Gone With The Wind
23 Jun
Her hand dropped to a little table beside her, fingering a tiny china rose bowl on which two china cherubs smirked. The room was so still she almost screamed to break the silence. She must do something or go mad. She picked up the bowl and hurled it viciously across the room towards the fireplace.It barely cleared the tall back of the sofa and splintered witha little crash against the marble mantelpiece.
“This ,” said a voice from the depths of the sofa, ” is too much.”
Nothing had ever startled or frightened her so much, and her mouth went too dry for her to utter a sound. She caught hold of the back of the chair, her knees going weak under her as Rhett Butler rose from the sofa where he had been lying and made her a bow of exaggerated politeness.
“It is bad enough to have an afternoon nap disturbed by such a passage as I’ve been forced to hear, but why should my life be endangered?”
He was real, He wasn’t a ghost. But saints preserve us, he had heard everything ! She rallied her forces into a semblance of dignity.
” Sir, you should have made known your presence.”
” Indeed?” His white teeth gleamed and his bold dark eyes laughed at her. “But you were the intruder. I was forced to wait for Mr. Kennedy, and feeling that I was perhaps persona non grata in the back yard, I was thoughtful enough to remove my unwelcome presence here where I thought I would be undisturbed. But, alas !” He shrugged and laughed softly.
“Eavesdroppers….” she began furiously.
“Eavesdroppers oftern hear highly entertaining and instructive things,” he grinned. ” From a log experience from eavesdropping, I …..”
” Sir,” she said, ” you are no gentleman !”
“An apt observation,” he answered airily. “And you, Miss, are no lady.”
