A LONG LINE OF GOVERNESSES
A/N: A word of explanation to my regular readers: this is the story I was trying to write when another recent story, Confidence, popped up out of nowhere. I couldn't quite get them to fit with each other, so please enjoy each on its own merits, such as they are (the merits I mean). Don't own TSOM, all for love.
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Although August had been punishingly hot, the terrace was still comfortable at mid-morning. The sun glinted off the two blond heads bent close together over a book.
"Very nice, Gretl," Maria said encouragingly. The little girl had made tremendous progress over the summer. "Imagine how surprised your teachers will be when you start school next month and they see how well you already read! I can't wait hear all about – why Gretl, darling, what is the matter?"
The proud smile had vanished from Gretl's face at the mention of school.
"You won't be here to hear about it on the first day. You'll be with Father, in Paris."
Maria sighed. "Yes, sweetheart. I am so sorry it turned out that way, with school starting while we are still away on our honeymoon. But you remember what I promised you. We'll telephone, and write letters. You must write me a letter all about the first day of school, how about that?"
It wasn't a very satisfying answer, but thankfully, a flurry of activity from the lakeshore distracted them: enthusiastic splashing, whoops of laughter, shrieks of dismay.
"Friedrich! Stop this minute!"
"Try and make me."
"Can I have one?"
"Watch out, Louisa's got three of them!"
"They're disgusting!"
"I think they're cute."
Gretl squirmed from Maria's lap and scampered toward the commotion.
Sighing, Maria put the book down. Was it her imagination, or were the children especially unruly lately? She was half-tempted to order them to march about the grounds, breathing deeply, for the rest of the morning. Although, really, they were behaving as well as could be expected under the circumstances. The wedding was only two weeks away, and the preparations had disrupted both the disciplined academic routines favored by their father, and the long, lazy days of play favored by their governess. Mother, she corrected herself. Or almost so.
Things at the villa were out of kilter, somehow, Maria thought. They could no longer go on the way they had been all summer. Not after the astonishing revelation, coming only hours after admitting that she loved her Captain, that he loved her in return, that he wanted her to be his wife and the mother to his children.
Now she wasn't exactly a governess anymore, but she wasn't a wife and mother, either. For the sake of propriety, she was forced to pass the long, lonely nights at the Abbey. And although she was able to spend most of her days at the villa, they were full of wedding preparations she didn't enjoy. They were stuck in between their lives old and new, neither here nor there, no school for the children, no married life for Maria and her Captain. Not for two more weeks.
She felt her cheeks flush with the knowledge that the wait was proving even more difficult for Georg. It was simple enough: he was, after all, a man who had always had his way with women, or so the neighbors said, a man who had been blissfully married for twenty years and now had unexpectedly found himself in love again. Georg was doing his gentlemanly best, but lately, there was no hiding the strength of his desire for her behind a gallant façade. Maria found those tempting glimpses almost too much to bear. Her mild interest in what lay behind the ballroom doors, only a few months back, was nothing compared to her avid curiosity now.
Every morning, he drove to Nonnberg Abbey in his bottle-green convertible to fetch her, and every night, he brought her back again.
"You'll have her back here at eight o'clock sharp. Every night." Sister Berthe had told him when they'd visited the Abbey the morning after that magical night in the gazebo.
"Oh, but Sister," Maria had interrupted, "the littlest girls go to bed at eight. They're just getting over – well, everything, you know, and I need to be the one to tuck them in bed."
"Very well, eight-thirty. It takes no more than thirty minutes to make the trip."
"But you see," Maria had jumped in again, while Georg sat by quietly, an amused twinkle in his eye, "the older children go upstairs at nine. Kurt and Brigitta go to bed right away, and the oldest three are expected to read or talk quietly until lights out at ten. I wouldn't feel right leaving the Cap- I mean, Georg, in charge of all of that. I'm their mother! Or I will be."
"Nine-thirty, then," Sister Berthe had stuck her chin out, only to have Reverend Mother intercede gently. "I think ten o'clock will be fine, Maria. Captain. Later than that would be inconvenient for the sisters, who, as you know, must rise with the sun."
And so, for the first seven nights of their engagement, she and Georg left the villa when the children went upstairs. They had time to linger outside the Abbey, enjoying some quiet conversation, but when the bells rang ten o'clock, he pressed his lips chastely to her cheek and wished her a good night. They were both conscious of Sister Berthe, lurking in the shadows like some great black-winged predatory bird.
On the eighth night of their engagement, however, a new routine had begun. They were still several blocks away from Nonnberg when, without warning, he pulled the car into a deserted lane, cut the engine, and doused the lights.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Attempting to give my fiancée a proper goodnight kiss," he explained. And without another word, she had gone willingly into his open arms.
By now, with only two weeks to go before the wedding, their nightly pattern was well established. Following long, heated minutes of furious necking, at exactly five minutes before the hour, Georg would slowly drive the last few blocks while she put herself back together. The Abbey bells were just ringing ten o'clock when Maria staggered, weak-kneed, past Sister Berthe and through the gate, knowing that she'd endure a few restless hours before she would be able to sleep.
There was no denying it. They were both anxious to move on with things. As was everyone else at the villa: the younger children already called her "Mother," all except Brigitta who was a stickler for details and wanted to wait until after the wedding. Just the other day, Frau Schmidt had asked her about the family's plans for Christmas! As far as Georg and his children were concerned, the past was forgotten, as though they had always been intended for each other, as though Elsa Schrader or Nonnberg Abbey had never existed.
But while the rest of the family was impatiently hurtling toward the future, Maria was still trying to work it all out, somehow, the way her entire world had shifted on its axis in a very few hours the night she'd returned from the Abbey. She'd gone from an unruly postulant who'd been outwitted by a baroness, to someone who was going to be a baroness herself. Why, when the children's summer holidays had started, she'd been scrubbing floors for Sister Berthe, while they were under the care of their eleventh? no, tenth, governess. Or maybe the ninth. She wasn't really sure.
"Watch out, Marta! Kurt's behind you!"
"Get your slimy hands off of me!"
"You're getting mud everywhere!"
The commotion by the lakeshore had reached such a pitch that it was impossible to ignore. Pushing aside thoughts of passionate Captains and lives turning upside-down in a manner of hours, Maria meandered toward the lake.
"What's going on here?" she inquired, only to be met by seven suddenly, suspiciously quiet children exchanging uneasy glances.
"Nothing," Louisa said confidently, but Kurt couldn't hold back a giggle.
"What was all the noise about?" Maria demanded.
Friedrich shifted, almost imperceptibly. He was holding something behind his back.
"Let's have it, Friedrich."
"You're not going to like it," he warned.
"Why don't you let me judge for myself," she said firmly, keeping her eyes locked on his until, at last, he held out a bucket. Peering inside, Maria's eyes widened at the sight of at least three dozen wriggling, slime-green frogs.
"I only hid them from you because I know you don't like frogs," Friedrich confessed. "Remember the day you came?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Friedrich, I was just startled. Frogs don't usually inhabit pockets, after all. I'm not afraid of them in the proper setting, not even a bit."
"You're not afraid of anything," Brigitta added admiringly. "Can we keep them in the house?"
"No. Absolutely out of the question. They wouldn't be happy living in a bucket. They belong in the lake, you see…"
"Why?" asked Marta.
"Frogs belong in the lake, with plenty of flies to eat, and mud to wallow in. The same way that Moth- Fraulein Maria didn't belong at the Abbey, because she couldn't sing or laugh there," Liesl explained, laughing.
Maria smiled at the comparison. "No frogs in the house. No snakes either. Or spiders. I still don't understand how such lovely children could have driven away so many governesses. I think your father said there were eleven of them! Although he blamed it on the governesses, not you."
By now, the younger children had lost interest in the conversation and had wandered off to free the frogs, leaving the older ones to settle on the lawn with Maria.
"If he says there were eleven governesses, then there were eleven governesses. Father keeps meticulous records about that kind of thing," Liesl said. "And like I told you before, yes, there were a few times when we took drastic action. We missed him! What were we supposed to do, send him a telegram? Most of the time, we had nothing to do with their leaving."
"Don't forget the pine cones, Liesl." Louisa cackled. "We pulled that trick with practically every one of those governesses. And you were the only one who didn't tell on us," she told Maria.
"They might have complained to Father about it, but I don't think anyone quit over a pine cone," Friedrich said.
"You're making it sound like you children were a bunch of innocent little darlings. What about the one with the toothbrush?" Maria asked.
"Fraulein Josephine?" Liesl nodded knowingly.
"That was the first time I figured out how to climb the trellis," Louisa said.
"I remember how proud I was when she told me I was impossible," Friedrich chimed in. "I was barely eleven years old! That must have been the first time Father left us alone. After," he finished quietly.
"And what about the one with the snake?" Maria asked hastily. She didn't exactly approve of their antics, but she wanted to lighten the mood.
"Fraulein Helga. That awful dress!" Liesl laughed. "It's hard to believe that was just a few months ago. Father had been in Vienna for a month, and desperate times call for desperate measures. Louisa and her spiders. I remember Fraulein standing on the bed shrieking. I think the spiders were more afraid than she was."
Maria shook her head disapprovingly. "What about the others? Nine, if I'm not mistaken."
Friedrich shrugged. "They were nice enough. They didn't really do anything wrong, they just disappeared."
"Vanished," Louisa confirmed. "You'd have to ask Father about them. Some we even liked, or felt sorry for, and we didn't play tricks on them. Not very many, anyway. But it didn't matter. We'd come down for breakfast, and there would be a new governess. We never knew why."
Maria shook her head. "Well, you were no angels, that's for sure. And you older ones, you know, you set an example for the rest." She studied their faces to be sure the lesson had sunk in, and then talk drifted to more pleasant subjects.
She might have forgotten the incident entirely had it not been for a conversation with Georg later that afternoon. She brought a cup of tea and some biscuits to the study, where he sat behind his massive desk, absorbed in some kind of ledger. Back when she was the new governess, the imposing sight of Captain von Trapp in the big leather chair behind that desk filled her with awe. Now, it made her heart flutter agreeably.
"Hello, Maria darling! You look lovely today, in case I hadn't mentioned it."
"You did, actually, three times since breakfast, but don't worry, I don't think you can overdo that sort of thing. What are you doing?" she asked.
"The household accounts," he grimaced. "Getting things in order before we leave for Paris. Don't want to be worrying about the fertilizer bill while I'm romancing my bride." His handsome face appeared to brighten at the thought of their honeymoon.
"Doesn't Frau Schmidt take care of that kind of thing?"
"Only inside the house. I take care of the stables, the orchards, the garden. And the children, of course-" he stopped suddenly. "I suppose you'll want to keep their diaries now, won't you?"
"Their diaries?"
Georg leaned back in his enormous chair, gesturing toward the shelves that stood just to his left. Maria had never noticed it before, but now she saw it: an orderly row of slender journals, the first dozen or so bound in brightly colored leather, blue, purple or red, and the last few bound in somber black.
"Agathe kept a journal every year," he explained. "About the children. Things they said that she wanted to remember. Milestones, the first tooth, first step, first haircut, that kind of thing. Clothing sizes, illnesses. I've tried to keep it up, even with all my absences. Agathe was like me in that regard, a meticulous record keeper."
Maria felt slightly sick to her stomach. "I'm afraid I'm not the meticulous type," she said apologetically.
"Oh, fine, fine," he rushed to reassure her. "It's not a requirement for the position."
She laughed, relieved, but a question bubbled up. "Speaking of meticulous records, Liesl told me, I mean…"
"What is it, darling?"
"You told me I was the twelfth governess, that the ones who came were undisciplined."
"Right," he nodded. "But that's all behind us now. It doesn't really matter about the governesses, does it?"
"The way the children tell the story is very different. That they were in fact, very well behaved. Most of the time, anyway. That you sent the governesses away even when there was no sign of trouble."
Georg shook his head. "They adore you, Maria. Naturally, they want you to think well of them, even if it means rewriting history. And why does it matter, anyway? It's all in the past." He beckoned to her. "I'd much rather talk about how absolutely lovely you look today. And possibly steal a kiss, if you'll let me."
She took an eager step toward him, beginning to circle the desk to where he sat, but then something stopped her in her tracks. Maria couldn't say why she was so curious, but it had something to do with that feeling of her astonishing overnight transformation from postulant to governess to mother that no one else seemed to find the least bit strange. Why her? What had the others been like?
"So," she said, "do your meticulous records reveal the fate of the eleven? My predecessors, I mean."
"Yes," he admitted, "It's all in there, I suppose, but why does it matter, Maria?"
"W-well," she fumbled. "I don't know very much about running a big house like this one and I want to know more about how you did it. I might have to hire, oh, I don't know, a housemaid or something. It can't be so very different, can it?"
"Wouldn't you rather have a kiss?" he coaxed.
"No. I mean yes, but not instead of an answer."
He sighed with exasperation, but his smile was warm. "Are you sure you wouldn't just as soon have me explain the fertilizer bill to you?"
But the more Georg evaded her questions, the more curious Maria became about her eleven predecessors.
"All right! All right!" he conceded at last, throwing his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "I'll see what I can find. I'll have to start at the very beginning, I suppose," he said, turning to retrieve the first black volume from the shelf.
Maria felt a twinge at the sight of the somber cover, visible evidence of a time when a bereaved father tried to take a lost mother's place. But Georg seemed matter of fact enough, muttering under his breath. "Let's see, let's see…ah! Here we go."
"What does it say?" she asked eagerly, learning forward.
He looked up, his blue eyes gleaming.
"Let's see if you can make it easier for me. I'll dig through my records for information about those eleven governesses, if you'll come sit here with me."
"With you? But there's only room for-"
He patted his lap and made a welcoming gesture. "Come on. I won't bite, I promise. I'll be every bit as angelic and disciplined as you believe my children to be."
"Won't that be a terrible distraction?" she asked suspiciously.
"To the contrary, it will help me concentrate," he said, waggling his eyebrows so comically she couldn't resist. Within moments, she was perched warily on his knees, watching him thumb through the black journal.
"Ah, yes. How could I have forgotten? I owe you an apology, but a very small one. The first two were not their doing."
"I knew it!" Maria exclaimed.
"It was Nanny's fault," he said, with a sad shake of the head.
"Nanny?"
"Nanny. Agathe's English nanny, the same woman who had cared for her and her brother. She came to stay when Liesl was born and never left. There was always a baby in the house, of course, until … well."
"She sounds lovely."
"She was an old witch, to tell you the truth. She never did like me. But she was devoted to Agathe and the children. I could never have survived that first year afterward without her, I'll admit it. Bringing on a governess was my mother in law's idea. Nanny was useless with the older ones; they loved her, but that didn't stop them from running roughshod over her. So Lady Whitehead contacted the finest agency in Salzburg, conducted the interviews, and got the new governess settled before returning to London."
He stopped to peer at the journal again. "Fraulein Elise. That was her name, the first one. But as soon as my mother in law left, that's when the arguing started. Nanny and Fraulein Elise. Day and night. They couldn't agree about anything. It got so bad, Frau Schmidt threatened to quit."
"And if one of them had to go," Maria interrupted, "then…"
"I couldn't let Nanny go. The children were attached to her, and she was a piece of the past-" Georg stopped to clear his throat, pretending to be busy rummaging through the journal.
"After Fraulein Elise came Fraulein Lotte. But it wasn't any better. She and Nanny went at it like a couple of fishwives at the market. By then I could see there was no point in a replacement, so I hung on, and I begged Frau Schmidt not to give up on us. We held on, barely, until Gretl could leave the nursery. Fraulein Lotte left in a huff, and I pensioned Nanny off to live with her sister."
"That's two," Maria said.
"Right." He took the second black journal off the shelf and flipped some pages. "Fraulein Josephine."
"The toothbrush one!'
"How did you-? Yes," he agreed, looking a bit startled. "Exactly. I thought by then I'd earned myself a bit of a respite. I'd barely had time to grieve myself. I went off to Rome, I think, but no sooner had I arrived when I received a telegram telling me I needed to come home and hire another governess." He sighed. "They didn't have to tell me. It was simply too early for me to have left them."
Maria felt a wave of pity for her sad, brave Captain. "You did your best," she comforted him, letting her head fall in his shoulder.
He stopped to drop a kiss on her head before paging through the journal. "Next came Fraulein Gertrude. She drank at dinner, so of course she had to go."
Maria furrowed her brow. "Weren't you the one who used to encourage me to have a glass of wine at Sunday dinner?"
"Yes," Georg admitted, chuckling, "but with Fraulein Gertrude, every night was Sunday. And she wasn't adorable when she drank, the way you were," he added, with a sidelong smirk.
"That's four," Maria reminded him.
"Fraulein Lise. She was next. She refused to take the children to church!" he said indignantly, jabbing at the journal with an accusatory finger.
"But Georg. You don't go to church."
It was a sore spot for Maria, but she'd decided to take Reverend Mother's advice: "The Lord will see to it in His own good time, Maria."
"And there are also a great many things I do that my children do not," he said loftily. "That is not the point. And we're ready for the third volume," he said.
He flipped past a dozen pages or so before starting, transfixed, for a good, long minute.
"The next one must have done something quite memorable, Georg."
"W-what? No, no. Just – remembering something else." He turned a few more pages and grimaced.
"By this time, I judged it safe to begin traveling again. I went to Budapest on business for three weeks, and everything seemed to be going swimmingly with Fraulein Kathe. The children wrote long, charming letters reporting great progress on their schoolwork. But the letters were full of misspelled words and grammatical errors. Even Brigitta's!"
"No!" Maria feigned outrage, but he didn't seem to get the joke.
"Yes. I sent word home immediately for her to pack her bags and be gone, and then I came home to repair the damage."
The next few governesses went by in a blur.
"Fraulein Susanna. She had an affair with the gardener."
"Old Peter? Honestly, Georg, I have trouble believing that. The man's close to seventy!"
"Well, she was awfully friendly with him. Then there was Fraulein Emma. She claimed to read four languages, but her Greek was barely functional."
"Greek?"
"Exactly! Her academic standards were far too low. Despite what she promised, she really only had three languages."
"I had no languages," Maria reminded him.
"You had other attributes."
"Like what?"
He feathered a gentle kiss across her forehead, and Maria realized that somehow, she was no longer perched on his knees, but had become comfortably ensconced deep in his lap.
"Freckles. Those long lashes. And your ears," he whispered.
"My what?" A little shiver ran down her spine and her limbs felt warm and heavy. He smelled awfully good, like cologne and spices and something else, something masculine. She let herself relax against his broad chest.
"You have the most adorable ears," Georg said, smoothing her hair behind them before resting a casual hand on her knee.
"You did not hire me for my ears," she said weakly. "I think it's time for the fourth book, anyway."
"Hm? Oh, yes. Well, we're almost at the end," he said, reaching for the last volume. "Fraulein Helga. Now that one was squarely the children's fault. I was far away, in Vienna-"
"Where you'd been for a month, they told me."
"By then, I'd decided I needed to get myself married. I was busy on their behalf, arranging for a new mother."
"They missed you, Georg."
"Is that what they told you?" he asked, amused. "In any event, something happened involving a snake, and some spiders, I think. She was gone by the time I got back. Which takes us to the last entry. In June. Fraulein Ruthe."
"Oh, right. Tell me, what could possibly have happened that caused you to send her away after two hours?"
"Her table manners. She arrived just before luncheon, we performed introductions, and went into the dining room. She leaned on her elbows and slurped her soup. And she blew her nose in her napkin."
Maria had a sudden memory: Gretl, quietly helping her face down the battalion of silverware that faced her down that first night.
"You're joking, Georg. Manners?"
"I am quite serious."
"You're joking about all of them. This is not at all what you implied that first day."
"But it's true!" he protested. "I told you it wasn't the children, that it was the governesses, didn't I? Look, it's all right here on the page. I asked myself where I could find a well-educated, ladylike governess who would not drink, or flirt with the help, and I wrote myself this note. 'Try Nonnberg Abbey.'" I wrote Reverend Mother and the rest, as they say, is history. And now," he said, barely taking a breath, "I have a great idea. Inspired. Even better than a kiss."
She'd been looking forward to that kiss. Feeling vaguely disappointed, Maria asked, "what would that be?" She pushed away a distracting question that floated, unanswered, on the edges of her mind.
"It's this, Maria, darling: let's leave for the Abbey early tonight."
"But what about the children? They count on me to wish them goodnight, Georg, you know that!"
"They can manage without you just this once. I want to take a different route to Nonnberg tonight, one that takes a little longer." He held her hand, turning it over to trace a pattern across her palm, past her wrist to her elbow and farther, up her arm. She felt her heart begin to race as the pleasure skittered across her skin.
"I- I've lived here my whole life, Georg. I d-doubt that there's any route that takes that much longer than another."
His fingers grasped the lace edging on her neckline and tugged gently downward before prodding inquisitively at the top button of her blouse. She felt herself flush at the reminder of what had been happening between them every night, just a few blocks from the Abbey.
"Aren't you the least bit curious?" he enticed her.
"Stop - stop trying to distract me, Georg!"
"It's working, isn't it? Tell me we'll leave early. Say yes. You know you want to." His fingertips, hot as coals, slid between buttons and found her bare skin.
"Ten," Maria blurted, suddenly remembering.
"But I've got to have you back at ten," he remonstrated.
"That's not what I mean, Georg. Ten governesses. You only told me about ten governesses." She ticked the names off on her fingers: "Elise, Lotte, Josephine, Gertrude, Lise, Kathe, Susanna, Emma, Helga, Ruthe. You said I was the twelfth, so you forgot one. Or omitted her on purpose, more likely."
He was starting at her in slack-jawed amazement. "How did you do that?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I may be a simple mountain girl, but I'm not stupid."
"Stupid?" he laughed. "You've got a mind like a machine. Why, if we'd had more men like you, we'd have won the war! My beautiful, brilliant bride," he said boastfully, though there was no one in the room to hear him.
"Georg. It's not going to work, distracting me with compliments. You left out a governess, and I know which one it was, too. In between Lise and Kathe. Because you paused for an awfully long time-"
"Maria. All that is in the past. It doesn't really matter anymore." Georg leaned close, murmuring in a low, silky voice. "Let's talk about the future. Like tonight. What we're going to do with the extra time."
Two could play that game, she thought. Taking a page from his book, she tugged gently at his tie. "Whatever you want, darling. As soon as you tell me about the missing governess. Fraulein – what was her name?"
He hesitated.
"What will it be?" she wheedled, letting his tie slide through her fingers. "The usual time? Or earlier? Eight o' clock, perhaps?"
The effect was instantaneous. "All right, Maria. All right! Make it seven, and we have a deal."
"Seven-thirty," she shot back. "My final offer. Now. Her name, please?"
Apparently, they had reached an agreement, because he mumbled. "Barbara. Fraulein Barbara."
"There. Was that so bad? Fraulein Barbara. And what, may I ask, did she do that was so intolerable? Misshelve a book? Forget Louisa's sun hat? Break a teacup?"
He was silent for a long moment, looking her over thoughtfully. "Are you sure you want to know?"
"More than ever," Maria said stubbornly.
"Very well, then." He sighed deeply, looked up at the ceiling, and said, "She made a pass at me."
"A pass?" Maria said, surprised. Although why it surprised her, she didn't know. She'd already gotten used to the way women's eyes followed him everywhere they went, if they didn't flirt with him outright. And she'd had a crush on him herself, after all, starting with the day he'd apologized after the first of their many arguments, down by the lake. Even without Baroness Schrader's formidable presence, though, Maria was certain she would have been too shy to make even the most innocent gesture toward the Captain. And she knew he was far too noble, too principled an employer to have encouraged any kind of liaison.
"What kind of pass? Could it have been some kind of misunderstanding?"
"It would have been hard to misunderstand," he said indignantly, "awakening to find her in my bed. Pawing at me," he added distastefully.
Maria gasped. "Oh, Georg. I'm so sorry. That must have been dreadful for you! No wonder you didn't want to tell me."
"You cannot imagine," he said in an uncharacteristically sulky tone, "how unpleasant it was. She was wearing a – a garment of some sort, in a lurid shade of purple. With feathers. I couldn't stop sneezing, which made it even more difficult to respond decisively."
"What did you do?"
"I tried to be gracious about it, at least at first. I told her there must have been some kind of misunderstanding, as you put it," he snorted. "I asked her to refrain from embracing me, but that only seemed to inflame things."
Maria bit back a smile. It really wasn't funny, not at all, but he was being so Captain-ish in his recounting of the event. "Then what?"
"When she failed to cease her attentions, I got out of bed and—are you sure you want to hear the rest of this, Maria?"
"Seven- thirty," she reminded him.
"Very well." With a resigned shake of the head, he continued. "I could see her preparing to launch herself off the bed and fling herself at me, and so I fled."
"Fled?"
"Down the back stairs." Maria knew there was a stairway that led directly from the master suite down to the study where they now sat. "I locked the door at the top of the stairs behind me so she couldn't follow, and then when I got down here, I secured the main door out to the foyer. Then I called my solicitor and ordered him to get here as quickly as possible - what's wrong, Maria?"
She was trying, desperately, to disguise her laughter behind a strangled yelp that she hoped sounded sympathetic. He had locked himself in his study for safety! She could hardly believe it. "Nothing, Georg. G-go on."
"It took an hour for help to arrive. Meanwhile, I had left that woman upstairs, where my children were sleeping. And I was down here, freezing cold, half out of my mind with fear."
"Freezing cold? You poor dear. No time to put on a tie and smoking jacket, I suppose."
She thought she might have taken the teasing too far, but the look of shame and pained embarrassment on his face was quickly replaced by a more familiar naughty smirk, and a dangerous twinkle in his deep blue eyes. He held her gaze for a moment longer than was comfortable before releasing it with a triumphant chuckle.
"I might as well tell you now. You'll find out soon enough. Sailors sleep in the nude, in case you didn't know."
"N- Oh!" The mental image of a naked Captain pacing this very room made her dizzy. Desperate to appear blasé and sophisticated, she managed a theatrical sigh. "And here I had that lovely little purple-feathered thing all ready for Paris. Too bad. I must say I'm surprised, Georg. A national hero, afraid of a governess?"
He looked at her pityingly. "You have no idea, do you? What that woman could have done? She could have made all kinds of allegations about me."
"No one would have believed her, Georg! Everyone knows that you are the most honorable, decent man in Austria. Everyone knows that you would never…"
He gave her another one of those long, appraising looks. "Seduce my governess?"
She flushed. "You are marrying me first. There's a difference."
"Is that what they're saying?' Georg grinned. "In any event, it all worked out. My solicitor was able to bundle her off the property with a few well-placed threats, leaving me to-"
"To meet me!" Maria exclaimed.
"At seven thirty," he reminded her. "Go on with you, now. You've distracted me long enough." She protested – it hadn't been her idea to spend the last hour in his lap, though she'd quite liked it – but he only kissed her on the cheek and gently urged her upright. Then he turned back to his ledger and dismissed her with a chipper salute.
She was halfway out the door when the impulse struck her.
"Georg," she said, turning back toward him, feeling brave, naughty and not a little bit nervous. "What would you have done if it were me?"
"You?" he snickered. "You wouldn't have had the nerve, not in a million years. The way you blushed every time I looked your way? And how you used to clutch your nightclothes about you, like a shield," he demonstrated. He was laughing outright now.
"I don't mean then. I mean now. Would you run away from me?"
He stopped laughing abruptly. His eyes grew dark, and his unsmiling expression was so intense, so nakedly honest, that her breath caught in her throat.
"There's only one way for you to find out, Maria."
Maria turned and fled. The sound of his laughter chased her across the foyer, but it was the look on his face that left her breathless.
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All afternoon, Maria tried to puzzle out what she'd learned about her eleven predecessors, but she never got very far before her thoughts slid to a much more intriguing topic: Georg's plans for the evening.
They left the villa immediately after dinner, so early that the sun's rays still slanted across the lawn. Maria knew this for a fact, because she kept her gaze firmly on the ground while Georg waved away questions from Max and the children about their early departure. She didn't stop blushing and begin to relax until the car left Aigen behind and began to climb into the mountains.
"This is an awfully roundabout way back to the Abbey," she remarked, but Georg merely grunted his agreement, and they drove on in silence. Higher and higher they climbed, until they left the paved road behind. After bumping along a hundred meters or so on a roughly marked dirt path, he stopped the car and got out. Ahead, a tall iron fence stretched in both directions; Georg stood before it, fumbling, until a gate swung open with a loud, protesting creak. Returning to the car, he drove another fifty meters or so, through heavy woods that seemed to lean in on them from every side. Then the rough path stopped entirely.
"Go ahead," he nodded to her. "Just through those trees and around the curve. I've got to get something from the boot."
Maria followed his direction, and a moment later, found herself on a flat, grassy point of land that stretched out over the valley below, and face-to-face with perfection.
She had spent most of her life rambling through the mountains surrounding Salzburg, and although she never tired of looking at the magnificent city and the mountains that surrounded it, she thought she knew the city by heart, from every angle. But this was magical. The setting sun lit the river with glints of fire. Stone and brick glowed warmly, as though heated from within. Green parks and colorful gardens glowed like jewels in their settings. The tranquil coo of evening birds nearby wove around the distant sound of church bells.
A rustle behind her. "Do you like it?"
"Oh, Georg. It's wonderful! What is this place? I thought I'd been everywhere in these mountains."
"You couldn't have been here. It's a private hunting preserve. Been in my family for generations. I used to come up here all the time…" he stopped to clear his throat. "Well. I haven't been here in years. Do you want to see the best thing about it?"
Her heart skipped a beat when he came up close behind her. But he only lifted his arm and pointed out into the distance. "Can you see that spot between the two mountains there? Just above the church with the three steeples and the flag?"
"Yes, I see."
"If a bird took flight from there and went straight on in that direction for five hundred kilometers, she'd end up at the sea," he told her.
She turned to face him, finding the sight of his handsome face even more delightful than the exquisite view. "You miss the sea, Georg. Don't you?"
He nodded solemnly. "I do."
"We could go back there, you know," she said impulsively. "Someday. When the children are grown. We could live by the sea."
For a moment, he looked taken aback, and then a smile spread slowly across his face. Their eyes met, and she knew what he was thinking, because she was thinking it too: with all the drama surrounding their meeting, and falling in love, the busy-ness of planning a wedding, their large, instant family, and the sober talk of Austria's troubles, they had never indulged themselves in dreams about their shared, far-distant future. Talk of that future made things between them more real, somehow.
"Yes! Even better, Maria!" There was something endearingly boyish about his enthusiastic reply. "We'll go to Italy. Where the mountains march right down to the sea, so we'll have both. Mountains for you and the sea for me." Georg put his arms around her waist and lifted her clear off her feet, spinning in slow circles until she was dizzy. For the moment, Europe's troubles were forgotten and the dream seemed within reach.
"Down, please," she gasped, laughing, until he set her down gently and went to work spreading a blanket out on the grass. She had barely seated herself when he took her by surprise, stretching out on his back with his head comfortably nestled in her lap. For all the intimacies he had introduced her to, this was new, but she quickly took advantage of it, letting her fingers trace the noble line of his brow, his austere cheekbones and the firm shape of his mouth before mussing his soft hair with her palms.
"So, Fraulein. Go ahead and lecture me. I've been waiting for it all evening."
"Lecture you about what?"
"About the eleven governesses."
"Well, I was thinking about that, Georg. And wondering. Despite what you tried to tell me that first day, I always assumed it was the children that drove them away. So you were right after all! It wasn't the children, not most of the time. But it wasn't always the governesses either, was it? It was you, more often than not, finding fault with them."
"Those cursed governesses! As you can see, I've tried very hard to forget about them. They were a constant reminder of my failure to put everything back the way it had been before. That nothing I could do would ever make things right again. Somehow, the children could accept that things would never be the same, but I – I couldn't. I just couldn't."
"Because then, you'd have been accepting what happened. I don't blame you," she said quietly. After a moment, she added, "that's why you kept running away, isn't it?"
"I was trying to find them a mother, I told you! Even if," he admitted with an embarrassed shrug, "she didn't quite work out either. I certainly didn't expect anything like this to happen."
"I know exactly what it must have been like, Georg! When you're not living the life you're meant to live. You keep telling yourself you just have to try harder, but trying harder doesn't work. I must have run away from the Abbey a dozen times or more, only to run right back again, because I didn't know where else to go! I would never have thought to run to where I've ended up, though," she laughed.
But the laughter died in her throat when his eyes found hers. He kissed her palm before holding her hand to his cheek and the emotion on his face made words unnecessary.
They sat quietly while the light slowly faded, the birds quieted, and the first stars twinkled overhead. The air grew chilled, and when she began to shiver, he sat up and took her in his arms.
"I thought," Maria confessed, "that you brought me up here tonight to-"
"I thought I did too," he chuckled. "Somehow I got distracted, though. Lucky for you."
Not so lucky, she thought, watching him stand and wander off, looking upward to inspect the sky. What had passed between them tonight was, in its own way, as intimate as anything that had gone on in the front seat of his car. The words burst out of her before she could stop herself. "I would, you know. If you wanted to."
Georg whirled to face her. "I was joking."
"No you weren't," she said evenly. "And it's only two weeks."
"Exactly. It's only two weeks. Perhaps we should wait-"
She went to him, wrapping her arms around his neck. "You still owe me a kiss, you know. It's the least you can do."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her, gently at first, but when her fingers pressed into the back of his neck, a tremor ran through him, a tremor she felt as though his body was her own, and his kiss turned rougher and more demanding. He ran his hands up and down her body hungrily, and then pulled her against him, hard. She melted into him, letting her knees give way, trusting him to catch her and ease her, gently, to the ground.
The blissful sensations, rich and hot, were coming at her faster than she could absorb them. Nothing about their awkward, frantic caresses in the front seat of his car had prepared her for the thrilling weight of his body on hers, the way they fit together as though they'd been made for each other, the hot sparks of pleasure every place their bodies touched. His mouth left hers to trail down her neck and lower.
She tried and failed to swallow a sharp cry of delight, but it was drowned out by the sound, from below, of church bells striking the hour.
Georg tore his mouth from her bare skin and buried his head in her shoulder. "No," he rasped. "Enough. No more."
"Why did you stop? Don't stop," she pleaded.
"Not here. Not like this." His breath still came in gasps, but he sat up and scrambled a safe distance from her.
"But I thought-" She sat up too, and reached for him, but he held up a hand to stop her.
"It's just- wrong, this way, Maria. I was wrong, to try it. There's something about you that just – I don't know, something I can't resist. But now that I have you here, I can't." Smiling tenderly, he reached up to brush a few stray pine needles out of her hair. "You've got to trust me. You deserve better than this, the first time."
"I don't care-" she started to object, but he interrupted.
"Anyway, I hadn't counted on all that talking beforehand, you know. It's nine o'clock. Time to start down, or we'll be late."
"We've got plenty of time," she objected, and was puzzled at his roar of laughter.
"How would you know?"
The hurt feelings must have been obvious on her face, because he crept back to her and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. 'I'm sorry for teasing you, Maria. But when I make love to you for the very first time, it's going to take more than-" he glanced at his watch. "Ten minutes. That's all we really have. Or possibly fifteen, I think there's a shortcut back to the Abbey … what am I saying? We are not going to, and that's all there is to it."
She could see there was no point in arguing with him – not now, anyway - so with a sigh of resignation, she put herself to rights while he folded up the blanket and led her back to the car.
The unpaved path was dark now, and Maria stayed silent so he could focus, following the headlights carefully until they were back on the paved road.
"Georg? Do sailors really sleep in the-"
He grinned. "You'll have to wait and see."
A few minutes passed, and they entered the city.
"Georg?"
"Hm?"
"Why do you think it's easier for you to wait?"
"I didn't say it was easy, darling."
"Perhaps it's because you're – ehrm – older. Wiser, I mean," she said slyly.
"Go ahead and try, Maria. I'm not taking the bait. I am older, it's true, but also as it happens, wiser, when it comes to this. More experienced, anyway."
She was silent for a while, until they turned onto the long avenue that led to the Abbey.
"Georg? Maybe - maybe you don't want me as much as I want you."
"Doubt it." He shot her a sideways, smoldering glance. If looks could light fires, Maria would have gone up in flames.
She turned to watch his profile, stern and proud in the dim light of the car. When they drove past their usual parking place, she could have sworn she saw the ghost of a smile quirk his lips.
"Ah," he nodded, pulling to a stop outside the Abbey gates as the bells tolled ten o'clock. "There she is. The great black bird of virtue, waiting for my innocent Fraulein. Little does she know who your real protector is."
Giggling, Maria decided not to wait for his gentlemanly kiss, but leaned over and pressed her lips to his cheek. "Can we go back up to the preserve tomorrow night? We could leave home a little earlier this time," she whispered.
"Minx. Anyway, it's supposed to rain tomorrow."
"If it rains, the bridge to Aigen might wash out, and I'd be stuck overnight at the villa, and then I could take a page from Fraulein Barbara, and…"
He shuddered. "I'm going home to pray for dry weather, in that case. No offense."
"None taken." She lowered her eyes to her lap. "Rain or shine, I'll be up half the night thinking about - about it. About us."
There was no mistaking the strangled noise he made, a noise of amusement, frustration and desire. "You are nothing if not persistent, Fraulein. Go on, now, Sister is waiting for you."
She slid out of the car and hurried to the gate, murmuring an apology to Sister Berthe.
"Maria!"
Ignoring Sister's exasperated groan, Maria turned back to find him standing on the sidewalk. "Yes, Georg?
He put his hand to his heart. "I do love you, you know."
"I know. I know! "
"And?" he prompted.
"I love you too."
He gave her one of his little salutes, slid back into his car, and with a roar of the engine, he headed back up the avenue.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Maria whispered. Then she turned to follow Sister Berthe back into the Abbey.
.
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Now. About that review.