CHAPTER 7: INSIGHT

Maria didn't like to bother Captain von Trapp about his plans to leave Italy. But as the days went by, she could see his face become lined with worry; he returned from his meetings with Leo without any progress to report. One evening after supper, she left the children to tidy the cottage and sought him out at their usual meeting place: the bench outside the woodshed, where he sat, staring out into the forest, apparently lost in thought.

"Captain? I – ehrm – I don't want to be a pest, but-"

She waited for a bitter retort, but there was none.

"There's a German unit in Milan," he said quietly. His eyes remained fixed in the distance. "Leo told me about it this morning. They're asking questions. Whether anyone's seen you since you arrived. If anyone's seen me."

Maria's heart tripped against her ribs. Hidden in their forest retreat, it had been easy to forget their uncertain and dangerous circumstances.

His gaze swung in her direction.

"I hadn't expected to be here long enough to worry about the Germans catching up to us, but that was before my arrangements on the other end were delayed." He lifted his hands as though preparing to offer a further comment, but then let them drop into his lap, an uncharacteristically helpless gesture "Perhaps it was a mistake, rushing them out of Austria like that, but I had every reason to believe that-"

"Oh, no, sir, no! I'm sure you're doing what's best for your children."

Talk of the Germans reminded Maria of a question Brigitta had whispered to her last night, just before bedtime, the time when the children's hearts always seemed to open and their fears and dreams spilled out.

"Captain, Brigitta has apparently been worrying herself sick about something. Someone, actually. Herr Detweiler. She said that shortly before you - I mean before we – left Austria, he simply failed to appear at breakfast one morning."

To her surprise, the Captain chuckled.

"Max?" He gestured for her to take a seat next to him on the bench. "Don't worry about good old Max. He's perfectly all right. He was in a bit of a tight spot, and it's got to be kept a secret, but I got him on a steamer to Shanghai, where he can wait out the war safely. I'm quite confident he'll be back in Austria when the war ends, well-prepared to capitalize on the ruins."

"I didn't know Herr Detweiler was Jewish!"

"That's not the problem. It's because he's-" the Captain sent a wary glance Maria's way and said abruptly, "well, yes, Jewish. That's what I meant to say, of course."

Maria couldn't make sense of his obvious discomfort, but before she could sort it out, he quickly changed the subject.

"You look exhausted, Fraulein. You've been working entirely too hard. I worry that you'll wear yourself out entirely before long, and then where would we be?" he smiled faintly, as though the joke itself was an effort.

"Oh, I'm all right," she assured him. "I've been doing housework since I was a little girl."

"Have you? I don't know very much about you. Always going on about myself, I suppose. I'll bet you grew up in a large family, didn't you?"

"Me?" Maria laughed.

But the Captain leaned toward her, resting an elbow on his knee, as though genuinely interested in her response.

"Oh, it was quite the opposite," she explained. "My father died when I was a baby, and then my mother was gone by the time I was Brigitta's age. I was sent to live with my mother's uncle and his wife. They – well, they weren't very kind to me. I had a roof over my head and food to eat, and I was sent to school, but I was expected to do most of the housework. I wasn't harmed in any way, but there wasn't any affection, either. The two of them were too caught up in arguing with each other to pay me any mind."

"No wonder you escaped to the Abbey! Your faith got you through it, I suppose."

Maria shook her head.

"I'm afraid you've guessed wrong again. In fact, I had only just made my first Communion when my mother died, and my uncle and his wife weren't church-goers, and all of that fell away from me. I was seventeen when they died, within months of each other, and so I went to work, and put myself through teachers' college. That was when I got the idea to enter the Abbey. I would come down the mountain, and hear the sisters singing on their way to Vespers, and it was all just so peaceful. It seemed – I don't know, so pure, and noble, and the sisters were so kind. Most of them, anyway," she smiled, thinking of Sister Berthe. "And I wasn't interested in getting married, anyway, not after the example my uncle and his wife had set."

"A pity," he murmured. His eyes fixed on some distant point over the horizon, and a queer, soft look came over his face. "Because it's not like that at all. Being married, you know, it's really quite-"

Having lost her audience, Maria was suddenly aware of having gone on about herself far too long in response to the Captain's polite inquiry. At the same time, there was something about this moment, as though the space between them, usually so charged, had become comfortable and welcoming. For the first time in months, she felt truly at ease in his presence.

"Can I ask you a question?" she said timidly. "If you liked being married so much, then why didn't you marry Baroness Schrader?"

"Elsa?" He shot her a surprised look. "We just discovered we couldn't go on the same way," he said matter-of-factly. "That's all there is to it."

"What does that mean?" she blurted, although it was none of her business. But he didn't seem offended by her question.

"She wanted me to stay and take the commission at Bremerhaven."

"Oh! But you never could have-"

"Yes. I suppose so." He tugged nervously at his ear. "I mean no. Of course not."

There was something off about his reply, something that sent another inappropriate question flying from Maria's lips before she could stop it.

"Or could you, Captain?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I mean, you spent all those years at sea, and the chance to have a command again, it must have been-"

"Tempting. Is that what you're trying to say?"

There was a long, awkward silence, while Captain von Trapp rose to his feet and turned to face her. Maria's heart sank at the thought of having offended him. Her cursed outspokenness! And just as things between them had begun to improve!

"Was I tempted by their offer? Is that what you're wondering, Fraulein?"

Before Maria could apologize for even thinking such a thing, the words poured out of him, as though he'd been longing for the chance to say them out loud.

"I was, yes. God forgive me. I sat on those telegrams for days, and every time I reread them, I grew more ashamed of my inability to simply turn them down. Zeller eventually turned up at the villa to demand an answer, and with Elsa urging me on to do the wrong thing, somehow I was able to," he ran a hand through his hair, "to do the right thing."

"So you are human, after all. Like the rest of us," Maria said. "Reverend Mother thinks you are a paragon. I'll be sure not to tell her the truth."

He sent a wan smile her way.

"I am sorry," she added impulsively. "About Baroness Schrader. I'm sure it was very disappointing."

He shrugged.

"It wasn't, not really. In fact, it helped me realize something. I'm not going to marry again after all."

"But Captain, you are the one always telling me how wonderful it is to be married, and I mean, I can see how sad it was, what happened to – ehrm – to the children's mother, but don't you think she – their mother, I mean, don't you think she would have wanted you to be happy? And for the children to have a mother here on earth?"

He slumped back onto the bench with a deep sigh.

"I wish I could explain it to you, Fraulein, but I can't. Most people aren't lucky enough to find that kind of thing even once in their lives. Just look at your uncle," he said grimly, before falling abruptly silent.

An evening breeze, sharpened by autumn's arrival, shivered through the trees. They'd been speaking long enough that the last bit of daylight had faded entirely, leaving the woodshed and surrounding yard wrapped in violet shadow. The cottage stood in the distance, its windows making squares of warm golden light against the dusk.

When the Captain spoke again, she could barely hear his voice, hoarse and low, over the rustling breeze.

"I just can't."

"Can't what?" Maria whispered.

A long moment, weighted by tangible sorrow.

"I can't beat it."

Through the gloom, she could make out his handsome face turning away from her, as though the admission had embarrassed him.

The memory of that dreadful day in the Mayor's office came back to her.

"It must have been so painful, then, having to marry me. No wonder you were so – ehrm – so cross that day."

She heard, rather than saw, the wry smile return to his voice.

"Cross? That's a bit of an understatement, wouldn't you say? The way I barged into your room in a drunken rage that night, the things I said and did? But yes. It was – ehrm - difficult."

It seemed like there were no limits to where this conversation might go.

"Your ring," she burst out. "You took it off."

He hesitated.

"It seemed disrespectful. Of you, I mean. You were willing to help me out in a difficult situation, even after I'd treated you so rudely at the party, first, and then after the wedding, and then that morning in the forest, and of course there was-"

Hoping to cut off his confession before he brought up the incident by the waterfall, Maria hastily changed the subject.

"And you really aren't sad about leaving Austria, Captain? Don't you miss your home?"

"Of course I miss it. But to be honest-"

Maria leaned forward expectantly.

"I find it easier, being here." he said somberly. "Call it running away from memories, if you like."

Just then, there was an explosion of sound and a flurry of activity coming from the direction of the cottage. Kurt and Louisa appeared, flushed with excitement over a family of raccoons found nested under the front porch, while Liesl followed behind them, shouting stern warnings to keep a safe distance.

And just like that, the Captain and Maria's first real conversation in months came to an end.

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In the days that followed, Maria thought often about that remarkable conversation with Captain von Trapp.

From her very first day at the villa, of course, she'd known the Captain to be consumed by grief for his wife. Hadn't Frau Schmidt told her as much? Somehow, his reconciliation with his children had led Maria to assume that his heart would become whole again. But now, she understood that was never going to happen.

How mistaken she'd been to believe, even for a moment, that Baroness Schrader had broken his heart! Maria still wasn't sure how to make sense of the rumors about the Captain's scandalous behavior in the years between his wife's death and his engagement to the Baroness; that situation was beyond her innocent understanding. But he couldn't have been clearer: there was only one woman for Georg von Trapp, and she was forever lost to him.

This knowledge made Maria wistful, but it also quieted the turbulent feelings for the Captain that had roiled her mind and heart since the summer. She no longer had to despise him, because she no longer took his behavior toward her personally. Perhaps the tender feelings she might have had for him at one point allowed her to forgive him his inability to return them. He was a rake, that was all that was left of him, caught between his attraction to her, which he was at least honest enough to admit to, and the inability of his broken heart to act on it.

Her new insight into the Captain also put Maria at peace with her plans for the future. While still occupied with the family's Italian sojourn, she forced herself to consider, seriously, what she would do when their time in the forest came to an end. The idea of going back to Salzburg as a governess or teacher was distinctly unappealing: every time she looked up to the mountains, Nonnberg Abbey's onion-shaped dome would bring to mind her failure there, and everywhere else she looked, she'd be reminded of the von Trapp family. That must be why Reverend Mother had sought a position for her in Vienna.

Vienna. Yes, she'd set her sights on Vienna. In Maria's mind, the city was associated with Baroness Schrader's tales of the opera, fashionable shops, art galleries and glamorous parties in a sophisticated milieu. Not my sort of place, she thought, yet at the same time, the idea of trying out a very different kind of life appealed to her.

One thing she knew for sure did not lie ahead for her: the Captain could try all he want to convince her of the virtues of marriage, but that seemed an unlikely future. Because when she tried to imagine a husband for herself, the result was always exactly the same: tall, dark hair tipped with silver, blue eyed, broad shouldered, stubborn and impossibly arrogant, with a warm baritone and a prodigious memory for poetry. How would any other man measure up to that?

OoOoOoOo

The days began to grow shorter. The forest blazed with vibrant colors, even as the canopy of trees overhead began to thin; brisk puffs of wind sent scarlet, gold and bronze leaves aloft, only to let them drift gently downward to pile on the forest floor. Even at midday, the sun no longer heated the forest, providing only a feeble warmth that quickly faded with the sun, leaving the evenings quite cool.

Nearly every morning, Georg climbed up to the road. When he was lucky, Leo was there to meet him, bearing food, supplies and even a sackful of worn jumpers for the children. But there was no further news of his plans to leave Italy.

On this particular day, a drenching, chilly rain began just after breakfast and continued throughout the afternoon and into suppertime. By that evening, in the time it took him to sprint to the cave, Georg was soaked to the skin. Kicking his boots aside, he doused the lantern and wrapped himself in a quilt, shivering in the inky darkness and letting his mind wander, once again, to the extraordinary conversation he'd had with Fraulein Maria, by the woodshed.

Georg had shocked himself by confiding in his governess, of all things, expressing sentiments he'd barely acknowledged even to himself. That sort of heart-to-heart discussion had always really been Agathe's realm, not his. Only this past summer had he discovered that talking about Agathe with the older children, and indulging in the things that reminded him of her – music and laughter – had brought a measure of comfort and peace to his mind and heart, and at a time when he'd desperately needed it for the sake of his family's future.

He had the little governess to thank for that, and now he understood a further, poignant reality: her instincts had not been formed by faith, and honed at Nonnberg Abbey, as he'd previously assumed, but rather by her early experiences with loss. It aroused a sort of protective instinct in him, almost as though he'd found a friend, one whose future happiness was worth attending to.

Quite apart from his simmering attraction to her, there was a great deal to admire about Fraulein Maria: her patience with the children, for one thing. Her patience with him, for another. Her ability to keep their spirits up during this miserable ordeal. She was like some kind of forest sprite, identifying birds by their songs, knowledgeably distinguishing the safe mushrooms from the unsafe ones, searching out the last of summer's wild berries hidden deep in the surrounding woods. He would, of course, reward her with a handsome bonus when this ordeal came to an end and she returned to Austria.

He hadn't been entirely honest with her in that conversation. Well, half-truths, perhaps. About why he'd removed his wedding ring, for one thing. And he had been monstrously out of sorts the day he'd married her, in part because it seemed a betrayal of Agathe, but also because, even then, he'd known it was asking for trouble to take the little governess off into the woods, postulant or not. And he'd been right about that, hadn't he?

For a day or two, Georg had foolishly hoped that the cozy chat with Fraulein Maria had put them on safer ground, by creating a different, if quite agreeable, kind of intimacy between them. They were friends, an improbable pair of friends, and that was all!

But tonight, Georg's thoughts warmed along with his body as he continued to ponder the problem called Maria. The enthralled expression on her face when she'd found him under the waterfall had imprinted itself on his memory. They'd been in the forest for so long that her sensible haircut, which had already begun to curl at the edges when he'd taken her away from the Abbey, had now grown into an untamed reddish-gold cloud. At one time, he'd been able to chase his lustful thoughts away by imagining her clad in wimple and habit, but of course, that tactic was no longer available to him. Nor could he go out into the stormy night to chop wood.

It was another restless hour or two before he fell into an agitated sleep, sweating and trembling through vivid dreams of a woman: her soft skin against his, her nails digging into his back and her low moans in his ear. He strained for even a glimpse of Agathe's lovely face, but to his horror, when the dream woman – who had now situated herself between his legs – looked up at him with an impish grin, it wasn't Agathe after all.

Georg snapped awake in the dark cave and stumbled out into the dim light of early morning, shamefully aroused and irrationally angry at Fraulein Maria, who presumably slumbered on in the cottage just up the path, unaware and damnably innocent.

Although the weather had cleared, his mood didn't improve any when, for the second day in a row, Leo failed to materialize at their meeting place. How long would they be marooned in Italy? The Germans were hot on his trail, and in another few weeks, real winter weather would become a possibility, and the next phase of his plan would become impossible to execute.

When he gave up on Leo and returned to the cottage, the children were bustling about the yard with various chores. It was remarkable, the way the little governess kept them occupied. Although at the moment, she was nowhere to be found.

"Where's your Fraulein?" he asked Kurt, and followed the boy's gesture beyond the sharp precipice that hung over the creek bed. When he drew closer, he could see her standing below him, just at the edge of the water, where it foamed against the sharp rocks that bordered the stream.

"What are you doing there?"

"Watercress!" she announced joyfully. "I spotted it there this morning!" Yanking her skirts high over her knees, she began to pick her precarious way toward the opposite edge of the stream. Swollen by the night's rain, the water eddied fiercely around her, lapping indecently at her bare legs. No garters, no stockings, he though irrelevantly.

"Come out of that water at once!" he bellowed, although he didn't know why, exactly, he was so irritated.

Her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"But watercress is so nutritious, Captain. I don't know why I didn't spot it before, but here it is, conveniently right here at our fingertips. I mean, my – whoops!" and then there was a flurry of long, pale legs, and a glimpse of her upside-down bottom, as Fraulein Maria vanished from sight.

Georg took an involuntary step forward, preparing to launch himself over the edge and down the steep slope, but she very quickly surfaced, spitting and coughing, but laughing nonetheless, as though the whole thing was some kind of lark. Her hair lay wetly against her forehead, water sparkled in her lashes and on her lips, and – he couldn't drag his eyes away – her dress was plastered to the rest of her.

For whatever reason, whether it was the dress ,or what she wore under it, or the weight she'd lost since leaving the villa – the results were far more revealing than anything he'd glimpsed on that long-ago day she'd swamped the rowboat in the lake. Her legs were even longer than he'd imagined, he could see that now, and despite her slender build, her breasts were temptingly round, and the womanly flare of her hips had him transfixed.

Even better, she knew it. Under his scrutiny, the smile faded from her face, replaced by an expression that was alarmingly, wonderfully, splendidly similar to the one she'd worn that day by the waterfall.

They might have stood there for the rest of the day, held spellbound in each other's gaze, had it not been for his children's chatter, turning first into cries and then screams, ripping through the air.

"Where's Gretl gotten to?"

"Gretl?"

"Where is Gretl?"

"Gretl!"

"GRETL!"

And then he was plummeting down the embankment, boots skittering against tree roots and pebbles, plunging into the rushing stream, racing frantically toward his youngest daughter.

The one who couldn't swim.

The water was deeper and colder than he would have thought. Just ahead, he saw Gretl's blonde head bobbing in the water. Once or twice, she slipped below the surface, only to reappear.

The third time, she vanished completely.

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Hang on Gretl, Chapter 8 coming soon!

Wayyyy long ago, in the prologue to this story, Elsa mentioned that Max had disappeared. Vanished! At the time, I only included this detail to underscore that the situation with the Germans was already quite dire, creating the need for Georg's hasty and expedient departure. But then a lot of people expressed concern for Max! Among them was bloomandgrow, who, despite the review holiday I've given you, left me a number of kind reviews and exchanged thoughts with me about Max. So here, in her honor, I've resolved the question of Max's fate. It was a chance to reinforce Maria's innocence, too. We may hear more about him later, but I'm not sure.

Thanks to those who indulged my little outburst about Georg not being in love. Lauryn Vi said it better in her wonderful review than I could have said it myself: "he notices far too much and pushes her away far too often for it to be mere attraction or infatuation - but it feels more like he doesn't WANT to love M to the degree that she's become sort of an unwelcome obsession. His self-abhorrence and guilt and refusal to let go of the past is preventing him from accepting that he deserves love and happiness."

I can't be that eloquent, but I do acknowledge that in this story, both M&G are, as one reviewer put it, "all over the place." This could just be bad writing on my part, but honestly, it's where I think they are right now. Confused. Both of them. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.

Someone asked how many chapters this story is going to be, and I would say about twelve, but I'm not sure. There may be a rating change in the future, so please follow it if you are over 18 and like that sort of thing. I am pumping out a lot of chapters while on holiday, but please don't give up on me if you get behind on reading, because my pace will slow once I'm back at work.

That line – "I can't beat it," was borrowed from Manchester by the Sea, a devastating film about grief that I just saw this year. You will never see nor read a better treatment of the subject.

Don't own, all for love.