She was allowed to leave.
Though Marion had not seen so much as a single pistol visible among them, she did not feel it likely she could have walked out on the group without their consent.
For years she had known the proper exit path from the maze. Her current state of intoxication did little to cloud her recall of it, but it did significantly impede her physical execution of it.
"Mind you, Pet," came a voice from behind her, "I don't think much of you-or Royston's wife, but I don't think you're even gonna make it back to the house at this point."
'Cousin' Dale appeared from the darkness, giving her a shoulder, briefly, to lean into.
"Can't go all of the way back with you, but really, you would think Oxley would know gentle flowers wot are English ladies don't hold their liquor like Englishmen. Daresay the war's gone and turned his head on the matter."
Oh, what I could tell you, 'cousin', Marion answered him in her mind.
"So you knew Robin, did you, before?" he chatted on, less guarded in his speech as he thought her three sheets to the wind and unlikely to recall any of it. "Don't know what good of an asset you'd make us, quite frankly. The things we need, the information and oh, just the... attentiveness to detail required, not really up your alley, is it?" They were nearly to the terrace. "Though your place does seem quite generously stocked with victuals."
She stood and attempted to straighten herself without using him as a brace. She was not ungrateful for his seeing she got back, but she had had just about enough of his review of her, of her qualifications and perceived shortcomings. And she told him so. "What you know about English ladies would fit on the head of a pin with room to spare, Allen Dale, so you may shut your commoner's gob," she began to tell him what she had ascertained that night of his life. "You've never been among society, not in your life, unless it has been as valet to their cars, or servicing their cookers-or a bored wife or two in the bargain. In fact, you've never worn a tuxedo before tonight, as you don't know how to tie a proper bowknot. Robin has tied it for you, his broken finger that never healed properly putting a perfect crease just there." She tried to indicate the spot with her finger, but in her vision the tie refused to hold its position, and she gave up on the gesture. "So you may take what you think of me, or what you do not, and...and you may go and piss on it for all I care."
She had always tied those knots for Robin, whenever he had let her. And he had always let her. "Now," her clouded mind could think of nothing else to do, and so it fell back on courtesy, "I thank you for seeing me back to the house."
She did not see Dale's initially gob-smacked expression, his moment of being unexpectedly impressed by her acuity, nor the humor he tried to choke back at her grandly thanking him on the heels of so vitriol-filled a lecturing. Charmed, chastened, and more than a little overwhelmed, he melted back into the shadows before they were seen together.
Score one for English ladies, he thought.
"Oh, what fun, what fun this will be..." sang out Kommandant Vaiser from his place on the terrace steps at the sight of the returning Marion. Only moments before he had been deep into what appeared to be an intimate embrace in the dark with Eva Heindl, a native islander of German descent, a pre-Occupation member of the Nighten house staff, and (still, actually) Marion's best friend on Guernsey. Eva was blonde and buxom and beautiful, and she was always invited to any party the Kommandant attended. Her enthusiastic enjoyment of his company could, at least in part, be explained by the needs of her own ailing mother and large family (most still school-age), and the privileges such enthusiasm could, in such times, buy one.
The Kommandant himself never seemed particularly curious about the root of such 'enthusiasm', only the satisfying results of it. He was a master manipulator, a keen manager of people and paperwork, and an observant plotter who lived to accrue dirt on others and then set them up to fall.
Currently, the islands were his chessboard, and the people on them-German or not-his play pieces. And he was proving a cutthroat competitor.
So of course he was chuffed beyond reason at seeing Lady Marion, the bride-to-be of his lieutenant, smashed to the point of being green about the gills on the night of her engagement party.
She could only hope that he had not marked the presence of his own driver walking her across the park and back to the house. Hope that Eva's tongue and other bits were tempting enough to keep such a steel-trap of a criminal mind fully occupied.
The Kommandant, with a faux generosity, offered to see Marion back into the party. He was now all but humming at his juicy discovery of her.
Eva had her, helpfully steering her by the arm.
"Where is he, where is the lieutenant?" he asked around among the guests, attempting to drum up the largest spectacle possible under the guise of concern. And drag poor Marion back and forth pointlessly throughout the house, when in her state she was barely fit for sitting still in a chair.
When they found Geis he was coming out of the kitchens, where he had obviously gone to search for Marion.
"Ah, yes," the Kommandant called for Gisbonnhoffer's attention. "there you are! We have found her, no fear," he laughed to the others present. "Just a short case of cold feet, no doubt..." He showed his teeth in an expression that telegraphed an almost feral enjoyment of the situation.
"Marion," said Geis, concern showing between his brows. "I have been looking for you."
The Kommandant grabbed her upper arm away from Eva, and coolly thrust her in Geis' direction. "I think it is just about time for the happy couple to have a dance." He looked around for the other guests' support. "Don't you all?"
Everyone clapped their agreement.
The band began to play a new song, and Geis walked her to the center of the floor, never one to refuse his commanding officer, nor let down an expectant public.
"I am very happy tonight, Marion," he told her, his voice sounding unfamiliarly full of an almost pent-up sentiment as they began to dance. "That is, you have made me very happy."
She missed a step and bumped gracelessly into his chest. He had been looking down at her, had been close enough to see her eyes, feel the unsteadiness in her waltzing gait. His eyes registered concern, and then something only somewhat less than outrage.
"Marion, you are drunk!" he hissed it with indignation, his eyes scouring the room to try and sort out which others of his guests might have noticed.
"It is," she had not planned on what to say, "only that I am-that I was-so very looking forward to tonight. I-I fear I have over-celebrated." She let out half a hiccup, and attempted a look of penitence.
His expression registered a moment of suspicion, and then a turn as he switched himself into an almost parental role. "Come with me," he instructed her, leading her slowly (so that she might not wobble) from the dance floor by the hand. He walked her to the kitchen so that the guests would not have to see them disappear up the main stair onto the second floor and the bedrooms. They used the winding servants' stair as their access instead, a hard climb when one's balance and depth perception are gone.
"This is not how I saw the evening," he spoke to her, his tone low so as not to have the staff overhear. For a moment he stopped above her on the steps, the narrow steps (not wide enough for his foot) and the steeper-than-usual risers increased his size over her so that he looked a giant in comparison to where she stood.
"I had thought-I had hoped that tonight would prove," he cut himself off when he saw her nearly swoon backwards, the dangerously precipitous stairway below her. He tried to manage getting around her to take up a new position at her back. He had his foot to the step below her, the narrow walls thrusting the two of them almost tightly close. She felt her back to the railing-less wall, the warmth of him at very near. His leg on the higher step bent at the knee, making his height so near her own, the proximity of his face, his eyes and mouth almost distressing.
Below, around his neck and collar, sat his bowtie. But there was something wrong with it. It picked at her scattered mind. Something was missing. It was too impeccably knotted. Smooth and perfect to the point of being immaculate. This was not the right tie she should be looking at.
Gisbonnhoffer looked up the stair, and then down. They were alone. Marion listed slightly to one side and he caught her with his right arm, ensuring that she did not fall, but he let the moment progress until he had her in something akin to a 'dip' in dancing, and the rescue clench he had begun turned into his mouth warm and full, exploring, even, on hers, gin and champagne-soaked, sloppy and (as usual) not fully engaged in the pastime.
She tried not to let her cloudy mind take what he had begun to say to its logical conclusion. Tried not to borrow tomorrow's troubles today, but the kiss made it impossible to gloss over where he had expected the night to end.
She felt a gag start in her throat, not sure she could stop it from its natural fruition.
Apparently, he felt it, too.
He removed his mouth from hers, terminating the kiss, though with obvious regret, and sighed as he slipped his left arm under her legs and ended the question of whether she could complete the journey on her own power, instead carrying her up the stairs and toward her room.
...TBC...
Author's Notation: It has been brought to my attention by more than one person that the song title used for the story title is perhaps somewhat less well-known than I thought it to be. "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" is a WWII-era song, about the things you should not do (as they would be ways to be unfaithful) to your soldier [lover] while he is away fighting the war. 'Sitting under the apple tree' is (or has become) an idiom denoting going to a private place to neck/spoon/snog/make-out. The song is probably most-famously sung by the Andrews Sisters.