IN VINO VERITAS

CHAPTER 3

A/N: This story was not submitted to a beta yet. However, it has been throughly revised and expanded, and another new chapter added. A little warning - the changes made the story a bit darker, and probablymore controversial. So, if you like to see Georg and Maria as practically perfect in every way, maybe you should stay away from this one.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Sound of Music, etc.

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Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.

William Butler Yeats

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A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, st. 12

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Maria was the first to break the silence, after the sound of the last note had died.

"What was that? It sounds very familiar, but I can't remember the name."

"Debussy - Clair de Lune, de la Suite Bergamasque," he provided in what sounded to her like flawless French. "Hmmm…" he hummed.

"Yes?"

"I was thinking that you are a good listener, when you apply yourself to it."

Not quite, Maria thought.

In fact, she had been mesmerized watching him as he played. He had rendered her speechless. It would be months until she would understand the nature feelings that overwhelmed her, body and soul. There was something about him, an aura that she had never sensed before, something that she had never been exposed to. It frightened her, and, at the same time, fascinated her. He bared his soul to her with his music. As he played, he emanated a sensuality that was so raw, so basic it was almost tangible, even to someone as innocent as Maria. She was unable to name it, but she felt it, from head to toe.

As he sat there, at the grand piano, looking like the tormented Brontë hero of her imagination, she stared at him again, taking in every detail: the tousled hair falling on his forehead that did not bother to brush back, the open shirt, the elegant, long fingered hands which at times caressed and at times slammed the piano keys. She studied the expression in his face. His patrician profile displayed a raw, earthy, masculine quality that she could very well perceive, since it was virtually tangible. What she failed to understand was the power it had over her, a power that made her impossible to flee from his presence, back to the safety of her room. A force that made it hard for her to even breathe, but at the same time, could not stop her from looking at him. No, the half a bottle of stolen wine she had drunk at the Abbey had certainly not affected her like this.

"I probably should go to bed now…" she straightened herself, concluding that she had allowed her thoughts to go to far – he was, after all, her employer, the children's father, and it could not be right to think of him in any other manner.

"Yes, to bed. At least you will be alone - you are not planning to take any ghosts with you, are you?"

"I don't think I know what you mean, Captain."

"Of course you don't. Do ghosts trouble you as well, Fräulein?" He shot her a sideways glance, his eyes so light blue, so transparent under the moonlight. She stiffened. But he never waited for her to answer. "I am inclined to believe so, at least tonight. You are much too quiet and too… accommodating, not questioning everything I say, not fighting back, not even challenging me. I ask, you answer. You lie, I push you just a little, and you tell me the truth. It has never been so easy, even with my most unruly cadets. You're out of character, not quite your usual self, and that can be the only explanation. So tell me… What dark thoughts haunt you?"

"Dark thoughts?" she repeated.

"What the hell am I saying," he hissed, and she winced slightly at the blasphemy. "None, of course. How could someone like you have a dark side?"

She blinked. "Everybody has a dark side, Captain. Even I do."

"Oh, do you?" was his derisive remark.

"I most certainly do! You've seen it yourself that day you returned from Vienna, when I yelled at you. And just now when I told you about the wine I took from the cellar."

"And do you think that your dark side? Your temper? Or is it your occasional propension to piracy?"

"Ehm – my occasional propension to what, Captain?"

"I am referring to your nocturnal incursions in the Nonnberg cellars."

"It was only that one time, Captain. And yes, I do have a foul temper when I am provoked. You have seen nothing of it yet, you have not witnessed my worse tantrums! We each have our own ghosts and demons and dr…"

"Dragons?" he interrupted her. His eyes were a pale, moonlight blue now, and they gleamed just like the ones of the dragon in her dream. "You've been reading too many fairy tales lately, Fräulein, and they seem to be getting into your head. Or was it the mere possibility of finding your mother's books in my possession that disturbed you so?" He looked at her for a long time, while she remained silent – it was the same gaze she had seen in one of her dreams about him, the one in which it was him waiting for her at the altar where she was going to take her vows, and not the Reverend Mother and the Bishop. Like in the dream, she could not tear her gaze away from him, until he finally spoke again. It was him who looked away then.

"There is so much light around you that sometimes it is just… unbearable." He thought for a moment. "Yes, you are right. How could anything haunt you? You are… an empty page! As wholesome and… pure," he nearly choked on the word, "as they come. You've been so sheltered, locked inside those convent walls that you have not even lived."

"That is not entirely true, Captain," she protested vehemently. "You simply don't know enough about me to accuse me of not having lived at all. My life may have been different from yours, I may not have seen much of the world, but it is my life, and I treasure it as it is."

"O-ho, indubitably! However, Fräulein Maria, if your most sinful secret is to have stolen half a bottle consecrated wine from the cellar of a decrepit old priest, I hate to be the one to tell you, but you have not lived at all. "

Maria crossed her arms in front of her chest, as the words were out of her mouth before she could even think of what she was saying.

"Maybe unlike you, Captain, I never had the opportunity and the means to commit worse sins than those!"

Again the ominous low laugh. "You mean you have never actually been tempted to do anything worse?"

She shrugged, and answered him truthfully. "No, I don't think I have."

"What if you were – uh - tempted? What would you do?" His eyes narrowed and darkened, and it was like his whole body tensed, waiting for her answer.

"Well, nothing!" she smiled, dropping her hands to her side again, her body language a clear indication that she was being completely honest.

"Nothing?"

"I am much stronger now, Captain. It is all part of the process of learning how to be a good nun."

"Are you trying to tell me that you would magnanimously say no to temptation and walk away, unscathed? No qualms, no regrets?"

"Yes…"

"How fabulously naïve to believe that of yourself!" he spat.

"Yet, I do. Why is it so difficult to believe, Captain?" she challenged him.

"Because it is not like you at all. It is not like me either – it is probably the one thing we have in common."

"Oh?"

"We both live under very strict rules, Fräulein, but we choose the one we will and the ones we will not obey. You did that from the very first moment you walked into this house. That day, and in the days that followed, you broke more rules that I care to remember. The thing is that you seemed to know exactly which rules to ignore or break – the right ones!"

"Yes, Captain, that maybe right about me, but what about you?"

His tone was sarcastic when he answered her. "I won't bore you with tales from my glorious days at sea to convince you of that. Maybe some other time," he sipped his wine. "However, right now I am breaking at least half a dozen rules of propriety. To begin with, I am here, in the middle of the night, in a deplorable state of undress, with my governess in her nightclothes, discussing matters that have nothing to do with my children's upbringing or the running of the household. Worse, I even insisted that she drank some of my wine – from the bottle. How depraved, how absolutely improper is that?!"

"But I am here talking to you, and I took your wine! What does that make me then?" she blurted out. Was it a relief that he had acknowledged, in a sentence, everything that had been disturbing her from the beginning? Or did that admission only made the atmosphere more charged? Probably the second – now they both knew they were threading on dangerous ground, they knew that they were playing with fire.

"Remind me – what did you just say about being able to walk away from temptation?" he mocked.

"Captain!" she glared at him. "I am not…"

"No, you obviously are not many things, Fräulein. Tell me then… have you ever lost a loved one?" he asked abruptly. "Have you? Someone so close to you that you shared the same soul, if not your body?"

I lost my whole family, she was tempted to say, even though But her family had always been distant from her, she had not actually felt their love. And what did her body have to do with anything?

She shifted on her stool. "No, I don't think I have. Not in the way you describe it, at least."

"If you never loved and lost before, then you can't know… you can't know what it means to have lived."

"I can imagine… can't I?"

"No, you cannot. You can read about it, you may argue, but that does not compare to feeling it. The Baroness was absolutely right about you the other day. Elsa's powers of observation have always been sharp (1)." She shook her head. "You still deny it, of course. Yet, it is written all over you."

"I am not sure what exactly you are reading, but I am not trying to deny what I am, Captain. It would be hypocritical of me to do so. Nor I have any wish to flaunt what I am, as if it were the only right way to live. What I refuse to believe is that being a… being a…"

"A virgin," he provided. Oddly enough, there was not the slightest hint of irony, in his eyes, or in his voice, when he said the word. The Baroness said it almost like a curse the other day. The Captain, on the contrary, said it almost reverently. But still, the word, coming from him, made her flinch. Probably because until very recently, the only thing that mattered to Maria about virgins was that she was one, a condition that was not going to be changed for as long as she lived. It all began to change when she had to deal with Marta and Gretl´s curiosity about the basic mysteries of life. Since that day, Maria had not given the matter any further thought, until she heard the word from him.

"I was going to say a future nun!" she said cautiously, even though she could feel her face on fire. Fortunately, she hoped that the moon glow would keep him from noticing it.

"You were, but it was not what you were thinking, and it was not what I was thinking either – not after our earlier conversation. So much for not being a hypocrite, Fräulein!" He toasted again, taking another large sip from the wine bottle.

"Guilty as charged," Maria thought. Unable to hold his gaze any longer, she lowered her eyes to the triangle of skin in his open collar. That was a huge mistake. Feeling oddly warm at the sight of what appeared to be a hint of chest hair, she tore her gaze again once more. Why was it becoming so difficult not to think about him that way before? The worst part of it is that he did not even try to hide the fact that he was noticing her discomfort, that he knew exactly what she was feeling. When she tore her gaze from his chest to look heavenward, he let out a low chuckle. It was enough to bring her back to her senses, as a few of her brain cells started functioning again, so that she could, at least, defend herself, even if she had to choke on the words.

"My vir…" No, she did not want to say the word. "My condition does not make anyone oblivious to life, least of all me. It does not mean that I have never lived and that I will never experience life." A sudden idea sprung in her mind and she added. "It does not make the Reverend Mother any less wise than she is."

"Touché! Nevertheless, you are most definitely not the Reverend Mother, and I sincerely doubt that she were like you when she was your age. God knows you would not be sitting here if you were! Nor you are right about her. The Mother Abbess's great wisdom comes from her age, from guiding too many troubled little misfits like you, helping them to find their way into the world. You are old enough to be her granddaughter, so unless you had a little taste of what you are giving up, don't try to convince me you are already wise in the ways of the world, at least wise enough to give it up…"

"Captain!" she gasped, but he did not stop.

"You wanted so much taste of that consecrated wine that you risked being expelled from the Abbey in order to do it, didn't you?" She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. She opened her mouth to speak up, to give him a piece of her mind, but no words would come to her. His next question was even more outrageous. "Stop gawking at me, Fräulein, you know I am right about this. I wonder what other little commandments would you be willing to break before committing yourself to your sacred vows, just to … How was it that you said? To know what it tasted like…"

His words appalled her. He could not be suggesting that she… Oh no, it would be much too outrageous, too scandalous, notably coming from him. Her friend Theresa (1), who was openly unsure about her religious vocation, might have been tempted by the suggestion, but she? The sorrows and the joys of secular life had never interested her in particular, not after the way her family had been shattered. If there was any joy, it would lead only to sorrow and heartache – that was the one valuable lesson she carried from the few early years of her life when she had lived among people who used to call themselves her family.

She was barely able to hide her indignation when she answered him. "Ooooh, none, I…"

"I would not answer too quickly if I were you."

Slowly, he stood up – there was a determined look in his face as he held her gaze. When he took a step towards her, she stood up as well, and place her right hand on top of the piano. She gripped it until her knuckles were white, but she did not take a step back, and held her ground, firmly and bravely. For the first time in her life, Maria knew the meaning of temptation, and learned of her utter inability to fight it – at least against the elusive promise she could read in his eyes. She did not know for sure what was coming, but she knew what he was trying to prove – that she was no angel, no saint destined to martyrdom, that she was simply human and that she had to acknowledge that there were things that she would be powerless to resist.

"Oh help! If he takes another step towards me, I am not going to be able to stop him," was her desperate plea. He took another step in her direction, and her eyes fixed in the hollow of his throat. "If he takes another step towards me, I will not be able to do anything else but walk towards him…"

A loud noise was heard, coming from downstairs, drowning what she could swear was the sound of her name on his lips.

"What was that?" she asked breathlessly, both hands clutching her heart.

The sudden noise was more than enough to bring him to his senses as well, because as soon as she had uttered her question, he was already sitting at the piano again. "A door downstairs. Probably the wind. I think there might be a thunderstorm coming."

"But… but the night is so calm. And there is a full moon… How can there possibly… a storm?" she stuttered. She felt there was a storm going on already, it was all around them – with thunder and lightning. Obviously it was not the same kind of storm he was talking about.

"To a seasoned seaman, a calm moonlit night is never a guarantee that there will not be any storms on the way. Haven't you ever heard of the lull before the storm?" He smiled, and in the next moment, the moonlight was gone, covered by heavy dark clouds. Gone was the soft glow, and they were left in complete darkness. "See, I told you! Just stay where you are," he said in a commanding tone, sounding so much like the Captain she was used to in daylight that she sighed audibly, in relief. "I know there must be a candle somewhere in here."

Maria could hear him fumbling in the darkness, and wondered how he could possibly find his way around the cramped attic, filled with old boxes scattered all over. All she could see now and them was faint traces of lightning, probably coming from very far away, because the sound of thunder could not yet be heard. There was the sound of a match, and then a candle was lit. He placed it on top of the piano.

"Are you all right?" he asked, sounding seriously concerned, his face now illuminated by candlelight.

"I am not afraid of the dark," she said, and her voice trembled.

"No, but you are afraid of me," he stated. "And not without reason, I should add."

"I don't know!" was her near desperate admission.

"I think the wine must finally be going up to my head. I am talking nonsense and I am being unforgivably rude to you. I owe you an apology. It is not you and your sacred virginity, which should not be none of my concern – or anyone else's. No, it is not you, it cannot be you," he whispered, as if to himself. His hand clenched into fists, and for a moment she thought he was going to smash the piano keys again. "It is… her. It has to be her."

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A/N: (1) See The 12th Governess.