Stowe, Vermont
September 1945
Craning her neck to look around the church, Maria spotted Lilian Chevalier sitting near the entrance, hat neatly pinned to her head, her hands folded in her lap, sitting ramrod straight, but her gaze was not on the priest. Rather, her eyes were burning into the back of her husband's neck, who was sitting several rows in front of Maria and Georg, he himself sitting equally straight and stiff, staring straight ahead at the altar.
Maria sighed to herself. She was beginning to doubt the efficacy of her advice to her friend, which by now had been in practice for several weeks, to no apparent positive results. Perhaps there were some marriages, she mused sadly, that just could not be salvaged.
"Perhaps I should have stayed out of it," Maria said to Georg later.
"I don't know," he said. "I have known some truly meddling people in my time, but sometimes two people need the push to set things to rights, and often it can only come from someone who knows the repercussions otherwise."
"I was a bit surprised that you did not get on my case a bit more about the matter," Maria admitted.
"Because I know your good heart and your shrewd mind," Georg said simply. "And because if it were not for the hard advice of good friends, I may not have enjoyed such a loving first marriage. There have been moments in ours, too, where I needed a swift kick and got it."
Tilting her head as she frowned at her husband, Maria ventured, "Dare I guess that I was at the center of your row with Max a while back?"
Reluctantly, he nodded. "You were. He thought I was treating you rather patronizingly, taking advantage of your patience and trust for my own benefit."
Maria thought back on those difficult weeks just after the war ended, remembering just how often she herself had swung from moments of elated joy to subdued resignation as her mind ran in circles that started with their newly assured safety and freedom from the clutches of the Third Reich and ended with the sobering knowledge that rebuilding was a ghastly process, and with so much carnage to recover and put in order…
And she could admit now that, had it not been for the distraction of Georg and Max's temporarily displaced friendship, bitterness at her husband's lollygagging would probably have set in and swept over her. Patience had never been her strong suit, and she had made a conscious effort to overcome that in those weeks, thinking of the difficulties and strain that returning to Austria would place on her husband, but it would have ended very soon had her husband not said "Let's go" when he did.
And now she found that she understood their lovely week in Martha's Vineyard much better, and all at once it meant so much more to her than it had before.
"It is incredible to me," Maria whispered, "that two flawed people can love each other so well." Gesturing with a hand, she expounded, "Those flaws are too easily others' downfalls!"
Georg knew she was thinking of the Chevaliers still. She had told him a bit of what she had learned from Lilian regarding how she and her husband had met and fell in love, and the downward spiral that had emerged in the years to follow.
"Do you think divorce is a great sin?" Maria found herself asking.
Georg had the immediate sense that he was staring down the muzzle of a double-barreled rifle when he heard her words. He considered them carefully, aware that he held the tenets of Catholic tradition and commands in far looser regard than she did. However, he did take the vows exchanged at the altar with utmost seriousness.
"I think," he ventured, "that two people should try their very hardest to make a diverging road meet again, but there are certainly times where that does not work, and might never. I have had the unfortunate experience of seeing it so many times over the years, two miserable people stuck in a miserable marriage being miserable together, when they would be less miserable apart, simply because divorce is not done. I find that living that way undermines the entire purpose and intent of marriage, and if one is not going to exercise those elements, well, what's the point?"
Maria pondered his words silently, offering no opinion. Instead, she said, "Lilian told me she is seriously considering it."
"I see," her husband said, waiting for the penny to drop.
"I know I should not be in favour of it," Maria said. "I should hate it! And I am not in favour of it, not really. But she is so determined to rekindle what looks so dead, and it's only making her angrier that he seems content without. I do not think she is wrong to consider divorcing."
She was making a statement, but her inflection had questions all throughout it. She was looking for a validation she did not find within herself, Georg realized. She wanted to be the good, supportive friend and yet had some fundamental ideas that she had never needed to challenge now thrown into an alternate perspective, and she was discomfited by it.
"Was it not Moses who, by God's authority, permitted divorce because of hardened hearts?" Georg asked. "Understanding that it is something to be hated because of the pain it causes, the covenant it breaks, but also knowing that in human fallacy, it is sometimes quite necessary?"
Maria's bowed head raised at these words, and comprehension seemed to spark in her eyes. "Yes!" she breathed. "Yes, of course!"
Georg found it somewhat of a turnabout for him to be laying out theology for his wife instead of she for him, but though he may hate the Roman Catholic institution, Georg von Trapp could never be accused of not having ever opened a Bible. He had read it beginning to end in his lifetime, several times, curious and probing at first and much more analytical and discerning in later years. Of all the words contained in it, the scenarios with regard to marriage had always been the passages he found to resonate with him, and it was his closest avenue to understanding a God that he had never trusted as a youth and disowned as a man.
Maria's face had fallen, now, and she looked as though she wanted to cry. "Oh, but how sad!" she exclaimed, her voice cracking. "God is so merciful to allow us to break the promises of marriage, and for the first time I understand the sorrow of such without that fear of judgment attached!"
She was truly distraught by this, and Georg felt himself automatically standing and moving toward her, drawing her into his arms, holding her close, leading her into the drawing room, where they sat down quietly on the sofa and he held her, so much gratefulness and love coursing through him. She was so special! How many people could take others' pain and empathize with it so completely? To be sure, as much as he tried to understand others in the way that she did, he failed at this daily unless the circumstance was directly personal.
"I'm alright now, I think," Maria said a while later, wiping her eyes as she sat up and straightened her top. "I'll have to scrub my face, though."
"You look lovely," Georg assured, gently tracing his thumbs underneath each of his wife's eyes to wipe away some of the smudged liner for her. "There," he said, kissing her nose.
"Thank you," she said with a sniff. "I'll still have a look in the mirror anyway, but you're a dear."
"You are a walking contradiction," Georg chuckled. "You are not a vain woman and yet you insist on an orderly appearance."
"That sounds a certain naval captain that I am married to," Maria parried back, getting to her feet. She twisted around and held out a hand. "Are you coming with me? I want to take a walk."
"Yes," Georg said, "but put your sturdy shoes on! You don't fool me. 'Just a walk' on a quiet Sunday with lovely weather and no lunch to prepare is never just a walk!"
Maria smiled. "Ach, you caught me! What a pity."
"More's the pity that nobody else gets to share your loveliness, today," Georg teased. "I hardly know what to do!"
"I have a few ideas," Maria said, her eyes dancing with laughter as she pulled him toward the kitchen. "Come, let's make a picnic basket! And we'll take that bit of champagne we have left from the Vineyard. I think I can stomach it now, if I only have a small bit."
"What a capital idea," Georg grinned, following his eager wife to the kitchen. "Do we have any cucumbers? I wouldn't mind something light and refreshing, with some cheese to match."
"We do," she nodded. "I picked the last of them this morning and they've been chilling in the ice box."
"I love your foresight," Georg sighed appreciatively, striding over to the ice box to fetch the vegetables and begin slicing them.
Several hours later, sprawled out over their checkered picnic blanket with Maria cradled in his lap, Georg asked his wife, "Do you think Brigitta will be alright? I felt so horrible driving away from her while she was wearing that dreadful expression of an animal caught in the headlights."
"She will be just fine," Maria said with a firm nod. "And if not, she knows that she can come straight home, because I told her so. It will just take her some time, that's all. She has a lot to adjust to, now!"
"She has her first classes tomorrow," Georg said. "I hope she telephones to tell us about them!"
"I think she will," Maria assured, reaching out to squeeze her husband's hand reassuringly from her upside-down position cocooned in his lap. "Oooh, this is a little dizzying," she said, squinting up at the mountains as she tilted her head back to get a better look at her husband. She pushed herself into a sitting position and tucked her legs under her, reaching for the champagne bottle. "Shall we?"
"We shall," Georg nodded, taking the bottle from her so that she could rummage around in the basket for the two flutes they had packed ever so carefully with the rest of their midday meal. They were surrounded by empty plates and a half-eaten platter of cucumber and potato sandwiches, the cheese and bread all gone.
As he removed the cork with a slight pop, she held out the glasses for him with a flourish, watching as her husband filled the narrow tubes with the champagne. Georg filled one significantly less than the other, confirming his decision with a slight raise of his eyebrow and Maria's quick nod of response.
"To us," he said with a smile as he took his flute from Maria and clinked his glass against hers.
"To the future," Maria added, tilting her head back with the glass and swallowing the liquid in one long gulp.
Georg had paused as he raised his glass to drink, watching the curve of her beautiful neck and the motion in her throat as she swallowed, and he found himself suddenly wearing a silly grin.
"What?" Maria asked when she had finished, looking around at her husband with a bemused expression, "Surely it hasn't already gone to your head? You haven't drunk anything yet!"
He shook his head, wondering, at her. "You are like something from a dream, Maria," he said. "That is all."
"That's rather broad of you," Maria commented. "Do you care to be more specific with your words?"
"If you mean for me to make up a song as I sit here surrounded by nature and my wife, I'm afraid you're out of luck," Georg joked, which earned him a scoff and his wife indignantly crossing her arms, refusing to look at him. "I am not such a talented wordsmith, after all!" he exclaimed. "I'll repeat someone else's words, but I cannot fathom making them up myself!"
"If you say so," Maria said, still maintaining her ersatz offense. She went as far to get to her feet and start walking away, which made her husband scramble to his feet and rush after her, grabbing at her hand. Wind blowing in a sudden strong gust, she turned to look at him, and it took his breath away. Her hair was ruffled in the wind, her cheeks just a little pink from the breeze and perhaps the champagne, her eyes sparking in deep blue hues, her profile absolutely stunning him.
Slowly, he reached out and cupped one side of her face with a hand and stood there, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath his fingers, eyes lighting over every freckle he could see in the glare of the sun. He breathed out, at a loss. "This moment," he croaked. "You, here, like this. My wife, my lover, my friend. So incredibly beautiful. Part of nature and yet belonging only to yourself. Mother to my children. Brave, strong, resilient. My rock. That is the dream that you are, but you are better than a dream. You are so incredibly real, warm and alive beneath my touch!"
There was a long minute after Georg spoke where he wondered if she would respond, wondered to himself if he had actually managed to say the words out loud at all. He thought he had heard himself talking, but maybe it had just been the wind whistling in his ears…
She was looking at him with an unreadable expression, her brow furrowed. And then, she stepped into his arms, and she smiled. "That's much better." And there, she kissed him, clutched him to her body, allowed no space between them except what was necessary to breathe. Georg wondered if it was possible to stay this way forever. Undisturbed, alone, just the two of them in the mountains, warm sun shining down on them as the breeze swirled around them, the birds swooping in and out at intervals.
It was magic. It was them.
Naturally, Maria found herself thinking with a grimace as she scrubbed at the dirty pans from dinner that evening, naturally the lull of belonging to each other alone would end with a crash and a bang.
When they had been content to part from their embrace, she and Georg had packed their picnic lunch and began the trek back down the mountains, moving slowly but surely, Maria having memorized every rock and crevice years ago, but her husband not so much. That, and he was carrying a picnic basket with fragile items in it. They had proceeded to spend a lovely hour in the kitchen, drinking coffee and tea, bringing the kitchen back into order before making dinner, talking of memories and plans for the future, only to realize that they were not alone in the chalet when a huge thud came from the floor above, to be followed by the sound of shattering glass.
Georg, stood next to his wife with cutlery in one hand and a dish towel in the other, closed his eyes as he listened to the carnage become complete.
"The hanging mirror in the guest room," Maria breathed, voice low and dangerously angry.
It was old, ornate, heavy. Not to Maria's tastes, but it had been there when they moved in, and she had decided to leave it, not finding it worth the effort to dispose of, but now Georg could hear a world of regret in her voice.
"What in the world could they have been doing?!" she demanded, shoving herself from the chair she had been comfortably ensconced in.
"I think someone slammed the door open, and someone else forgot to put the doorstop back when she finished dusting the guest room," Georg said, feeling a headache growing from a point just behind his right eye. This was going to be nightmarish to clean up, and it would require a sharp eye, something which he found he could no longer lay claim to.
"Gretl," Maria sighed, "and Marta, respectively." Waving a hand in irritation, Maria said, "I'm going to get the broom and dustpan. Can you check the breadbox for what we have left? It will help pick up the small shards once we've cleared out the frame and large chunks."
Georg nodded and went to fetch the bread, sorely wanting to ensure that he would not go upstairs to find her on her hands and knees herself, but he had the sense, given her demeanor, that she would not take it in the spirit that he meant it, and she so far had not liked anything argued in the name of the baby's sake that had more to do with her efficacy and less to do with the health of their child.
He was pleased to see that his daughters were the ones doing the cleanup work as Maria stood in the doorway, observing the proceedings. "Here," he said, slipping a chunk of bread into her hands, "that's all there is. And I brought up the rubbish bin."
"Thank you, Father," squeaked a tearful Marta. "I'm so sorry, Mother, it's my fault! I should have remembered to put the doorstop back! We were trying to put the linens away, and I tripped when Gretl opened the door—the knob went straight into the mirror!"
Georg nodded and surveyed the mess, himself, saying, "As long as neither of you are hurt, we'll talk about what happened later. Now, let's please get this cleaned up properly." He looked over at his wife and found that she was tearing the bread he had handed her into great chunks with considerable dimension. It was a dense, heavy bread and should pick up the bits of glass easily, at least. She did not seem angry anymore, but she did seem somewhat resigned.
Surely, she did not care for the mirror, but Georg supposed it was the principle of the matter that was irking her now, and instead of responding to their daughters' blubbering at intervals with effusive reassurance, she was keeping it just as neutral and functional as he had. If he looked closely, he could just see the stress rising in her every time the girls picked up large chunks of mirror shards and flung them into the bin, each time introducing themselves to the possibility of a multitude of cuts and a flood of blood.
Only when the big and medium-sized chunks were gone and the girls could stand and use the broom and dustpan did her shoulders seem to loosen and her expression relax slightly. "Here," she said at last, holding out the bread chunks. "Use these to go over every square inch of floor where glass shattered. It will pick up the little bits. I need to go put a new loaf of frozen dough in the oven if we're to have anything for dinner."
"You handled that well," Georg said when he met his wife in the kitchen several minutes later, coming up behind her where she stood at the sink, placing hands on her hips and dropping a gentle kiss to her neck.
"It doesn't feel that way," she murmured back, leaning into him.
"They're plenty old enough to deal with the consequences," Georg reminded. "They aren't five and seven years old anymore!"
"It was an accident," Maria said.
"One that would have been avoided with diligence and care," Georg said firmly.
"It couldn't have been a vase," Maria sighed. "It had to be a huge, antique mirror."
Georg raised an eyebrow at this, wondering if perhaps he had misjudged her disdain for the item. It had, after all, had several years in which to grow on her. She did have many opportunities to look at it on a weekly basis, after all, and once one got around the rather garish varnish, it was not too terrible to look at… as long as one did not look too hard, that is.
"Maria?" he prompted expectantly. "I thought you didn't care for it."
She shook her head. "I don't. Not a bit. But it was our only full-length mirror, and I had got attached to being able to observe my silhouette day by day…"
"Ah," Georg said. He'd had no idea! Of course, he had not thought of it, for he got to observe her growing figure every morning from the comfort of their bed. She was always up first, and always undressed and redressed in front of the great window, light filtering through the thin curtains and illuminating her with a delightful aura of loveliness. It had not occurred to him that her relatively unfussed attitude regarding her body had less to do with lack of concern but rather with quiet, private moments she stole for herself, just her and the child growing inside her.
"It's just as well," Maria said, shrugging. "I was beginning to feel rather conceited!"
"No," Georg shook his head. "We will go to Montpelier this weekend and buy one for our room. Maybe we will find something to replace the shattered one, as well."
Maria looked at him with a most curious expression. If he did not know better, he would say it was a bald cross between love, gratitude, and desire. But he said nothing, and she nodded. "Alright. We'll do just that. We should probably begin looking at nursery items, as well." She reached up with one hand to rub her neck.
Brow furrowing with concern, Georg pulled her with him to sit down again. "That we shall, love," he assured, "though I rather admit that I'm looking forward to speaking with the specialist tomorrow."
"I am too," Maria echoed, "if only to find out if this will be a permanent nuisance."
"I hate seeing you in pain," Georg grimaced. "I cannot abide it. I pray it can be fixed."
"At this point, I will settle for relief," Maria said, "seeing as the aggravation has been more or less permanent since that car crash." Absently brushing invisible crumbs from the surface of the table, she changed the topic: "Anyway, I think I should pay Lilian a visit and have a proper catching up with her. Things do not seem too cheerful for her. Someone ought to check in on her."
"Maria?" Georg said as she stood to leave.
Maria paused, turning in the doorway. "Yes, Georg?"
"You were right, for what it's worth. About distance sometimes being the only way to gain clarity."
"Oh, you are a darling," Maria sighed, her expectant expression softening at once, her eyes glistening and dark. "I don't know what I would do without you!"
Georg nodded, shoeing her out the door with a wave and a kiss. But he meant what he had said, just now. Amongst the attempts to sort out the mess that was the Chevaliers' failing marriage in his head, he came to the reason that Maria had said what she had in advice. What if she had not run away, that night of the grand ball? Would they be standing here today, married and happy, despite everything to the contrary?
He thought of another time, one he often preferred to forget but for a few precious moments: the way Maria had run into his arms, crushing him with her full weight, when he had returned home from a wayward endeavor in England. She had practically clawed his clothes from his body and had seemed entirely focused on one thing: feeling him against her skin, real, warm, alive.
They had been so strained at that parting, fraught with myriad disagreements about how to best ensure the safety of their family and the trust that could be placed in the Whiteheads to keep them safe. After all, Maria had fumed, Robert Whitehead's father had had no problem abandoning his homeland for the first country that would take his inventions and put them to use.
He had found it so repulsive, the idea of not trusting the people his late wife had loved most in the world before him and their children, and having shared in the Italian allegiance in the Great War, it had chafed at him that his wife was not accepting the situation quietly. So they had fought dreadfully, as a result, and when he parted ways with his family in the following days, it was on considerably strained terms that he had bid his wife farewell.
But something had changed in his absence, for them both: for his part, Georg had grudgingly allowed himself to accept the possibility of truth in his wife's concerns, while Maria had filled the void left by his absence with an opportunity to get to know her children's grandparents without her husband constantly hovering to help and guide her. And, for the first time in their short marriage, they had the opportunity to miss one another—truly miss. Not just long for, but really and truly desire each other's presence in the other's life.
"I will never take you for granted again," Maria had breathed at that first kiss of their reunion. There was a desperation in her words that both contained and displayed the depth and breadth of her feeling. "I have missed you so, and I am sorry for the way we parted—"
Georg had cut her off promptly with a kiss of such ferocity and belonging that there was no need for words. They understood each other better, now. They would talk. There would be time to talk later. But for now, in that moment… they simply allowed themselves to bask in their renewed togetherness.
"You would never know they had fought so terribly before he left," Dorothea Whitehead said in a murmur under her breath to her husband. "They are lost to the world."
"Don't stare," Robert Whitehead had admonished, but he was watching the pair with a sense of deep satisfaction settling in his gut. "He married a wonderful woman."
Beside him, his wife nodded. Their approval of Agathe's successor went by unnoticed, but as far as they were concerned, it was fine. After all, the lack of reserve and abundance of abandon as the children all ran to their parents confirmed as well as anything could that Maria Rainer was a worthy wife to this war hero and unquestionably dedicated mother to the children. There was nothing here to disapprove, and all was as it should be.
Southampton, England
April 1938
Georg looked over at his wife from where he stood at the front of the line, Gretl in his arms, and noticed her shaking with nerves. Not that they were expressly detectable, but he knew his wife well enough by now to know that what most people took for simple jitters was her manifestation of nervousness, and the fact that she tried valiantly to suppress it only made it worse. He wished he could reach out to her over the crowd of their children, just to touch her, reassure her. Nothing too terrible could happen—after all, the worst that could happen was that the Whiteheads did not like her.
While there had been a day where Georg would have taken Robert Whitehead's opinion for the gold standard back in his youth, he now had years upon years by which to diverge, and they had, on many aspects. The one that Georg struggled with the most was the fact that after deserting the United Kingdom in the name of his achievements in war-making inventions, he had returned to his homeland and had practically been welcomed as a revolutionary hero, not unlike his father. His wife was no less a formidable sort, which made it curious to Georg that their daughter should be so docile as she was, but he had learned with time that it was a misleading impression to have…
He wished that the children would stop chattering with each other and regale Maria with stories to comfort her and reassure her. They had more in their memories that would calm her than he did, and he was currently the width and breadth of six children away from her.
After casting a watchful eye around the harbor, waiting for the passengers to be released, Georg noticed with relief that Liesl had finally engaged Maria in some kind of conversation, and was regaling her with a story about a time when their grandparents had invited them to England for Christmas and the whole family had gone ice skating, save their mother, who was expecting Brigitta, and Kurt, who was too small to join in the festivities.
Georg could tell when Liesl reached the point in the story where she was describing Friedrich, who had lost control of himself and gone head first into a snow bank. She was gesturing wildly, presumably explaining how he had looked something like a lion, but of snow instead of a big mane. The others were leaning in nearer around her, and Friedrich was blushing, looking for all the world like he wanted to cut in and alter his sister's words. Maria had begun to laugh, and seemed more relaxed by the time the queue was allowed to start filing off the ship. He breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that it could only help her. She was eager, but nervous to be using only English, and so desired to make the right impression on the children's grandparents.
At last, they were all piled on the dock, and Georg set Gretl down, giving the children orders to make themselves decent and get in a straight line, while he took his wife's hand in his and held it tight, giving it a slight squeeze as he glanced over at her reassuringly.
All at once, the Whiteheads seemed to emerge from the crowd, flanked by their chauffeur. They were unmistakable. Old, elegant, stately, regal were all words that came to Maria's mind. And much to her dismay, the expressions on their faces, while welcoming, were not precisely what she would call warm.
Maria swallowed, nervously stumbling over her introduction as she held her hand out to greet them. "Ich heiße—also, ich meine—I'm Maria," she managed, to an understanding smile from both figures, and polite nods.
And then the moment was swallowed, forgotten, for the clamour of the children began as they crowded around their grandparents, moving them all like a school of fish toward where the cars were waiting, a force unto themselves, their parents, grandparents, and the chauffeur swept up into it.
"Goodness," Maria said, louder than she meant upon pulling into the Whitehead Estate. She had seen pictures of British manors and great homes, had moved among Austrian and French estates and inhabited her own however short the time, but it was nothing to seeing this up close and personal! The house—magnificent, of course, but dwarfed by the sheer vastness of the estate surrounding it. And every bit of it was green, so green, a magnificent emerald green—of itself so familiar—but so flat and strange.
"It's small, I know," said Robert Whitehead. "Not much, but it's home."
"It's remarkable," Maria breathed. She turned to her husband, asking, "Agathe—she grew up here?'
"No," Georg answered. "She truly only lived here while living the life of a débutante. The rest of the time, she was in finishing schools or moving about the Continent with her parents. It's more home to the children than it ever was to her. She was most comfortable in the Italian residence they had when we met. We stumbled across each other in Trieste when she came to see a project of her father's to which I had also been summoned."
Maria nodded at this, falling silent afterward as the children piled out of the vehicle and hurried for the front door.
Mrs. Whitehead was being helped out of the car by a footman, while her husband gave orders to the waiting staff about what to do with all the luggage.
"Shall we?" Georg murmured, giving Maria comforting smile as he slipped from the vehicle and offered a hand to her.
"Oh, help," Maria whispered, swallowing hard. Her eyes had gone wide, she feared permanently, but try as she might, she could not shake off the intense feeling of dread. She had believed this all behind her, hadn't given it much thought, what it would mean to be under the care of yet another set of aristocratic customs, felt a familiar, frightening, shrinking feeling in her chest as dread settled over her. The goal for so long had been safety, refuge, but now she wondered: had she walked straight back into the jaws of the thing that had left her so unsettled and uncertain for months?
Unpacking her things in their room, putting everything into precise order, seeing it all laid before her, and donning her best dress for dinner had calmed her. It was nice to see her husband smartly dressed, and the children in their very best frocks. It was a familiar comfort, one that Maria had never expected to affect her, but it felt ever so slightly like the ease of life before, and then came the dropping hammer, courtesy of Dorothea Whitehead:
"Well, that will do for tonight, but I shall certainly ring up my seamstress to have you all measured up properly."
Panicked, Maria looked to her husband, whose expression was neutral, but he nodded a small nod of acquiescence. "I think that will do very well for the children, but I don't think Maria nor I are particularly lacking. She has most of her wedding trousseau, and I can simply borrow a dinner jacket when needed."
"Nonsense," waved Dorothea, "that Continental style is simply dreadful at the moment, and we do entertain quite often. And, you'll find, what was fashionable last summer is not fashionable coming into this new season."
Swallowing, Maria stuttered, "I—I thank you, very much, but… I am in agreement with my husband. The children certainly may be measured, if they wish, and do have need of some things. What I have suits me perfectly fine. I haven't need for anything new, and shan't for some time. The quality of my trousseau is outstanding."
"My dear, my daughter said much the same, and within the year nothing she was married off with fit her as she had a baby on the way. I know about these things, and you should be prepared."
The quiet chatter that had been going on around the table had by now fallen silent, and Maria was acutely aware that a deep red flush had risen to her cheeks. It was embarrassment, yes, but also fury, fury that one should be so frank, and in front of the children, on matters that were not the business of anyone's but Maria and her husband. Suddenly, she found herself feeling very alone, and very far away from Georg, who, in this frustrating British fashion, was seated across the table quite a ways from her. She dropped her gaze to her lap, where her hands were twisting together, and she began her nervous habit of twisting her wedding band around and around.
"Are you going to have a baby, Mother?" Gretl asked innocently, a forkful of cake in one fist and her water glass in the other.
"No, dear heart," Maria answered swiftly, turning her gaze to the child seated next to her, though this distraction did nothing to assuage the burning in her cheeks.
"Could you, soon?" Gretl queried. "I hate being last!"
"I…I don't know," Maria faltered, all too aware of the attention of all seven children, their grandparents, and her husband upon her.
"Your consideration is most appreciated," Georg intercepted in a dangerous, biting tone, which was directed at his mother-in-law. "But most unnecessary. It is a matter between my wife and me, and should we require assistance, you will know it then, and only then. Not a moment before."
When Maria looked up and over at him, it was to see a face like thunder. His rage was the sort that knocked away breath, and satisfyingly, Mrs. Whitehead seemed visibly rattled thereby. Mr. Whitehead, so stark and imposing by Maria's approximations, seemed flustered and uncertain, and opened his mouth to salvage the situation, but Georg raised a hand, and shook his head.
The discomfort that had lodged itself back into her stomach slowly began to loosen, however, and Maria felt herself flooding with relief and gratitude. The issue hadn't raised itself since her revealing midnight conversation all that time ago in Paris, but it seemed Georg had taken her transparency to heart, and was to be her greatest champion in this matter.
"Well," Dorothea Whitehead huffed, "then simply ring for what you need, if it's to be that way. But don't expect readied provisions! If the rumblings are to be believed, there's soon to be a war on!"
"I shan't hold my breath," Georg said calmly, his expression still thunderous. He turned his gaze to Maria, and finding her eyes on him, softened his expression for her small smile at his scathing wit. Then after she gave a tiny nod, he turned, gesturing rather grandly, to address the children, "What do you plan to do with the rest of your week, before you've enrolled in school?"
There were mingled reactions of groans and exclamations of excitement, and this carried the rest of the evening away into a point of focus that did not have Maria at the center.
"Georg, must we stay?" she asked, strained, when they were huddled together in a great four-poster bed that was altogether too foreign, too comfortable, too far away from the cramped, huddled existence they had led in the long months up to now.
"Robert is the best chance we have at a future," Georg said tightly, drawing his arms around his wife. "Not the children, they should be fine, but us."
"I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but I rather preferred our cramped Swiss quarters. The company was much more to my liking and we were simply a husband, wife, and children. Now we're to be swept back up into aristocracy, and instead of feeling relieved, I feel rather wretched. Like I'm being forced by a will that is not my own to live this life."
"That is, to be precise, my mother-in-law," Georg said grimly.
"No!" Maria exclaimed. But when her husband tutted, unconvinced, she conceded, "Alright, yes, It was ghastly and she spared no decency, in front of the children, no less!"
"She takes a much more direct approach, to be sure, but she does not mean harm. This is… simply the way of the world to her, rain or shine."
Silence fell around them for a while, each thinking their separate thoughts, separate memories, separate worries.
"Thank you," Maria said as the clock standing beyond their door chimed midnight. "Thank you for coming to my defense, not leaving me to wallow in my own inadequacy."
Confused, Georg pushed himself up and turned the light on beside him so that he could see his wife's face. "Inadequacy? What inadequacy? We have discussed this, and you made it quite clear why you stand where you stand. I have, in my way, come to stand there, too! I am grateful, relieved, really, that you possess a different frame of mind than most, actually."
"It's just… well, we haven't neglected intimacy altogether, and if there was as ripe a time as any for me to fall pregnant, Georg, it was in Paris. Our coupling was, I think, of a rather shocking precedent. I haven't done, even half a year later. There was a barb, there, in her words. She more or less suggested that I have failed where the children's mother did not. Women conceive regardless of feeling or circumstance, and it hasn't yet happened."
"But, my love," Georg reminded, "Agathe wanted it, from the start, and you have not. That alone should be enough to reassure you. You are a very different woman to her in many ways, this particular one included, and just as ever, it remains a matter between us and should be respected regardless of the reason by others."
"What if there is something wrong?" Maria whispered.
"Then we will cross that bridge when we reach it," Georg soothed. "Why worry yourself now?"
"Because," Maria breathed, "there were a few days in February, as we were preparing to sail, that I thought I might… but it came to nothing, in the end." She paused here, to let him digest these words, and burrowed against him. Taking a steadying breath, she continued, "And instead of being relieved, I was… not sad, precisely, but I felt disappointed, and not in the way that meant a week of headaches and pain and mess had arrived. Disappointed that the glimmer of possibility had not been real."
"You're allowed to feel that, Maria," Georg said quietly, betraying nothing in his voice. "When the possibility is introduced… it spirals into something that invites so many new feelings. Your previous ones are not invalidated in spite of it, and I know it all too well."
"Do you mean… the miscarriages?" Maria asked gently.
"Yes," Georg swallowed, squeezing her. "Yes. The second one… all I had felt before Agathe conceived after the first miscarriage was dread, dread that it would happen again, only the results might be much more devastating. I wanted to stay out of her bed entirely, refused intimacy, but she was adamant, persuaded me, and when she conceived again, there was that glimmer for just a short while, building a future with this new child of ours within, and it gave such joy and anticipation. It resided alongside that justified fear, and though it feels rather traitorous, this strange cohabitation of feelings is altogether one of the very reasons that this life is worth living. I have learned that. I have forgotten, too."
"Oh," Maria breathed, feeling as if the wind had been knocked from her. "Oh, I have been there. And… you have. Recently."
"Yes…" Georg trailed. "Loss, and finding… they are strange things."
"Hold me," Maria whispered, "and find me, please."
And so, he did, and as one long kiss became another, as warmth and pleasure began to flow in waves, as lines and walls of reality blurred within this pinched and worried now with a future that had no certainty, there was comfort in the knowledge that, though their now, descended from two entirely different origins, shaky, moving, and ever-changing, was encased by a "before you" and an "after you" that had come to redefine how they perceived this world, and what had worth, and what really mattered.
Maria had told him, that night almost a year ago now, shrouded in the darkness of the gazebo, that a wise woman had told her to look for her life. He had wondered, then, even as he had asked her if she had found it, if the wisdom had been meant more for him to experience than for her to hear. Her presence, her agency, her unwillingness, her own faults aside, to be stuck somewhere that would lead nowhere, it was an example and a catalyst he knew now that he needed.
He pressed a kiss to her neck, that sensitive spot just at the nape that made her convulse, and joined with her. She gasped in wonder, voice cracking as she questioned how he knew just what to do.
Alongside her voiced exclamation, he privately wondered just the same of her, and resolved that the coming months, though bound to be difficult, he would try to make pass as swiftly as possible. It would not do to linger in a place of stagnation, and Georg had realized as his wife revealed her qualms for being plucked from one aristocratic tradition only to be placed in another, and thoughts, very recent thoughts, that she might be with child, that there was so much more to be done aside from staying or going. He could not rest until that purpose was found.
And nor, he surmised, would she.
"I want to make you a promise, Maria," Georg said the next morning as he buttoned his shirt and shook out his sleeves. She was positioning her skirt, about to zip it up, and had just tucked her blouse into it. Her jacket was already on, though as yet unfastened, and she had yet to dry her wet hair, which Georg couldn't help but think seemed an apt metaphor for the discomfort she had expressed the night before, and the year previously during their engagement. The difference now, was that they were both on a stage that didn't quite fit them, and the tools couldn't be wielded quite so easily, or handed over.
Looking up at her husband, who stood there plainly before the bathroom door in his cuffs and shorts, feet bare, Maria smiled wanly and began to button her jacket closed. "I've an odd sense of déjà vu, and I'm not keen on the idea of promises."
"Oh, my love," Georg sighed. "You are too young for such weariness."
"I think the greater tragedy is that which is imposed upon our children," Maria replied. "I made my choice, but they don't have one."
"I promise you—"
But Maria shook her head, stepped forward, and placed a finger to his lips. "I dream still, how close I came to losing you to a very simple thing: an idea with a promise. That's all a belief is, really. The bullets aren't what cause carnage, Georg, they're simply the vehicle. What I could have lost that night, I chose. Our children did not, and never can. I don't have it in me to hold to any other promise than what our wedding bands represent. Please don't."
Georg watched his wife, searched her face, wondered at this strange creature that had emerged from the night. This creature who straightened his collar, smoothed invisible lint from his shirt, handed him his pants, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Turned away and shut herself in the bathroom, lost behind the dull roar of her hair dryer. This creature that did not at all seem in step with what had occurred the night before.
Slowly, as he tucked his shirt into his pants and threaded his belt, it dawned on him: there was nothing in this new reality that could wipe away the fears and strains of all of his wife's honest confessions, or his, and she was not to be moved from under this weight except by her own readiness. Already the road had grown long, but it was stretching ever longer before them, grim and winding and complicated, full of choices and bereft of promise.
Sighing, Georg knocked on the bathroom door, behind which there was now silence, and when Maria appeared before him, he reached out to her, now a complete picture with her hair set and face made up, and drew her into his embrace, and did not let go as he rocked her, as the breakfast bell rang, and as a knock on the door from Liesl summoned them.
Nor did she release him, and it was the only thing in the world that felt right in that moment.