Scarlett

by Alexandra Ripley

  Scarlett was firm about the points that mattered to her: Cat must have a room next to her own, not in some nursery wing with a nanny; and Scarlett would do her own accounts, not turn all her business over to a bailiff. Other than that, Charlotte and Mrs. Fitz could do whatever they liked. The costs made her wince, but she had agreed to give Charlotte a free hand and it was too late to back out once she’d shaken hands on it. Besides, money just didn’t matter to her now the way it used to.

  So Scarlett took refuge in the Estate office and Cat made the kitchen her own while workmen did unknown, expensive, noisy, smelly things to her house for months on end. At least she had the farm to run, and her duties as The O’Hara. Also she was buying horses.

  “I know little or nothing about horses,” said Charlotte Montague. It was a statement that made Scarlett’s eyebrows skid upwards. She’d come to believe that there was nothing on earth Charlotte didn’t claim to be an expert on. “You’ll need at least four saddle horses and six hunters, eight would be better, and you must ask Sir John Morland to assist you in selecting them.”

  “Six hunters! God’s nightgown, Charlotte, you’re talking about more than five hundred pounds!” Scarlett shouted. “You’re crazy.” She brought her voice down to normal sound, she’d learned that shouting at Mrs. Montague was a waste of energy; nothing bothered the woman. “I’ll educate you a little about horses,” she said with venomous sweetness. “You can only ride one. Teams are for carriages and plows.”

  She lost the argument. As usual. That was why she didn’t bother to argue about John Morland’s help, she told herself. But Scarlett knew that really she had been hoping to have a reason to see Bart. He might have some news of Rhett. She rode over to Dunsany the next day. Morland was delighted by her request. Of course he’d help her find the best hunters in all Ireland . . .

  “Do you ever hear from your American friend, Bart?” She hoped the question sounded casual, she’d waited long enough to get it in. John Morland could talk about horses even longer than Pa and Beatrice Tarleton.

  “Rhett, do you mean?” Scarlett’s heart turned over at the sound of his name. “Yes, he’s much more responsible about his correspondence than I am.” John gestured towards the untidy pile of letters and bills on his desk.

  Would the man just get on with it? What about Rhett?

  Bart shrugged, turned his back to the desk. “He’s determined to enter the filly he bought from me in the Charleston races. I told him she was bred for hurdles and not for the flat, but he’s sure her speed will compensate. I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. In another three or four years, perhaps he might prove right, but when you remember that her dam was out of . . .”

  Scarlett stopped listening. John Morland would talk bloodlines all the way back to the Flood! Why couldn’t he tell her what she wanted to know? Was Rhett happy? Had he mentioned her?

  She looked at the young Baronet’s animated, intense face and forgave him. In his own eccentric way, he was one of the most charming men in the world.

  John Morland’s life was built around horses. He was a conscientious landlord, interested in his estate and his tenants. But breeding and training race horses was his true passion, followed closely by fox hunting in the winter on the magnificent hunters he kept for himself.

  Possibly they compensated for the romantic tragedy of Bart’s absolute devotion to the woman who had gained possession of his heart when they were both not much more than children. Her name was Grace Hastings. She’d been married to Julian Hastings for nearly twenty years. John Morland and Scarlett shared a bond of hopeless love.

  Charlotte had told her what “everyone in Ireland” knew—John was relatively immune to husband-hunting women because he had little money. His title and his property were old—impressively old—but he had no income except his rents, and he spent almost every shilling of that on his horses. Even so, he was very handsome in an absentminded way, tall and fair with warm, interested gray eyes and a breathtakingly sweet smile that accurately reflected his goodhearted nature. He was strangely innocent for a man who had spent all of his forty-some years in the worldly circles of British society. Occasionally a woman with money of her own, like the Honourable Louisa, fell in love with him and made a determined pursuit that embarrassed Morland and amused everyone else. His eccentricities became more pronounced then; his absentmindedness bordered on vacancy, his waistcoats were often buttoned wrong, his contagious whooping laughter became sometimes inappropriate, and he rearranged his collection of paintings by George Stubbs so often that the walls of his house became peppered with holes.

  A beautiful portrait of the famous horse Eclipse was balanced perilously on a stack of books, Scarlett noticed. It made no difference to her, she wanted to know about Rhett. I’ll go ahead and ask, she decided. Bart won’t remember anyhow. “Did Rhett say anything about me?”

  Morland blinked, his mind on the filly’s forebears. Then her question registered. “Oh, yes, he asked me if you might possibly sell Half Moon. He’s thinking about starting up the Dunmore Hunt again. He wants me to keep my eye open for any more like Half Moon, too.”

  “He’ll have to come back to buy them, I guess,” Scarlett said, praying for affirmation. Bart’s answer sunk her in despair.

  “No, he’ll have to trust me. His wife’s expecting, you see, and he won’t leave her side. But now that I’ll be aiming you at the cream of the crop, I couldn’t help Rhett anyhow. I’ll write and tell him so as soon as I find the time.”

  Scarlett was so preoccupied with Bart’s news that he had to shake her arm to get her attention. When did she want to start the search for her hunters, he asked.

  Today, she answered.

  Throughout the winter she went every Saturday with John Morland to one hunt or another in County Meath, trying out hunters that were for sale. It wasn’t easy to find mounts that suited her, for she demanded that the horse be as fearless as she was. She rode as if demons were chasing her, and the riding eventually made it possible for her to stop imagining Rhett as father to any child but Cat.

  When she was home, she tried to give the little girl extra attention and affection. As usual, Cat scorned embraces. But she would listen to stories about the horses for as long as Scarlett would talk.

  When February came, Scarlett turned the first sod with the same happy excitement as in earlier years. She had succeeded in relegating Rhett to the past and seldom thought of him at all.

  It was a new year, full of good things to come. If Charlotte and Mrs. Fitz ever got finished with whatever they were doing to her house, she might even be able to give a party. She missed Kathleen, and the rest of the family. Pegeen made visits so uncomfortable that she almost never saw her cousins any more.

  That could wait, it would have to. There was planting to be done.

  In June Scarlett spent a long, exhausting day being measured by the dressmaker Charlotte Montague had brought over from Dublin. Mrs. Sims was merciless. Scarlett had to hold her arms up, out, in front, at her sides, one up one down, one forward one back, in every imaginable position and some she would never have imagined. For what seemed like hours. Then the same thing sitting. Then in every position of the quadrille, the waltz, the cotillion. “The only thing she didn’t measure me for was my shroud,” Scarlett groaned.

  Charlotte Montague gave one of her infrequent smiles. “She probably did, without your knowing it. Daisy Sims is very thorough.”

  “I refuse to believe that terrifying woman’s name is Daisy,” Scarlett said.

  “Don’t you ever call her that, unless she invites you to. No one below the rank of Duchess is ever allowed to be familiar with Daisy. She’s the best at her trade; they wouldn’t dare risk offending her.”

  “You called her Daisy.”

  “I’m the best at my trade, too.”

  Scarlett laughed. She liked Charlotte Montague, and respected her as well. Though she wouldn’t call her exactly cozy to have for a friend.

  She put on her peasant clo
thes then and had supper—Charlotte reminded her it was dinner—before she went out to the hill near Knightsbrook River for the lighting of the Midsummer Night bonfire. When she was dancing to the familiar music of the fiddles and pipes and Colum’s bodhran, she thought how lucky she was. If what Charlotte had promised was true, she was going to have both worlds, Irish and Anglo. Poor Bart, she remembered, wasn’t welcome at his own estate’s bonfire.

  Scarlett thought of her good fortune again, when she presided at the Harvest Home banquet. Ballyhara had another good crop, not as good as the two previous years, but still enough to make every man’s pocket jingle. Everyone in Ballyhara celebrated their good fortune. Everyone except Colum, Scarlett noticed. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. She wished she could ask him what was wrong, but he’d been cross as a bear with her for weeks. And he never seemed to go to the bar any more, according to Mrs. Fitz.

  Well, she wasn’t going to let his gloom ruin her good mood. Harvest Home was a party.

  Also, the hunting season would be starting any day now, and her new riding habit was the most enchanting design Scarlett had ever seen. Mrs. Sims was everything Charlotte had said she was.

  “If you’re ready we will take a tour,” said Charlotte Montague. Scarlett put down her teacup. She was more eager than she wanted to admit.

  “Mighty kind of you, Charlotte, seeing as how every door except my rooms has been locked for practically a year.” She sounded as cranky as she could, but she suspected that Charlotte was too smart to be fooled. “I’ll just find Cat to go with us.”

  “If you like, Scarlett, but she saw everything as it was done. She’s a remarkable child, just appears when a door or window is left open. It made some of the painters quite nervous when they found her on top of their scaffolding.”

  “Don’t tell me things like that, I’ll have a seizure. Little monkey, she climbs everything.” Scarlett called for Cat and looked for Cat to no avail. Sometimes the little girl’s independence annoyed her, like now. Usually she was proud. “I guess she’ll catch up with us if she’s interested,” she said at last. “Let’s go, I’m dying to see.” Might as well admit it. She wasn’t fooling anybody.

  Charlotte led the way upstairs first to long corridors lined with bedrooms for guests, then back down again to what Scarlett still had trouble calling the first floor instead of, in American usage, the second. Charlotte took her to the end of the house away from the rooms she’d been using. “Your bedroom, your bath, your boudoir, your dressing room, Cat’s playroom, bedroom, nursery.” The doors flew open as Charlotte unveiled her labors. Scarlett was enchanted with the feminine pale-green-and-gilt furniture in her rooms and the frieze of alphabet animal paintings in Cat’s playroom. The child-size chairs and tables made her clap her hands. Why hadn’t she thought of it? There was even a child-size tea set on Cat’s table and a child-size chair by the hearth.

  “Your private rooms are French,” said Charlotte, “Louis Sixteenth, if you care. They represent your Robillard self. Your O’Hara self dominates the reception rooms on the ground floor.”

  The only ground floor room that Scarlett knew was the marblefloored hall. She used its door to the drive and the broad stone staircase to the upper floors. Charlotte Montague led her quickly through it. She opened tall double doors on one side of it and ushered Scarlett into the dining room. “My stars,” Scarlett exclaimed, “I don’t know enough people to fill up all those chairs.”

  “You will,” said Charlotte. She led Scarlett through the long room to another tall door. “Now this is your breakfast room and morning room. You may want to have dinner in here as well when you are a small number.” She walked across the room to more doors. “The great salon and ballroom,” she announced. “I admit to being very pleased with this.”

  One long wall was made up of widely spaced French doors with tall gilt mirrors between them. The wall opposite was centered by a fireplace surmounted by another gilt-framed mirror. All the mirrors were infinitesimally tilted so that they reflected not only the room but also the high ceiling. It was painted with scenes from the heroic legends of Irish history. The High Kings’ buildings on the hill of Tara looked rather like Roman temples. Scarlett loved it.

  “The furniture throughout this floor is Irish-made, so are the fabrics—all wools and linens—and the silver, china, glass, almost everything. This is where The O’Hara is hostess. Come, there’s only the library still to see.”

  Scarlett liked the leather-covered chairs and Chesterfield, and she recognized that the leather-backed books were very handsome. “You’ve done a wonderful job, Charlotte,” she said sincerely.

  “Yes, well it wasn’t as difficult as at first I feared. The people who lived here must have used a Capability Brown design for the gardens, so there was only pruning and cleaning to do. The kitchen garden will be very productive next year, though it may be two years before the wall fruits come back. They had to be pruned back to leaders.”

  Scarlett hadn’t the remotest idea what Charlotte was talking about, nor the faintest interest. She was wishing Gerald O’Hara could see the ceiling in the ballroom and Ellen O’Hara could admire the furniture in her boudoir.

  Charlotte opened more doors. “Here we are in the hall again,” she said. “Excellent circular movement for large parties. The Georgian architects knew precisely what they were doing . . . Come through to the entrance door, Scarlett.”

  She escorted Scarlett onto the top of the steps that led down to the freshly gravelled drive. “Your staff, Mrs. O’Hara.”

  “My grief,” Scarlett said weakly.

  Two long rows of uniformed servants were facing her. To her right Mrs. Fitzpatrick stood slightly in front of the cook, four kitchen maids, two parlor maids, four upstairs maids, three dairymaids, the head laundress, and three laundry maids.

  To her left she saw a haughty-looking man who could only be a butler, eight footmen, two nervous-footed boys, the stableman she knew and six grooms, and five men she guessed were gardeners by their earth-stained hands.

  “I believe I need to sit down,” she whispered.

  “First you smile and welcome them to Ballyhara,” Charlotte said. Her tone would permit no remonstrance. Scarlett did as she was told.

  Back inside the house—which had now become an establishment—Scarlett began to giggle. “They’re all better dressed than I am,” she said. She looked at Charlotte Montague’s expressionless face. “You’re about to bust out laughing, Charlotte, you can’t fool me. You and Mrs. Fitz must have had a high old time planning this.”

  “We did rather,” Charlotte admitted. A smile was the nearest thing to “bust out laughing” that Scarlett could get from her.

  Scarlett invited all the people from Ballyhara and Adamstown to come up to see the revived Big House. The long dining room table was spread with refreshments, and she darted from room to room, urging everyone to help themselves, dragging them to see the High Kings. Charlotte Montague stood quietly to one side of the big staircase, quietly disapproving. Scarlett ignored her. She tried to ignore the discomfort and embarrassment of her cousins and villagers, but within a half hour of their arrival, she was close to tears.

  “It goes against tradition, Mrs. O,” Rosaleen Fitzpatrick murmured to her, “it’s naught to do with you. No farmer’s boot has ever crossed the threshold of a Big House in Ireland. We’re a people ruled by the old ways, and we’re not ready for change.”

  “But I thought the Fenians wanted to change everything.”

  Mrs. Fitz sighed. “That is so. But the change is for a return to even older ways than the ones that keep the boots out of a Big House. I wish I could explain more clearly.”

  “Don’t bother, Mrs. Fitz. I’ve just made a mistake, that’s all. I won’t do it again.”

  “It was the error of a generous heart. Take credit for that.”

  Scarlett forced a smile. But she was bewildered and upset. What was the point of having all these Irish-decorated rooms if the Irish didn’t feel com
fortable in them? And why did her own cousins treat her like a stranger in her own house?

  After everyone left and the servants removed all traces of the party, Scarlett went from room to room alone.

  Well, I like it, she decided. I like it a lot. It was, she thought, a damn sight prettier than Dunmore Landing would ever be, or ever was.

  She stood in the midst of the reflected images of the High Kings and imagined Rhett there with her, full of envy and admiration. It would be years from now, when Cat was grown, and he would be heartsick that he had missed seeing his daughter grow up to become the beautiful heiress of the home of the O’Haras.

  Scarlett ran to the stairs and up them and through the corridor to Cat’s room. “Hello,” said Cat. She was sitting at her little table, carefully pouring milk into a cup for her big tabby. Ocras was watching attentively from his commanding position in the center of the table. “Sit down, Momma,” Cat invited. Scarlett lowered herself onto a small chair.

  If only Rhett were there to join the tea party. But he wasn’t, and he never would be, and she had to accept it. He would have tea parties with his other child, his other children—by Anne. Scarlett resisted the impulse to grab Cat in her arms. “I’d like two lumps of sugar, please, Miss O’Hara,” she said.

  That night Scarlett couldn’t sleep. She sat upright in the center of her exquisite French bed with her silk-covered eiderdown wrapped closely around her for warmth. But the warmth and comfort she wanted was to feel Rhett’s arms around her, to hear his deep voice mocking the disastrous party until she could laugh at it and at the error of giving it.

  She wanted comfort for her disappointment. She wanted love, grown-up caring and understanding. Her heart had learned to love, it was overflowing with love, and she had nowhere to spend it.

  Damn Rhett for getting in the way! Why couldn’t she love Bart Morland? He was kind, he was attractive, Scarlett enjoyed being with him. If she really wanted him, she didn’t doubt for a minute that she could make him forget Grace Hastings.