Didn’t men ever think about anything that really mattered?
Here was this fool expecting her to be excited about Mr. Lincoln’s didoes when her heart was broken and her reputation as good as ruined.
Charles stared at her.
Her face was paper white and her narrow eyes blazing like emeralds.
He had never seen such fire in any girl’s face, such a glow in anyone’s eyes.
“I’m so clumsy,” he said. “I should have told you more gently.
I forgot how delicate ladies are.
I’m sorry I’ve upset you so.
You don’t feel faint, do you?
Can I get you a glass of water?”
“No,” she said, and managed a crooked smile.
“Shall we go sit on the bench?” he asked, taking her arm.
She nodded and he carefully handed her down the front steps and led her across the grass to the iron bench beneath the largest oak in the front yard.
How fragile and tender women are, he thought, the mere mention of war and harshness makes them faint.
The idea made him feel very masculine and he was doubly gentle as he seated her.
She looked so strangely, and there was a wild beauty about her white face that set his heart leaping.
Could it be that she was distressed by the thought that he might go to the war?
No, that was too conceited for belief.
But why did she look at him so oddly?
And why did her hands shake as they fingered her lace handkerchief.
And her thick sooty lashes—they were fluttering just like the eyes of girls in romances he had read, fluttering with timidity and love.
He cleared his throat three times to speak and failed each time.
He dropped his eyes because her own green ones met his so piercingly, almost as if she were not seeing him.
“He has a lot of money,” she was thinking swiftly, as a thought and a plan went through her brain. “And he hasn’t any parents to bother me and he lives in Atlanta.
And if I married him right away, it would show Ashley that I didn’t care a rap—that I was only flirting with him.
And it would just kill Honey.
She’d never, never catch another beau and everybody’d laugh fit to die at her.
And it would hurt Melanie, because she loves Charles so much.
And it would hurt Stu and Brent—” She didn’t quite know why she wanted to hurt them, except that they had catty sisters.
“And they’d all be sorry when I came back here to visit in a fine carriage and with lots of pretty clothes and a house of my own.
And they would never, never laugh at me.”
“Of course, it will mean fighting,” said Charles, after several more embarrassed attempts. “But don’t you fret, Miss Scarlett, it’ll be over in a month and we’ll have them howling.
Yes, sir! Howling!
I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
I’m afraid there won’t be much of a ball tonight, because the Troop is going to meet at Jonesboro.
The Tarleton boys have gone to spread the news.
I know the ladies will be sorry.”
She said, “Oh,” for want of anything better, but it sufficed.
Coolness was beginning to come back to her and her mind was collecting itself.
A frost lay over all her emotions and she thought that she would never feel anything warmly again.
Why not take this pretty, flushed boy?
He was as good as anyone else and she didn’t care.
No, she could never care about anything again, not if she lived to be ninety.
“I can’t decide now whether to go with Mr. Wade Hampton’s South Carolina Legion or with the Atlanta Gate City Guard.”
She said, “Oh,” again and their eyes met and the fluttering lashes were his undoing.
“Will you wait for me, Miss Scarlett?
It—it would be Heaven just knowing that you were waiting for me until after we licked them!”
He hung breathless on her words, watching the way her lips curled up at the corners, noting for the first time the shadows about these corners and thinking what it would mean to kiss them.
Her hand, with palm clammy with perspiration, slid into his.
“I wouldn’t want to wait,” she said and her eyes were veiled.