A/N: Please note this is another two part chapter because a single page would break your eyeballs. So please make sure you read this one first.

Chapter 27: Sins (Part 1)

Maria still wasn't quite certain what had happened as she and Georg finally stepped onto the street, her left arm tucked into his right. The sunlight was blinding after the dimmer overhead lights in the courthouse hallway. And while the halls and clerk's office had been quiet apart from footsteps and gentle whispers—the calling of names just like his—hers—the noise was back with the light. The real world again, she thought as she drew her arm closer to tighten her hold on his. Her husband's arm.

I was hardly more than a girl when we walked in, though I don't know anyone would think that anything has changed. Maybe it's what he wants. But I suppose it is a bit odd. My foster mother always wore her husband's ring. I don't quite understand why, Georg has always been so proper, or...Maybe it wasn't quite right, to think always. Sometimes, I don't really remember how it all began, not really. Well, I know how, just sometimes not quite why. I wanted to spend time with someone who saw the world, but...how did it turn into more?

She glanced up at him, her eyes catching the cut of his jaw and swell of his hair as they always did. But I don't think anyone would find it strange or wrong anymore, me being so close to him. I know Johanna always did, always worried about me a little, especially after...That moment still haunted her, the first moment she had lost control. It's all felt so strange, today, like a lovely dream.

Would people on the street look at her—them—differently? She hadn't missed the little tut tuts and disappointed clicks of the tongue sometimes when they walked about a little too close together. But...would anyone even know? She glanced down at her right hand, ring finger still bare. I suppose it doesn't matter all that much, but if I ever visit Vienna and Mother doesn't—

"Maria."

She started a little. "Yes?" she asked, peering this way and that as she tried to remember where Georg parked the car. Oh yes, it must have been down that way—

"Not that way," he said as he pulled her away and farther down the street they had traipsed along since leaving the courthouse.

"But that's the way we came." Maria wasn't certain how long they had been walking, only that the road had already curved. For a moment, she tried to stop—turn back to see if the peaks of the courthouse's cream colored bricks and the gentle spires still rose above the buildings surrounding it. "Shouldn't we—"

"It's too early for that," Georg said as he tugged her along. "And I'm sure you're hungry."

Maria nodded, not quite certain what to say.Hungry...She supposed she knew—almost looked forward to finally understand for herself, but...how to say it?

O O O

It was a fancier café than any where Georg had ever treated her. Lacquered tile, lights shining through stained glass, white linen crossed by a darker runner, gleaming plates and polished silverware waiting for them before a bespectacled man at the entrance with a handful of thick papers asked them—more politely than Maria was used to—to follow him. The man insisted she sit before he allowed Georg to do the same, though he made no effort to do so first.

With just a quick glance at the menu, Maria knew most of the dishes, but needed a deep breath when she saw the prices. "Georg?"

"Something wrong, darling?" he asked, his own gaze still on the choices for their late lunch.

"It's too much—"

"Not today, Maria."

"You can't—"

"I can." The waiters in pristine shirts and ties were gliding between the tables, pausing here and there for a quiet discussion with other diners. "He'll be here shortly, if you haven't decided." She returned her attention to the menu.

By the time the waiter arrived to talk with them, Maria chose the simplest thing she remembered from her childhood, a small dish of dumplings—nothing but water to drink—though Georg chose veal instead and muttered something else as a loud conversation behind her muffled his voice. "You needn't always worry over the cost of everything," he added as the waiter nodded his head and took the stack of menus away.

"But I always have—"

"Then stop."

She shrank back into her chair as she reached for her water glass, the surface trembling a little as she brought it to her mouth. What now? What am I meant to talk about with my husband? Should I ask him about seeing the world again? Or, I still wonder, I suppose, today. "Georg?"

"Hmm?" A glass of wine had arrived for him, perhaps what he and the waiter had discussed when the man and woman just behind her deafened her for a moment.

"May I ask you something?"

"It's never stopped you before, love."

"I remember—I know what you said earlier, but...really. Why this way?"

Halfway to his mouth, his glass paused. "You'll have to forgive me, but you'll need to ask again."

Maria sighed as she sat up again and pulled her chair closer to the table's edge. It was too chilly in here, she decided, even though the warm air from the road still wafted through the open door and along the aisles of tables. She wasn't used to her arms being so bare and she shivered despite the heat. "It wouldn't have been that long to wait, would it?"

Georg shook his head before he finally took a sip of wine; it nearly splashed onto his hand as he set the glass heavily on the table. "That disappointed, are you?"

She opened her mouth for a moment, then closed it for a moment. "I'm...I mean, wouldn't it have been nicer?"

"Nice?"

"Yes. In a church."

Georg leaned forward, hands folded on the edge of the table. "You remember what I told you that afternoon, don't you?"

"Well, yes—"

"And that's why I told you soon. The number of times you darted up those stairs and away from me, especially these last weeks?" Her cheeks were already glowing and, despite the light overhead and what streamed through the open door and large windows onto the road, she hoped he didn't see how bright it was. "Maria…" Reaching across the table, around their glasses, Georg took her hand, one thumb running over her knuckles. With his little smile, she knew he had noticed her blush. "You understand more than I think you'll admit."

"But—"

"Later, darling. Lunch first."

They fell silent again, Maria still trying to decide what to say. More than anything, she sipped at her water, anything to busy her hands. It was almost a relief when their plates arrived, hers far smaller than his. Not that that's different than usual, she thought as she settled her starched napkin into her lap. She would have to be more careful than usual, more mindful than ever of her silky white dress. She still wasn't certain what to talk about.

Her eyes mostly on her plate as she ate, Maria picked at her knödel, half of them still in front of her when she finally glanced up. Georg's knife and fork lay on the side of his cleaned plate and he was simply looking at her. "If you weren't so quiet, I would have thought you were more interested in your food than me. Lost your appetite, darling?"

Maria nearly stabbed her plate rather than her half-eaten dumpling. She shook her head. "No, I just—I'm not used to it."

"You must have eaten that in Vienna."

You have to know what I mean, Georg. You know I don't only mean our lunch. "But not this nice," she said, trying to slice another piece away and manage another mouthful.

"You mean you're not used to me, don't you?" Maria blushed again. Georg leaned across the table, his hand against her cheek for a brief second. He felt her sigh for more than heard it. "Well, you should on your wedding day." Maria let herself smile, a little growl finally rumbling in her empty stomach. "You'll be happier later, I promise." Maria tried not to think about what her husband meant, not quite yet. Right now, some things were safer in her dreams.

Dessert wasn't quite what she expected, a slice of cake for each of them, something she had never seen before, let alone eaten. A fluffy cake—two layers—layered with plum jam and some sort of cream Maria didn't recognize, finally dusted with fine white sugar. Particularly alongside her sweetened milky coffee, she struggled to slow her bites, to make it last. Georg was more measured with his paired with his pitch black brew, just smiling at her enthusiasm.

"At least I'll always know how to persuade you. But come summer," he said as he took another sip of coffee, "in summer, the cook—they won't bother with the jam. It will be fresh plums on top."

"Hmm?" Despite picking at her lunch, Maria had cleared her plate of cake.

"Nothing. Just something to look forward to." Georg then turned his attention to his coffee. No need for her to know about the cake the cook made every summer when the trees at the edge of the villa wore branches laden with plums and apricots. How she layered it with custard and baked the fresh plums into what would be the very top, laced the sponge with almonds whenever they were about. How it was Agathe's favorite summer dessert—

His coffee suddenly turned bitter. He hadn't remembered this café and its best dessert before he finally heard his stomach rumbling for something to eat. If he had known it would be laid before them without a chance to ask for any other choices...This lunch would have happened somewhere else—anywhere else. But now wasn't the time to think about her, there was never a time to think about her here. Maria, just her when I'm here.

Her eyes were still darting here and there behind her delicate coffee cup, though she occasionally glanced down at the last crumbs on her plate. You've probably never been anywhere like this, darling. But too often...everyone will know. They had already lingered too long.

"Maria?"

"Yes?"

"Are you done, my dear?"

With one last sip of coffee before she set it back on its gold-rimmed saucer, Maria nodded.

Despite the respite of dessert, she wasmuchhappier when Georg left some schillings for the check and they left, still not quite knowing what to make of a café—restaurant really, she supposed—with such a nice sign. She was still uncertain where Georg meant for them to go, but knew when the Salzach appeared just over the rise of a hill. She still didn't know this area of Salzburg that well, instead trusting Georg to know what was where and where to go.

Which was how, a few hours later with the sun still over the horizon but fading fast, Maria found herself and her husband still wandering along the river hand in hand. She didn't think she'd said that word aloud, it seemed so odd. As she had so often today especially, she couldn't stop herself from glancing up at him. She would never grow tired of just looking at him, especially when she had the chance. Once or twice, Maria needed to bite back a giggle, her mind drifting to the beginning of the year. Things really have—

"Why are you staring at me like that, darling."

Maria immediately looked down—to the Salzach just beyond Georg—to the trees off to her side—anywhere but him. "I didn't mean to."

He kissed the top of her head as he held her a little tighter. "Do you think a—sailor wouldn't notice a lovely woman looking at him so often?" Christ, it was becoming difficult, always struggling to keep his time as a captain in the navy to himself. Sometimes, it's so much simpler just to be a man, Maria. Not someone with medals and the nickname "The Dread of the Adriatic".

"I wouldn't know, I don't think I've met another sailor."

"But you were."

There was no denying it, Maria supposed as Georg drew her farther along the path and around another curve in the path past another little stand of trees in full bloom. A smell was wafting from the water, less than she could recall from that afternoon at Attersee and certainly less than the little ponds she remembered from her Viennese childhood. The movement, I guess."I can't help thinking just now, now that we have a little time."

With a little grin as he straightened his jacket with his free hand, Georg glanced down at her. "We?"

Her own smile was suddenly a frown. "Of course—"

He pressed a finger to her lips to silence her, then brushed the wild hairs back from her face as he kissed her softly. "Forgive me, you're still quite fun to tease."

Maria let out a quiet snort—but she couldn't quite be angry with him as he slipped his hand from hers and snaked his arm around her waist to pull her right against him. She nearly caught the tip of her own new white shoe on the toe of his polished black ones as he did. "You would laugh at me, if I told you that I nearly stumbled over your foot just now rather than mine."

"You don't give me enough credit for some things, Maria."

"Well, just I never would have thought the night we first met."

"That you would be my wife?"

Maria nodded. The knot of hair at the back of her head was loosening after the last hours. It won't last much longer, I know that. But will it need to? No, it wasn't time to really think about that, still not quite yet. Not even with all the nights she had shuddered through— Maria tried to struggle ahead of her husband. (Even in her head, it sounded so strange to think that she was married, had a husband!) But his grip on her waist was too sound, and the strength of his arm held her back. "Yes," she murmured as he clasped her right against his side again, his arm now almost a vice about her waist. "And I never thought all those Sundays at the Mirabell Gardens, the afternoons after my class that...my life could never be anything like this."

Georg tried not to growl, a deep grumble rising from his throat. One foot at a time, he told himself as the young girl beside him continued to talk on about this and that. The short excursion to Attersee as though she had never seen the water before, almost terrified to be on a boat. The little treats he had bought her every now and then when they wandered through an afternoon market: trivial and innocuous for him, something rich and rare for her. You may not think so, Maria, but it's easy to tell when you're worried. You may talk on at the best of times, but your tongue always goes ahead of mind when you're worried or nervous. "Maria?"

"Yes?" She couldn't remember what she had been saying when Georg's call of her name broke into her thoughts.

"I do have something for you," he said softly as he paused and pulled her to a stop alongside himself.

She turned toward him in a struggle against his closed arm, still trying to tell herself that nothing was wrong as he slipped it away and took one of her hands again. "You do?" You and Georg did this long before today and neither of you seemed to care. Why are you wary of him like this now?

He laughed gently as he smoothed away an invisible wrinkle from her dress along the top of her shoulder. "You must know I do."

"What is it?"

"I suppose this would have been better a little—earlier," Georg went on as he took his hand back. It only took a moment of searching in his pocket to find the pair of rings, loose and bouncing about the silk lining. There was no difference between the pair, so he palmed one and pulled his hand back out. "Somehow, I just wanted you to have it, for you alone."

"What?" Oh, why do I think I know? she asked herself. I was wondering just before why he wouldn't.

He opened his hand, the gold band slipping to the tips of his fingers. "Something to be said for doing things alone." Or at least that's what I'll have to tell you, Maria. It was troubling enough to sign those papers in front of a clerk and secretary who didn't care, too much to do this as well when it is just for you. The other one shifted in his pocket, but he ignored it for the moment. Georg didn't wait for her to offer him her hand again, instead seizing and threading the thin gold ring onto her bare finger.

Maria tried to blink away the little tears burning at the corner of her eyes, her face down again.Please don't see them, Georg.Was it so wrong to have something for the world to see, for the rest of Salzburg to know and understand that she wasn't just a girl, now? I'm not just walking about hand in hand with a man twice my age. She gulped. At least there's a chance any passersby will believe I'm with my husband—

Georg's hand beneath her chin brought her face up again, holding her still as he stepped closed. "Whatever are you looking down for, darling?"

"N—nothing," she whispered with a swipe at her face with her free hand to hide those tears. She wished she had one of those little rags her foster mother had always carried in her pocket, but her dress didn't have one to keep it anyway. "I'm not."

"Yes, you are, Maria" He didn't wait for an answer before pressing another kiss to her mouth. He felt the breath rushing through her lips against his, didn't let her close hers to stem the flow of her—the life within her. If not for the crowd breaking apart about the Salzach, Georg knew there would be even more of the old women in their worn hats and coats shaking their heads in disapproval, probably whispering something about things to be done in secret. Well, wouldn't that be the right way to say it, Georg decided as he finally bit off his own breath, her lower lip caught between his for a moment as he pulled away. It's why I couldn't offer it to you right there and then as we signed the paper. The more that happened right there, the greater the chance of memories, both new and old. You have to be mine alone, my own little secret.

"...have one for you."

"Hmm?" Georg shook his head, his young wife swimming in his vision for a moment. "I'm sorry?"

"I just said I'm sorry I don't have one for you."

I'm not surprised you would worry over that, he thought as he dipped his hand back into that pocket to find the other ring. "It doesn't matter, love."

"But I should have, but I don't know if I—"

"Enough going on about what you can afford." Georg quieted her again with a finger to her lips. "You'll learn that soon enough. Never forget that the navy was quite good to me in the end."

Maria's hands quivered when he pressed it into her hand, and he thought he almost saw her drop it once. (She caught it with her other palm, and he supposed she just hoped he hadn't seen it.) But his own right hand would have shaken just as much if he hadn't braced his nerves like he remembered the iron grip of helmsman doing as the shallow currents of the Adriatic sometimes strove to send their submarine adrift. You can't be frightened of a young girl. Not anymore. As she slid it past his second knuckle to the base of his finger, Georg tensed every muscle he could against a shudder. It had been months since he had worn a ring like this, not since he threw it aside in a fit of anger. He still wasn't quite certain what had become of it, only that he had never seen it again. One of the maids selling it on her day off? he wondered as his new wife's fingers lingered on his. Not that I think I'll ever care to see it again, especially not now. I'm not sure I'll ever need to think on you again, darling, at least while I'm here and she's here. With a lick of his lips, Georg pulled his hand from hers, twined her arm with his again, and continued to pull her along the way, though now they fell into an easy, simple silence.

The noise of the city was winding down to leave the gentle lapping of the Salzach against its steep banks and rocky shallows plain to hear. The sun was even closer to the horizon before he felt Maria's first shiver against him. A glance down saw her chin as far as possible against her neck and her cheek pressed into his jacket, her knot of hair all he could see. Even on the arm tucked into his, he could see the goose pimples in the fading light. "You're chilly, aren't you, darling?" Georg whispered before he pulled her against him. He might have paid for her dress—he had forgotten how expensive Frau Eder's creations were—but he hadn't the slightest idea of how it looked until he saw Maria early this afternoon. More like a girl's than a bride's, if he was honest, but in the last hours, he had forgotten how short the sleeves were, how the hem hardly skimmed her knees, how thin it felt when her body brushed against his.

He gently pushed her from him; this brought her from whatever contented stupor had consumed her with a little gasp. "What is it?" she murmured.

"You're cold, aren't you?"

Maria nodded; Georg couldn't see much else in the twilight. "A little."

"Here." Pulling one arm free—then the other—Georg tugged his coat from his shoulders and tossed it across hers. He winced when she staggered for a moment under the sudden weight of the heavy fabric, but she righted herself quickly. "I'm sure you'll feel better with that." He tried not to think of that whistle still in one pocket, so close to his new wife's touch. You wouldn't go looking in my pockets, love, I know that, he thought as he caught her waist in his embrace. He couldn't quite feeling her thin frame beneath his jacket, so baggy and loose on her. I'm sure I can think of a better way to keep you warm, my dear.

The thought was enough for his trousers to tighten around his groin. I've waited long enough for you. "Maria?"

"Hmm?"

"It's getting late, don't you think?"

"Y—yes."

"You've said that quite a few times today, darling."

Maria laughed lightly before she twisted around out of his grasp and wrapped her arms around his chest, his jacket still hanging almost like a dressing gown from her. "I suppose," she whispered.

I've wanted this for so long, Georg, even though I don't really understand why—or how, more than what I read in school textbooks or learned in science class. But now that I'm faced with what I wanted—I'm almost a little scared. I don't want to be like that—I shouldn't be. I've faced the unknown before, I can do it again.

"Time to go home, don't you think?" he asked, one hand around his back to peel away the first of her arms.

"Home? But I thought—"

"Well, not you to yours and me to mine, love." Georg laughed gently before pulling her up for another gentle kiss, rather like he had in that moment in the courthouse.Anything else is my secret to share just with you."If that's what you were thinking, that's one of the sillier things that have ever gone through your head."

Maria was thankful for the growing twilight that hid her flush, her face no longer hidden against Georg's chest. "I just didn't quite think about—it."

"That isn't quite true, and you know it. Not how you were looking at me so much of today."

"But I don't have anything with—"

"You have yourself, darling. All the rest can wait until tomorrow."

Maria pushed herself up on her toes despite the stiffness of her shoes, desperate to catch his eyes. "I don't even have anything to wear tonight."

His hands around her waist, he nearly had her off her feet as he yanked her against him. "I wouldn't worry about that." He saw her bite her lip, though whether to stop a few words or a smile...until she nodded, just the slightest. "Good."

A/N: Still little knowledge of the geography of Salzburg, though I did some research, re: courthouse and the Salzach.