Alexandra Ripley - Scarlett

Five pounds, she thought. How very generous. From a man who’ll pay thirty times that for a horse. “I’m familiar with Dunsany,” Scarlett said. “It’s not far from the friends I’m visiting. I’d dearly love to hunt with you sometime. I can hack over any day you name.”

“Saturday next?”

Scarlett smiled wickedly. She spit in her palm and lifted her hand. “Done!”

John Morland laughed. He spit in his, slapped hers once, twice. “Done! Stirrup cup at seven and breakfast after.”

For the first time since she’d pushed in on them, Scarlett looked at Rhett. He was looking at her as if he’d been looking for a long time. There was amusement in his eyes and something else that she couldn’t define. Great balls of fire, you’d think he’d never met me before or something. “Mr. Butler, a pleasure to see you,” she said graciously. She dangled her dirty hand elegantly in front of him.

Rhett removed his glove to take it. “Mrs. O’Hara,” he said with a bow.

Scarlett nodded to the staring dealer and the grinning former owner of her horse. “My groom will be here shortly to make the necessary arrangements,” she said airily, and she hiked up her skirts to take a bundle of banknotes from the garter above her red-andgreen striped knee. “Guineas, is that right?” She counted the money into the seller’s hand.

Her skirts swirled when she turned and walked away.

“What a remarkable woman,” said John Morland.

Rhett smiled with his lips. “Astonishing,” he said in agreement.

“Colum! I was afraid you’d got lost,” said Scarlett when her cousin emerged from the crowds near the tents.

“Not a bit of it, Scarlett. I got hungry. Have you eaten?”

“No, I forgot.”

“Are you pleased with your horses?”

Scarlett looked down at him from her perch on the rail of the jumping ring. She began to laugh. “I think I bought an elephant. You’ve never seen such a big horse in your life. I had to, but I don’t know why.” Colum put a steadying hand on her arm. Her laughter was ragged and her eyes were bright with pain.

“Cat will go out,” said the little voice.

“No, sweetheart, not today. Soon, but not today.” Scarlett felt a terrifying vulnerability. How could she have been so reckless? How could she have ignored the danger to Cat? Dunsany was not that far away, not nearly far enough to be sure that people wouldn’t know about The O’Hara and her dark-skinned child. She kept Cat with her day and night, upstairs in their two rooms while she looked worriedly out the window above the drive.

Mrs. Fitz was her go-between for the things that had to be done, and done faster than fast. The dressmaker raced back and forth for fittings of Scarlett’s riding habit, the cobbler worked like a leprechaun far into the night on her boots, the stableman labored with rags and oil over the cracked and dry sidesaddle that had been left in the tack room thirty years before Scarlett arrived, and one of the boys from the hiring fair who had quiet hands and an easy seat exercised the powerful big bay hunter. When Saturday dawned, Scarlett was as ready as she’d ever be.

Her horse was a bay gelding named Half Moon. He was, as she’d told Colum, very big, nearly seventeen hands, with a deep chest and long back and powerfully muscled thighs. He was a horse for a big man; Scarlett looked tiny and fragile and very feminine on him. She was afraid she looked ridiculous.

And she was quite certain that she’d make a fool of herself. She didn’t know Half Moon’s temperament or peculiarities, and there was no chance to get to know them because she was riding sidesaddle, as all ladies did. When she was a girl, Scarlett had loved riding sidesaddle. It produced a graceful fall of skirts that emphasized her tiny waist. Also, in those days she seldom went faster than a walk, the better to flirt with men riding alongside.

But now the sidesaddle was a serious handicap. She couldn’t communicate with the horse through pressure of her knees because one knee was hooked around the sidesaddle’s pommel, the other one rigid because only by pressing on the one stirrup could a lady counterbalance her unbalanced position. I’ll probably fall off before I even get to Dunsany, she thought with despair, and I’ll certainly break my neck if I get as far as the first fence. She knew from her father that jumping fences and ditches and hedges and stiles and walls was the thrilling part of hunting. Colum had made things no better when he told her that ladies frequently avoided active hunting altogether. The breakfast was the social part and riding clothes were very becoming. Serious accidents were much more likely when riding sidesaddle and no one blamed the ladies for being sensible.

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 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’seyes 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.”