Chapter 1: PROLOGUE - ELSA

"Elsa. You cannot be serious. I simply do not understand."

"What is it you don't understand, Georg? I think I've made myself reasonably clear."

Elsa reached for the gleaming silver tea service that sat on the low table between them and poured out a cup, adding his preferred squeeze of lemon. Wearing a full-skirted navy silk dress and a rope of creamy pearls at her neck, she exhibited her usual elegance and poise, although Georg thought he detected a slight tremble in her manicured fingers as she handed him his tea.

He waved the cup away and rose to pace back and forth in front of the marble fireplace.

"What I don't understand, Elsa, is your timing. We've known each other for a year, and it wasn't very long after we met that you began to hint at marriage – don't you try to deny it, and I won't deny that the idea made sense from the start, even though, naturally, it took me longer to come around. You'd been widowed for a decade, while it had been only four years for me, and there were the children to consider as well. But after you issued your ultimatum – by telegram, for God's sake – I did as you asked. I brought you to Salzburg, I introduced you to society here, we announced our engagement the next day, and now – now you decide to call things off? What's all this about, Elsa? There's got to be something you're not telling me."

He watched her carefully, trying to get a glimpse of what lay behind the composed mask he'd come to know so well. To know, and even admire, the way she had learned to hide her grief and get on with her life, even if that life was focused on the shallower pursuits. Although he didn't much care for her gay parties or shopping habit, she did share his love of music and art, was a charming and easy-going companion, and had readily agreed with him that their forthcoming marriage, while likely to be quite satisfactory for both parties, would never yield the same measure of joy or contentment as their first marriages had. No, Elsa hadn't asked him for anything he couldn't be expected to give her.

"There's no big secret, Georg darling. And anyway, it's not just one thing."

Georg was surprised to find he felt less disappointment or pain, than perhaps a bit of damaged pride. Still, he needed to know the truth. After all, Elsa had been the one to bring some meaning back into his life.

"The women," he blurted. "Is that it? Because I told you, Elsa, I put all of that behind me long ago." The truth was, he'd given up his wild ways shortly before they met. But if Elsa wanted to consider herself his savior, there was no harm in letting her believe it.

"Pardon me, Captain." Franz appeared in the doorway. "There's someone here to see you."

"Whoever it is, I'm not at home. Send them away," Georg snapped.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Captain. He's already waiting for you in the library."

"I see. And who, may I ask, is waiting in my library, without having been invited by me to do so?"

Franz did a very poor job of hiding his delight.

"It's Herr Zeller, sir. Now that Anschluss has taken place, he's the Gauleiter, you know. He's come to congratulate you and Baroness Schrader personally on the news of your engagement."

"I don't care if he's the Emperor himself," Georg fumed, "I don't want that man anywhere on my property."

"Georg," Elsa said soothingly, "why don't you let me handle this? Thank you, Franz, I'll be there in a moment." After the butler had withdrawn, she crossed the room and laid a hand on Georg's arm.

"There's no need to make a fuss, Georg. Let me go work my magic on Herr Zeller. I'll charm him out of your library and send him back where he came from in a matter of minutes. You wait here."

Georg muttered his agreement, and Elsa was halfway out the door of the salon when she paused and turned toward him.

"And no, Georg. It's not the women. I do trust you on that count."

Trying to distract himself from the mental image of Zeller invading his library, Georg's thoughts turned to the period before he'd met Elsa Schrader, years during which he'd behaved recklessly, trying anything he could to escape the wretched burden of his grief.

Although Agathe von Trapp's death four years ago had not been a surprise, coming as it did after a months-long decline, nothing had prepared Georg for the devastation that followed. The marriage had been idyllic in every respect, a true meeting of two souls with an unquenchable passion for each other, even after seven children in fourteen years. No one had believed it years before, when Georg von Trapp had forsaken his rakish pursuits to marry Agathe Whitehead, but much to his surprise, the joys of marriage – in bed and out of it - far surpassed anything he'd ever experienced.

He had spent his first year as a widower drowning his sorrows in brandy, while leaving the care of his children to a series of unsatisfactory governesses. The second year brought a different kind of shock: although the pain had barely abated, his body came awake and made certain demands of him, in colorful dreams that haunted him night after night, despite his conviction that he would never love another woman the way he'd loved his late wife. Thinking a change of scene might help, he had escaped to Rome, a place he'd never visited with Agathe, with the surprising result that he found a few hours' relief and even a watered-down kind of joy in the bed of a Milanese countess whose husband had died several years before.

By the time he was forced to return to Salzburg to replace yet another governess, Georg had worked some things out for himself. His irreparably broken heart would be his tribute to Agathe, a sign of his continuing faithfulness to her, but he would allow his body whatever it required to keep him sane and functioning.

Indeed, over the next two years, he did find some consolation in a series of liaisons, each conducted at a discreet distance from Salzburg. Georg had always loved women, and now he was grateful for the mindless release he could find in their arms. Some of the women he took to his bed had been abandoned by husbands who had stopped paying attention to them in favor of mistresses or worse. Others were widows. He was surprised to learn from these women how many marriages were devoid of the passion that had enriched his own, and surmised that the fault for this often lay with not with the woman, but with her husband's lack of skill or patience, and it gave him an odd sort of satisfaction to set things to right. Subsequent correspondence from a few of the married women suggested that, once their eyes were opened to the possibilities, they frequently reconciled with their husbands, much to the utter satisfaction of both parties. And for the widows, at the very least, he brought a measure of comfort to women who had not felt a man's loving touch in years.

It had taken two years, and more than a dozen women, before the appeal of his amorous pursuits began to wane. For one thing, his energy was sapped by the continuing problem of his children, who drove away one governess after another, repeatedly sending what should have been an orderly functioning household into chaos. For another, the last two women he'd gotten involved with – a widow and an unhappily married duchess – confessed to having fallen in love with him, and he'd had a difficult time disentangling himself in an honorable fashion. Georg was not a cruel man, despite his chilly demeanor, and he began to imagine Agathe in heaven, clucking her tongue not so much at his shameful behavior – he thought she knew that side of him well enough to forgive him the bed-sport - as the hearts he was breaking along the way. And despite all the variety, the truth was he was getting bored. Staying madly active hadn't filled the yawning void in his heart and mind, an emptiness so loud it shouted at him.

When he met Elsa Schrader, he thought he'd found a better way forward for himself and his family. He and Elsa had each experienced their share of tragedy, but when they were together, they laughed often and never ran out of things to talk about - although they had never even once discussed love. She wasn't the maternal type, but no one could really take Agathe's place in his children's hearts anyway. Certainly, Elsa could help launch his daughters into society and appropriate marriages, and a governess could do the rest. The right governess, that is; with everything that had happened this summer, and how he had grown closer to his children, he'd have to find someone who would be responsible for their well-being without usurping his place in their hearts. Agathe would have wanted it this way.

Georg couldn't say why, but despite a few tentative inquiries on Elsa's part, he had been avoiding any significant physical intimacy between the two of them, pursuing nothing more than the occasional champagne-fueled kiss. There would be time enough for all of that after the wedding, and he liked to think it was a noble and self-sacrificing way to draw a bright line between the shameless behavior of his forced bachelorhood and the worthy enterprise of his second marriage. It helped that the physical urges that had tormented him earlier in his widowhood seemed to have abated, with the odd exception of his infatuation with the little governess from Nonnberg Abbey. Which, he'd long ago decided, had been nothing more the temptation offered by forbidden fruit.

The clock over the mantel struck the hour and startled Georg from his reverie. Elsa had been gone for a good quarter-hour, he realized. By now, she'd certainly dispatched Zeller. Was she trying to avoid finishing their conversation about the marriage? Well, they had to have it out, one way or the other; the wedding was only a week away and under no circumstances could it be delayed.

He strode impatiently across the foyer into the library, only to be caught short by the sight of Elsa, shoes kicked off and legs curled beneath her at one end of the big leather sofa. She was laughing, her low, musical laugh, with her head tilted sympathetically toward Zeller, who sat at the other end of the sofa, looking as comfortable as his pompous demeanor would allow.

"Ah! Captain von Trapp! Here you are at last." Wearing an insolent smirk, Zeller rose to his feet, but slowly, as though to remind his host that the respectful gesture was purely for show. "I was telling Baroness Schrader that I wanted the opportunity to congratulate you personally on your engagement."

"Elsa," Georg pointedly ignored their guest, "I thought you were going to -"

"Georg, darling," Elsa interrupted him with a brittle smile. "I'm so sorry to have lost track of the time. Herr Zeller was just sharing with me the most interesting piece of news. I can't believe you didn't tell me about it yourself, Georg. I'm sure you meant to. It must have been all the excitement with the wedding, I imagine."

"And what news would that be?" Georg asked, as though he didn't already know the answer.

"I hate to spoil a social call with business," Zeller said, and the smirk vanished, "but we have sent you two telegrams in the last week, Captain. Conferring upon you a naval command at Bremerhaven. What with the announcement of your engagement, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure you've been busy, and meant no offense by failing to reply, but now an answer is becoming imperative."

"Georg, darling," Elsa turned to him, her smile unwavering. "What an honor! You don't suppose that since Herr Zeller has gone to the trouble of coming all the way here, perhaps you could give him your answer now?"

Elsa couldn't possibly believe that he would accept. They had been through all of that already! And yet there was something about her smile. . . a year of escorting her around Vienna, and Georg still couldn't reliably read her.

Not that it mattered. He had imagined taking this step in writing, or by telephone, but the moment was here. Georg took a deep breath.

"I am sorry for having inconvenienced you by forcing you to inquire in person, Herr Zeller," he said, as politely as he could, "I will even go so far as to thank your – your people for thinking of me. But I'm afraid I can't accept."

"Can't accept?" The man's eyebrows rose and his little moustache twitched disagreeably. "Can't accept? It was not an offer, Captain."

"It's the wedding," Elsa broke in with a nervous laugh. "What Captain von Trapp means to say is that he can't accept right now, because of the wedding, isn't that right, darling? It's only a week away. And then the wedding trip, of course, that's another week on top of it."

She threw Georg a pleading look.

Georg felt a surge of gratitude for her willingness to play along, to buy him a few more days to finalize his plans. They had, in fact, planned no wedding trip. Not to mention that she'd just broken their engagement. Not to mention that Georg would burn in hell before he served in the German Navy, and Elsa knew it.

"Very well," Zeller said grudgingly, "but after the wedding trip, Captain, you will take your place in the new order. Your children – let's see," he drew out a scrap of paper from his jacket pocket – "the two youngest will be at the parish school this year, and the others off to boarding school, is that right?"

"Yes," Georg said, "but I don't see what that has to do with anything."

Zeller folded the bit of paper carefully and returned it to his pocket. "Should you fail to report for duty, it might be difficult for them to keep their places at school. You understand."

"Hold on." Georg hardly knew whether to shout at the man, drive a fist into his face or laugh at him. "You are threatening a bunch of schoolchildren?"

"Just making it clear how much the German Navy needs you, Captain. And how much you need us. Once again, congratulations to both of you. They'll expect you at Bremerhaven within two days of your return from your wedding trip." The odious little man made an ironic bow and headed for the library door, only to pause and turn back toward them. "Oh, and Captain. Baroness. About that wedding trip. You weren't by any chance planning to leave Austria, were you?"

"We – ehrm - we hadn't quite decided yet!" Elsa said with forced gaiety. "Do you have any suggestions?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, I do. Take my advice, Captain," Zeller said, and there was nothing comical about the threat this time. "Don't leave Austria. Don't even try. It might not be good for your children. Because while you're away, we'll be watching out for them, of course. And you."

Then he was gone, leaving Georg and Elsa staring wordlessly at each other. The room filled with an oppressive silence that lingered for a minute or two before he forced himself to speak.

"Thank you, Elsa. For playing along. It will buy me some time."

From her seat on the sofa, Elsa gave him a long, considering look.

"It's not going to help, Georg, not really. The time has come for you to learn to be a realist. You'll have to say yes eventually, and you might as well do it without provoking them in the process."

"Are you mad?" Georg asked. "You know I would rather die than go along with them."

"What choice do you have?" Elsa said, her tone of voice more practical and less regretful than he might have wished. "The Anschluss has happened, and as for what comes next? What's going to happen is going to happen. Just don't let it happen to you, Georg."

"I can't serve in the German Navy, Elsa. We've been through all of that already. If you think I'm going to change my mind, you're sorely mistaken. Or is that why you played along with Zeller just now?"

Although she wouldn't meet his gaze directly, there was no mistaking her uncharacteristically sober expression.

"I suppose," she said quietly, "yes, that I was hoping against hope that you might reconsider your position, so that I might reconsider mine."

"Elsa. We talked about it, the night we decided to marry. I thought we agreed about what we would do if it came to this. I told you then and I'm telling you now: I will not bow down to men I despise."

Now Elsa was on her feet, her mouth trembling with emotion.

"But that was before, Georg. Before the Anschluss. Before I saw, first-hand, what they were capable of. Max is gone. Disappeared. Since then, I've been thinking. We could lose everything, everything you worked for, everything we own. No one is asking you to bow down, Georg. Can't you just, well, stoop a little? Oh, Georg, please! Can't you see things my way?"

"No, Elsa." His heart went out to her, the way it had to the women whose hearts he had broken, but there wasn't a shred of doubt in his mind. "Not if you're going to see things their way. If that's the reason you've broken things off, then – well, perhaps it's for the best after all."

Elsa slipped on her shoes and crossed the room to where he stood, muttering something under her breath.

"What's that, Elsa?"

"I said, that's not the only reason."

Her other reasons for breaking their engagement didn't matter, not really, but once again, he was curious about the machinations inside that carefully styled blonde head. He raised his eyebrows and waited.

"Dear Georg. You can't marry someone when you're in love with someone else." She gave his cheek a little pat. "Can you?" she added gently.

"In love? Of course, Elsa, but we talked about that too. My Agathe. Your Erich. They are gone, much as we might wish it to be otherwise."

She shook her head.

"I'm not talking about Agathe, Georg."

"I don't understand."

Elsa sighed deeply and went over to the French doors that led out on to the terrace. When she pushed aside the lace curtains, it was possible to see the brilliant midday sun bouncing off the lake, and the mountains looming beyond.

"Somewhere out there, Georg, is a young lady. A young lady who is never going to be a nun."

Her words surprised Georg, but they shouldn't have. He hadn't tried to deny it, not to himself, not even to Elsa, the ferocious physical attraction he felt for the little governess, a flame that had flickered to life the day she dressed him down for mistreating his children, had grown stronger after the puppet show, when she'd coaxed him to take a guitar into his arms, and nearly ignited in flames when he had her in his arms at the conclusion of their dance on the terrace.

But in love? Certainly not. He'd have forgotten all about Fraulein Maria by now, had it not been for his children's persistent grief. The whole thing had been awkward, not to mention wildly inappropriate, of course, and so it was almost a relief when the girl had run away. He knew perfectly well that he'd encouraged the flirtation and come far too close to the line; he would always feel guilty for that, and for having treated her so rudely when he came to his senses at the end of that dance. If she hadn't run away, he'd have found a way to apologize.

He had apologized to Elsa, who had instantly forgiven him with an airy, "Oh, darling, you'd hardly be a man if you hadn't noticed her. Just imagine the scandal if you'd done anything about it!" He'd been so relieved, so grateful, so eager to put the embarrassing incident behind him that the long-overdue marriage proposal had simply popped out.

Now Elsa returned to his side and kissed his cheek, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

"I've enjoyed every minute we've had together, Georg. And I do thank you for that. Auf wiedersehen, darling."

And then she was gone.

Georg sat at his desk and stared sightlessly at the polished surface, listening to the scuffle of Elsa's trunks being brought to the foyer, hearing the taxi's arrival heralded with a loud beep of the horn, its departure apparent from the crunch of gravel as it drove away.

Only then did he go to the wall where a small still life hung. Moving the painting aside, he spun the combination until the safe sprang open.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Hello and welcome to my new story. It seems that every story I write gets longer and more complicated, and unlike other people, I can't write as I publish, I have to work the whole thing out ahead of time, at least in draft. Thus the shameful result that when I have a story underway, I disappear into it, completely ignore Proboards, prompts and reviews (hello, excellent stories piling up on ff dot net!) This is my 32nd TSOM fic, and while I have two others in the pipeline, when this one is over, I'm probably going to take a break and spend time being a better TSOM citizen.

Meanwhile, to try and make up for things, I'm announcing an innovation: the review-guilt-free story. I have gotten so much joy from others' stories, and not repaid the favor with reviews, so while I'd certainly be thrilled to get reviews, I am inviting you to enjoy this one without leaving me one. I won't ask for them and you don't need to leave one. (Although, as Georg would say, you can if you want to.)

A few things to note: 1) this chapter had quite a bit of Elsa, but she is gone for good, the rest of the story will be very different, with lots of M/G angst, FBOFW 2) eventually, although not for a long time, it's going to turn M-rated and disappear from the main page, so follow it if you want to keep up 3) as usual I am going to do some violence to historical fact, please forgive me and 3) don't own, all for love.