Sailor´s Knots

A/N: This is a vignette I published at the fan fiction forum a few weeks ago. It is meant to be fun, nothing more than that. I love it when they bicker, and I think I will never tire writing such scenes. I have no idea if I will continue this one day... Maybe, if the right idea strikes me. There are a couple of references to some of my earlier stories.

Disclaimer: The usual. I do not own "The Sound of Music", etc, etc, etc...

---

It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.

John Locke

---

"He loves his sailors, he loves his Navy, no bones about that... He never expects anything in return. That's what I love about him."

Robert E. Lee

---

This should teach him once and for all not to allow himself to entertain lustful thoughts about young governesses fresh from the convent. If he were not so absurdly distracted, he – well, they– would not be in this most unfortunate situation. Naturally, the worst was yet to come, because everyone who witnessed the event would make sure that he would never, ever forget it, for as long as he lived. O-ho, they would make sure of it, especially Herr Maximilian Detweiler.

"You find his highly amusing, don´t you?" he said scathingly to Max, whom he had summoned to rescue them from their predicament. This, of course, after sending the children away with Frau Schmidt, whose eyes were that it seemed they were about to pop out of their sockets.

The impresario started laughing uncontrollably as soon as he realized what was going on.

"In case you haven´t realized it yet, you are the only one," he added, with the same caustic tone.

Next to him, the governess in question was glaring at them both murderously. In fact, he never thought a future nun could look at anyone like that. Her eyes shot icy daggers at him, her blue-grey eyes cold and implacable. His annoyance reached unprecedented limits, and he lashed out at her.

"Impressive, Fräulein. I might steal that look from you the next time I have to discipline one of my children. Where on earth did you learn to glare like that?" he asked, sarcastically. Her scowl only deepened, and she quickly turned away from him, holding her head high.

"Are you sure you can fix this… situation, Herr Detweiler?" she asked gravely, solemnly ignoring him.

Georg snorted. It gave him a good dose of satisfaction to know that, underneath all her anger, she actually had her worries about their current predicament. He wagered that even the notorious Black Sheep of Nonnberg had never been in a similar situation before. The simple fact was that she was oddly affected – again and again, her face went from pale to bright red in a splint of a second, apparently for no reason at all.

"Certainly, my dear Fräulein. There is no need for you to fret. After all, this particular talent of mine was precisely one of the reasons why the Captain wanted me in his submarine crew! Isn´t that true, Georg?"

"Max..." he warned, although his friend had not exactly told her a lie. To his utter dismay, Max Detweiler started laughing again.

Suddenly, it occurred to him that Max´s mirth was highly contagious – it was the only plausible explanation for his absurd need to start laughing as well. Certainly it was not the outraged look that was back in the little nun´s eyes.

No, he could not help it. If he really thought about it, it was funny, although his dark state of mind forbade him to fully appreciate the humor in the situation. His governess, a religious woman with a boisterous and unusual, yet unshakable, faith, a future nun, and wholesome and pure as the snow of the highest alpine peaks… And he, a widowed naval captain, well schooled in the ways of the world and, according to his late wife, formerly an unreformable rake, father of seven children... What was worse was that unless Max managed to scavenge his brain cells for some of his distant memories of a distant, somewhat disreputable past, they could remain like that for hours. His lips began twitching and much to his dismay, he let out a low giggle.

Max raised his head from the work he was doing.

"At last you are finally seeing the humor in this! There is still hope for you, old man!"

The casual observation drove the governess to the edge.

"You abominable wretch!" she hissed.

"Fräulein, I am only trying to help you," chanted Max, in mock offense. "Besides, if you do not cease twitching because of your constant bickering, I am afraid there won´t be much I can do about this."

"Not you. You," She turned sharply to him instead, bending so close that their noses almost touched. "You should know that it is his entire fault," she informed Herr Detweiler, as haughtily as she could possibly manage under the circumstances.

"Of course it is," Max humored her. "It always is!"

The governess was not done yet. She continued to lash out at him.

"If you were paying more attention to your children instead of… instead of…"

He held his breath, but she never finished the sentence, ending it with a typical unintelligible grumble. Had she noticed that he had been paying too much attention to her – not only that, not exactly the kind of attention one should pay to a governess? So, he merely rolled his eyes at let out a low curse, instead of giving her the proper answer she deserved: to remind her that, as a governess, it was her duty to pay attention to what the children were doing, not his. That was, after all, precisely what governesses were for.

"Whatever it is that you did, you have to admit you gave this lovely Fräulein every reason to be upset, Georg. You are in a very delicate situation right now, my friend!"

The lovely Fräulein agreed wholeheartedly.

"I have never…"

Again, another unfinished sentence.

It seemed it was a newly developed habit – another one in the endless list of her annoying idiosyncrasies! This time he chose to help her.

"O-ho, I am sure you haven´t!" he spat, with elegant irony. What he meant by that, he was not precisely sure. Many things, undoubtedly, none of them suitable for the ears of a nun. He watched her closely. Oblivious of the innuendo, she frowned, while Max, who never missed such things, doubled over in laughter.

He groaned, while his friend continued to enjoy himself immensely at his expense.

"I am really flattered that after so many years you call me to a… ahem… mission again. Now, you must remember well that my talents usually don´t work well if my childlike curiosity remains unsatisfied," Max provoked. Georg grumbled again in response. "Would any of you be kind enough to tell me how this happened? Why I was called while savoring a lovely cup of tea at the Tomaselli (1) to come to the rescue?" he asked, before he started laughing again.

Fräulein Maria opened her mouth to speak.

"Well, he…"

"You," he corrected immediately. "And no, no, no. You will not tell him, I will not allow it."

"He," she solemnly ignored his warning and repeated emphatically, looking at Max and pointing a finger straight to his chest.

"Absolutely out of the question," he silenced her again. Next, he decided to talk some sense into the governess – after all, he could not be so mistaken about the worry in her eyes and her face which was constantly changing color, so maybe she would listen to him just this once.

"Fräulein, would you look at this man," he pointed to Max, "and pay close attention to what he is doing. Do you really believe that you can tell him your colorful version of the events and remain unscathed? He will never leave you alone afterwards. God knows he will never leave me alone."

She muttered something incomprehensible.

"You would not like it if such kind of news reached the ears of the Mother Abbess, would you?" he taunted.

She moaned, closing her eyes and uttering what it sounded like a quick prayer.

"I will never leave any of you alone, no matter what happens," Max said, but he chose to ignore him.

"But it was all very innocent and harmless when you consider all the facts, Captain," she began, wide-eyed again, firmly stomping one foot on the ground. Obviously, she wasn´t convinced. He should know by now that discretion was not one of her talents. "Honestly, we have nothing to be ashamed of."

His eyes widened instantly.

Innocent and harmless?

Nothing to be ashamed of?

He could not believe what she was saying. Yet he knew that if he allowed her to tell the tale, she would only make things worse with her blunt honesty. He knew exactly how Max would respond to it, but Elsa… his future fiancée might not find the whole situation amusing at all.

Meanwhile, the governess continued blabbering.

"There was no way Marta and Gretl could have known, the poor little dears never saw such a… such a… contraption. I myself admit that I never have. Why do you keep such an awful thing in your house all these years after the war is beyond my comprehension. And you had to bring it downstairs when the children were around. So, you see, that is entirely your fault. Something like this was bound to happen!"

"It was standard equipment aboard my submarine," he explained between clenched teeth.

"That I refuse to believe," she exclaimed scathingly. "I never heard of any of our mighty warships carrying such awful, outlandish instruments of torture."

"First of all, this is not an instrument of torture."

"Ooooh, I beg to differ about that one, Captain!"

"Second of all," he used his booming military voice to interrupt her, "if you were an expert in Austrian Naval History you would know that we did carry similar equipment aboard in case one of the sailors became… rebellious and uncontrollable." She grumbled, because his eyes narrowed into slits at her when he spat the last words.

"Finally, nothing was bound to happen if you had chosen not to ignore the first command ever issued to you when you walked into this house."

"Hah!" she laughed triumphantly. He knew why, and he had to keep himself from biting his own tongue.

She had a point, after all – it had not been the infuriating Fräulein who had invaded a room which was to be left undisturbed this time, and it had been him, in his absurd need to impress her. It was him who went to the sanctuary of his attic to retrieve a box where he kept some trinkets he used to keep in his U-boat, including the perfect kind of twine to make flawless nautical knots! He had not touched that box in years, even before Agathe´s death. He simply did not remember having that… contraption there. He honestly thought he had thrown it away because it was, in theory, perfectly useless. Yes, in theory, and not in the presence of seven children and one governess who was prone to the most unusual accidents.

So, while Max worked his disreputable magic, he proceeded to satisfy his friend´s fiendish curiosity and tell him what had happened.

It all began only one our earlier, with an innocent question from his youngest daughter.

"Gretl, stop playing with that," he warned as he saw his daughter´s head disappear inside the box. He could not help but smile – the box was not a small one, and it look like the little girl was about to fall in. "Come here, darling, and join your brothers and sisters."

"Didn´t these belong to mother?" she asked.

"What darling?"

"The lovely silver bracelets. The Chinese ones!"

"Mmmm?"

Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he thought that he did not recall Agathe ever owning a silver Chinese bracelet. But the thought was fleeting, and it vanished before he could give it any further consideration. The matter seemed of little importance, anyway – it was a well known fact that little Gretl called anything she did not understand or never seen before "Chinese", no matter what the origin was.

"May I keep them?"

"Mmmm…"

His mind barely registered what Gretl was saying anymore, so entranced he was by the picture Fräulein Maria made, surrounded by his youngest children in the nursery. She had not been glaring at him, nor looking at him like she wanted to tie a rope around his neck and pull it very, very slowly.

It was a rainy day outside. Max was away in Salzburg, having coffee and cake with a group of impresarios of equally shady reputations. Elsa was taking her beauty sleep upstairs. As for him, he now wondered why he had been overcome with such an attack of insanity, having the preposterous idea of teaching his seven children and their governess how to make proper sailor´s knots.

But Fräulein Maria wasn´t paying any attention to him at all. There was a softness in her face, a slight blush tinting her cheeks whenever they briefly made eye contact that made her appear utterly charming and alluring to him, in spite of the fact that she was back to wearing that awful convent grey dress again. He made a mental note to tell the laundress to burn that thing the next time it was sent to be washed.

He knelt next to her on the floor, and playfully began tying his children together by their wrists with a wickedly clever knot, one that required a certain degree of skill. Fräulein Maria was silently working on another complicated knot herself, one that he had personally challenged her to finish. He gazed at her profile. There was a blue stain in one of her high cheekbones, since she and the girls had been water coloring before his arrival. His fingers itched to brush it away.

"There!" she exclaimed, turning to look at him, proudly handling him the result of her efforts.

He surveyed her work critically.

"Honestly, Fräulein, I´m not at all impressed. I have seen better work done by first year cadets."

"Oh!"

It was not entirely true, of course. For a first attempt, her knot was more than adequate. In fact, so much that he was vaguely impressed with her beginner´s skill. The trouble was that lately, he simply enjoyed too much provoking a certain reaction in the young woman. Her eyebrows rose, she tilted her nose up, her mouth formed a perfect "o". She looked offended, disgruntled, and hopelessly, utterly charming and alluring.

"I think they would look pretty on Fräulein Maria," Gretl said somewhere near him.

The governess looked to the right, at the object in his daughter´s hands and frowned. On the other hand, he kept looking at the governess – there was another small ink stain at the tip of her nose. Well, she had brushed a lock of hair from his forehead once, hand's she? (2) If only he… No, no, no, he could not.

"No, those are too big for Fräulein Maria," said Marta, but he still hardly registered it. "I think they are large enough for father!"

"Let us see then," said Gretl.

Click…

"Look, I it fits!"

It all happened too fast after that. He saw the Fräulein´s eyes widening impossibly.

"O-o-oooh, Gretl, I don´t think these are…" she began, but it was already too late. "… bracelets." He heard another metallic click.

"What the…" he spat, raising his right wrist. With it came the governess´s left wrist.

No, most definitely not Chinese bracelets. They were tied by a pair of handcuffs from the Great War.

It had been Sister Margaretta the first one to speak to her about people who believed we lived not only one, but several lives. According to their faith, the punishment for your sins was to be forced to make the same mistakes again and again, until you finally learned the right way to live a fulfilling and virtuous life. One night, during a cup of tea late at night, she was brave enough to ask Georg von Trapp, a man who had circled the world and knew so much about different faiths, if that was indeed truth, and he had confirmed it. What followed was one of the most fascinating hours of Maria´s life.

Now, although she did not share the same beliefs with such people, she could not help but wonder what despicable sins she had committed in a past life to deserve to be literally caught in such a situation. She did not even want to consider thinking about the Captain´s sins, especially after having overheard the whispered comments between two maids that he did have quite a colorful past before he married Agathe Whitehead. What they meant exactly by colorful she had no idea, but she was sure it was not something a postulant of Nonnberg Abbey would even dream of finding out.

The worst was that he did not look even half as mad as she was feeling. It wasn´t right, he should be bellowing orders around, like the honest to goodness sea captain that he was. However, in spite of a quick, effective call to locate Max Detweiler in town, when he told him, in a brisk tone and with the minimum possible amount of words what had happened – in spite of that, he looked oddly… amused.

Well, she was not.

She had so many reasons to be mad. More than that, boiling mad as Friedrich once described his father´s state of mind whenever he was contradicted. Those were handcuffs, for heaven´s sake! Running the house like a warship was one thing, but keeping such kind of device in the house was another matter entirely. What was he thinking?!

Yet, in spite of that, she also had many reasons to be curious and puzzled by the little facts the incident was revealing to her.

There was, for instance, that maddening underlying amusement in the Captain´s eyes. That barely detectable glimmer of mischief she noticed while he thought he was hiding it so well. Max Detweiler, on the other hand, was making no effort to hide it. It was almost like both of them knew a secret that she did not, and that they were laughing inside at her expense. It would be months and she would already be a married woman when her husband would tell her, quite bluntly in fact, exactly what was so amusing about the situation, but until then… No, she did not like it.

Maybe… maybe it was because he knew that, if Herr Detweiler did not succeed in breaking that lock, they could remain like that for hours until another solution was found. No, days! And if things were as enervating as they were now, with her forced to be in such close proximity to the Captain, she could barely imagine how it would be if they had to spend weeks like that, she thought feverishly, her thoughts panicked and out of control. Their hands touched once in a while, sometimes his arm brushed with hers… his naked forearm, because he had to roll his sleeves in order to make it possible for Herr Detweiler to work and she had rolled hers because she had been water coloring before.

What made it more disturbing was that she felt nothing when uncle Max casually touched her hand, which he often had to do, while when the Captain… It seemed like little electric currents began running up and down her arms, ending in her lower belly. It was the most unusual, alien feeling – not at all unpleasant, on the contrary, which was precisely what it made it so perplexing. No one should make her feel like that. He should not make her feel like that. She was going to be a nun, she was not supposed to feel anything so… physical. It could not be right, it had to be sinful.

"Oh dear," she murmured wretchedly, trying to focus her thoughts anywhere else, but failing miserably.

They would have to change their clothes, they would have to respond to an urgent call of nature and go to the bathroom. Eventually, they would feel tired and they would have to sleep in the same bed…

She could not prevent a strangled gasp from escaping her mouth, wondering why the thought of sleeping in the same bed with the Captain was enough to feel like she had just jumped inside a flaming volcano. She was sweating, and it was not even so hot today. Horrified, she felt goose bumps traveling down her arms, and prayed silently that the Captain would not notice them.

"Did I hurt you, Fräulein?" Herr Detweiler asked.

But Maria merely shook her head, frantically, not daring to look at the Captain. Instead, she tried to focus her eyes and her mind in what his best friend was doing. Blessedly, it worked – she recovered a little control over her thoughts again.

Herr Detweiler… He was also a whole different matter to be considered. How come the best friend of the illustrious, highborn Captain von Trapp was somehow an expert in… picking locks?! It was the last talent she would imagine anyone close to an aristocratic Baron would have. Yet, even as an expert, the man was making quite a few obvious mistakes. Under any other circumstances, she would have kept her mouth firmly shut, but since her well being, her peace of mind, not to mention her dignity, were at stake, she decided to speak up.

"If you excuse me, Herr Detweiler," she began, still awfully flustered, her voice not as calm and firm as she might have wished.

"Yes?" Both men spoke at the same time.

"I am not talking to you," she wanted to yell at the most infuriating one of the pair, but she decided it would be wise to curb her tongue for the moment. At least while she was… tied to him like that.

She took a huge, calming breath.

"With all due respect, I do not think you are handling this in the correct manner!"

There, she had said it.

She was as delicate and polite as she could possibly muster. In her scant experience, men did not like to be told what to do, not when it came to what they considered to be a man´s job. Ridiculous, but true. However, man´s job or not, Maria knew a little something about picking locks, something she had learned in the Abbey from a most unlikely source.

Anyway, they may even refuse to listen to her, but whatever the result of her outspokenness was, it was worth seeing the look in their faces. Her momentary physical discomforts were forgotten – at least for the moment. The Captain looked like he was about to have a stroke.

"Did I hear what you just said?" he asked rapidly.

"Unless you suffer from a hearing problem, Captain, which I don´t think you do, I think you heard me just fine," she retorted ironically.

He gave her one of his dangerous smiles, which provoke a strange feeling low in her stomach.

"Oh no, it begins again," she realized, perturbed.

She felt Herr Detweiler watching them intently, fascinated.

"Ah ha! Then I will kindly ask you to satisfy my undying curiosity and tell me where, when and with whom did a future nun learn how to pick a lock?!"

She decided to give him a petulant, but precise, answer.

"Nonnberg, about…" she squinted, as if to stimulate her memory, "… six and a half months ago and… and…"

"And?" he insisted, impatiently.

"Sister Berthe."

"Sister Berthe?!"

Well, in spite of her unfortunate condition, there would be something to be remembered fondly about that rainy afternoon after all. Again, she saw that priceless look of utter dismay in his face. She probably ruined the reputation of the nun he usually referred to as a "model of discipline and orderliness" in just a few words.

However, her triumph was short lived. He crossed his arms in front of his massive chest, silently demanding further explanation. Of course he had completely forgotten about the handcuffs – her left hand was violently, although unintentionally, pulled against him and she yelped. He did not apologize. He also made no motion to uncross his arms and free her hand.

"Sister Berthe – think of Sister Berthe," her mind screamed.

Poor Sister Berthe!

She was, after all, no model nun at all - hardly perfect, and much more human than the Captain would ever imagine possible. She would not be the one to ruin her spotless reputation in the eyes of such a distinguished Austrian hero… even if the sour nun would have a heart attack of she saw Maria and the Captain like that.

"It is a very long story, Captain, one I don´t believe you have the inclination or the patience to listen to at the moment," Maria said as calmly as she could possibly manage. In a gesture that contrasted with her tone, she yanked her hand back, just as suddenly as he had and this time it was his turn to flinch. The brash action cost her, of course – his hand brushed against her breasts, and she nearly jumped. Hastily, she dropped her handcuffed hand to her side, to a safer position. She did not apologize, but something in her gesture softened the ominous look in his eyes.

"Fräulein…"

No, she would not hear any of it.

Not now.

She was feeling too much, feeling things she could not fully understand. Her had had been pressed against his chest and for a fleeting moment she had actually felt him. And what she felt ended one of the last misconceptions she might have had about him – that he was someone not used to any kind of demanding physical activity, at least after he lost the Navy. It was true that she had never touched a man´s chest before, but his did not feel like one who would belong to a flaccid aristocrat.

Not at all.

"Stop it!" Maria admonished herself.

She cleared her throat and decided to try once more to focus on more practical matters, as a very obvious thought occurred to her.

"Have any of you gentlemen considered the possibility if looking for the key?!"

"She does have a very good point, Georg," the impresario laughed. "Where are the keys?" he asked innocently.

The Captain went livid at first. Then he took a calming breath.

"The blasted keys," he began, his teeth clenched, "as you know very well, Lieutenant…"

Maria flinched.

Oh dear – he had used Max´s old Navy rank. She had never heard him doing that before. It could not be a very good sign.

"… are lying at the bottom of the blasted Adriatic because…"

What followed was a somewhat… colorful description of the events that led to the loss of the keys to the pair of handcuffs, events of which, without a doubt, Herr Detweiler was entirely to blame.

While both men continued their verbal battle, employing a vocabulary that they probably had not used since their early days at sea, Maria let out an audible sigh, and sagged back in the couch. Just when she thought she could not suffer any further embarrassment, she heard a melodious, but very aristocratic woman´s voice.

"Georg, are you there darling? We are doing to be late for… Dear Lord!"

Baroness Schraeder appeared at the door.

It was going to be a long day.

To be continued… someday!

---

A/N: (1) The oldest café in Salzburg. (2) See "Edelweiss".