Page 6 of The Spinster & the Sock

“No, I suppose you didn’t—though I assure you that is not why I believe you to have been raised among animals.” She crosses her arms and gives me a pointed once-over.

“Blaze.”

“Pardon?” Josephine spins in a circle, clearly panicked. “Fire? Where?”

“N-no! My name—it’s Blaze, Blaze Hollows. That’s my name. Blaze is my name.”

Her incredulous stare tells me the same thing all those kids did back in grade school. She thinks it’s ridiculous.

“Should we catch up to Gerty?” I sigh, nodding my head in the direction of the now-open door.

“My grandmother’s name is Marjorie. Will you please stop calling her Gerty?” Jo shakes her head and grabs my hand, dragging me behind her as she makes her way to our mutual doom—clearly fearing I may hold true to my joke and run.

I know I’m way past fucked when we step into the house and turn into the parlor. A handful of women, obviously related to Jo if their hair color is any indication, are sitting on various couches and whispering to each other. But it’s the older man pacing in the back of the room in front of the fireplace that makes me want to tuck tail. He’s chewing at his thumbnail, and his face is red with anger. Gerty—it’s too late to let the name go—is standing by the mantle, arms crossed.

“I wish it was not true, George, but I was there! I saw everything—and I do mean everything—with my very own eyes!” The elderly woman shudders, her jowls dangling like a hound dog while glancing between my legs. “I saw it. There is no mistaking what was happening.”

I sigh.

He looks up, right at me. Jo has his eyes, though where hers are gentle—even when she’s spitting like a viper—her father’s are harsh.

Fuck.

He clears the gap in four strides, jerks Jo to his side by her wrist and shoves an open palm at my chest, which I think makes him angrier, but I’m used to being pushed around by angry heifers. It doesn’t matter that he’s a whole hand taller than me.

“My daughter’s character has suffered enough damage without her virtue also being questioned. You may marry Josephine, or you may die. Make your choice, sir.”

Well, that’s a little dramatic.

Medical Straddling

Josephine

“Make your choice, sir.”

Father speaks calmly, as though he is offering a welcomed guest their pick of gin or port. It is cordial and yet, beneath the surface, I know that warm composure. I have experienced it more times than I should care to recount. Most memorably, when I refused the viscount’s proposal. More than once.

This warm composure is the quiet before the teapot starts screaming in a steamy rage.

Blaze. What kind of name is that? Nevermind, whatever he says next will determine if the teapot cools or steams in the immediate seconds to follow, and no amount of open windows in the drawing room could possibly rid the space of the suffocating feeling which closes in around me while I wait for the idiot to speak.

He does speak, and I decide scalding water to the ears would be better.

“That’s the weirdest damned thing I have ever heard in my life.” His words are not promising at all, and my eyes fall closed in dread. “And if I hadn’t watched more Pride and Prejudice than I care to admit, I would probably not even believe that this is a thing—weird and archaic, by the way.”

Blaze’s messy red hair bounces as his head turns to assess the room. His panicking eyes lock with mine as I release a deep, shaky breath and something about the sincerity in his gaze makes me want to dive into the hearth and burn myself, as if I’m truly the plague society will believe I am should I actually be forced to marry him. “Jo, darlin’, talk to your old pops here for me and explain!”

“Jo?!” Georgia gasps, covering her mouth in shock, and I feel my insides knotting tighter than my laces have ever been. The idiot doesn’t even seem to realize the mistake he makes in addressing me as anything other than Miss Dashwood.

Stanley, who’d been hovering in the shadows of the drawing room and indulging in a long, slow puff of tobacco from his pipe, strides forward. “You impertinent scoundrel, you shall address my sister as a lady, or I will have you horsewhipped! Where does a fool of your poor breeding come from?!”

“See, I would tell you,” Blaze chuckles nervously, “but this hostile situation makes me wonder if personal details would make this better or worse…” His voice morphs into a breathy whimper as he blurts more nonsense. “Can’t I just ‘to infinity and beyond!’ myself out of this?” He pumps a fist skyward, and I shake my head with an exasperated sigh, pressing fingertips to my temples.

Death, be not proud. The famous words of John Donne, my favorite poet, ring in my mind as I imagine Blaze, the burly brute, dead by my father’s pistol. Not that anything about him seems proud even now, but the poor fellow, who likely belongs in an insane asylum, will seem even less so when he’s shot down for violating social niceties worse than having a truly ugly sense of fashion. Briefly, my mind wanders to the hideous sack he emerged from the pond wearing, and I say a prayer of thanks that I was able to clothe him more appropriately. Heavens forbid he had shown up here clad in one sock.

Covered in roosters, nonetheless.

Then again, him having kept that atrocious sock and ridiculous sack on would’ve avoided this whole debacle to begin with.