Author's Note: I confess I wasn't expecting to write a second chapter for this so soon, but here we are. All of you lovely people who left reviews for me are truly angels. You gave me the encouragement I needed to continue this. And I will likely keep continuing it as long as there is interest.
Once someone had told her, "'Tis no different than the animals."
She knew it had been a man who had told her that, but she couldn't remember exactly who it was. Probably because she'd been so young and so traumatized.
She had seen the horses mate before. Once was quite enough.
She was certain that piece of information, nestled away in the back of her innocent mind, had factored into her decision to enter Nonnberg Abbey. And now, in a beautiful twist of irony, she was about to behold for herself if it was true.
The thought was dizzying, and it made her feel ill. Maria sat on the edge of the bed, alone, clutching the porcelain pink satin of her night robe around her. It was the robe of a wealthy wife, not something she should be wearing. It was a loose, lightweight reminder of the material world which Christians were meant to reject. God was surely frowning on her. The thought made her loosen her grip.
Her fingers felt weak. Her neck felt sore. Her palms felt clammy. Everything felt so wrong. God was supposed to bless their marriage, wasn't He? So why did she still feel so lost?
Her husband's partial silhouette was visible just beyond the doors, behind that gauzy curtain, framed by twilight. She saw the champagne in his hand and wondered if it was his way of coping. Surely he had some nerves of his own. He was only human, though she had doubted that fact many times while working for him. She had been so used to recoiling at the forceful sting of his voice. She'd grown accustomed to the shuddering, on-edge feeling that took over her body when he'd entered a room – a strange mix of excitement and dread. And now she was suddenly expected to undo it all? To undo every knee-jerk reaction, every fear? To forget the ways he had once made her feel, not so very long ago, and accept that he should no longer make her feel that way?
She tried to only remember the times he had been all kindness, selecting them like precious grapes from a short, twisted vine. The way he had danced with her. The look of obscene fondness in his eyes when he sang for his children. The pure affection he'd shown her that night in the gazebo. The stealthy kiss he had stolen just following their wedding.
But for every sweet grape, there was a bitter one. The barking of orders, the maiming of her lowliness, the insincere terseness of how he had once addressed her, "Fraulein!"
Was she a fool for believing his regard for her had changed so quickly? Those in his circles certainly seemed to have their doubts. Those people had known Georg von Trapp much longer than she did. They had known him in his Naval days, in the days of his first wife, in the days before he'd even become a father. Surely those people had a better grasp on his character than she did - the lowly governess who was supposed to be a nun.
Maria felt a tear threaten the corner of her eye, but she rejected it with a flick of her finger. Summoning what little courage remained within her, she stood up and moved boldly to the balcony door.
He turned only slightly to acknowledge her, and the dim violet backdrop of the Paris sky sharpened the features of his profile in such a way that she felt her very veins coil within her wrists. There was a darkness in his face that had nothing to do with the setting sun. Maria clasped the cold door handle behind her, if only to delay letting go of the one thing that seemed to be holding her upright.
His eyes lowered, ever so briefly, in discreet observation of her nightclothes. And she suffered a sudden flashback of the moment he'd walked in on her comforting his children during a thunderstorm.
That very thunderstorm seemed to broil within his eyes in that moment, but it was not angry. No, not angry.
She steeled herself and pushed forward, letting go of the handle. Her bare feet swept carelessly over the stone floor, and she came to stand beside him, holding her chin high. A breeze played with her hair, and she tucked it behind her ear, staring out at the city lights, at the streets, at the colors that seemed to blend like oil paints all around her. Anywhere but at him.
"I must say, I'm not used to you being this quiet," he confessed after a time, a note of humor in his low voice. "It's a bit disconcerting."
She chewed her lip before replying, "I always felt the need to talk when I had so many thoughts in my head but nowhere to put them."
He thought for a moment, exhaled deeply, and said, "So you either have nothing on your mind right now, or you have a great deal on your mind, but perhaps have found somewhere to . . . put it all?"
He phrased his questions so delicately, with that subtle spike in pitch on the final syllable. The way he spoke was frustratingly emotive, causing her mind to bend aimlessly in hopes of interpreting every inflection.
She swallowed hard and dared to look at him. "Do you think of me as being beneath you?"
She noticed a flinch of pure panic in his eyes. "No."
He said it with confidence, but she doubted him. She did not move her gaze from his face until he reluctantly added, "Not anymore."
Maria turned away to look at the horizon, her heart torn by his honesty. "But at one time, you did," she said quietly.
"At one time, I did," he confessed. "But you must understand how much I hated myself, Maria. For so many years, I truly despised myself." He placed his elbows on the railing beside her, tapping the half-empty champagne flute with the fingers of his left hand. "But you taught me things. Things I would not have had the patience to learn on my own. When a woman is able to teach a man a lesson, especially this late in his life, he cannot help but respect her."
Respect.
The word held a victorious kind of weight to it, uttered in his familiar voice. Maria felt something shift within her. A tiny glow of pride, and the warm certainty of a grown woman who could have an effect on someone whose prolific narrative far surpassed her own.
Still, she could not surrender herself to that feeling.
"I don't know if I . . . if I will ever feel like your equal." She hung her head in shame.
Georg shifted beside her, then asked candidly, "How does God view us?"
She looked over at him in surprise.
He smirked slightly as he raised the champagne flute to his lips. "Your Mother Abbess has had the opportunity to impart her wisdom upon me, too, you know."
Maria felt a surge of warm comfort at the mention of her beloved Reverend Mother. With a bit of effort, she finally managed a smile. "I see that."
It seemed impossible that one additional sip of champagne could have its effect so soon, but his next words astounded her.
"If you think you're the only one in this relationship whose concern is feeling equal to the other, you're sorely mistaken."
She furrowed her brow in confusion as she stared at him, urging him to elaborate.
"You were on a path towards a convent, Maria. At times I can't help but feel I had come along and . . . plowed my way through that path and kicked the dust in your eyes." His hand danced about in the air with an illustrative motion as he spoke, then he was hiding his mouth behind the champagne again, and he looked mildly disgraced in spite of himself.
Maria thought on his words for a long time, staring out at the busy streets of Paris, her mind racing.
"I chose you," she finally said, turning her entire body to face him. "I chose the children. I chose this life. Not that one." She shook her head, her eyes trained on his. "You did not destroy that path. You only paved a new one beside it."
She could see right through his grateful expression to the brooding doubts behind it. But that would be a conversation for another time, she decided. With newfound assurance, Maria raised herself on her toes to kiss her husband.
For just that second, she had a taste of the power she had. It was so frustratingly fleeting; it melted away with the tender invasion of his tongue between her lips.
She inhaled sharply and he released her, turning away too quickly for her to see the torment in his eyes.
Knowing she was the cause for that torment, that was the primary source of her distress.
She was once again reduced to the poor, trembling, virgin bride, too scared to cross the threshold.
In any other circumstance, she would address the problem head-on, without hesitation, no matter how uncomfortable it might have been. But here, she was paralyzed. She could not fathom a scenario in which she confided her fears in him. Yet he was her husband. How could she expect a fulfilling marriage if such an issue could not be addressed?
Vague platitudes would be her only friends now, she thought.
"You told me to lie with you," she whispered. "Nothing more?"
He finished the champagne and set the empty flute down beside the bottle. "If that is what you wish." He made it sound like a secret.
"What if… what I wish disappoints you?" Each word was like a careful nudge, pleading him to lead her through uncharted waters like the experienced officer he was.
He took a deep breath, tapped his fingers on the railing, then spoke resolutely. "The thing to remember, Maria, is that I am a man who has spent much of my life in solitude." His next words flowed like the solemn lines of a poem. "When one enters the Navy, one is in solitude. When one's wife is in recovery after just giving birth, one is in solitude. When one becomes a widower, one is in solitude."
Maria tucked one ankle shyly behind the other and tilted her head to study his face.
"I am not so naive to the ways of this world, Captain. I'm sure a man of your stature had means of fulfilling his desires quite easily, whenever he wished." In a rare moment, she found herself surprised by the forwardness of her own words.
He observed her thoroughly, his blue eyes unsettlingly intense. "Money can buy a woman's body, but it cannot buy intimacy," he said. His voice was soft, but just a moment later he bashed his hand against the railing with a resounding 'thump' and insisted in his normal barking sort of tone, "And you must stop calling me 'Captain.'"
Maria jolted at the sound and murmured an apology before drawing her gaze to her hands. The evening bustle of Paris could still not drown out the resounding echo of his words in her head. "But it cannot buy intimacy."
She had so many questions. Was this a confession? Had he attempted to buy intimacy and failed? Had he even desired intimacy after the passing of his wife? How far had he taken his relationship with the Baroness von Schraeder? Maria could feel the uncertainties eating away at her – if she gave them enough power, they would weaken her completely.
She rubbed her neck self-consciously as he no doubt internally berated himself, then before she knew it, she was wrapped in his arms and being taken back inside.
The delicate irony of what she was about to do was not lost on her. On the day they'd first met, he had insisted she should only ever call him by his formal title. And now, not a few months later, he was insisting that she stop using it to address him. In fact, it actively upset him. Everything was a forced reversal. No wonder it all still felt so wrong.
She knew on some level that as his wife, she should be looking to him for guidance. It had always been his rules from day one, so that was nothing new to her. But such reliance on one man for direction on how to behave was a source of great resentment for Maria, whose heart was wilder than most. She had always rejected his ways before, believing they were observed in bitterness by a man who wished to punish the world for his own loss. But now, with one tug of his hand, he was asking her to trust him implicitly. He had to understand how difficult this was for her…
All in muscle memory, she knelt down at the bedside, where he still remained standing. He looked shocked and offended as he took one step back from her.
"What are you doing?" he demanded in a fierce whisper, hand outstretched as if to withhold her shoulder.
"Praying," she answered simply. She tilted her head up to observe him with a dubious look.
He released a strange sound – something between a scoff and a sigh of relief – as he looked down at her. Running one hassled hand through his hair, he got his bearings and obediently knelt beside her.
Maria felt a calmness overtake her, knowing this was one place where her experience reigned dominant over his. She noticed that he did not neatly fold his hands over the covers as she did, but rather pressed them earnestly to his forehead as if trying to clear his mind of indecent obstructions.
Still squinting over at him in the dim room, she murmured her nightly prayer under her breath and quickly made the sign of the cross. He did not repeat the action, but seemed to look to her for permission to rise. She would have normally found the interaction amusing, but on this night she could not find it in herself to be amused.
Again, they were at square one, facing each other in a heart-pounding checkmate – just like on the night they danced the Ländler.
"I don't know what to do," she whispered.
He stared at her as if it were his first time seeing her. There was a deep sense of awe within his expression, painted by the faintest shade of pity.
Slowly his eyes drifted to the bed, nodding absently as he murmured, "Lie down."
Limbs stiffened by nerves, Maria did as she was told, fully expecting a string of clinical commands to follow.
But he did not join her immediately as she suspected. Instead, he moved to the opposite side of the bed, facing away from her, and began to undo the buttons of his shirt.
Blushing furiously, she turned on her side and faced the window, studying every wrinkle in the curtains as if it could distract her from what she knew was happening just behind her. With every whisper of fabric that crossed her ears she became more overwhelmed. Her heart was beating in her throat by the time she finally felt his added weight on the bed beside her. She kept completely still until at last his arms found her, and drew her in against his chest.
Though she was still safely covered by her robe, she felt the heat of his bare skin against her back. She was consumed by the feeling of closeness, the forbidden loss of layers between them, the touch of his breath on her neck, the clasp of his fingers around her wrist. Though many things may have felt wrong to her earlier that evening, this felt right. If she closed her eyes and allowed herself to surrender to those feelings, she could sense that there was a holiness in that closeness. It was unlike the holiness she felt when entering the church or when singing hymns on the mountainside. It was more subdued, more personal.
She recalled the words of the Reverend Mother, "The love of a man and woman is holy, too." Back then it had felt like a mere consolation phrase, at a time when she had been vulnerable and frightened; a failure in the house of God. But now…
It did not feel like a consolation. It felt like an undeserved reward.
"Do you know what brings me the most joy?" His voice broke her reverie, so soft, so close to her ear. "Watching you with the children."
She sighed and allowed herself to smile in his arms. His very strong, very warm, very bare arms.
"From the day you met them, you've treated them as if they were your own," he said. "And now they are."
The thought made her so happy, she could have cried.
"I love them so much, Georg."
"I promise you, they love you even more." He said it as if he had heard it from them firsthand, which probably meant he had. She bit her lip and grinned to herself.
"I never in my wildest dreams imagined having seven children," she confessed with a shy laugh.
She thought she had a pretty good grasp on what his response would be to such a remark. She had expected a cheeky "neither did I," or something along those lines. But what he said was so out of character, she wondered if she had misheard him at first.
"You may not just have seven."
It was perhaps the most ridiculous, absurdly naive oversight on her part to have not once considered adding to their family. Yet God all but commanded his people to be fruitful and multiply. For Maria, this seemed a daunting task for more than one reason.
Georg had uttered the sentence in a tone of loving warning, as if she should prepare accordingly. She wondered in wide-eyed bewilderment what premonitions plagued him as she lay on her pillow.
"Have you thought about it?" he asked quietly, his fingers tracing circles along the inside of her wrist. The innocent motion had weakened her so much she could barely concentrate.
"Not really." She exhaled shakily. "I'd assumed you would be opposed to it," she admitted in a small voice.
"Ah, well . . ." he paused, his tone laced with chagrin. "I can understand why you would assume that."
She wanted to turn around so that she could see his expression, but she remained facing away from him, afraid to move too much.
"Do you want more children, Georg?" she asked tentatively.
"If God is not finished with our family, I won't dare challenge Him."
His tone was serious in nature. It again surprised her.
"You've mentioned God more than I have tonight," Maria remarked, trying to lighten the heavy turn their conversation had taken.
"You've had more of an impact on me than you realize," he said, a smile evident in his voice.
Unable to resist anymore, Maria slowly turned in his arms so that she was lying on her back, able to look at him. Looking back at her was the same face of the stern, stoic sea captain who had intimidated her for the better part of the time she had known him. He was the same man – that, she could not reconcile – but the way he looked at her now was nothing like how he had looked at her then.
There was a reverence in his gaze. A reverence that should have been reserved for the cross of Christ. Not for one lowly woman like herself.
But then, Christ had been lowly, too.
All they were doing was staring at each other, but she could feel the pressure of his eyes all across her body. Even though his gaze had not moved from her face once. He was feeding fire to her veins, with only the look in his eyes.
And with that look, maybe, she thought it was possible. That she could find it within herself to be more for him on this night. Because deep down, Maria had only ever wanted to please the Captain. Whether it had meant teaching his children, obeying his rules, knowing her place, anticipating his needs. After all, that had been her job. He had been her employer . . . a damn difficult employer at that.
Oh, but she'd proven to be much more difficult.
Yet, here he was. Holding her in bed. On their honeymoon. By some strange miracle, he wanted her. This was God's gift to her. To both of them.
Why? She wondered. She would never stop wondering why.
Her breath caught in her throat because she'd been staring at him for far too long, and there was nothing between them but that pale pink sliver of satin she still wore, and she could hear the thump of her own heartbeat in her ears, and could recall the thousands of times he had looked at her before – it was as if every time leading up to this moment had been a tiny fraction, increasing in its weight until she would finally collapse from the strain of it…
He moved his hand. Just the tiniest bit. It brushed the front of her robe and exposed her breast, and he allowed himself to touch her.
And that was what caused the collapse.
Author's Note: I know a few people took notice of the rating. Yes, it's rated M for a reason. When I write love scenes, I tend to give them a lot of detail. A love scene for this pairing, however, seems to demand a great deal of delicacy from me. I can't seem to just feverishly type it all out like I usually do. I also wanted to give them dialogue, because we didn't get to see a lot of that between them once they were married.
Let me know what you think? I crave and adore feedback. This fandom has some very passionate readers and I really appreciate that.
xox, Mackenzie