THREE
"Let me help you with that."
The words startled Maria and she immediately spun around to see who it was, though the sudden quickening of her pulse at the sound of his deep baritone voice left her in no real doubt.
"Oh, Captain!" she exclaimed in surprise. She had no idea that he had even returned from town yet, let alone that he was in the grounds. He smiled at her, and as usual she felt her face begin to redden.
"Forgive me for disturbing you Fraulein," he said matter-of-factly, "I merely came out to see that the children were... enjoying their swimming..." he raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, well they were suffering so much in the heat that I thought-" she interrupted him quickly, certain that swimming in lakes was not an activity which children of an aristocratic family should ever be seen doing, but determined to justify herself anyway before he began lecturing her. He surprised her again by holding up his hand and laughing.
"As much as it may surprise you Fraulein," he continued good-humouredly, "For once I did not intend to reprimand you…. Whilst swimming in the lake is a rather... unconventional activity, I have to say that in this weather I rather envy them!"
Indeed he did seem to be rather affected by the heat. Maria had never seen him without a jacket and tie before and his shirt was clinging slightly to his chest. His hair was also rather ruffled as though he had run his hands through it several times and then not bothered to comb it. It gave him a slightly roguish appearance, which, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, just made him look all the more handsome. As soon as the thought crossed her mind she forced her gaze away from him and back onto the children, telling herself once more that it was highly inappropriate for her to consider her employer 'handsome', and besides, as a committed future nun, there was no place in her life for handsome men anyway.
This handsome man however seemed determined to be in her life for at least while longer.
"May I?" she turned back around to see him gesturing at the ground beside her, asking her permission to sit down.
"Of course, Captain," she replied. A part of her was suddenly certain that she should get up to leave - he had a unique way to make her feel emotions which were dangerous and unfamiliar, especially when they were just in each other's company - but as she watched him lean back against the tree and stretch his legs out in front of him, that part was drowned out by a sudden compulsion just to be near him.
"Tell me Fraulein," he said, fixing his gaze on her, "Whose idea was it to go swimming?"
She wasn't really sure why he was asking her, after all, he had just said that he had not come to reprimand her, and she could not resist teasing him slightly: "Well you see on this particular day the children had little enthusiasm for 'marching about the grounds, breathing deeply'..." she quoted his previous words back at him and saw his eyes widen slightly in surprise before he laughed again.
"Can a man not be allowed to forget any of his mistakes, Fraulein?" he asked, smiling.
She smiled back at him, thinking how different he was now from the stern disciplinarian with his orders and whistles who she had first met when arriving at the villa.
"Now then," he continued, leaning forwards and picking up her guitar, "Let me show you."
He strummed his fingers slowly across the strings before quietly beginning to sing.
The song obviously meant a great deal to him - Maria could hear as much in his voice as it rose and fell through the verses, making the performance one of the most poignant things she had ever witnessed. She felt a lump rise in her throat as she watched him, the music stripping away the aristocratic pretentions of his titles and leaving just the very essence of the man behind.
The sight held her spell-bound, and she suddenly felt very privileged that he would sing for her alone.
He kept his eyes fixed on the guitar all the way through the song, but as he finished the last note he lifted his gaze to look at her. In that instant she felt suddenly closer to him than she ever had before. In all the time they had spent together over the last few weeks – all the late night and early morning walks around the grounds when they would just happen to end up together, the long conversations they had entertained about topics entirely unrelated to her governess' duties, and even in those moments she would later refuse to think about, when he would tease her in that wicked way he often did, or she when would catch herself admiring him or thinking about him in ways she most definitely ought not to have been- she had never before felt quite as connected to Georg Von Trapp as she did in that moment. Her throat constricted over any words she might have wanted to say, and it seemed that he could not think of any either, for they sat, simply staring at each other, until eventually the Captain broke the silence with a slightly sheepish smile and the words:
"You try - play it slowly and I'll show you the notes."
Maria nodded and reached out for the guitar, not daring to meet his gaze as she settled it across her lap. She was a little self-conscious at first, acutely aware of how intensely he was watching, but her confidence grew as she went through the verses.
It took three renditions of the song before Maria could play every note correctly. The Captain was a good teacher, correcting the few parts that she played out of tune, and by her third time through he simply sat back and listened.
"...bless my homeland forever." She reached the last line and finally looked up. He smiled at her.
"Thank you Fraulein," he said softly.
"Thank you?" she echoed, "What for? It was you who taught me to play!"
The Captain shrugged, looking suddenly slightly uncomfortable as though he was once again not quite sure what to say.
"Oh for a few things..." he replied casually at last, "You have a very beautiful voice."
She felt herself reddening again both at the compliment and the intensity in his words. Quickly she looked back across the lake at the children.
"They seem to be having a marvellous time," she said, steering the conversation back to a safer topic.
"Yes," the Captain agreed, "I am rather tempted to join them myself!"
Maria closed her eyes for a second, silently praying to God that he would do no such thing.
"I don't think I have ever known it to be this hot in Salzburg," he went on, sounding irritable now, "If this weather doesn't change soon then I think we may all have to emigrate…! How do you fancy re-locating to cooler climes, Fraulein?"
She laughed and looked back towards him. He was undoing the top buttons of his shirt and had rolled up his sleeves to the elbows.
"That is quite appealing, Captain," she replied honestly, "It certainly is terribly warm."
They sat for a few moments in companionable silence, both looking towards the children to avoid looking at each other, before Maria remembered something that she had been intending to ask him.
"Captain?" she turned back towards him and felt her heart skip a beat again as his eyes instantly flicked to hers, "I wanted to ask you about the arrangements for the children this evening." He frowned slightly so she prompted him with: "You informed me yesterday that you and Baroness Schräder are to be entertaining friends of yours..."
He interrupted with a slight groan. "Yes of course, Fraulein," he said, "I had mercifully forgotten for a moment…."
"I assume that the children and I will be eating separately?" Maria asked when he said nothing further, "Or do you intend for us to take dinner with your guests?"
The Captain laughed, "No," he replied, shaking his head, "I most certainly will not permit the children to dine with these particular guests!"
"Is there..." Maria searched for the right words, "Some problem with them Captain?"
He smiled, "Only if you can call an insatiable appetite for gossip-mongering and scandal a problem, Fraulein," he paused and then answered her questioning look with, "Lieutenant Steiner has quite a... reputation both for being involved in scandal himself, and for never forgetting a scandal anyone else has ever been involved in."
"Ah, I see," Maria replied, though she was not sure that she did completely see at all.
"I don't think he is much used to children," the Captain elaborated, "And I have yet to know him tell a story which I would not consider it wholly inappropriate for even the eldest to hear."
"Is he really so bad?"
The Captain shrugged, "Perhaps I'm being a little harsh," he admitted, "After all we have had many good times together… it's just that he never grew out of them, I suppose," he paused, "And he is certainly the kind of man who I would be horrified if my daughters became embroiled with and ashamed of my sons if they grew up to be like!"
"I'll take dinner with the children earlier then," Maria said after another pause. She was suddenly curious about this Lieutenant Steiner - he sounded so unlike both the Captain and Herr Dettwelier.
"Good," he agreed, "Then perhaps the children could be briefly introduced - I suppose it would be impolite for them not to make an appearance at all…." he smirked suddenly, "Just make sure that they do not stay around long enough for Christoph to decide that they should hear any stories about their father!"
"Stories, Captain?" Maria could not resist teasing him slightly, her curiosity inevitably aroused. The Captain laughed again, though the sheepish smile was back.
"Nothing too scandalous, Fraulein," he tried to reassure her, though she suspected that their definitions of 'too scandalous' might differ somewhat. She raised an eyebrow at him, and was amused as she watched him shift uncomfortably. "Let's just say that at some points in my life I did not always find it so easy to resist every one of the seven deadly sins!"
'Gluttony, greed, sloth, pride…' the names flitted through her mind at a speed even Sister Berthe would have been proud of, 'Envy, wrath, and…'
His eyes sparkled at her.
Lust.
Perhaps that was what he was thinking of.
"Well I think there are times in all of our lives Captain, when the good Lord does not make it so easy for us to resist those temptations."
The instant the words were out of her mouth she regretted saying them aloud. They were undeniably true though, and she knew precisely why she had said them - at that very moment, with him sitting just a few feet away from her and looking so wickedly, devilishly handsome, they had never been more apt. She blushed even deeper, once again cursing her running mouth as the expression in his eyes changed to one of amusement.
"Is that so, Fraulein?" his tone was playful now - clearly he had noticed her discomfort and she was sure he must also know exactly what she was thinking.
"Yes, well I… um..." she implored her mind to think of some witty response – or if not witty, at least intelligible - but just found herself trailing off into silence. The Captain raised an eyebrow and smiled, a teasing, wicked smile which she had never seen before, and which made her feel distinctly uncomfortable.
She leant forwards and reached for the bowl of water and wash cloth that she had brought outside. She couldn't bear to watch him looking at her like that for even a moment longer, and spread some water quickly across her face and neck, trying in vain to cool her skin which suddenly felt as though it was on fire. All the while she could feel him staring at her and though she wanted to turn away, her eyes soon traitorously found their way back to his face.
Nothing could have prepared her for the intensity of his gaze. Indeed she had always been rather scornful of such things when Josephine would read aloud from eminently unsuitable books which she had sometimes smuggled into the abbey. Rather starry-eyed at the best of times, she would read out some of the century's finest romantic nonsense as though it should have been appendix-ed to the Bible as the very word of God.
'And with a flutter of her heart and a flurry in her stomach, she felt her breath catch,' she would read of the heroine's first encounter with her usually rather saccharine hero, 'His eyes were as two stars hanging in the darkness, burning and smouldering with such passion as she had never seen before. She would know nothing in the world but those eyes, hanging before her and burning with all the luminosity of a sun. He swept away all intelligent thought, all ability to speak, think, act, or even breathe...'
"Well I'm sure I would never be so feeble-minded around a man!" Maria had once scoffed, thoroughly disputing every line as an utter impossibility.
But that afternoon, staring into the eyes of the decidedly less-than-saccharine Georg Von Trapp, such literature was proved rather more than just romantic nonsense after all. If Josephine had been there at that moment, she would have pointed her finger at them gleefully, and declared that her friend now had more than enough evidence - and evidence of the best and most overwhelming kind - to refute every one of her claims.
"You are absolutely right Fraulein," the Captain spoke very softly and Maria struggled to concentrate on his words, "And sometimes they are the most exquisite times of our lives..."
Exquisite. He was exquisite - exquisite, handsome, perfect and dangerous - very, very dangerous.
He began to move slowly closer - little by little as though he didn't quite know what he was doing.
She certainly had no idea what she was doing. Just like the heroine in Josephine's novels, she was thoroughly and utterly overwhelmed by him, and wondered if she could move even if she wanted to.
And she was not at all sure that she did want to either - his look both terrified and completely exhilarated her.
He reached his hand up towards her and brushed it slowly across her cheek.
The blue of his eyes was darker than she had ever seen it. She heard a soft sigh escape from his mouth and her eyes dropped to his lips as they came nearer to her own...