlett hated that most of all because she liked it.
“This way, if you please,” Mrs. Pike said. “The east room is prepared for you. It catches the morning light but not the worst heat. Mr. Butler said—”
“Mr. Butler,” Scarlett said, “has said a great deal.”
Rhett removed his hat. “And yet not enough, apparently.”
The staircase rose in a graceful turn. Scarlett looked at it and then at him.
His eyes met hers.
The silent argument lasted no more than a second.
She wanted him to let the servant bring a chair or perhaps use the downstairs room. He knew it. He refused. She wanted to insist. He knew that too. He also knew she would not do it before the servants, and she hated him for knowing her kindness before she had chosen it.
“Slowly,” she said.
“How tyrannical.”
“Slowly, Rhett.”
Something in her voice must have reached him, because his expression shifted. Not surrender. Never that. But concession.
“As my lady commands.”
“I am not amused.”
“Then I shall try harder once I have survived the stairs.”
Mrs. Pike began to say something, thought better of it, and led the way.
Rhett climbed with infuriating elegance.
Scarlett climbed beside him, her hand near but not touching his arm. Every step felt like an insult. Every breath he took seemed to pass through her own chest first. By the time they reached the landing, her nerves were stretched so tightly she could have slapped him for smiling.
The east room was large and bright, with white curtains billowing at open windows, a wide bed hung with netting, a washstand, two wardrobes, and doors leading to a private piazza that overlooked the water. Someone had placed flowers on the table. More roses. Pink ones this time, pale and fragrant and offensively lovely.
Their trunks had already been brought up. Rhett’s books were stacked near the bed. Scarlett noticed them at once.
“You had your books unpacked before my gowns?”
“I feared you would find fault with the library and wished to survive the first evening.”
“I still may.”
“I count on it.”
Mrs. Pike explained the bellpulls, the bathing arrangements, the linen press, the dinner hour, the location of the nearest doctor without quite saying the word doctor as if it might bite. Scarlett listened to every syllable. Rhett wandered to the window and looked out.
No, not wandered.
Moved.
Carefully.
Scarlett watched the line of his back.
He was looking toward the water, but she thought perhaps he was seeing something else. A boy barefoot on the piazza. A woman with a parasol. A father’s voice. Charleston’s rules following him even to the edge of the sea.
When Mrs. Pike finally withdrew, Scarlett closed the door.
The click of the latch sounded louder than it should have.
Rhett did not turn around.
“You used to come here,” she said.
“So I believe I mentioned.”
“As a child.”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
He leaned one shoulder against the window frame. “Younger than prudence. Older than innocence.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have at present.”
“Rhett.”
He looked at her then.
The sea light was behind him, and for a moment his face was shadowed. He looked both older and younger to her. That was the cruelty of the place. It held some vanished boy she had never known and laid him over the man she could not bear to lose.
“I was seven the first summer I remember clearly,” he said. “Perhaps six. My mother disliked the heat in Charleston and feared fever. My father disliked everything, but he disliked fever more than comfort, so we came.”
Scarlett crossed her arms. “Was this house yours?”
“Not ours. A family house. There were always cousins and aunts and elderly relations occupying rooms and passing judgment. But my mother liked the east porch.”
He looked back out the window.
“She said the wind made her feel she could breathe.”
Scarlett’s anger faltered.
She despised that. She needed it intact. Anger was useful. Anger had bones in it. Without it, all that remained was the softer thing beneath, and the softer thing was unbearable.
“Is that why you brought me here?” she asked. “Because of your mother’s wind?”
Rhett laughed quietly. “No, my darling. I brought you because of your temper.”
“My temper?”
“I thought it would do well with the salt.”
“You are not funny.”
“I am frequently funny.”
“Not now.”
He turned from the window. “No. Not now.”
The room changed.
Or perhaps only Scarlett did.
She saw the bed then. The open windows. The sea beyond. His cane resting against his leg. His hand, still gloved, pale at the knuckles. The books by the bed. The flowers. The arrangements. The two months he had chosen and not asked for.
She could not bear it.
“You had no right,” she said.
His eyes held hers. “To bring you here?”
“To choose it all. To plan it all. To bring me to some house full of Butler ghosts and Charleston summers and your mother’s breathing, as if I am supposed to be grateful for being shown the scenery before—”
She stopped.
Her throat closed around the word.
Before.
Rhett did not rescue her from it.
That was worse than cruelty. He had learned, in these last five happy years, when not to rescue her. When to let her stand inside the truth until she either burned or spoke.
Scarlett hated him for that too.
Her eyes stung. She looked away, furious at them both.
“I don’t want your pretty farewell,” she said.
His face altered, the faint mask of irony slipping.
“Scarlett.”
“No.” She rounded on him. “No, don’t say my name in that voice. I hate that voice. I hate this house. I hate the sea. I hate that you picked a place you loved as a child and brought me here like some—some parting gift. I hate that you think I can be managed with roses and salt air and old stories. I hate that you are looking at me as if you are trying to make me remember it kindly.”
“I want you to remember it kindly.”
“I don’t want to remember it at all!” she cried.
The room went very still.
Outside, the surf broke and withdrew.
Scarlett stood breathing hard, one hand clenched in the folds of her skirt. She had not meant to say that. It was not even true. Or it was true only in the way terror told truths: violently, incompletely, without mercy.
Rhett took a step toward her.
She shook her head once.
He stopped.
That stopped her more than if he had come.
“I don’t mean that,” she said, and the words came out ragged. “I don’t mean it.”
“I know.”
“I want every minute.”
“I know.”
“I want so many of them I could choke on wanting.”
His eyes closed briefly.
Then he opened them and the look in them was so nakedly loving that she nearly turned away. But she did not. She had not fought her way through thirty years of herself to turn away now.
“I did not bring you here to manage you,” he said. “Though I admit the temptation is eternal.”
She made a sound that might have become a laugh in a kinder world.
“I brought you here because I was selfish.”
“You are always selfish.”
“Yes,” he said. “But this time I wished to be honest about it.”
Scarlett stared at him.
“I wanted you where no one would ask anything of you,” he said. “Not the children. Not Atlanta. Not Tara. Not society. Not anyone. I wanted you where you could rage or laugh or sleep until noon or throw crockery at the gulls if it pleased you.”
“I might.”
“I have no doubt. I shall warn Mrs. Pike to inventory the china.”
“Rhett.”
“I wanted you to myself,” he said.
The words moved through her like a hand over bruised skin.
He looked older than he had downstairs. Tired now that the door was shut. Tired because he had climbed the stairs, because the journey had cost him, because pretending always cost him, and because perhaps, with her, he no longer wished to pay so much.
“I have had to share you with wars and children and ghosts and cotton fields and foolish men and worthy causes and every damned bit of life that laid claim to you,” he said. “For once, I wanted to be greedy.”
“You should have been greedy sooner.”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer undid her.
No argument. No defense. No old cleverness polished bright enough to blind her.
Just yes.
She crossed the room then and put both hands on his coat.
“You should have,” she said, and now her voice broke because love was inside the anger, had been all along, was the very furnace of it. “You should have. We should have had more than five years like this. We should have had twenty. We should have had every year we wasted and every year we were too stupid to take and every year I didn’t know how to love you right.”
His hands came up to cover hers.
“Scarlett.”
“And now you bring me to the sea and expect me to behave prettily.”
“I have never expected you to behave prettily.”
“You expect me to bear it.”
His face changed.
“Yes,” he said softly. “I suppose I do.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know everything.”
“Nearly everything.”
She glared through the wet in her eyes.
His mouth curved. “There you are.”
“Oh, don’t look pleased with yourself.”
“I am not pleased with myself. I am pleased with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you are furious.”
“That is not usually considered a virtue.”
“In you, my dear, it is often a sign of life.”
That struck too close to tenderness.
Scarlett gripped his coat harder.
“I am furious because I love you,” she said. “Don’t you dare mistake it for anything else.”
The words came out plain.
Five years ago, even after reconciliation, such plainness would have cost her pride. Now it cost only breath.
Rhett’s expression changed in a way that made him look suddenly less like the legendary captain, the scandal of Charleston, the terror of Atlanta drawing rooms, and more like the boy who had once stood barefoot on this very island and wanted, perhaps, to run beyond the reach of every rule that had been made for him.
“I would not dare,” he said.
Then he drew her hands to his mouth and kissed them both.
Scarlett let him.
She even let her forehead rest against his shoulder for a moment, though she was careful not to lean too heavily. That was another thing she hated: calculating the weight of her own love.
His cheek brushed her hair.
“I am not dead today,” he said.
She stiffened.
“I know you dislike the phrasing.”
“I despise it.”
“But it is true.”
“That does not improve it.”
“No. But it is what I have.”
She closed her eyes.
He went on, his voice low, almost against her hair.
“I am here today. You are here today. The house is objectionable, the roses are presumptuous, the sea has offended you, and Mrs. Pike will likely resign before the week is out. Today is quite full.”
A laugh broke out of her despite everything.
He held very still, as if the sound were something precious and easily startled.
Scarlett pulled back enough to look at him.
“You are pleased with yourself again.”
“Yes.”
“You look smug.”
“I feel encouraged.”
“You shouldn’t. I still hate the house.”
“You will come around.”
“I won’t.”
“You will have rearranged all the furniture by Thursday and claimed it was unlivable before you improved it.”
“It probably is.”
“You have not seen half of it.”
“I can tell.”
“And by next week,” he said, “you will have bullied Mrs. Pike, seduced the cook, scolded the gardener, and declared the east porch barely tolerable.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Is there a gardener?”
“Two.”
“Two gardeners for a beach house?”
“The roses are demanding.”
“I knew they were vain.”
“They reminded me of you.”
“Because they’re beautiful?”
“Because they insist upon blooming in hostile conditions.”
She looked away because that was too much.
The wind moved through the curtains, lifting them like breath. Somewhere below, servants carried trunks and closed doors. The house creaked softly in the salt air, settling around them as if it recognized him, as if the old boards remembered the child he had been and the man he had become and were now making room for Scarlett too.
She resented that thought.
She also wanted it.
“Show me,” she said suddenly.
Rhett’s brows lifted. “The house?”
“Your house.”
“It was never mine.”
“It is now, for two months.”
His face softened at that, but he did not correct her. He understood possession. He understood that Scarlett had to claim a thing before she could bear it.
“As you wish,” he said.
But when he reached for the cane, she put her hand over his.
“Not all of it.”
“No?”
“No. You can show me from the chair.”
“My dear, what a blow to romance.”
“You may be romantic after dinner if you have eaten enough.”
“I see. Romance on a ration.”
“Everything about you is on a ration now.”
The words trembled too near the edge of grief. Rhett heard it. Of course he heard it. But he only turned his hand under hers and threaded their fingers together.
“Then we shall have to spend extravagantly where we can.”
She looked at him.
That was the thing about Rhett. Even now, even with death somewhere beyond the surf and the salt and the flickering curtains, he could still say something that made her feel both robbed and rich.
She leaned down and kissed him.
Not his cheek. Not his brow. His mouth.
He tasted faintly of tobacco and travel and the peppermint lozenges the doctor had recommended when he tired too easily, which Scarlett had thought absurd and Rhett had accepted because they amused him. His lips were warm. His hand tightened around hers. For one moment, there was no illness, no sea, no house named Saltwind, no Charleston behind them, no two months measured like coins in a miser’s hand.
There was only Rhett.
Her Rhett.
Alive beneath her mouth.
She ended the kiss before fear could.
His eyes opened slowly.
“If that is how you express hatred for the house,” he said, voice roughened, “I shall endeavor to make the wallpaper offend you.”
She laughed again, and this time it hurt less.
“Come downstairs,” she said. “Slowly.”
“Must I?”
“Yes.”
“I had hoped to be ravished on the spot.”
“You may hope after supper.”
“Hope is a Christian virtue.”
“You have never cared for those.”
“I am making a late conversion.”
“Then convert yourself toward the stairs.”
He sighed magnificently. “Marriage has made you hard.”
“No,” Scarlett said, and helped him take up the cane though she pretended not to. “Marriage has made me practical.”
“Among other things.”
She gave him a warning look.
He only smiled.
They went down slowly.
Scarlett allowed it because she had won, and because he needed to, and because there was no one on earth she loved enough to walk this slowly for except him.
In the dining room, the table had been set near open windows facing the sea. The curtains breathed in and out. A lamp had been lit though the evening was not yet dark, and the flame trembled whenever the wind found its way through the shutters. The silver was old. The china had a blue border of shells and vines. In the center of the table stood another vase of roses.
Scarlett stopped.
Rhett followed her gaze.
“I begin to suspect the roses have formed a conspiracy,” he said.
“I will defeat them.”
“I never doubted it.”
Mrs. Pike appeared with the first course, followed by a maid carrying bread and butter. There was soup, but also fish in a lemon sauce, ham, rice, tomatoes, and peaches in cream. Scarlett approved the spread with a sharp nod that made Mrs. Pike look faintly relieved.
Rhett glanced at the table. “You intend to fatten me for market.”
“I intend to keep you alive.”
The servants were there.
She should not have said it.
But she had, and Rhett did not make light of it. He only took his seat and looked up at her.
“Then I shall eat,” he said.
So he did.
Not enough, perhaps. Not as much as she wanted. But he ate fish and bread, and some rice, and even peaches because she looked at him until he did. He told her stories of Sullivan’s Island between bites, not the sentimental ones she suspected he was saving or avoiding, but wicked little sketches: a cousin who had fallen into the marsh trying to impress a girl; an elderly aunt who had believed sea bathing cured moral weakness; a preacher who had come for one Sunday and stayed three summers because the widow next door had excellent sherry.
Scarlett listened despite herself.
She asked questions when she meant not to. She laughed when he made the aunt sound like a general directing troops into the surf. She found herself imagining him as a boy, dark-haired and insolent, already too clever, already unwilling to be tamed, running barefoot through sand while Charleston tried and failed to catch him.
That boy had stood here once.
Her husband had stood here once.
And now he had brought her.
The anger inside her did not leave. It settled. Changed shape. Became something she could sit with.
For tonight.
Only tonight.
After dinner, they took coffee on the piazza. Rhett sat in a wide chair with cushions he pretended not to need. Scarlett sat beside him, close enough that her skirts touched his leg. The sky had gone violet. Far off, the last edge of sun burned low over the water, and lights began to appear across the harbor, tiny and uncertain.
Charleston was there in the distance, but muted. Reduced to pinpricks.
Rhett followed her gaze. “There she is.”
“Charleston?”
“Yes.”
“It looks better from here.”
“Most things do.”
“Did you miss it?”
He was quiet long enough that she looked at him.
“No,” he said at last. “I missed what I thought it ought to have been.”
Scarlett understood that too well to answer quickly.
Tara had been like that sometimes. Not the place itself, which was real as red earth and sweat and hunger, but the idea of it she had carried like a banner through years when she had no other flag. One could love a thing and resent it for failing to match the dream of itself.
Rhett reached for her hand.
She gave it to him.
Below the piazza, the roses tossed in the wind. Beyond them the sea kept coming in, coming in, coming in, as if time itself had learned that motion and would never tire.
Scarlett stared at the water until it blurred.
Rhett’s thumb moved over her wedding ring.
“Do not count tonight,” he said.
She swallowed.
“I am not counting.”
“My darling, I can hear subtraction in your breathing.”
She turned on him. “Then stop listening.”
“I have tried. For decades.”
That did make her smile, though she did her best to hide it.
He saw anyway.
For a while, they sat without speaking.
It was not one of the old silences. Those had been cold rooms and shut doors, punishment laid carefully between them. This silence was warm with coffee, salt air, lamp glow, his hand around hers, her shoulder near his. Five happy years had taught them there were silences one could live inside.
Scarlett leaned back in her chair and looked at Saltwind, at the white railings, the open windows, the lamplight beginning to gather in the rooms. She still hated it. She would probably hate it all summer. But perhaps she could hate it and claim it. She had always been good at that.
“Rhett,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow you will show me where you used to run off to be wicked.”
“I was never wicked as a child.”
She looked at him.
He smiled. “I was misunderstood.”
“You were insufferable.”
“Frequently.”
“And spoiled.”
“Never. That was Bonnie.”
“Because you made her so.”
His smile shifted, and something older passed between them. Not pain exactly. Memory. A room hushed around a child’s bed. Bonnie pale and still. Scarlett and Rhett sitting on either side of her, frightened clean through to the bone. Promises made because terror had stripped them of every elegant lie.
His hand tightened around hers.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I did.”
Scarlett did not soften the truth. She had learned, finally, that real love did not require that.
“You got better.”
“At not spoiling Bonnie?”
“At loving her properly.”
His eyes moved to hers.
“And you,” she added, because she would not let him make a joke of it, “got better at loving all of us properly.”
For a moment Rhett said nothing.
Then, very softly, “So did you.”
The sea wind moved between them.
Scarlett looked away before he could see too much, though there was very little left he had not seen. Five years of happiness had ruined a great many of her defenses. She resented that too. She was grateful for it beyond words.
The lamp behind them flickered.
Somewhere in the house, Mrs. Pike closed a door.
Two months, Scarlett thought.
No.
Not two months.
Tonight.
Dinner. Coffee. His hand. The sea. The old house. The roses she would defeat. The childhood he would pretend not to reveal. The husband she loved sitting alive beside her.
Tonight.
She could hold tonight.
She lifted her chin and looked out over the darkening water.
“I still hate the name,” she said.
“Saltwind?”
“It sounds like a poem written by someone with too much leisure.”
“You wound my aunt’s ghost.”
“She should have chosen better.”
“What would you call it?”
Scarlett considered.
Rhett watched her, amused now, and that pleased her. She liked his amusement. She liked making it happen. She liked that after all the years of trying to conquer him, wound him, win him, keep him, she could still make him look at her as if she were the brightest thing in any room or on any shore.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I haven’t taken possession of it.”
His smile deepened.
“There’s my girl.”
This time the words did not break her.
They warmed her.
She looked at him, at the silver in his hair, the shadows beneath his eyes, the mouth she had loved too late and then fiercely and then well. Fear rose in her again, huge and black and salt-tanged, but love rose with it. Stronger. Angrier. More stubborn.
She would not let grief have him early.
She would not let fear ruin the hours before they were gone.
She would be furious, yes. She would be impossible. She would rearrange the furniture and terrorize the cook and insult the roses and make Rhett eat and rest and laugh and remember.
She would love him so hard that death itself would feel it had come into a room where it was not welcome.
Rhett lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.
Scarlett looked back at the sea and refused, for one more evening, to count.