Page 17 of The Spinster & the Sock

“Wanna get rid of me quick, eh?” His eyes close, and I can see the exhaustion of the day physically taking hold of him. “Also, getting here was the scariest shit to ever happen to me. Nearly drowning and freezing to death all at once is not something I want to repeat.”

My chest tightens. He isn’t joking. The tone of his voice is solemn as he recollects what is very obviously the most terrifying experience of his life. “It sounds like you have a mother who must be beside herself,” I whisper softly, to which his eyes droop open and I see sadness there. He purses his lips, nods once, and closes his eyes again.

“I’m sure news will reach her any time now that I’m sleeping with the fishes,” he says with a heavy breath before burying his palms in his eyes and rubbing vigorously. “Pops always begged me not to get on those damn charters, and now I am starting to wonder if he was right.”

With a bolstering deep inhale, I glance away from the half-asleep man and smooth the front of my dress, a nervous tic. “Do not be troubled,” I say, trying to sound cheerful. As cheerful as one can be towards someone who knows they are presumed dead. “You marry me, clear my reputation, and we will get you home soon.”

I stare unimpressed into my mother’s eyes as she rambles on in no particular, coherent direction. I swear, I have watched squirrels move with more purpose than her train of thought.

Something about marital relations piques my interest momentarily, but she is quick to add, “Which you know something of, obviously.”

Naturally, my first thought is, I know nothing of what you speak. Can we go back to marital relations? But as she continues rambling and her cheeks grow redder than ripe tomatoes, I envision something that has been burned into my memory for the last week: Blaze, naked in the modiste shop. Any proper woman wouldn’t dwell for another second on the mishap. Me? Well, I am unmarried and hardly welcome in polite society for a reason. So yes, I fell asleep last night imagining a man three times my size. Naked. Drifting across my tired vision. With all that in mind, I’m almost certain whatever she is talking about has something to do with men in their natural state.

I am a spinster. Not an idiot.

“Of course there will be much to learn and…grow accustomed to after your wedding,” she says with a satisfied sigh, and I realize whatever it is we are talking about, she seems to think she has said all that needs saying. “Just know that if you don’t understand a marital action, he likely will. So ask lots of questions—or better yet, say nothing. It’s usually very quick.”

My mouth gapes, and I consider adding a remark or asking for clarification, but instead, I press my lips together and mull over that thing Blaze mentioned. Something about illnesses and the sex. Perhaps he meant male versus female ailments but I’m unaware what crabs have to do with that, and now mother is rambling on about relations and expectations and that word stimulation she used ten minutes ago, and I realize Blaze isn’t the only one who confuses me.

I should have never left the modiste. Blasted Jonathan. If he had simply done his job, I wouldn’t be in this situation.

Indoors: safe. Outdoors: deadly, or at least humiliating.

“If you’ll excuse me.” I laugh nervously as Mother seems to be catching a second wind, so I rise to my feet, stopping her mid-sentence. “I need to sew the final touches on my dress, and it’s getting late.” Damned liar.

An hour later, I stand in my empty modiste shop, door locked and curtains drawn. It is high time I do something with Blaze’s ugly, smelly clothes which I threw into a hidden pile behind the counter. Besides the clothing being truly offensive to the eyes and reeking of the ocean, there isn’t much I might pause at until I come to the sock he seems so concerned with. It is outrageous and yet also…perhaps the most immaculately woven pattern I have ever seen in my life.

Bright yellow and covered in roosters. Who weaves roosters into socks?

As I turn the droopy thing over, text in the fine embroidery catches my attention. The letter C enclosed in a circle is followed by the words ‘copyright, 2023’.

What is copyright?

2023?

My breath hitches, and I drop the sock. Blaze said he was from the future. Here, at my feet, a garment woven with identical roosters and absolutely no variations or mistakes is unlikely to come from any loom I have ever heard of, no matter the skill. But a perfect textile with the year 2023 imprinted?

I swallow hard, kneel to the floor, and retrieve the sock, deciding for everyone involved it is safest to hide it somewhere nobody will go snooping. I carry it upstairs and shove it in the back of my delicates drawer, not realizing I’m shaking until I slam the drawer on my fingers.

“Damn!” I curse, squeezing my smarting hand in the opposite fist. Slowly, the red in my vision fades and a certainty consumes me, no matter how impossible and frightening it feels: Blaze is from the future.

Vicious Woman

Blaze

Jo and I have fallen into an almost comfortable pattern. Mommy and Daddy Dashwood refuse to let us move into the loft together until after the wedding, and after discovering that I had no residence to return to, which started another massive argument, they insisted I stay at the Dashwood house. Bless Jo’s beautiful heart, she’s staying in her room at the family estate instead of leaving me to the wolves and running back to the modiste. While the Dashwoods have controlled our evenings as if we’re a pair of rowdy teens, I’m surprised—and grateful—to learn we aren’t being regulated during the day. Jo leaves in the early hours for work and, aside from the few days George and I sneak off to fish, I tag along like a lost duckling—which I guess I am.

This morning is no different from the last week’s worth, except Jo somehow seems more sympathetic to my plight. Today, she is dutifully working on a dress that is the exact same shade of yellow as a grilled cheese sandwich, and I oscillate between reading books and wandering aimlessly around the shop. I’m on my second left-turn lap of the front room when I trip over a box that is sticking out just slightly from the bottom shelf and crash to my knees.

“Brother Tucker, John, and Fred!” I grumble, sitting back on my heels, massaging my wrists and waiting for my kneecaps to either quit screaming in pain, or fuck right off and leave for this neglectful treatment. Jo calls out for me, but I fail to answer as I notice the contents of the now open, trip-inducing box.

“Blaze? Can you hear me? Are you well? Why have you got those?” She’s standing beside me now, looking over my shoulder at the red shoes in my hands.

I grin like a fool and shift from my sore knees to my ass on the modiste floor. “This is not going to make a damn bit of sense to you, but I’m going to put these ruby slippers on my big ass feet and if we’re both lucky, they’ll take me straight to Kansas.” I start cramming my socked dogs into the heels before Jo can even protest otherwise. I must have gotten lucky because whoever these shoes were for has decently large feet, so they only hurt just shy of a lot, but I’m actually able to wear them…kind of.

As soon as the calloused and wool-clad heel of my foot snaps down into the incredibly narrow second shoe, I spring up, grabbing the wall for support. Obviously I wore my mom’s heels around the house when I was a kid, but it’s been a few years since I’ve done that and I forgot how damn hard it is to stand in these fuckers.

“Blaze, for heaven’s sake, you’re going to hurt yourself and destroy those shoes!” Jo whines. She’s not wrong, I’m most definitely going to do both of those things, but hopefully not before I can do this.