Scarlett (100 page)

Rhett would be glad to see her cowardly and weak, she was convinced. And she’d much prefer to break her neck than to give him that satisfaction. Scarlett touched her crop to Half Moon’s neck. “Let’s try a trot and see if I can balance on this stupid saddle,” she sighed aloud.

Colum had described a fox hunt to Scarlett, but she wasn’t prepared for the first impact of it. Morland Hall was an amalgamation of building over more than two centuries, with wings and chimneys and windows and walls attached higgledy-piggledy to one another around the stone-walled courtyard that had been the keep of the fortified castle erected by the first Morland baronet in 1615. The square courtyard was filled with mounted riders and excited hounds. Scarlett forgot her apprehensions at the sight. Colum had omitted to mention that the men wore “pinks,” misnamed bright red jackets. She had never seen anything so glamorous in her life.

“Mrs. O’Hara!” Sir John Morland rode over to her, his gleaming top hat in his hand. “Welcome. I didn’t believe you’d come.”

Scarlett’s eyes narrowed. “Did Rhett say that?”

“On the contrary. He said wild horses wouldn’t keep you away.” There was no guile in Morland. “How do you like Half Moon?” The Baronet stroked the big hunter’s sleek neck. “What a beauty he is.”

“Um? Yes, isn’t he?” said Scarlett. Her eyes were moving quickly, searching for Rhett. What a lot of people! Damn this veil anyhow, everything looks blurred. She was wearing the most conservative riding clothes fashion allowed. Unrelieved black wool with a high neck, and low black top hat with a face veil pulled tight and tied over the netted thick knot of hair at the nape of her neck. It was worse than mourning, she thought, but respectable as all get-out, a real antidote to bright-colored skirts and striped stockings. Scarlett was rebellious in only one matter: she would not wear a corset under her habit. The sidesaddle was torture enough.

Rhett was looking at her. She looked away quickly when she finally saw him. He’s counting on me to make a spectacle of myself. I’ll show Mr. Rhett Butler. I might break every bone in my body, but nobody’s going to laugh at me, especially not him.

“Ride along easy, well back, and watch what the others do,” Colum had said. Scarlett began as he advised. She felt her palms sweating inside her gloves. Up ahead the pace was picking up, then beside her a woman laughed and whipped her horse, breaking into a gallop. Scarlett looked briefly at the panorama of red and black backs streaming down the slope in front of her, at the horses jumping effortlessly over the low stone wall at the base of the hill.

This is it, she thought, it’s too late now to worry about it. She shifted her weight without knowing she should and felt Half Moon moving faster, faster, sure-footed veteran of a hundred hunts. The wall was behind her and she had hardly noticed the jump. No wonder John Morland wanted Half Moon so much. Scarlett laughed aloud. It made no difference that she’d never hunted in her life, that she hadn’t sat sidesaddle for more than fifteen years. She was all right, better than all right. She was having fun. No wonder Pa never opened a gate. Why bother when you could go over the fence?

The specters of her father and Bonnie that had plagued her were gone. Her fear was gone. There was only the excitement of the misty air streaking past her skin and the power of the animal that she controlled.

That and the new determination to overtake and pass and leave Rhett Butler far behind.

Scarlett stood with the muddy train of her habit looped over her left arm and a glass of champagne in her right hand. The paw of the fox that she’d been awarded would be mounted on a silver base, if she’d allow it, said John Morland.

“I’d love it, Sir John.”

“Please call me Bart. All my friends do.”

“Please call me Scarlett. Everybody does, whether they’re friends or not.” She was giddy and pink-cheeked from the exhilaration of the hunt and her success. “I’ve never had a better day,” she told Bart. It was almost true. Other riders had congratulated her, she saw the unmistakable admiration in the men’s eyes, jealousy in the women’s. Everywhere she looked there were handsome men and beautiful women, silver trays of champagne, servants, wealth; people having a good time, a good life. It was like life before the War, only now she was grown up, she could do and say what she liked, and she was Scarlett O’Hara, country girl from North Georgia, in a baronet’s castle partying with Lady this and Lord that and even a countess. It was like a story in a book, and Scarlett’s head was turned.

She could almost forget that Rhett was there, almost erase the memory of being insulted and despised.

But only almost. And her treacherous mind kept remembering things she had seen and heard as she rode back to the house after the hurt: Rhett acting like it didn’t matter that she’d beaten him to the kill… teasing the Countess as if she were just anybody at all… looking so damned at ease and comfortable and not impressed… being so… so Rhett. Damn him, anyhow.

“Congratulations, Scarlett.” Rhett was at her side, and she hadn’t seen him approaching. Scarlett’s arm jerked, and champagne spilled on her skirts.

“Dammit, Rhett, do you have to sneak up on people like that?”

“I’m sorry.” Rhett offered her a handkerchief. “And I’m sorry for my boorish behavior at the horse fair. My only excuse is that I was shocked to see you there.”

Scarlett took the handkerchief and bent over to wipe at the dampness on her skirts. There was no point to it; her habit was already spattered with mud from the wild cross-country chase. But it gave her a chance to collect her thoughts and to hide her face for a moment. I will not show how much I care, she vowed silently. I will not show how much he hurt me.

She looked up, and her eyes were sparkling, her lips curved in a smile. “You were shocked,” she said. “Imagine what I was. What on earth are you doing in Ireland?”

“Buying horses. I’m determined to win at the races next year. John Morland’s stables have a reputation for producing likely yearlings. I go to Paris Tuesday to look at some more. What brought you to Drogheda in local costume?”

Scarlett laughed. “Oh, Rhett, you know how I love to dress up. I borrowed those clothes from one of the maids at the house I’m visiting.” She looked from side to side, searching for John Morland. “I’ve got to make my manners and get going,” she said over her shoulder. “My friends will be furious if I’m not back pretty soon.” She looked at Rhett for an instant, then hurried off. She didn’t dare stay. Not close to him like that. Not even in the same room… the same house.

The rain began when she was a little more than five miles from Ballyhara. Scarlett blamed it for the wetness on her cheeks.

On Wednesday she took Cat to Tara. The ancient mounds were just high enough for Cat to feel triumphant when she climbed them. Scarlett watched Cat’s recklessness on the run down the mound and forced herself not to warn her that she might fall.

She told Cat about Tara, and her family, and the banquets of the High Kings. Before they left she held the little girl as high as she could to look out over the country of her birth. “You’re a little Irish Cat, your roots go deep here… Do you understand anything I’m saying?”

“No,” said Cat.

Scarlett put her down so she could run. The strong little legs never walked now, always ran. Cat fell often. There were ancient hidden irregularities under the grass. But she never cried. She got to her feet and ran some more.

Watching her was healing for Scarlett. It made her whole again.

“Colum, who’s this man Parnell? People were talking about him at the hunt breakfast, but I couldn’t make any sense out of what they were saying.”

A Protestant, said Colum, and an Anglo. Nobody to concern them.

Scarlett wanted to argue but she’d learned it was a waste of time. Colum never discussed the English, especially not the English landowners in Ireland, who were known as the Anglo-Irish. He would manage to change the subject before she knew he was doing it. It bothered her that he wouldn’t even admit that some of the English might be nice people. She’d liked the sisters on the ship from America, and everyone had been nice to her at the hunt. Colum’s intransigence made her feel a distance between them. If he’d only talk about it instead of snapping her head off.

She asked Mrs. Fitz the other question that had been on her mind. Who were the Irish Butlers that everyone hated so much?

The housekeeper brought her a map of Ireland. “Do you see this?” She swept her hand over an entire county, as big as County Meath. “That’s Kilkenny. Butler country. The Dukes of Ormonde they are. They’re probably the strongest Anglo family in Ireland.” Scarlett looked closely at the map. Not far from the city of Kilkenny she saw the name Dunmore Cave. And Rhett’s plantation was called Dunmore Landing. There had to be a connection.

Scarlett started to laugh. She’d been feeling so superior because the O’Haras were rulers of twelve hundred acres, and here were the Butlers with their own county. Without lifting a finger Rhett had won again. He always won. How could any woman be blamed for loving a man like that?

“And what’s so amusing, Mrs. O?”

“I am, Mrs. Fitz. Thank God I can laugh about it.”

Mary Moran poked her head around the door without knocking. Scarlett didn’t bother to say anything. The gangly, nervous girl would be even worse for weeks if anyone criticized her. Servants. A problem even when you hardly had any. “What is it, Mary?”

“A gentleman to see ye.” The maid held out a card. Her eyes were even rounder than usual.

Sir John Morland, Bart.

Scarlett ran down the stairs. “Bart! What a surprise. Come in, we can sit on the steps. I don’t have any furniture.” She was genuinely pleased to see him, but she couldn’t take him up to her sitting room. Cat was having her nap next door.

Bart Morland sat down on the stone steps as if it were the most natural thing in the world to have no furniture. He’d had the devil of a time finding her, he said, until he ran into the postman in the bar. That was his only excuse for being so late delivering her trophy from the hunt.

Scarlett looked at the silver plaque with her name and the date of the hunt. The fox pad was no longer bloody, that was something, but it was not a thing of beauty.

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” said Bart cheerfully.

Scarlett laughed. No matter what Colum said, she liked John Morland. “Would you like to say hello to Half Moon?”

“Thought you’d never suggest it. I was wondering how to drop a really weighty hint. How is he?”

Scarlett made a face. “Underexercised, I’m afraid. I feel guilty about it, but I’ve been very busy. It’s haying time.”

“How’s your crop?”

“So far, so good. If we don’t get a real rain.”

They walked through the colonnade and out to the stable. Scarlett was going to pass it on the way to the pasture and Half Moon, but Bart stopped her. Could he go inside? Her stables were famous, and he’d never seen them. Scarlett was puzzled, but she agreed readily. The horses were at work or pasture, so there was nothing to see except empty stalls, but if he wanted to see them—

The stalls were separated by granite columns with Doric capitals. Tall vaulting sprang up from the columns to meet and cross and create a ceiling of stone that looked as light and weightless as air and sky.

John Morland cracked his knuckles, then apologized. When he was really excited, he said, he did it without thinking. “You don’t find it extraordinary to have a stable that looks like a cathedral? I’d put an organ in it and play Bach to the horses all day.”

“Probably give them strangles.”

Morland’s whooping laugh made Scarlett laugh, too; he sounded so comic. She filled a small bag with oats for him to feed Half Moon.

Walking beside Morland, Scarlett searched her mind for some way to interrupt his admiring chatter about her stables, something casual she could say to start him talking about Rhett.

There was no need. “I say, what luck for me that you’re friends with Rhett Butler,” Bart exclaimed. “If he hadn’t introduced us, I’d never have gotten a look at those stables of yours.”

“I was so surprised to run into him like that,” Scarlett said quickly. “How do you happen to know him?”

He didn’t really know Rhett at all, Bart replied. Some old friends had written to him a month ago, saying that they were sending Rhett to look at his horses. Then Rhett had arrived, bearing a letter of introduction from them. “He’s a remarkable fellow, really serious about horses. Knows a lot, too. I wish he could have stayed longer. Are you old friends? He never quite got around to telling me.”

Thank goodness, thought Scarlett. “I have some family in Charleston,” she said. “I met him when I was visiting there.”

“Then you must have met my friends the Brewtons! When I was at Cambridge I’d go down to London for the Season just in hopes that Sally Brewton might have come over. I was mad for her, just like everybody else.”

“Sally Brewton! That monkey face?” Scarlett blurted before she thought.

Bart grinned. “The very same. Isn’t she marvelous? She’s such an original.”

Scarlett nodded enthusiastically, and smiled. But in truth she’d never understand how men could be mad for anyone that ugly.

John Morland assumed that everyone who knew Sally must certainly adore her, and he talked about her for the next half hour while he leaned on the pasture fence and tried to entice Half Moon to come get the oats he held in his palm.