By January 1866, Scarlett is barely making ends meet at Tara when Will gives her the unwelcome news that she owes $300 for taxes. Since Reconstruction, opportunists and Yankees have taken over the local government. The formerly enslaved are behaving aggressively toward whites, and the Union officers are allowing them to do so. Georgia is an occupied territory where the old planter families have no rights.

Scarlett only has $10 in gold coins left and doesn’t know what to do. She seeks Ashley for advice and finds him chopping wood in the orchard. Ashley is grateful for the help Scarlett has given his family but doesn’t have a solution to the tax problem either. Impulsively, Scarlett proposes that the two of them run away together. Ashley’s sense of honor forbids it, but he admits that he loves Scarlett and is tempted. The two share a passionate kiss, but Ashley resists his baser impulses. He points out that Scarlett loves one thing more than him—Tara.

Scarlett goes back to the house and finds a visitor. It is Jonas Wilkerson, the former overseer at Tara whom Ellen once fired. He has come around to make an offer on the property. Scarlett knows that he is powerful in the new government and hiked the taxes on Tara so that the O’Hara family couldn’t afford to pay them.