14. A Spinster, Not An Idiot
A Spinster, Not An Idiot
Josephine
I know I shouldn’t be alone in this bedroom with him, door shut and voices hushed.
But we can’t get any more marriage-bound than we already are.
What’s the worst that will happen? Grandmother finds me unchaperoned with him again and bullies him into an awkward proposal?
And honestly, everything about the past twelve hours has me questioning right from wrong, so I am not really concerned about what anyone thinks at this point.
Blaze and I need to set a few things straight before the chaos of the next month ensues.
“So you’ve been living all Han Solo in an attic above your store?
And you have a room at your parent’s house?
I share a bunk space with the rest of the crew during the season, and I work the farm back at Mom and Pop’s the rest of the year, so I still have my childhood bedroom there.
Guess we have that in common, no real home.
“ He shrugs, flashing me a charming, tired smile.
Sure, we have similar housing situations, but I don’t know what ‘Han Solo’ is. “Han Solo?” I clarify, my brow furrowing, and I cross my arms, warding off the late evening chill.
“Ah, sorry, bad future pun—alone. You live alone.” He chuckles at his own joke, and the way he smiles shows how truly fatigued he is.
It isn’t the jovial, lighthearted grin I’ve observed an absurd amount of times today considering he has fallen through time.
Finally, his expression reflects what he’s been through.
“Right.” I cringe, wondering how long it will take for us to either return him to his time, or for me to adapt to his curious manner of talking.
“Yes. And I think for everyone’s sake, we ought to continue to live there.
I have a very comfortable chaise you can make your own until we magic you back to your time.
” A fleeting doubt penetrates my mind. What if I am about to marry a lunatic?
What if he isn’t strange because he has traveled, but because he has escaped a sanitarium and is taking refuge on my family’s estate?
Bringing me back to the present, Blaze puffs an exhausted sigh and reclines against the down pillows. “Magic. Don’t suppose you have any of that lying around in your shop?”
I offer him a sad, apologetic smile. “Fresh out, I’m afraid.”
“No DeLorean chilling in your garden somewhere?”
“DeLorean?”
“It’s a car, which is basically a carriage with rubber wheels instead of wooden ones, and a motor providing horsepower minus the actual horses.” Blaze flashes two thumbs up, and a proud grin stretches across his face. “The DeLorean is a time-traveling carriage.”
“So, did people in 2025 invent time travel?” I ask, absentmindedly as I cross the floor to peer out the large window overlooking the garden.
“Pretty sure Diana Gabaldon did. Or maybe it was aliens…that would better explain how I got here.”
“Oh, Blaze,” I sigh, looking over my shoulder at him. “You might as well be speaking a foreign language. How did you get here? Can’t we just repeat whatever you did and send you back home?”
“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.