This isn't an Easter story, but it's close enough, so happy Easter to any of my readers who celebrate it! Here, have some sugary fluff :)
xxx
It seemed to Marian that there were more children in River City these days than there had ever been, though of course there were not. It was just that so many who were close to her were now the ones having them, and, between her own three children and those of her friends and acquaintances, they seemed to surround her constantly.
The librarian marvelled that her own little daughter now played alongside the progeny of those whom Marian had first known when they were young children themselves, such as Tommy and Zaneeta Djilas – and as Winthrop and Amaryllis had recently been married, the librarian could probably expect to become an aunt within the next couple years. The Washburns' two sons and two daughters were frequent fixtures around the Hill household, as was Sam Appleton, proud and talented clarinet player in the band. There were many nights when somebody else's children slept in the house, usually in exchange for allowing the Hill children to sleep over on another occasion – for this reason the atmosphere of the house often varied between the two extremes of energetically bustling and peacefully silent. The town's current crop of teenagers, including Gracie Shinn and Milly Appleton, were never without opportunities for work, as it always happened that somebody's children required minding. And, though Marian's many duties had led her to cede the role of town piano teacher to the two Mrs. Paroos – her mother and Amaryllis – the librarian still gave her fair share of piano lessons, in order to ensure that her children were literate in music as well as books.
Marian adored watching Harold with their children, that remarkable tenderness and understanding that she had initially glimpsed in his early interactions with Winthrop now fully realized in fatherhood. Although he had confessed that he had never once contemplated fatherhood before meeting Marian, his good humor, calm authority, and immense adoration for his children made him an ideal father. The librarian suspected that she, as well, might not have made such a good mother if it wasn't for the ways in which loving Harold had changed her – while she held strongly to the importance of manners, morals, and discipline, she knew that she was a much warmer and more forgiving person because of Harold. The unbridled joy with which he embraced and enjoyed life was a wonderful example not only for her, but for their entire family.
With three little ones in the house, Harold and Marian's life had certainly become a great deal more hectic, but neither had ever known anything more gratifying than watching their own children learn and grow and come into their own. Though quite different from each other, all three of the Hill children seemed to possess a blend of both parents' traits, which Harold and Marian found quite charming and amusing to discover.
Charlotte Lucille Hill, almost seven years old and already striking with dark wavy hair and flashing brown eyes, had acquired a certain impassioned spirit from her parents that made her both exasperating and invigorating to converse with. She was intelligent, curious and always eager to share any new knowledge she had gained or any new mystery that puzzled her. Charlotte had learned to read before attaining the age of four, and she had scarcely stopped since. Her appetite for knowledge was voracious, and she devoured both fiction and nonfiction with equal enthusiasm, seeking help from her mother for those books that were beyond her current abilities. She wasn't satisfied whenever she came across a subject which she could not understand, and she found herself particularly hung up on those topics for which there were no rational explanation, such as the various injustices of the world – the issue of why anybody should wish to deny women the vote had been particularly troubling to her, and, despite her rather limited understanding of the situation, she had cheered the recent passing of the Nineteenth Amendment as ardently as any suffragist.
Although she was earnest and thoughtful, hardly the type of child with whom most adults would take issue, her steadfast objection to following orders blindly had given her a fair amount of trouble with her teachers, as her constant desire for explanations led her to commit the offense known as "talking back", a charge which she, naturally, found most unjust.
Charlotte had a certain sharp-featured beauty that more resembled Harold than Marian, although strictly speaking, she looked most of all like the blue-blooded grandmother whose name she shared, Miss Lucille Weatherby. The single picture that Harold possessed of his mother seemed to be a startlingly accurate prediction of what his daughter would look like when she reached maturity.
The younger children were scarcely a year apart, their "Irish twins", as Harold referred to them within the confines of private conversation with his wife – and indeed they looked the part of twins, both sharing their mother's golden hair and hazel eyes.
The middle child, William, had a certain tinge of red in that hair which some may have regarded as a blemish, but which was, to his doting grandmother, a badge of the highest honor. At four years old, he was a little boy so talkative and gregarious that many joked that he seemed destined to become a politician. Adults and other children almost invariably found him charming, and he thrived on the attention. The wheels in his head were continually turning, but unlike contemplative Charlotte, his instinct was not to think but to act, always ready to jump headfirst into any new situation. He was so much like Harold in personality, in fact, that the music professor had expressed some degree of concern about keeping him in line, lest it turn out that the boy had inherited a family talent for swindling and scheming.
William showed no sign of a willingness to cheat or deceive, though, which Harold owed to the influence of his good-hearted mother. He was learning the fine art of playing pranks under the tutelage of the rambunctious Washburn boys, Jack and Ben, to the occasional dismay of his sisters and friends – but his chief interest was friendly mischief, not malice.
The younger "twin" was Susanna, better known as Susie, who was almost comically prim and fastidious, making her an unfortunately easy target for her brother's tomfoolery, though, as the baby of the family, her siblings generally coddled and adored her. Susie was a strait-laced perfectionist who never needed to be scolded for the same transgression twice, not out of fear of punishment but out of genuine reverence for doing the right thing. Angelic in appearance and virtuous in personality as Susie was, Harold had joked that the world was exceedingly lucky to be blessed with Marian not once, but twice.
The youngest Hill had a great admiration for nature, provided that she could explore it without risk of getting dirty, and she gazed with gentle, wondering eyes upon any soft-furred animal or pretty flower – though her fiery temper could be suddenly incensed by any display of disrespect to animals, herself, or her family. Her dearest wish in life was that her parents might someday allow her to have a kitten or puppy of her very own – although she sometimes expressed great interest in having a baby sister or brother, something which, Harold and Marian had tried to gently inform her, would be very unlikely indeed.
It wasn't that Harold and Marian had ever been opposed to having a third child – in fact, three children had been the ideal number that they had once settled upon – but dealing with another pregnancy while William was still an infant was far from an ideal situation, one that had caused Marian no little embarrassment as well as forced her to take a great deal of time off from the library that year. Still, everything had worked out for the best eventually, and she could never wish that things had happened differently – after all, if they had conceived under different circumstances, the child wouldn't have been their beloved Susie. They had become more scrupulous about preventing the conception of any more unplanned children, however – though their opportunities for lovemaking were much more limited than they had been in the early days of their marriage, their passion had only intensified since then, and if they didn't take care, they would inevitably end up with more children than any couple could reasonably handle, especially while maintaining a house, a band and a library!
The Hills just might have been the busiest family in town, but none of them would have wished it to be any other way.
xxx
One Saturday afternoon in June, on a rare day when neither the music professor nor the librarian were constrained by any obligations, they decided to take the entire family for a surprise picnic by the lakeside. Although the weather had been warm for the better part of a month now, they had not had a chance to have a picnic yet this spring, and, as such things always did after a long winter, it felt like an exciting novelty.
While they could just as easily have gone to the lakeside picnic spot in town on the outskirts of Madison Park, Harold insisted that they ought to spend their day somewhere more special, so they rented a motorcar from the livery and headed to the much more isolated lake just beyond the limits of River City, laying out their picnic under the large oak tree at the crest of a gently sloping hill that ran down toward the water.
The warm spring breezes formed little rippling waves on the ocean of grass that surrounded them and the glass-clear surface of the lake, and the air was filled with the ambient sounds of birdsong and rustling leaves. It felt as if they might have been hundreds of miles away from River City instead of two or three. Although Marian knew much more of the world than she once had – most notably, she and Harold had taken a glorious second honeymoon trip to California, where she had seen the ocean for the very first time – she still felt that the prairies of Iowa were vastly underappreciated for their loveliness.
"It's so beautiful out," Marian sighed happily as she spread out the blue-and-white quilted blanket on the grass. "I'm so happy that I don't have to spend a day like this indoors."
"I never care much about getting outside until I already am," Charlotte reflected as she tucked her legs behind her and settled upon the blanket. "I could be happy indoors all day with my books or my dolls, but then I go outside and feel like I could just run and run. Especially in a big open place like here."
"We could play tag," Susie exclaimed.
"All right, but you're 'it', and you won't catch me!" Charlotte proclaimed, jumping up to skip merrily in a circle around the picnic blanket, green ribbons on her gingham dress fluttering in the breeze. With a bright peal of laughter, Susie leapt to her feet as well and began chasing her sister around the blanket until Harold reached out and caught them both gently by the arm.
"Now, you stay right here, Ladybug and Honeybee!" Harold teased, pulling his giggling daughters into a hug and kissing the tops of their heads as he addressed them by his silly nicknames for them. "Nobody's playing anything until we've gotten through with lunch."
Neither Harold nor Marian was really certain of exactly how these pet names had come to be; at some point in Charlotte's infancy, the music professor had taken to referring to his daughter as his 'little Ladybug' on occasion, and the name had stuck fast. He had bestowed Susanna with a matching endearment soon after she was born – Honeybee, after her honey-gold hair – and the names had become a sort of special connection between father and daughters. Although Harold had guiltily worried before the birth of his first child if he'd ever really be able to connect with a daughter the same way that he imagined he would with a son, he had lost all those doubts the moment that he had first laid eyes on Charlotte. He took special joy in doting upon both his little girls, and it delighted Marian to know that her husband wasn't the sort of man who was so insecure in his own masculinity that he was unwilling to embrace his nurturing side.
Before finally sitting down himself, Harold ensured that all three children were in place on the blanket without any intentions of running off, although it wasn't an effort that he had to keep up for long. As hunger won out over all other priorities, the children soon developed a great interest in the picnic basket, and they helped to distribute the plates and napkins while Marian began working on the task of matching each sandwich to the correct Hill.
Removing his straw boater hat, brushing his hair from his brow and taking in a deep breath of fresh air, Harold sighed, feeling completely at ease. "It's awfully nice to have a day to relax with a parade coming up. There's only so many hours of rehearsal that I can take!"
"I love watching your parades, Daddy." Susie leaned her head against her father's arm with comfortable affection, her eyes fluttering dreamily shut.
William nodded, hazel eyes wide and intense. "Me too! I think we're so lucky that our daddy leads the band. Everybody in River City loves the band!"
"They love the library, too," Charlotte added with an eye toward her mother, who patted her hand in appreciation.
"I have to learn a lot so I can be in the band when I'm bigger," William stated gravely. "People will expect me to be the best." His carefree demeanor all but evaporated when he discussed the band, the only thing about which he was particularly serious; he regarded his father's crowning achievement as the most important thing in the world.
"You'll be wonderful," his father assured him sincerely. "Passion for music is half of what you need, and you've got that in spades."
"A lot more than half, if we're talking about the Think System here," Marian noted wryly, leveling a challenging gaze at her husband.
"Half," Harold insisted. "We wouldn't be an award-winning band if I was still that foolish!"
"Oh, I know. I'm just reminding you of your humble roots, darling."
"As if I could forget."
As they spoke, the children sat silent and bewildered, and William's eyes darted back and forth between his parents in confusion. "What are you talking about?"
"That, my boy, is an exceptionally long and complicated story!" Harold said with a quick wink in his wife's direction. "You just keep working hard and studying with your mother the way you've been doing, and you'll be more than ready for the band when you get old enough."
As the librarian handed Charlotte her sandwich, the girl took it with a question already on her lips. "When we stayed over the Washburns' house last week, we ate on the porch and Aunt Ethel told me that food tastes better outside. Is that true?"
Marian couldn't help but smile – her older daughter had an exceptional talent for asking questions that had no answer. "I don't know if it's better, but I've always found that it tastes different."
"But it's the same food!" Charlotte reasoned. "What would make it taste different?"
"Eating is more fun outside, that's why," William asserted, certain that he had settled the matter entirely. "You know what I was thinking about? I bet sleeping is more fun outside! I really want to try camping, maybe with Jack and Ben."
Harold pursed his lips skeptically as he considered how to inform the child of reality without being too blunt. "Son, I don't think that you'll be ready for such a difficult thing until you get quite a bit older."
"Well, what if you came with me?" William suggested, concocting this solution so quickly that he didn't even have the time to look disappointed.
The music professor's eyebrows rose almost comically in alarm, and he gazed pleadingly at his wife, searching for some kind of escape. Though he was usually more than happy to indulge his son's playful fancies, the idea of 'roughing it', even for a night, was appalling to a man who so enjoyed his daily luxuries. It turned out that Marian did not need to rescue him after all, however – she noticed a flash of cunning in his eyes that indicated that he was working out a scheme.
"You know, maybe you should bring that idea up to Jack and Ben," Harold improvised quickly, an almost-devious smile lighting up his face. "I think your Uncle Marcellus might be a better choice to take you on that trip."
Old habits, Marian thought amusedly as she met her husband's eyes. Leave it to Harold and Marcellus to turn the parenting of their children into a battle of wits and tricks – it was the way that they had conducted most of their lives, after all, no matter how completely reformed they were now!
"Huh, all right," William answered, completely unaware of the deeper implications of his father's comment. In a moment, the idea of the camping trip fell to the wayside entirely as he declared, "Yesterday Uncle Marcellus told me he'll teach me how to ride a horse once I get big enough!"
While the others expressed their congratulations, Charlotte frowned as she always did when pondering something of great consequence. "Huh, I never thought about this before, but how's he our uncle, anyway? I thought that an uncle is your parent's sister or brother, but Uncle Marce and Aunt Ethel and Aunt Nellie aren't either of your brothers and sisters. Just Uncle Winthrop is Mama's brother."
"And don't forget that Amaryllis is our aunt now 'cause she's his wife," William added, pronouncing the name with the barest hint of a lisp.
"Right," said Charlotte with a nod. "But the rest of them aren't related to us at all, are they?"
"Well, sometimes, children refer to their parents' dearest friends as their aunts and uncles, because they're so special to the family," Marian explained.
Her older daughter nodded slowly, coming to terms with the information. "Oh, okay. No one ever told me that before."
"Do grown-ups know everything?" William asked suddenly.
At that, Marian and Harold shared an amused smile, trying not to burst into laughter at their son's innocent inquiry.
Harold shook his head, grinning. "Nobody knows everything, William. Grown-ups might know a lot more than children, but that's just because they've lived a lot longer, done more things, read more books – "
"But somebody must know everything," Charlotte insisted. "If a person just read a whole big encyclopedia like the ones in the library, she'd know everything, right?"
"'Everything' is a lot more than what people have managed to write down in books," Marian explained as she removed the glass bottle of lemonade from the picnic basket and began to pour. "'Everything' would mean all the different fish in all the seas, the name of every star in the sky, any little thing that one person ever said to another at any point in history... nobody can know everything except God Himself."
Charlotte's eyes widened at the magnitude of it, her expression awed and a little humbled. "Oh, I thought I wanted to know everything, but that's too much! I want to learn everything interesting, that's what I'll do."
"So 'everything' is really that big? It doesn't make sense to me," William intoned with the air of one who had been defeated by the incomprehensible.
Charlotte leaned forward, her chin resting on her hands and her head tilted philosophically. "A lot of ordinary things don't make sense if you really think about them. I wonder about things all the time. Like babies," she remarked as she patted Susie's golden curls, the latter looking fairly affronted at being deemed a 'baby'.
"Babies don't make sense? Why is that?" Marian asked with a small smile as she handed out the cups of lemonade, curious about the workings of her daughter's mind yet not really certain that she wanted to hear the answer.
"Well, I know babies are born from a mother and a father, but the baby only grows inside the mother. What does the father have to do with it? It must be something, or else why do I look like Daddy?"
Flustered, Marian felt her mind going completely blank as she searched for an answer that would deflect the girl's interest in the subject without being entirely untrue. In the same moment, Harold nearly choked on his lemonade, but he managed to recover quickly enough to find something to say.
"You're right, Ladybug – that is a true mystery," Harold told her with an unceremonious shrug.
The librarian almost giggled at the convincing ease with which Harold humored his daughter. Although Marian did not find it conscionable on principle to lie to her children, she had to admit that it was probably the only safe thing that could be done in this situation. Still, she didn't want to be the one to do it, so she tried her hand at changing the subject.
"What else do you wonder about, Charlotte?"
"Instruments!" the girl exclaimed immediately. "Why are they so complicated, like trumpets and tubas with all those curvy parts? Who figured out how to make them that way, and what sounds they would make?"
Thankfully, none of Charlotte's many other wonderings were nearly as uncomfortable as the one that her parents had narrowly managed to dodge.
xxx
When they had finished their lunch, William hovered impatiently around Harold, almost bouncing on his toes in excitement. "Can we go fishing now? Can we?"
"May we, William," Marian corrected good-naturedly, smoothing his tousled red-gold locks and straightening his collar.
"May we?" asked William, echoing her emphasis.
Harold grinned and ran a hand through the little boy's hair, instantly ruining the improvements that his mother had just made. "Of course, kiddo. Let's grab our fishing poles and get going."
As father and son prepared for their excursion, the librarian would have been hard-pressed to say who looked more proud. Though he did not come up much higher than his father's knee, William stood as straight and tall as he could, clearly regarding this special time with his father as some sort of rite of passage into manhood. Harold, on the other hand, could not stop beaming at his boy, and Marian knew that no matter how much he might express concern over William's boisterous nature, it delighted him immensely to be father to a child who was so much like himself.
Susie, who had been sitting on the picnic blanket while Charlotte wove flowers into her blonde curls, jumped up suddenly with a keen interest in what her father and brother were doing.
"I want to fish, too!" she protested, toddling over to cling to her father's leg. "Fish are nice."
"I'm not so sure that you'd like it, Honeybee," Harold said as he knelt down to her level, melting easily into the kind and gentle tone that he always used with his littlest daughter.
"You know that if you catch fish, they'll die, right?" William broke in bluntly.
Susie's hazel eyes grew to an enormous size, her mouth falling open. "What?" she squeaked, the foundations of her young world profoundly shaken. "That's awful!"
"They don't have to," Harold added quickly, before she had a chance to cry. "We can let them go after we catch them."
"Oh, then we'd have to do that," she said earnestly.
"You'd still have to touch worms," William noted, a mischievous little grin stealing onto his face.
Thoroughly accustomed to her brother's teasing, she did not consider for a moment that he might be serious, and she stomped her foot, little hands bunched up in fists at the skirt of her white eyelet frock. "Stop lying! I would not!"
"I'm afraid that you would, Susie," Harold responded. "That's what 'bait' is."
She made a face, unable to find any way to overcome such an unappealing notion. "Then I don't want to fish. But please, promise you'll put them back after you catch them."
When William rolled his eyes, the little girl tugged hard on his sleeve. "Promise!"
The music professor enfolded his younger daughter's tiny hand in his own and gazed resolutely into her eyes. "Susanna Kathleen Hill, you have my solemn promise that I'll do no harm to a fish."
At once Susie broke into a wide, relieved smile. "William, too?"
"I promise, too," William sighed at the prodding of his father.
"Good," she pronounced with a prim nod, the miniature image of her upstanding mother. "Then you can fish."
Thus permitted, the Hill men stood up and prepared to head off for the dock at the other side of the lake, but they were halted in their progress once again when Charlotte, who had been wandering by the water, came running up, her chestnut brown braids flying in the wind and eyes huge with excitement.
"Guess what? There are all these little fish just swimming right up at the edge of the water!" she exclaimed, illustrating the phenomenon with sweeping gestures of her small hands.
"I want to see the fish!" Susie gasped, clasping her hands together. "Show me! That way I won't need worms."
William frowned at the prospect of being left out of this possible adventure. "Hey, I want to see too."
"I thought you wanted to go fishing, son," Harold laughed.
The boy's freckled nose scrunched up as he considered this conundrum. "We can still do that after, right?"
Harold patted him affectionately on the back, knowing that it was useless to try to dissuade the impetuous boy from one of his many whims. "Sure, you just tell me when you're ready."
"Come on!" Charlotte commanded, taking her younger siblings' hands and nearly dragging them toward the water, leaving their father standing behind them.
"All right, but stay where we can see you," Harold called. The slope of the hill made the sandy beach look a bit further away than it really was, but it also offered a good vantage point for those above to keep an eye on those below, if not necessarily the other way around.
Resting his fishing pole against a tree, the music professor joined his wife back on the picnic blanket and stretched his arms and legs with a contented sigh. "I guess it will do me good to have a moment to rest, anyway."
Marian nodded in agreement as she finished up packing the picnic basket. "They can be such a handful when they get excited over something, and they've been awfully excited today. You'd think they'd never been on a picnic before!"
"Not since last year, and that's ages and ages to a child," Harold pointed out.
"Oh, I meant to tell you, nice save with Charlotte back there, darling," Marian said with a giggle, turning to her husband. "It was only a matter of time before a child as inquisitive as she broached such an uncomfortable topic – but I certainly hope I won't have to answer a question like that for several years yet." Her smile faded slightly as she contemplated that unpleasant prospect. "I can't imagine how I'll ever be able to do that, Harold. I mean, what does one say?"
"Hmm, I don't know. What did your mother say to you?" Harold asked, an amused grin turning up the corners of his mouth.
"Oh, it was awful!" Marian laughed, her cheeks turning a vibrant shade of pink. "I couldn't possibly remember what words she used, because immediately afterward I began trying to forget. When she told me that I was going to start bleeding monthly, that was enough of a horror to my poor young mind. But then, she told me about – what really happened between those who were married! I decided right then and there that I would never let any man do that revolting thing to me, even if it meant never having any children. It was years before I could look at a pregnant woman without feeling vaguely mortified. And only a few years after that conversation, my mother became pregnant with my brother, so I was suddenly forced to think of her and my father – " Too embarrassed to continue, Marian buried her face in her hands and collapsed into giggles.
Harold couldn't help but laugh as well at his wife's childish confessions. "What would that little Marian say if she could see you now?" he inquired slyly. "She'd be horrified at how very often you let me do all kinds of things with you, and how much you enjoy it."
"I know she'd be happy with absolutely everything else, though," the librarian sighed blissfully as she entwined her fingers with his and watched their children playing by the lakeside, suddenly overwhelmed by just how beautiful her life had turned out to be because of him. "I love you."
"I love you too, darling." He leaned in to place a soft, gentle kiss on her lips, the kind that would be perfectly within propriety in the company of their children – but then when he didn't pull away when she expected him to, propriety failed to remain either of their first concern, and their kiss grew longer and deeper, their bodies pressing closer and closer until Marian had no choice but to pull back from him, placing her fingers over his mouth.
"Goodness, Harold, the children are right there!" she reminded him, blushing at their lapse in judgement.
His eyes widened in realization, and he quickly slid a few inches away from her – having children around meant that they often had to be as careful about their displays of affection as they had when they were courting, although they could now at least look forward to being utterly alone together each night. The fact that they had to be more reserved in their conduct only made the moments that they could steal together that much sweeter and more difficult to give up, however.
"You're right, we shouldn't get carried away. Although I think they were a little too busy to miss that slip-up." He gestured in their direction, and she saw that the three were indeed completely absorbed in chasing minnows, their shouts and laughter echoing all over the lakeside.
"Oh, they'll be exhausted tonight, won't they?" Marian laughed, shaking her head. "I guess they'll be dropping soundly off to sleep as soon as we get home."
"More fun for us," Harold murmured in her ear, earning him a teasing smack on the shoulder from his wife.
"Harold, honestly, they are right down there!" she giggled.
Sweetly kissing his lovely wife's cheek, the music professor pulled her to her feet, hands fitted around her slim waist. "Forgive me, Madam Librarian, if I find you irresistible."
"You are entirely forgiven," she assured him, letting her fingers curl in his rich brown hair and her fingernails trail lightly across the back of his neck.
His eyes went dark and smoldering, and he pulled her close against his chest, his lips close enough to her ear to make her quiver and tremble as he spoke in his low, velvety voice. "That's good. I wouldn't want be forced to cancel those plans I was making – that is, plans to take you home and make wild, passionate love to you for hours on end until we both collapse in each other's arms from the sheer pleasure of it..."
Marian gasped at his abrupt frankness, and she gazed heatedly into his eyes, caught somewhere between mirth and desire. "I should have known better than to think you would stop where you did!"
"I think you did know better. I think you knew exactly what I was going to say, you little tease." He trailed little kisses and love bites across her jaw, making her sigh and melt in his arms. "But, darling, you know the only reason I like to scandalize you like that is because I know you really don't mind it one bit."
"Absolutely not," she whispered. "You always deliver what you promise, after all, and how could I not be pleased with that?"
Harold shivered a little as her hands stroked across his back, and the librarian reveled in the proof that even after six and a half years of marriage, his passion for her was just as overwhelming as it had ever been, the simplest touch enough to render him nearly speechless. Though he had frequently confessed that his love and desire for her had only grown each day since he'd first fallen for her, it nevertheless brought Marian intense joy to witness that even after three children, her husband could still be brought to tremble at the mere thought of making love to her, just as he had in their courting days. Certainly, he had the same effect on her, and almost seven years of knowing and loving and sharing every part of her life with him had only deepened that wonderful passion.
"I think we'd better go see what the children are up to, Marian, or I don't trust what we'll end up doing." Leaning down until his lips brushed her ear, he couldn't resist delivering one more overtly suggestive remark. "And if the weather is nice the next time that they're visiting at your mother's house, what say we come back here alone and put that blanket to a different use..."
Though such a tryst would certainly not be the first time that they had dared to make love outdoors, the librarian still found a wicked thrill from contemplating such an undeniably forbidden pleasure – it set her heart racing and her blood rushing to all sorts of interesting places.
"Intriguing," she breathed, feeling like the seductress and the seduced both at the same time. "We shall have to discuss this in greater detail tonight, Professor."
Even now, the music professor still looked a little startled whenever Marian was so unabashedly forward with him – startled, but delighted, and he couldn't help but pull her into another delicious and not-particularly-proper kiss full of promise for the night to come.
When their lips parted at last, he gazed down at her with such ardor and adoration that Marian had to force herself to step back to keep from willingly melting right into his arms again. "You're right, we really ought to go join the children now!" she laughed, her voice almost shaking.
Their lingering rendezvous was finally broken up when William came bounding up the hill, fishing pole slung over his shoulder, and Marian felt genuinely grateful for the interruption – it didn't look like they were having much success staying apart without outside intervention! Still blushing with the memory of Harold's heated words, she quickly tucked a few errant curls back into her chignon and replaced her hat before going to seek out the girls, who would surely be hoping for her company.
"Daddy, I'm ready to fish now!" William announced with an exuberant grin that looked very much like the smile that his father was known for.
Taking up his own fishing pole, Harold joined his son with matching enthusiasm, and Marian marveled at how quickly he could change roles entirely. Harold Hill was many things to many people – husband, father, friend, brother- and son-in-law, shopkeeper, bandleader – and he performed in all of those roles with zeal and panache.
But then, perhaps she wasn't giving herself enough credit. After all, she did just the same thing nowadays, didn't she? Though it sounded difficult in theory, and maybe sometimes it was, she didn't mind it in the least – having known too well what it was like to lead an empty, lonely life, there was nothing she could have wanted more than this life that was filled to bursting with joys and challenges and love. Slipping adroitly back into her role as devoted mother as she went to join her daughters in gazing at the clouds, Marian felt an immense gratitude for all of the different facets of her life, and the wonderful family of which she was blessed to be a part.