Time & Tide - Original Wattpad Version

Chapter Twenty-Six: In Which Jessie is Married

We walked as quickly as was dignified to the end of the avenue, which spilled us out into a small grassy park. It was really just a bit of green space behind the market buildings, filled with carts that currently weren't being used to unload goods, and a tree and a lump of grassy dirt.

Mr. Cooper was sitting underneath the tree, eating an apple and staring at something I couldn't make out at first. He looked up before Margaret and I could bypass him, and jumped to his feet.

"Miss Franklin!" he said, and I realized the thing in his hand was one of those un-covered poke bonnets that I'd seen in the milliner's window. He was holding it carefully by the basket of gathered white fabric at the back, eyes narrowed at the straw brim as if it had personally offended him. There was a single sash of light blue ribbon across the point where straw and fabric met, dangling down so the clipped ends curled.

"Mr. Cooper," I said. "I'm not entirely certain that those ribbons are your colour."

"No, no," he said fumbling with the bonnet, looking at it, then me, then back down at it. He tucked it, shame faced, behind his back, then blushed furiously and held it back out. "It is yours, though."

"My... what now?"

"Your colour, Miss Franklin," Margaret said, but with none of the lightness her teasing usually came with. She sounded tight and annoyed. "The blue is the same shade as your calico dress."

Mr. Cooper startled at Margaret, as if just realizing she was standing there beside me. He straightened his arm and brought the bonnet up to eye level. Offering it to me.

"Uh, I suppose it is," I admitted. "What...?"

And then, of course, I understood. Duh.

He flushed again and said, "Miss Franklin, I, uh, I couldn't help but notice you, um, perusing the wares at the hatmaker's, and, well, I thought it would be, um, an accurate token of my affection if I were to, uh, provide you with a bonnet. Besides, ladies ought to have bonnets. It's the... the done thing."

I winced, more out of embarrassment for his stuttering confession than out of discomfort over the fact that the boy that I bought flour from every other night seemed to think that our evening walks were leading somewhere they were not.

Idiot, I scolded myself. I didn't know what to do.

Of course that's what he would think about our strolls; I was a woman interacting regularly with a man, both of us single and unchaperoned. Where I came from, Harry could meet Sally with no orgasms required, but this was 1806 and Mr. Cooper probably had every right to think that I was actively attempting to, as the phrase in Margaret's books went, 'attach him'.

Margaret.

Beside me, she was utterly still, save for the way that her hand was pinching into the crook of my elbow.

No, no, no, abort, I thought frantically. I deliberately did not reach for the hat. "Thank you, Mr. Cooper," I said. "But I fear I cannot accept your gift."

He opened his mouth to argue, I saw it flash in his eyes. Instead he checked his face for lingering apple juice, tucked the offending bonnet behind his own back, like my hands were behind mine, and said, "May I escort you somewhere then, Miss Franklin? Where were you bound for?"

"Home," I said, exchanging a look with Margaret.

He smiled sadly. "Then let me escort you both there." He cut another look at Margaret, probably hoping he could replace her on my arm as we strolled and convince me to change my mind.

"Mr. Cooper," I said, hesitating. Shit fuck, what now? This is ridiculous. I thought miserably. I hadn't resented being in this era so much as right in this moment, because I couldn't just tell him I had a girlfriend and be done with it.