After the shantytown raids, Frank Kennedy survives, and an unhappily married Scarlett finds solace in the company of Rhett Butler, who reluctantly resigns himself to the burden of unrequited love. Driven by loneliness, they begin to entertain ideas that make their volatile relationship even more ambiguous than it was before as they wade through perverse fantasies of what could be.

When a blue coat turns up at Tara's doorstep, Melanie convinces a hardened Scarlett to shelter the injured soldier. Exploring Scarlett's bold claim that she would marry Rhett even if he had fought for the Yankee side.

Scarlett wakes up expecting another dreary day under siege in Atlanta but instead finds herself in Charleston in the year 1847, where an ill-famed Captain Butler was not yet so ill-famed, nor a Captain. As she begins to question their seemingly intertwined fates, she realizes she feels something she once dared never to say.