Disclaimer: The characters here and the world they inhabit are the creation and property of Margaret Mitchell, her heirs, and their assigns.

Scarlett was worn out from working at the store, so she stayed home after dinner. She knew that Rhett still had business downtown and listened in her room until she heard him leave. The children were all on their own pursuits, and the coast was clear. She peeked out her door and slipped across the hall to his. His door was unlocked and she walked in, carefully shutting the door behind herself, as she'd done for the past two years.

"Mamma!"

Scarlett stopped dead in her tracks. She'd forgotten that Bonnie's little bed had been moved in here since her last visit. "Hello, darling. Shouldn't you be sleeping?" She edged toward Rhett's bed. She only needed to slide her hand under the pillow.

"Not seepy, mamma."

"I'm sure you've been playing hard all day," Scarlett answered. She found what she was looking for, and folded it as small as she could make it, then hid it in the folds of her skirt before turning back to the little girl.

"Mamma sing?"

Scarlett knew she was trapped. If she left before the child was asleep, the whole house would be up in arms and Rhett would be impossible. Scarlett sat on the floor next to Bonnie's bed and hummed a little before singing.

Beautiful dreamer,
Wake unto me
Starlight and dewdrops
Are awaiting thee...

It worked, and before she had to start the song over, Bonnie was asleep.

"Scarlett?"

She looked up to find Rhett in the doorway. How long had he been there? Why was her heart suddenly pounding?

"I-I-she wasn't asleep, so I was singing a lullaby. I suppose she doesn't need me any more."

Keeping her left hand tangled in her skirt and the precious object she'd obtained, she knelt up and used her right hand to smooth Bonnie's hair and kiss her forehead before she very carefully moved around her husband and scooted across the hall where she quickly shut the door and stood against it, her heart racing.

She snapped the nightshirt out and crushed it within her arms, smelling his scent and letting it relax and calm her.

It had started the same week as that fateful argument. Why had she told him she didn't want him any more? Didn't she know, from the times he would leave her, that she would pay by far the greater price for that bit of foolishness? He knew. He'd told her right then and there that she would miss him, especially when the nightmares came.

The nightmare did came back, and there was no one to hold her tight and tell her she would be fine. Oh, how she missed Rhett! Did she dare cross the hall to see if he was in his room? She opened her door and peeked out. The door across the hall was wide open but there were no lights. He was at that Watling creature's house, no doubt. She couldn't tell him she was wrong. He would see that it was all her own selfish wants. She would have to pretend that it wasn't a problem.

Scarlett succumbed to a tearful rage, tearing at the sheets of the bed until she discovered his night shirt under one of the pillows. She held it to her face, and breathed in his scent of bay rum and cigar. It soothed her. It wasn't Rhett, and it couldn't compare to having his arms around her, but it provided something. Scarlett curled up in the bed, his nightshirt curled in her arms. Suddenly she realized that it would never be Rhett, and she could never have him back after the way she'd acted. The tears didn't stop coming, but at some point she fell asleep.

The nightshirt helped until it stopped smelling like him. Then a night came when she had another nightmare. She had to get a more recent nightshirt. Would there be one? She peeked out the door of her bedroom. His door was shut, and she could see the light was on underneath it. She was halfway across the hall before she realized that she couldn't go to him. He'd told her she couldn't and that if she did he wouldn't. She went back to her room. She couldn't stand to be mocked for her bad dream.

She paced her own room until it was light, wishing she knew how to make the dreams stop, desperately wishing he would come to her and ask. He must know by now that she was aware of how wrong she was. Prissy came and dressed her, and she went down to breakfast.

Rhett was peeling an orange but glanced up at her. "You look somewhat the worse for wear, Mrs. Butler. Has the staff neglected to refill the brandy?"

She looked up at him and couldn't summon the will to rise to his bait. He looked good, much better than she felt. How could he be so happy with this arrangement, when it left her as it did? Anger finally rose to the surface. "As if you care," she bit out.

He chuckled to himself. "Just looking after my investment," he replied.

Scarlett looked into her lap to hide the tear. She would never be anything more than what she cost him. Couldn't he see that she was so much more than that? He used to be so kind to her. His mockery and barbs had been frequent, yes, but not the usual way as they were now. Was there any path back to that world? She glanced up again and saw Rhett reading his newspaper. She was the farthest thing from his mind. The food on the table nauseated her, so she got up.

"Leaving so soon?"

"I don't guess I'm very hungry after all," she whispered miserably, eager to be away from him before the tears fell. Back in her room, the maid who was straightening her things took one look and left. Scarlett began pacing again. She waited until after dinner and tiptoed across the hallway. She knelt by his bed and buried her face in his pillow, smelling his scent, hugging it to herself... and found what she was looking for.

This is what her life at home had come to, sneaking into Rhett's bedroom to snatch a recently-used nightshirt so that she could rest on her worst days. She would sit at dinner and stare at him at the other end of the table, knowing she'd made a bad choice, and wishing she had a way to ask... but then he'd raise an eyebrow at her and she had no idea what to ask or how to ask it. Nightmares threatened especially on such nights, but she could never go to Rhett. Instead she took his shirt out of her nightstand drawer, the drawer that used to be his, and wrap it around herself. Then she could lure herself into thinking he was in her bed, holding her and keeping her safe.

It never occurred to her that Ashley Wilkes had made her neither so happy as Rhett used to make her, nor so miserable as she was now. Perhaps it was that her happiness and misery were tangled in the occasional sight of Ashley, alone or with his wife. At the same time, her pulse would race whenever she saw Rhett, and a feeling of emptiness would descend upon her when she felt him leave the house. It never occurred to her to think the question through, and her best confidante, the one person who might be able to help her figure out her muddle, was closed off to her.

The night Rhett come to her room, the night before the run was threatened on their bank, during that terrible year when there was a panic and every week a different bank fell, Rhett discovered Scarlett's secret. They hadn't meant to lie together like that. She'd merely seen someone as miserable as she was and in her new understanding of her feelings for him, she wanted to do anything to make him happier than he was.

He'd made the first move, and she would never tell him no, hadn't ever told him no in the days before Bonnie was born, and wouldn't have, even afterwards. Her resolve would have crumbled in his kisses. How could he not have known that? There was no time to think about that question. He kissed her and then he was... and she could only... and there it was, that wild thrill she'd felt when he'd carried her up the stairs, when any question of other loves was absurd. She received him with joy, telling him she loved him, wanting him to know it flowed backward to all of their times together.

Their bodies cooled and the reality set in. He didn't want her any more, and if she understood what he'd done, he had taken care to avoid a baby. She yearned after Bonnie and the child they would never see face to face. She wanted his baby, now, but he didn't. She wanted more than anything to lie in his arms and experience the feel of his skin against hers, but she sensed that he would hate that, and after these moments of bliss, she didn't want to risk it.

Scarlett found her nightgown and put it on, and then went over to the drawer where Rhett's most recent nightshirt was. He woke when she was pulling it over his head, and an uncomfortable conversation followed. She was right; he didn't want a baby, didn't want her baby. He didn't seem to mind that he'd had her body, however, and he didn't leave her room. Instead he settled back into the bed and opened his arms to her. With a sigh she curled up against him. This was comfort. This was home. This would be gone with the first train to Charleston.

For the next few hours, she would dread tomorrow.