And we're back with the next chapter! HUGE thanks to those who reviewed the previous chapter: MaryChapel and Misfortune. You guys really do keep me going.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 4:
"This is absurd."
"This is impossible."
"Surely one of us should know how to do this."
"And where would we have learned, pray tell?"
"Mother clearly neglected a crucial part of our education."
Sighing, Rapunzel broke into the conversation. "I could try to braid my hair myself," she suggested. The two brothers had made at least seven aborted attempts to pleat her golden locks and were just embarking on their eighth.
"No, I think I've finally got the mechanics of it," Nick replied, giving her hair a quick tug as he divided it into three parts. "I start by crossing this part over the center, right?" With excruciating tentativeness, he passed the chosen third of the hair over the center division. Will, recently returned from his business trip, took the hair from Nick with equal hesitancy.
"Now cross that bit on your side over the middle," Nick told him, although it sounded more like a question.
"This is taking a very long time," Rapunzel remarked, wincing as Nick's attempts to tighten the nascent braid became increasingly rough. Her tone was mild, but held a hint of steely impatience.
Ever the concerned lover, Will was quick to conciliate her. "I'm so sorry!" he exclaimed as he crossed another segment of hair over the center. "It's just that we don't want your hair to become any sort of an issue, and pleating it seems like the most likely way to disguise the length."
"The braid will still trail a bit, but if we pin part of it up, it should look slightly more… normal. At the very least, no one will step on it," Nick added, frowning in concentration.
"Nick, are you certain I learned enough?" Rapunzel anxiously asked. "I've been studying."
"I know. You kept a full place setting so that you could review silverware," he remarked in amusement.
Will was positively beaming with pride. "I love how studious you are," he told his fiancé. "My parents will love you, too. They'll delight in your provincial charm."
"Continental charm," Nick corrected him. "She's from the continent. She's German."
"I'm German," Rapunzel agreed. "Guten tag. Wie geht's bei Ihnen?"
Will and Nick paused in their very unskillful braiding and stared at her in shock. "Do you actually speak German?" Will asked her.
"Only a little. My mother speaks it quite well," she explained.
"What is your mother's name?" Will asked, his curiosity piqued.
"Oh, I don't know. I only call her Mother." Rapunzel gently but firmly took her half-formed braid from Nick's hands and deftly began to finish the plaiting. "Sometimes I'll call her Mutter, as well. That's German."
"Yes, obviously," Nick muttered. He was slightly anxious about bringing Rapunzel into town and hoped to get it over with quite soon. Would his parents accept her? Surely they wouldn't turn her out of the house, but they might well have some reservations about welcoming a strange pseudo-German woman into their home, no matter how practiced her table manners were.
Aside from those concerns, he had the rather selfish desire to run to the university library before it closed to see if they had received Dr. Auttenberg's papers. Of course, he knew that they hadn't. Maria Auttenberg probably hadn't even returned to her own university yet, and even if she had, she had almost certainly forgotten the young English medical student who had barged in late to her lecture and thrown himself at her afterwards.
But when she called him 'Mr. Ormandy,' she had said his name like she intended to remember it…
"Nicholas, are you alright?"
Nick emerged from his reveries to find Rapunzel frowning up at him as she skillfully pinned the end of her braid at the nape of her neck. "Perfectly fine," he replied with a huff, irritated that she had caught him in a state of distraction.
"He's dreaming of his intellectual muse," Will said with a smirk that made Nick want to punch him. Fool that he was, Nick had told Will about his conversation with Dr. Auttenberg, and as usual, Will had read far too much between the lines.
"What is an intellectual muse?" Rapunzel asked. She was still frowning, though now she sounded quite curious. It was truly a marvel to see how easily she was managing her absurd hair.
Nick had no desire to further the discussion. "Nothing. It's something that Will made up."
But Will was shaking his head and smiling knowingly. Infuriatingly. "Our dear Nick has been in raptures for the past several days over a beautiful young university professor. Well, maybe not young, but at least not very old. I must say, Nick has singular tastes."
"I've been in raptures over her research," Nick stiffly corrected him.
"Research is an extension of the soul," Will said, though it made absolutely no sense. Romantic nonsense was second nature to him. "Thus, Nick, I think you are attracted to her soul."
"That's beautiful," Rapunzel said, clutching Will's arm and turning an approving smile upon her future brother-in-law.,
"That's idiotic," Nick said.
"He's losing sleep over the possibility that he might actually be able to read her papers," Will informed his fiancée. "Doesn't that sound rather dirty?"
"I'm not sure what you mean…"
"Will, please keep such comments to yourself." Nick was quickly losing all semblance of patience.
"Sorry, but in that context it sounded like a euphemism."
"What in God's name is wrong with you? It's not a euphemism."
"William, what is a euphemism?"
"Will, if you explain euphemisms to her, you will dearly regret it."
"Are we ready to depart?" Will suddenly bellowed, completely ignoring Rapunzel's question and Nick's admonishment.
Rapunzel immediately leapt into action. "Yes, I've packed all my things," she said, pattering over to her bed and hoisting a large sack that apparently contained all her earthly belongings. "Mother has never given me a proper trunk, so I thought a sack would be sufficient. But will it look strange? Will people think me peculiar?"
"She's suffered a great deal of hardship," Will remarked to his brother.
"I don't doubt it," Nick sighed. "Don't worry, Rapunzel. We'll tell our parents that when we rescued you from bandits, they emptied your trunk and left only what you can carry in that sack. It's a perfectly reasonable explanation, given the story we've concocted."
"You always have an answer!" she happily exclaimed. "It will be such a joy to be a part of your family."
Rapunzel's sincerity was charming enough to overcome any irritation, and Nick smiled despite himself. Perhaps it really would be a joy. "Then if you're so eager, why don't we escape this tower?"
The escape was not such an easy thing. The brothers had brought a great deal of rope to assist their climb and their descent – its length was at least three times the height of the tower. Still, they were concerned about Rapunzel, whose confinement meant that she was unused to physical exertion of any sort.
Nick was the first to descend, relying upon Will and Rapunzel to lower him by the rope. When he reached the base of the tower, he watched as Will tied the rope about Rapunzel's waist and looped it over a wooden beam near the tower window. Normally he would have yelled up some words of instruction, but he trusted that Will's love for Rapunzel would make him cautious and thorough.
They now had to bring Rapunzel safely to the ground. She closed her eyes tightly as Will painstakingly lowered her over the edge of the window. He grunted with exertion, and his muscles strained against his skin as he gradually let more and more rope slip through his hands and over the beam. When he had used all the slack he had, it was Nick's turn to release some of the rope at the bottom of the tower. The slack traveled up the tower, over the beam, through Will's hands, and down once again until Rapunzel's feet were safely on the ground.
Nick quickly untied her, barely noticing her wide eyes and the way she clung to the stones of the tower. There was still work to be done. Will had retrieved the rope and tied it around his own waist, ensuring that Nick had enough slack on his end to gradually lower Will down the side of the tower, just as they had done with Rapunzel. When Will was finally reunited with his fiancée and his brother, they tugged at the rope until they had retrieved its entire length. They dared not leave any trace.
Although Will's arms were burning and he was gasping for breath, he tended to Rapunzel first. "Are you alright?" he asked her. "Did the rope hurt your waist? I had to tie it tightly so that you wouldn't slip, but it may have been too tight…"
"Ah, yes, it hurt a little, but nothing too terrible," she replied in a highly distracted manner. She was simply looking, staring at everything around her, her mouth partly opened and her eyes as wide as they could possibly go. "I always wondered what it would be like outside." She murmured this last sentence in a voice of awe. Kneeling down, she gently stroked a blade of grass.
"Yes, isn't it beautiful?" Will said. He was positively beaming. "I can't wait to show you a real town. You'll be stunned. Don't be worried about all the people; I assure you that you'll grow accustomed to the noise in time. You'll adjust. And I know your manners will be more than sufficient; in fact, you'll charm everyone you meet. I do hope we can throw a party for them at some point. Our engagement party will be spectacular, of course."
Nick stopped his ramblings with a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Will, let her be," he hissed. "Let her revel in it."
And revel she did, gazing up at the trees and the tower and the blazing sun with awestruck eyes and an ever-widening smile.
Chapter 5 should be coming soon. Let me know what you think!