A/N – This chapter focuses on moments that occurred in my particular fanon.
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The Summer girl is sentimental. Having an active existence only during the warm months, it becomes necessary for her to lay in a stock of sentiment during the three months that will last throughout the year. Therefore she is very sweet, very tender, very caressable. The young mail [sic] who claims her for his own for June to September is believed to have a very "soft" time of it. He is supposed in sentimental slang, to have all the hugging and kissing he wants. The Summer girl always has a supply of kisses on hand. It is true some of her kisses are rather stale, having been lent all Winter, but when they are warmed up they pass very readily for fresh ones. The young man who cultivates Summer girls is not very particular what kind of kisses he gets so long as they are the cling kind.
~ The Leavenworth [KS] Times 5 August 1883: p. 2, second body paragraph
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Sadder but wiser
When Harold Hill overheard Marian Paroo enumerating the qualities of her ideal man, he was genuinely unnerved. Sadder but wiser gals weren't supposed to dream of white knights. They weren't supposed to want anything… at least, anything other than a good time for a short while, which he could readily provide. The librarian should have been far too canny and cynical to entertain such innocent, girlish fancies. It just didn't add up.
Yet here Harold was, spying on Marian through the library's wide windows and trying to puzzle out the inscrutable paradox she presented. The wistful note of romantic longing that suffused her melodic voice as she conversed with her mother now permeated her gaze. When she dropped her aloof ice queen act, she was somehow even more alluring. This irked him, for reasons he couldn't quite discern and were probably too dangerous to parse out, even in the privacy of his own mind.
But he pondered them anyway as he watched her. After their disastrous interlude in her back yard, the conman had honestly started to question whether the librarian was capable of more than a glimmer of sensual feeling for a man. As it turned out, she was indeed, but none of her feelings were for him in particular. Miss Paroo's imaginary white knight was nothing at all like him, in point of fact, which really shouldn't have mattered but rankled his masculine pride anyway. Despite the spark of attraction he'd teased out of her earlier, the librarian's endearingly dreamy expression was not for Harold Hill. And he found himself foolishly, embarrassingly, begrudgingly jealous that there was another fella who had succeeded in touching her mind and heart so deeply… even though it was nothing but an inconsequential chimera of her own invention!
Harold reassured himself that such unwarranted sentimentality on his part was merely one of the side effects of not being used to any woman, let alone such a gorgeous specimen of femininity, holding out against his ardent advances for so long. When the librarian's eyes finally met his and he saw that the desire in them was at least partly for him after all, he was ridiculously elated – and firmly convinced that a good romp in the cornfield with her would cure this unsettling malady that had inexplicably taken hold of his senses.
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The rose garden
Harold had seen many emotions play across Marian Paroo's beautiful face in his brief time in River City – anger, disdain, delight, and longing, to name a few. But when he spied the hurt in her eyes as she gazed wistfully at his public display during the picnic commemorating the late Henry Madison, his heart palpitated in an odd staccato rhythm and his stomach lurched uncomfortably.
It wasn't right that such an elegant and dazzling woman should be so lonely. Especially when she looked so scrumptious on this occasion, too, in her pink rose-bud gown. She ought to be the belle of the ball surrounded by friends and admirers, rather than lingering resentfully at the edge of the avid crowds that were perpetually drawn to him.
So instead of ingratiating himself with the mayor or flirting with the town's most prominent ladies, as he ought to have been doing – as he had planned to do today – Harold found himself spending a good fifteen minutes all by his lonesome scouring the gardens for a rose that was the precise shade of the librarian's brilliant gown. When he finally located just such a bloom and then spent an additional ten minutes tracking Marian down in an out-of-the-way alcove so he could present his hard-earned gift, he should not have been so disheartened that it – he – was soundly rejected, given that she still despised him.
But Harold was chagrinned anyway, enough that he squandered the rest of the event dethorning this stubborn flower (he had to soak both hands in Epsom salt that night to stop the stinging), writing the most winning note he could manage with his sore fingers, and chatting up Mrs. Paroo so she would conspiratorially deliver these tokens to her recalcitrant daughter.
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Fair warning
Harold's heart beat in that strange syncopated rhythm again the moment he spotted Marian Paroo marching purposefully toward him. He'd been loitering on the sidewalk in front of the library all morning, attempting to scheme his way around the ironclad ban from the premises she'd decreed in recompense for the liberties he'd taken in pursuing her, when she helpfully provided him an opening: if Winthrop took to his cornet, the music professor would be granted entrance to Madison Public Library once more.
At first, he wasn't sure exactly where the conversation was going when she opened it, but it quickly became clear Miss Paroo cared so deeply about the boy's happiness that she was willing to swallow her substantial pride in order to bargain with a man she could barely bring herself to be civil to when in his company. It couldn't have been easy for her to seek him out like this, and his admiration for her sheer nerve increased. Few women, if any, were as indomitable as Marian Paroo!
It was quite something to fathom, how much she loved her little brother. The charlatan had only ever loved one person that much in his life – his dear, sainted mother – and she was dead now. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like, but when his eyes met Marian's he remembered not just what it was to love, but also to be loved in return. And he ached for it, in a way he hadn't allowed himself to since he learned of his mother's death.
Harold had never even gotten to say a proper goodbye – by the time he arrived home, his mother was already dead and buried, and insultingly, too, in a pauper's grave without even a proper headstone to mark her existence. So he would make damn well sure that his farewell to Marian would be memorable enough to keep him warm on the many cold winter nights that were sure to be in his future.
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An impromptu stroll
Harold had seen Marian Paroo smile before, and he appreciated the way it not only lit up her countenance, but transformed her entire personality. She was truly one of the most incandescent women he'd ever beheld, when she smiled. But when he personally delivered her little brother's cornet and she focused the full force of that sweet beam on him, he wasn't fully prepared for how much it would addle his rational mind.
And undo him, it did. When the would-be music professor escorted Miss Paroo back to the library after the Wells Fargo wagon departed, he didn't try to wheedle his way inside. He didn't even talk to her during their leisurely stroll to the building. Instead, he found himself simply enjoying her company – another novelty he'd never experienced with an object of his romantic pursuits. He did muster up the gumption to flirt with the flustered librarian once they'd reached their destination – she was gallantly and even skillfully concealing her feelings, but he knew an infatuated woman when he saw one. And it would have been an egregious lapse of opportunity not to take advantage of the new esteem he'd earned in her eyes.
But even though Harold now had the upper hand, he almost derailed his subtle, steady seduction by getting a little too caught up in the warmth of Marian's palm as he stroked it with his thumb and the brilliance of her hazel eyes as he stared into them. And so it didn't occur to the conman until after the librarian closed the double doors on him that he'd forgotten to confirm whether his ban from Madison Public Library had indeed been lifted.
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Running into trouble
Although every evening in River City had been beautiful weather-wise since his arrival to town – barring the occasional thunderstorm that rolled through – Harold was determined not to waste a single moment in his dogged pursuit of Marian Paroo. So each night, just after the sun set, he made his way toward Madison Public Library, on the off-chance that he would bump into the librarian.
While the conman had never been a man who felt the need to ask for permission in anything he decided to do, he was not the type of scoundrel to seduce a lady without her express or at least tacit consent of his advances. So even though Miss Paroo had noticeably softened her demeanor toward him of late, he couldn't shake the mawkish desire to hear it unequivocally from the librarian's kissable crimson lips that he was welcome to freely enter her domain.
When Harold rounded a corner and found himself running into Marian in the most literal sense of the phrase, he had to stop himself from tightening his arms around her and kissing her senseless. He was only inches away from those tempting lips, and her breath smelled alluringly of peppermint. She was a lady who maintained scrupulous personal hygiene, and he wanted to bury his face in every curve and crevasse of her, inhaling deeply until he'd memorized her tantalizing scent. And to give her an equally aromatic delight in return, he'd taken care to be even more conscientious in his own grooming than he already was.
However, Harold did not take his usual nightly bath when he got back to the hotel. He didn't even change out of his suit. Since he couldn't kiss Marian just yet, he allowed the faint scent of lavender that clung to his hands, collar, and cuffs to lull him to sleep. It would surely fade by morning, and he could wash up then.
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Chemistry
Dancing always whetted Harold's appetite for carnal delights, and he got an awfully enticing portrait of the grace Marian Paroo was capable of when he waltzed with her in the River City High School gymnasium. To his mind, a woman who moved as sensually as she did had to be at least a little bit knowledgeable about the more intimate rhythms in which she could engage with a man between the sheets. Yet the librarian did not flirt with him as they danced, not even covertly. Instead, she persistently gazed at some distant point over his right shoulder for the majority of their interlude. Her eyes, when they finally met his, were not come-hither. On the contrary – her expression was downright apprehensive, even though it was obvious that she was attracted to him.
Once again, her reticence perplexed the conman. While she certainly knew how to dance – all the false compliments regarding "natural flow of rhythm" and "expression of line and movement" that he'd paid to the preening mayor's wife applied to the lovely librarian in spades – her demeanor was that of a modest maid who'd never made love to a man before. This ought to have turned him right off, but it just made Marian a fascinating enigma that he was even more eager to unravel. She really was unlike any other woman he'd ever met.
It was only their second dance together, and Harold was determined it wouldn't be their last.
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A long lost cause
While Harold could easily attribute his increasingly maudlin thoughts, erratic heart palpitations, and the electric zing that constantly ran through him while in the presence of the librarian as the natural consequences of a lust that had gone too long unfulfilled, he could not explain why, of all the women he'd ever known, Marian Paroo was the only female who filled his mind even when he was insensate. He'd had at least four extraordinarily detailed dreams about the librarian since his arrival to River City, and was aware of several more that he couldn't recall with enough clarity to summarize upon awakening.
Ever since he laid eyes on her, Miss Paroo had wormed her way into the deepest recesses of his mind and took root. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't thought of her in at least some capacity – even when he was wholly occupied with the intricacies of carrying out his latest scheme, Marian lingered at the back of his mind, like a sweet symphony playing pleasantly and unobtrusively in the vicinity. Given the highly irregular circumstances of having to get to know a woman before he was allowed to so much as gently brush her lips with his, it was no wonder he found himself dreaming of her!
While Harold refused to call it love, even he had to own that he felt more for the librarian than abject lust. He liked Marian Paroo. He liked her so much that he had even admitted it to her a time or two in their acquaintance. He liked her so much that he was going to take her to the footbridge, as if he was courting her like a proper gentleman with sincere intentions.
He didn't bother asking himself if he liked her enough to stay in River City for keeps. Because even in the midst of his increasingly muddled feelings, he never forgot that he couldn't stay, no matter how badly he wanted to.