Now is your chance to tell me to return with my shield or on it.
But, talk fast, for I want time to make a brave speech before departing for the wars.”
His drawling voice gibed in her ears.
He was jeering at her and, somehow, she knew he was jeering at himself too.
What was he talking about?
Patriotism, shields, brave speeches?
It wasn’t possible that he meant what he was saying.
It just wasn’t believable that he could talk so blithely of leaving her here on this dark road with a woman who might be dying, a new-born infant, a foolish black wench and a frightened child, leaving her to pilot them through miles of battle fields and stragglers and Yankees and fire and God knows what.
Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach.
She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body.
Now, as she looked at Rhett, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.
“Rhett, you are joking!”
She grabbed his arm and felt her tears of fright splash down her wrist.
He raised her hand and kissed it arily.
“Selfish to the end, aren’t you, my dear?
Thinking only of your own precious hide and not of the gallant Confederacy.
Think how our troops will be heartened by my eleventh-hour appearance.”
There was a malicious tenderness in his voice.
“Oh, Rhett,” she wailed, “how can you do this to me?
Why are you leaving me?”
“Why?” he laughed jauntily.
“Because, perhaps, of the betraying sentimentality that lurks in all of us Southerners.
Perhaps-perhaps because I am ashamed.
Who knows?”
“Ashamed?
You should die of shame.
To desert us here, alone, helpless—”
“Dear Scarlett!
You aren’t helpless.
Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.
God help the Yankees if they should get you.”
He stepped abruptly down from the wagon and, as she watched him, stunned with bewilderment, he came around to her side of the wagon.
“Get out,” he ordered.
She stared at him.
He reached up roughly, caught her under the arms and swung her to the ground beside him.
With a tight grip on her he dragged her several paces away from the wagon.
She felt the dust and gravel in her slippers hurting her feet.
The still hot darkness wrapped her like a dream.
“I’m not asking you to understand or forgive.
I don’t give a damn whether you do either, for I shall never understand or forgive myself for this idiocy.
I am annoyed at myself to find that so much quixoticism still lingers in me.
But our fair Southland needs every man.
Didn’t our brave Governor Brown say just that?
Not matter.
I’m off to the wars.”
He laughed suddenly, a ringing, free laugh that startled the echoes in the dark woods.
“'I could not love thee, Dear, so much, loved I not Honour more.’ That’s a pat speech, isn’t it?
Certainly better than anything I can think up myself, at the present moment.
For I do love you, Scarlett, in spite of what I said that night on the porch last month.”
His drawl was caressing and his hands slid up her bare arms, warm strong hands.