Without preliminary, Rosemary said, "Writing to my brother is useless.
My brother is dead.”
"No'm, Master Rhett ain't dead.”
Rosemary put her hands firmly on her hips. "How do you know?”
"The horses, they — “
She stamped her foot, "Hercules! I am no longer a child.”
"Yes, Miss." He sighed. "I can see you ain't." As Rosemary stormed back to the house, he returned to grooming. "Be easy now, Gero. Miss Rosemary distress 'count of she goin' to the Jockey Club and she feared the young gentlemen won't favor her.”
Rosemary concluded her letter: "Although some of my letters may have gone astray, you must have received others. Your silence is too cruel. How I wish I knew your whereabouts and circumstances. I will always love you, brother, but in the face of your obstinate silence, I will not write again.”
Rosemary was as good as her word. She didn't write Rhett that her debut had been notable, that Andrew Ravanel had flirted outrageously and taken four waltzes. Nor did she tell him that during the intermission, Grandmother Fisher had said, "John Haynes is thoroughly besotted with you. A girl could do worse than John Haynes.”
Nor that she had replied, tossing her head, "John Haynes can't sit a horse. It's a wonder he doesn't injure himself.”
"But Andrew Ravanel can sit a horse?”
"He is the handsomest man in Charleston. Every belle has set her cap for Andrew.”
"I believe what you call a 'cap,' dear, Mr. Ravanel's sporting friends call a 'scalp,' " Constance Fisher replied.
CHAPTER FOUR
Race Week
Three years before the War, a full nine years after Rhett Butler left the Low Country, on a February afternoon Rosemary Butler stood before her pier glass, dissatisfied. She thought herself too tall and her torso was unfashionably long. Her entirely ordinary auburn hair was parted in the center and curled in ringlets. Her features were, Rosemary believed, too strong, and her mouth too generous. Her candid gray eyes, she thought, were her only good feature. Rosemary stuck her tongue out at the mirror. "You are no friend!" she announced.
Rosemary's dress, a textured print in green polished cotton, was new for Race Week.
Race Week was the pinnacle of Charleston's social season. The rice had been harvested, dried, winnowed, hulled, sold, and shipped; the negroes had been given their annual clothing issue and enjoyed their Christmas holiday. The planter families were in town and their mornings hummed with gossip about the rare doings of the night before and anticipations for the evening ahead. Smart new carriages and refurbished, highly polished older ones promenaded in the great loop down East Bay, up Meeting Street, and down East Bay again. The latest Paris fashions (as adapted by London pattern makers and sewed by Charleston's free colored seamstresses) were admired at the Jockey Club and St. Cecilia Society balls. Yankee excursionists gawked at grand town houses, throngs of negroes, splendid racehorses, and the most beautiful belles in the South.
Cleo burst into Rosemary's bedroom, wringing her hands. "Missy, they's somebody here to see you.”
"I'll be down directly. Show the gentleman into the drawing room.”
"He ain't... Missy, he waitin' in the yard. He ... he ain't no gentleman!”
Cleo's lips clamped tight. She would say no more.
The public rooms of Langston Butler's Greek Revival town house had carved marble mantels and varnished cherry wainscoting. A shaded piazza encircled the entire second story.
The servants' staircase at the back of the house was narrow, steep, and unpainted. Up these stairs, servants carried plates and tureens for Langston Butler's political dinners. Armloads of fresh linens came up these steps.
Down came dirty sheets, pillowcases, underclothing, and tablecloths. Down, carefully, came the family's chamber pots.
During this season, just fifteen Broughton servants attended the Butlers.
Uncle Solomon, Cleo, Hercules and Sudie, and Cook had a room each above the kitchen/laundry house. Lesser servants slept in cramped quarters above the stable.
Usually, the yard was a beehive of washing, laundering, mucking out stables, and grooming horses, but Gero was running in today's noon race and everybody was at the racecourse.
"Hello?" Rosemary called.
The stable smelled of axle grease, neat's-foot oil, and manure. Curious horses lifted their heads above their stall doors.
Rosemary's visitor clutched his parcel so hard, he'd indented it.
"Why, is it Tunis? Tunis Bonneau?”
Like his father, Tunis Bonneau had been a fisherman and market hunter, but these days Tunis was a pilot for Haynes & Son. Rosemary knew the man by sight, although they had never spoken.
"Tunis Bonneau ... didn't someone tell me you'd married?”
"Yes'm. Last September. My Ruthie, she's Reverend Prescott's eldest.”
Tunis's wire-rimmed spectacles and solemn expression made him seem a dark edition of a Puritan schoolmaster. His clothing was spotless, pressed, and he smelled faintly of lye soap.
"I was asked to bring you this." Bonneau pushed his parcel at Rosemary and turned to leave.
"Wait, Tunis. Please. There is no card. Who sent it?" Untied, the parcel revealed an oversized yellow silk scarf fringed with exquisite black knots.
"My goodness! What a gorgeous shawl.”
"Yes, Miss.”
When the virginal girl settled the silk on her shoulders, it caressed and made her feel vaguely uneasy. "Tunis, who sent this to me?”
"Miss Rosemary. I don't need trouble with Master Langston.”
"Was it ... was it Andrew Ravanel?”
"It weren't Andrew Ravanel gifted you. No, Miss.”
Rosemary said determinedly, "You will not leave until you tell me.”
Tunis Bonneau took off his glasses and rubbed the mark they'd left on his nose. "He reckoned his letters weren't getting to you, so he asked me to bring you this. I seen him in Freeport. He ain't changed none." Tunis turned the glasses in his hand as if they were an unfamiliar object. "I sailed as pilot on the John B. Elliot, carryin' rice and cotton, bringin' back locomotive wheels for the Georgia railroad. Soon as I seen him, I knowed who he was. Rhett Butler ain't changed none.”
Rosemary felt a catch at her throat and she gripped a stall rail to steady herself.
"Rhett been with them freebooters in Nicaragua, but he quit that business.”
"But he's ... Rhett's dead!”
"Oh no, Miss. Mr. Rhett ain't dead. Why, he's right lively. That man always sees the amusin' side of things.”
"But... but... not a single word to me in nine years.”
Tunis Bonneau breathed on his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief.
"Miss Rosemary, your brother did write to you. He wrote plenty.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Notes in Bottles
Occidental Hotel,
San Francisco, California Territory
May 17, 1849
Dear Little Sister, Although I disembarked from The Glory of the Seas six long hours ago, the earth still wobbles beneath my feet.
Our captain and his son rowed we passengers ashore fearing The Glory might join the hundred ships deserted by sailors who became gold seekers.
Their masts are a dismal forest beside Long Wharf.
The wharf itself was a hubbub of runners for restaurants and hotels, brothels and gambling houses. Sharpers offered to buy and sell gold. One well-dressed man diffidently begged a meal.
I played cards on the voyage around the Horn. Because they were going to be rich soon, the aspirant gold seekers were contemptuous of the cash money already in their possession and played as if prudence showed no faith in their glorious future. Consequently I arrived in this city with a considerable "grubstake" (the money the argonaut uses to finance his prospecting).