She quickly lowered her gaze lest he should look up suddenly and see the expression on
her face. She knew that the feeling of triumph surging through her was certain to be plain in her eyes. In a moment he would ask her to marry him--or at least say that he loved her and then … As she watched him through the veil of her lashes he turned her hand over, palm up, to kiss it too, and suddenly he drew a quick breath. Looking down she saw her own palm, saw it as it really was for the first time in a year, and a cold sinking fear gripped her. This was a stranger's palm, not Scarlett O'Hara's soft, white, dimpled, helpless one. This hand was rough from work, brown with sunburn, splotched with freckles. The nails were broken and irregular, there were heavy calluses on the cushions of the palm, a half-healed blister on the thumb. The red scar which boiling fat had left last month was ugly and glaring. She looked at it in horror and, before she thought, she swiftly clenched her fist.
Still he did not raise his head. Still she could not see his face. He pried her fist open inexorably and stared at it, picked up her other hand and held them both together silently, looking down at them.
"Look at me," he said finally raising his head, and his voice was very quiet. "And drop that demure expression."
Unwillingly she met his eyes, defiance and perturbation on her face. His black brows
were up and his eyes gleamed.
"So you have been doing very nicely at Tara, have you? Cleared so much money on the
cotton you can go visiting. What have you been doing with your hands--plowing?"
She tried to wrench them away but he held them hard, running his thumbs over the
calluses.
"These are not the hands of a lady," he said and tossed them into her lap.
"Oh, shut up!" she cried, feeling a momentary intense relief at being able to speak her feelings. "Whose business is it what I do with my hands?"
What a fool I am, she thought vehemently. I should have borrowed or stolen Aunt Pitty's
gloves. But I didn't realize my hands looked so bad. Of course, he would notice them. And now I've lost my temper and probably ruined everything. Oh, to have this happen when he was right at the point of a declaration!
"Your hands are certainly no business of mine," said Rhett coolly and lounged back in his chair indolently, his face a smooth blank.
So he was going to be difficult. Well, she'd have to bear it meekly, much as she disliked it, if she expected to snatch victory from this debacle. Perhaps if she sweet-talked him--
"I think you're real rude to throw off on my poor hands. Just because I went riding last week without my gloves and ruined them--"
"Riding, hell!" he said in the same level voice. "You've been working with those hands, working like a nigger. What's the answer? Why did you lie to me about everything being nice at Tara?"
"Now, Rhett--"
"Suppose we get down to the truth. What is the real purpose of your visit? Almost, I was persuaded by your coquettish airs that you cared something about me and were sorry for me."
"Oh, I am sorry! Indeed--"
"No, you aren't. They can hang me higher than Haman for all you care. It's written as plainly on your face as hard work is written on your hands. You wanted something from me and you wanted it badly enough to put on quite a show. Why didn't you come out in the open and tell me what it was? You'd have stood a much better chance of getting it, for if there's one virtue I value in women it's frankness. But no, you had to come jingling your earbobs and pouting and frisking like a prostitute with a prospective client."
He did not raise his voice at the last words or emphasize them in any way but to Scarlett they cracked like a whiplash, and with despair she saw the end of her hopes of getting him to propose marriage. Had he exploded with rage and injured vanity or upbraided her, as other men would have done, she could have handled him. But the deadly quietness of his voice frightened her, left her utterly at a loss as to her next move. Although he was a prisoner and the Yankees were in the next room, it came to her suddenly that Rhett Butler was a dangerous man to run afoul of.
"I suppose my memory is getting faulty. I should have recalled that you are just like me and that you never do anything without an ulterior motive. Now, let me see. What could you have had up your sleeve, Mrs. Hamilton? It isn't possible that you were so misguided as to think I would propose matrimony?"
Her face went crimson and she did not answer.
"But you can't have forgotten my oft-repeated remark that I am not a marrying man?"
When she did not speak, he said with sudden violence: