Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.
Author's Note: Thank you, everyone, for reading and reviewing! This is a short chapter but the next one will be longer, I promise. Enjoy!
Something Good
Chapter 2
Georg began regretting whatever impulse had made him agree to Elsa's request for a party long before the morning was over. (Except, he couldn't help remembering, the impulse had been born more out of a sense of self-consciousness and vague guilt for that look at Fraulein Maria than out of a wish to please Elsa as such.)
He looked down at the list of guests to invite- most of the local aristocracy from around Salzburg as well as a few government officials whom he couldn't avoid inviting—and suppressed a grimace.
Elsa looked up at him with a smile. "Is there anyone else among your friends whom you'd like to invite, Georg?"
His eyes fixed on the name of Herr Zeller, a representative of the Third Reich, who had become something of a mandatory guest at all social events, and he stiffened. It did not sit well with him that he had to invite such a man to his house as a guest. "These are not my friends; they're mostly distant acquaintances," he retorted coldly, unconsciously slipping back into the icily formal tones he'd tended to use with his subordinates when he was displeased. He saw the flash of some emotion flicker across her face and belatedly realized how harshly he'd spoken.
He put a hand on her shoulder, giving her an apologetic smile and consciously softening his voice. "I'm sorry, Elsa. That was unpardonably rude of me. I am quite the brute this morning, aren't I?"
She gave him a swift smile. "No, no, it's quite all right. Men always find the details involved in planning a party so tedious."
It was, he thought, the perfect, smoothly sophisticated response, the sort of response he could always expect from Elsa. He usually found it charming but somehow, that morning, he could only think of how very disingenuous it sounded. He tamped down that betraying thought.
"That hardly excuses my ill humor," he said instead, only to be distracted by a flash of movement on the lawn outside.
He turned to look and saw the children and their Fraulein—marching? What on earth…
It was purely idle curiosity. Whatever the children were doing, they were not in any mischief, certainly not with Fraulein Maria there with them, and yet…
He found himself standing almost without realizing it.
And yet, he couldn't resist the urge to find out. He wanted to know about every aspect of his children's lives after the past years of not knowing but some small part of him was conscious of also wanting to watch Fraulein Maria with his children.
"Excuse me, Elsa. I think I should go check on what the children are doing," he said half-absently and was halfway out of the room almost before he was peripherally aware of Elsa's response of "Certainly, darling."
He strode through the house and outside to hear the sound of the children's voices and the somewhat more authoritative, although warm and loving, voice of Fraulein Maria, all mingled in with the sound of the children's laughter.
The sound seemed to wrap around his heart, warming it. Even after just over two weeks of it, he could never hear enough of the sound of his children's laughter.
He rounded the corner of the house to see all the children, except Louisa and Kurt, standing and laughing as Kurt melodramatically fell to the ground and writhed before lying still.
His lips twitched at the boy's antics and the sound of his children's laughter. "What sort of game is this?" he asked, stepping forward, and everyone's gaze flew to him, Kurt and Louisa both quickly scrambling back to their feet.
He felt a fleeting pang at how, still, his children seemed to become more subdued if he startled them but then was immediately comforted as Marta ran over to him to clasp his hand, turning a bright smile up at him. (This was a change and one he would never have enough of, one of his children running to greet him.) "Good morning, Father. It's not a game," she informed him quite seriously.
"It isn't?" He let his gaze find Fraulein Maria as he rested a lightly-caressing hand on Marta's hair. "Then what sort of activity is this, Fraulein?"
She glanced at Brigitta, a quick, almost conspiratorial glance, before she said, straight-faced, "Why, we're following your orders, sir."
"My orders?"
"Certainly, Captain. Did you not instruct me that the children were to march about the grounds, breathing deeply?"
He heard a stifled giggle from someone as he stared at Fraulein Maria, the sun shining on her hair and limning her figure. He couldn't see her eyes but—his eyes narrowed a little—he could see the tiniest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
She was teasing him, he realized. Why, the impertinent… He tried- and failed- to remember the last time someone had teased him like this. Elsa had her own wit but it wasn't the sort to manifest itself in this sort of teasing and Max was more given to dry quips than light-hearted teasing.
He didn't try to hide his amusement as he smiled. "Touche, Fraulein. I see I shall have to watch my words more carefully around you if you are going to cast my own foolish words back at me."
She returned his smile before she added, "Actually, Captain, you've interrupted a history lesson."
He stared, looking around at the children. "A history lesson?"
"Oh, yes, Father," Friedrich spoke up. "We're studying Napoleon now and so Fraulein Maria is having us re-enact some of the battles."
"That's why I just died," Kurt added cheerfully.
It was, of course, an entirely unorthodox method of teaching but looking around at his children's smiling faces, he could only bite his tongue to keep from asking to join them. It would certainly be more enjoyable than planning a party—but no, he could hardly leave it all to Elsa. And he'd told himself he should keep his distance from Fraulein Maria.
"I see," he finally settled for saying. "Well, then, I shall leave you to your history lesson."
"Yes, sir." And Fraulein Maria threw him a jaunty, small but quite unmistakable salute.
He stopped and stared at her. She'd saluted him. (Again. He remembered her little salute just after they had met when he had outlined his rules for the children's behavior. He'd been very reluctantly amused and very irritated, both at her and at himself, all the more so for feeling unwilling amusement.) He was peripherally aware of more giggles from his children and that both Liesl and Brigitta were staring between him and their governess but he couldn't tear his gaze away from Fraulein Maria.
She was smiling at him, her entire face positively glowing with a simple love of life, tinged with mischief—and his breath was sucked right out of him at the sight. His mind was suddenly flooded with a memory of Agathe, who had once saluted him in jest too—but she hadn't invested the gesture with nearly as much charm as Fraulein Maria had.
And he was charmed. Charmed and utterly drawn to her… At that moment, there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to remain out here, not for his children's sake, this time, but simply for her… He wanted to stay with her, wanted to soak in the vibrancy of her…
It took a positive act of will for him to turn away from her, to stop himself from walking towards her. But he managed it and he had, perhaps, never been quite so grateful for the iron self-control he'd acquired in his years with the Navy as he had been at that moment.
He forced himself to give his children a slight smile and a nod and patted Marta's shoulder as he left, trying to seem completely unaffected, as if nothing had just happened.
He stopped when he was just out of sight, around the corner of the house and paused for a moment, trying to regain his composure.
From behind him, he heard a shout of laughter that he recognized as Kurt's followed by a higher giggle from Gretl and he felt another pang of longing. He wanted to spend more time with his children, time all the more precious because of his lingering regret for all the time he'd wasted, but he didn't dare. Not now, not yet, when he was still reeling over his unprecedented and utterly wrong reaction to Fraulein Maria's teasing.
She was his children's governess, he reminded himself yet again—except the reminder didn't seem to make much of a difference to him. She was just so… alive… so openly ingenuous in her appreciation for music and beauty, so honest in her affections…
She… she reminded him of Agathe, he suddenly realized with something of a shock. They didn't look alike and their mannerisms were very different because, for all her cheerful nature, Agathe had been raised to marry into a wealthy household, so she was, in many ways, more like Elsa than Fraulein Maria. And yet… And yet, Fraulein Maria did remind him of Agathe somehow… Perhaps it was the love of music for Agathe had loved music. She had always laughingly disclaimed any ability to sing, although her voice had been sweet enough, but she had loved music, of all kinds, and loved dancing as well.
He remembered the first party they had hosted after their marriage, remembered how bright Agathe's smile had been as she'd urged him into waltzing with her, remembered whirling around the dance floor with her in his arms, her gray eyes shining at him…
The memory was why he'd been so adamant about not using the ballroom, why he'd been so angry when he'd first seen Fraulein Maria inside it, that a stranger would dare to simply walk into that room…
On an impulse, he strode back into the house, to the formal ballroom, which was going to be given another thorough cleaning before the party. It was empty now, the maids busy elsewhere, and he looked around at the ornate walls and tried to picture it as it had been on that night when he and Agathe had danced, tried to pull the memory to his mind.
And yet…
The faint strains of music he heard in his mind from his memories were not of a waltz. Not anymore. He looked around this room and in his mind, he heard his children's voices, yodeling, heard Brigitta's sweet voice singing about a girl in a pale, pink coat… He heard Fraulein Maria's voice, clear and beautiful, lilting her way through the lyrics of the songs for the puppet show…
He abruptly returned to himself to realize that he was standing alone in the ballroom, smiling to himself at the memory of a puppet show, and he straightened, with a small sense of shock at his own behavior.
And what good was it to resolve to keep his distance from his children's governess if he spent his time going over all his memories involving Fraulein Maria?
He should return to Elsa, try to help her with the preparations for the party.
He did and Elsa smiled at him as he returned to the little room she'd appropriated as a study of sorts while she prepared the details for the party. It was a smile that made her eyes sparkle and which had more than once drawn him to her from across a room.
And yet, somehow, that afternoon, he found her smile and her sophisticated charm infinitely less attractive and less distracting to his peace of mind than a certain, impertinent governess with blue eyes and a smile so bright it could light up a room…
~To be continued…~