Chapter Nineteen

Georg recovered quickly after his fever broke though there was a lingering cough that Maria didn't care for. The doctor and Georg both assured her it was normal for him to have that after a bout of illness and the best thing she could do was to stop worrying and take care of herself.

Now that the flu had run its course, leaving only the boys, Max, and Maria completely unscathed, the family began to gather again for meals, games, and most of all songs, much to Max's delight.

One evening while the family was gathered together in the drawing room, Franz appeared and approached Georg. "Captain, there is a young man that wishes to speak with you. His name is Herr Graber and he wishes to speak to you at your convenience."

Georg looked at Maria, he remembered the name, but he couldn't make the connection. Maria remembered though and rose. "Georg, may I speak with you privately please?"

Maria stood up, placing her hand on her belly as they stepped outside into the side hallway. "Be nice," Maria said firmly, with a confidence she only had when preparing to defend the children. "That is the young man Liesl wished for you to meet the night…Well, the night that we found out about the baby. Apparently, he is still interested."

"I knew I remembered the name," Georg replied. "And I knew I didn't like it."

"Liesl likes him, Georg," Maria replied gently. "She's growing up, she'll be having her own party come the spring and it's occurred to me, if not to you, that she might want to be escorted to her 17th birthday ball by someone other than her brother. It's bad enough she was born in November and the season is all but closed by then. She has to wait for the spring with the other winter babies, her dance will be lost in the shuffle as it is."

"All right," Georg replied. "I'll be…civil…but I draw the line at nice."

Maria reached out and slid her hand along Georg's arm, "Thank you," she whispered and leaned up to kiss him softly.

Maria did that a lot lately, Georg noticed. It seems that after his bout of fever she wanted to be close to him whenever she could manage to be. She would hold his hand, lie on his chest, kiss him more deeply than before…it seemed the forced intimacy of caring for him while he was ill had broken more of the ice.

"Franz," Georg instructed. 'You can show the young man to my study. I'll see him now."

Maria returned to the drawing room and looked over at Liesl. "You could have warned me," Maria said but her tone held no scorn.

"I knew if I did that Father might say no to even seeing him," Liesl replied. "Things didn't go so well the last time we tried."

"And that was my fault," Maria admitted shaking her head. "Well, I convinced your father to at least give him a chance, so we'll see, and I think it's very adult of you both to have waited while there was so much turmoil going on in the family."

"I wouldn't exactly call it turmoil, Mother," Liesl smiled.

Over the last couple of weeks, Maria seemed to be more relaxed and more accepting of her pregnancy. She was about halfway there now and occasionally Liesl would catch her sewing or crocheting something for the baby. She still had her doubts that her father and mother had premarital sexual relations, but her father was happy and content once again and she did subscribe to the old adage, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

The "boy" that was waiting for Georg in his study was not quite that at all. He was a man, he was at least 20 years old. "Captain von Trapp," Matthias greeted at nearly full attention. "Thank you for seeing me, Sir."

"Yes," Georg sighed as he looked this person over. He was a good looking lad, blonde hair, brownish eyes and a nice smile. He could see how Liesl might be taken with him. "And what brings you here at this later hour without invitation?"

Matthias sighed, "I'm not entirely without invitation, Sir. I've been asked, that is, we've spoken many times now since I met her and…I've come to seek your permission to pay formal court to your daughter, Liesl. I'm a student at the college in Salzburg, and plan to join my father's business when I graduate. You might know him, Piotr Graber, he's a banker."

"I've heard of him, yes," the Captain acknowledged, still sizing Mathias up. "How old are you?" he asked bluntly.

"I'll be 21 my next birthday," Matthias replied.

"And when would that be?" Georg pressed.

"March, sir," Matthias replied. His birthday was a month away.

"You'll be 21 years old and you wish to court my daughter, who is just 17, do I correctly understand?" Georg reiterated.

"Yes, Sir," Matthias answered. "That is, I would like your blessing to court her, Sir. But it is my intention to…"

He lost it there. If Georg had any intention of consenting, which up until that point, he hadn't decided, that comment made up his mind. "It is your intention to what, young man? Pursue my daughter, who is decidedly above your station in life, not that it matters, without my consent? Is that what you were going to say?"

Matthias knew he blew it. He thought the Captain had been looking for him to be more assertive and he blew it. Now he had to stick to his guns, "Yes," Matthias replied. "Liesl is a young lady now, and she has a say too in what happens to her life."

"Oh, she does?' Georg countered. "All right, then you ask her. You ask her if she is willing to go against her family, to go against me, to court you. You have my blessing to ask her that!"

When Matthias left with nothing more than a slam of the door, Maria knew things had not gone well. She looked over at Liesl, "I'm sorry, Darling," she comforted. "I suppose he's just not ready yet for you to start courting."

"Besides," Friedrich spoke up. "Matthias is older than you, he's like 20."

"Father's older than Mother," Louisa reminded him. "By a lot more than three years."

"But Mother is a grown-up," Gretel replied, giving her undesired two cents.

"Children, let's not discuss this openly," Maria said firmly. "I'll speak to him, Liesl, but for now, continue as you have been, and please maintain your honesty with us and your distance from Matthias when you are not in the open."

Maria moved closer to Liesl and squeezed her hand. "If it is something that is meant to happen, Sweetheart, it will. It took a lot of very strange things to bring your Father and me together, but in the end we are and we are happy."

Liesl agreed for the moment though she was upset with Georg and refused to look at him when he returned to the room. Georg would come to find out at bedtime Liesl wasn't the only woman in the house that was cross with him for his decision that night.

"Twenty-one years old!" Georg vented as he began to undress for bed. "And he has the nerve to even speak to my Liesl, never mind come here and TELL me he wants to court her. At first, he asked me, then when he sees I'm about to send him packing, he TELLS me, he only wants my blessing!"

"Georg, stop it," Maria said as she undressed herself behind the screen Georg had brought in for her privacy. "He probably was intimidated; you aren't the most inviting person when one first meets you."

"I see," Georg replied as he continued to undress. "So this is my fault? I'm somehow so intimidating that this…this MAN declares his intentions to ask my daughter to go against her own father…"

"Liesl will never do that, and you know that, and that's why you're willing to press it, "Maria sighed. "That's not fair to you, either. She's a good girl, she's loyal to your wishes, and instead of rewarding it you fault it. How is Liesl ever supposed to learn what a good man is if you don't let her find out?"

"I made that mistake once already," Georg thought, only the words had left his lips and not just his head.

"I know," Maria replied. "Not like I can forget it."

At the moment, she was naked behind the dressing screen, her five-month baby bump fully within her view.

"Precisely," Georg replied. "You are a grown woman and…"

"Georg, I'm 24, and yes, I'm older than Liesl, but I was totally unprepared for the world, even when I went to that party as a chaperone. I needed someone like Herr Mueller to step in with more…less agreeable people and I feel that if Liesl learns now then maybe…"

"Maybe some animal won't track her and rape her?" Georg asked bluntly.

"That has nothing to do with this," Maria replied defensively. "Nothing I knew or didn't know had anything to do with that and I resent you implying that it did!"

Georg hated himself for the words before Maria even finished speaking, but when he looked at her, she didn't look shattered or wounded, she looked strong. "I'm sorry," Georg replied. "I never should have said that. You don't even know who it was, it could have been some mental patient or…It doesn't matter, I was a boar for saying that, even thinking it."

Maria came out from behind the screen. Her nightgown was fitting her more snuggly now, she would need to let the seams out to accommodate her expanding waistline in the near future.

"What's said is said, Georg," Maria replied but she crossed the room to stand nearer to him. "I can't pretend to understand how you feel. You have this little girl, she adores you, and you adore her and then you blink. You had a few years where you weren't the most present father…"

"Years you never cease to remind me about," Georg replied. He was still angry Maria wasn't taking his part in this. He wanted her to just blindly agree with him on this like she had been doing, but the old Maria was peering out and he wasn't sure if he liked it.

"You're not the victim here, Georg," Maria said stepping back to hold his gaze. "It's not a good look on you. You weren't present for your children for a long time and you have to own that."

"I do," Georg countered.

"You sometimes do," Maria corrected. "Other times you try to make it up and you can't. You can't be the father she needed when she was 12 when she's 17, it's not fair to her, you can't do it. Just like…Just like it wasn't fair of me to hope you would act as my protector with Herr Mueller. I wanted you to act jealous, I wanted you to speak up and I played that all wrong. Now we both pay the piper for that and an innocent baby as well. I don't want Liesl to make my mistakes, that's so true…I want her to learn from them."

Georg shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "You want me to let her see him, don't you?"

"I want her to have a proper first courtship, yes, "Maria replied. "I want her to learn to feel safe and confident with who she is so she can stand up for herself and if she loves a man, I want her to feel like she can say it, like she can ask for love in return, like she is worthy of love and admiration. I want her to feel…" Maria stopped and bent forward in shock, reaching over to grab onto Georg's arm for support.

"Maria?" he asked quickly sliding a supporting arm around her waist. "Come sit down. What is it? What's wrong?"

"I feel something," Maria told him. "Inside, it's like…I don't know, it's…"

"Like a butterfly, maybe?" Georg asked realizing what was happening wasn't something to be feared but something to be celebrated.

"Yes, I suppose that is a good way to describe it," Maria replied. "It doesn't hurt not really, it just feels odd. What…do we need to call the doctor? I don't want anything to happen…"

"I don't think we need to do that, Darling," Georg replied gently. "That's the baby you're feeling. The baby's quickened, Maria."

Maria knew what quickened meant and she couldn't help but smile a little. It was real now, though, the child inside of her. A child that existed between her and a ruthless, faceless stranger. That part was still terrifying, but being a mother to the little creature now doing flips and flops inside of her, wasn't so much, not anymore. The relief in that was nearly instant as Georg's hand hovered over the baby mound, "May I?"

"Yes," Maria replied. "I'm not sure you can feel it yet. It's very soft, but it feels strange."

Georg gently laid his hand on Maria's stomach and she in turn placed her hand over his. "I can't feel it, not yet, but soon, so I will be and soon it will more real for both of us than it is now."

Georg was smiling softly, but Maria frowned. "I know," she said almost to herself.

"Maria," Georg took a deep breath. "Darling, I can't imagine what you are feeling. I know what it feels like to not have control over your body, over your thoughts, but even with all I saw in the war, I don't know the sense of violation you must have felt both as a child and now. It's easy for me to pretend, to go inside my head and convince myself that this baby is made from our love, but I know it wasn't. If you can't bare it, Maria, if you can't stand the idea of being reminded of…We can arrange for a trip to Zurich, you and I and visit family I have there. When the baby is born you can leave it with the Benedictines there and we'll say the child was…"

Maria stopped Georg with a finger to his lips, "Don't even say that out loud. Don't put it out there."

The baby moved again and Maria's eyes filled with tears. She kept taking deep breaths to try to calm her thoughts. She should have been appalled by Georg's suggestion but she wasn't, she was oddly touched by it.

"The children are so excited," Maria reasoned. "They have no idea about this baby's origin and I don't ever want them to go through any more grief than they have already. I think I can bare if for them, Georg. Sometimes, in my mind, I pretend, I pretend that I wasn't so scarred inside from my miserable childhood that I backed away from you that night in the gazebo when I should have fallen into your arms. I pretend and it makes it easier."

Georg moved his hand to touch Maria's cheek and traced the lone tear she'd let fall with his fingertip. "I understand," Georg replied. "I do this also. My only fear is that the child resembles him and if you remember then…I'm scared of losing you in the childbed that's true, but that fear comes with loving someone, I've dealt with it seven times over, but the thought of losing you inside of yourself because you are reminded daily of what happened to you, that's what I can't face."

"That won't happen, Georg," Maria assured him. "I don't remember his face, and this child will grow up with love and kindness and discipline. This will be your child if we make it so, I hope I have the strength to do that."

Maria shifted and laid her head on Georg's shoulder, the baby in question nestled between their bodies. "If you don't," Georg whispered into her hair as he felt her body starting to relax. "Use mine. You can use mine."

Georg began a gentle, rhythmic rock as Maria fell asleep in his arms on the couch. She rarely slept well and when she did, he didn't, but that night, in the most uncomfortable of circumstances, both physically and emotionally, they both slept like babies.

A/N: Still a big roller coaster for Maria, not sure what she's feeling or how, but she's developed so much with Georg…Four maybe five chapters to go, a couple run a little long so I might break them in different spots.

Tomorrow is gonna be a big one!

I know some of you are wondering about the timeline, but you'll see. The revelation is on it's way, but I think some of you might be able to guess.