Authors: Samantha Leal
The next morning found Jasmin and Nathaniel engaging in their second favorite physical activity; roaming the emerald green meadows of Nathaniel’s vast estate on horseback.
Rising side by side with their hands joined between them, the couple talked and laughed together, before finally pausing at the edge of the meadow. Nathaniel suddenly fell silent as he turned to face the woman beside him.
“Say you’ll stay here with me, Jasmin,” he implored her, taking her hand in his as he stared deep into her eyes. “Don’t go back.”
Jasmin shrugged.
“Well, I’m not entirely sure that I could go back, even if I wanted to—it’s not like I can just grab the nearest Uber and hightail it back to F-L-A,” she told him, adding more seriously, “And even if I could, Nathaniel, I wouldn’t want to go back. I mean, sure, I have some good friends and family members there.” She paused here, gracing him with an affectionate smile. “And you, darling, are here—thus my choice is made.”
Letting loose with a joyful whoop, a beaming Nathaniel brought her hand to his lips for a sweet, affirming kiss.
“I swear to you, Miss, I will spend our every moment together making sure that you do not regret your choice,” he promised her. “You can remain here as long as you like as the queen of this manor, resting, relaxing…”
“Nu-uh,” Jasmin interrupted him, holding her free hand up before them as she added, “I do spend a lot of time here, to be sure—but I also have every intention of heading into London proper and writing up a storm for your publishing company. And, while I’m at it, I think I’ll do my part to advance the rights of women in your time.” She paused here, pitching her head back and adding in a wail that sent the swans and geese around them flying for cover, “Watch out, Victorian England! Hurricane Jasmin has arrived!”
Nathaniel guffawed outright.
“Victorian England is most fortunate to have you,” he praised her, adding in a softer tone that dripped with love, “And so, for that matter, am I. I love you, Jasmin.”
THE END
Cynthia Wilde
Copyright ©2015 by Cynthia Wilde. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Thank you so much for your interest in my work!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 1
Aria looked out from the top deck of the ferry. She was on her way to somewhere in Alaska that she had never heard of, in order to take possession of a cabin she had inherited from a great aunt whom she had never known. She had been looking for a change anyhow, and so with the promise of free rent and adventure, she left behind the small town in Florida where she came from. There were a few tear-filled goodbyes, but they were balanced by the fact that Aria was more than ready to start fresh somewhere new. As she looked around her at the wide open wilderness on all sides, she realized that if the awe inspiring beauty of nature up her was any indication, she would soon have a whole lot of new things to get used to.
Everything had changed as she drove northwest through the expansive country. It got considerably colder, even for June, the closer she got to Washington. The houses were separated by wider and wider spaces, and those spaces went from holding a few trees each, to being made up of whole forests. Everything just got more natural as she headed further west. She had been overjoyed to get through what she felt was the vastly overpopulated South. The further she got from it, the more she realized how much she had disliked it. Aria was on a shoestring budget, and by the time she had gotten on the 3-day ferry up to Alaska she was already getting low on funds. Traveling like this actually cost more than flying, but there was absolutely no way she was going to get on a plane. Regardless of the cost, though, or the means of travel, she was excited to be on this new adventure.
It was the third day on the ferry and she had already spent two nights camped out on the front deck. Even though the price for an actual room was astronomical, she now kind of wished she had chosen that route. The air outside was far colder than she would have imagined for early summer. At least there were many others who had underestimated the temperature as well. On the bright side, they now shared a sense of camaraderie that had been forged through the mutual trauma they had endured in the deep chill of the last few nights. Many were ending their trip in Ketchikan, but Aria was pushing forward north to around Barrow. According to her map, even once she arrived there, there would still be two more days of travel by bus as well as by boat.
All she knew about where she was going was what she had looked up, and that had in no way prepared her for the vast majestic views that had awaited her. She also had had no way to anticipate how small such open spaces would make her feel. Nature definitely reigned supreme in Alaska. The paperwork in her knapsack said that she now owned a cabin and fifty acres somewhere up there. She could feel her destiny calling to her from the wilderness.
***
Aria finally arrived at Ketchikan and then almost immediately picked up a bus that was headed even further north. Even though the trip meant several more hours of driving, it was mainly coastal roads and the views kept her in a perpetually awestruck state. She sat next to a gentleman a little older than she was for the last leg of the journey and the two talked for hours. The conversation made the time pass quickly. At the next town, she got off to catch a boat to the northern coast. Everything had been pre-booked, so it was supposed to be a smooth trip, but she was still genuinely surprised when each leg went off without a hitch. Aria decided that she would take that as a sign. Things were on the upswing.
Her first impression of Barrow was how small it was. Taking in the houses in a glance she figured that there couldn’t have been more than a hundred or so people in the whole town. But the thing that made it seem so much smaller she decided, was the way the town was so close to the shore. It looked dangerously close. She imagined it would only take one tantrum and the sea would swallow it all up in one angry surge.
Aria’s heart skipped a beat as she hopped off the boat in the uneven tide. Her legs were happy to feel the solid dock, and then actual ground underneath her. She only had one large duffel bag that the mate handed her as he waved goodbye. Everyone had been so nice and even the couple of hours on the boat had yielded several friends she would be happy to see again. It seemed to Aria that people were just different up north. She had admit that she liked the change.
Looking through her bag pockets, she found the piece of paper that had the address. She had bought a car through a man and she was supposed to pick it up. Vehicles were extremely hard to get, in large part because the cost of transporting one exceeded the value of the actual car. So she hoped that the car she had purchased was not a complete rust bucket and that it would at least get her to the cabin some 10 miles inland. Aria found it hard to take her eyes from the view though. She could see the icebergs just off the coast. It was just so … wild … and dangerous.
Aria shivered as she walked the several blocks to the address. It turned out to be a small house/restaurant and when she opened the door, several pairs of eyes were instantly on her. There was a small bar with a few stools and she went to sit down, smiling at a few people that kept her eye contact. A waitress quickly brought over a menu and asked what she wanted to drink.
Trying to prop the large bag up, she asked for the name she had written down on the piece of paper.
“Ralph!”
The woman turned her head back towards Aria and told her that he would be out in a moment. Aria asked for a Coke and settled in to look at the menu. She had ordered and started eating by the time Ralph came up from the back. He turned out to be a rotund older man that looked much like his name sounded. He gave Aria a once over that made her a bit uncomfortable.
“So you’re Aria?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Look at you, so polite. I daresay that won’t last long around here. You kind of look like Martha you know. We never knew she had nieces.
“Great niece. I think her and my mother had a falling out when they were younger. I actually never met her or even knew that she existed until a couple of months ago.”
“Tragic. Hell of a way to learn.”
His green eyes stared into hers, as if probing for something for a moment, until he finally turned away when she didn’t. It sort of reminded her of a stare down that she had with her cat a week before.
“So you ready to pick up your car? She is a beaut. I really think you are going to like it.”
Aria had hoped for a picture, or something, but the man did not seem too on top of things technologically speaking. When she explained cell phones with cameras, he snorted. But she had been a little desperate so she went on his word.
“Oh I don’t have one of those fin dangled picture phones. What do you need that for?”
As Aria looked around the man’s yard, she believed him. There wasn’t a thing in it that didn’t look like it had been there at least ten years already. He seemed to have a combination used car and salvage business – and diner. They walked to the back where he had most of the cars. They went pretty far before he finally pulled a sheet out from the wipers of a sedan of some sort. It was a beaut and though it was old, it seemed to have no outside damage. Aria did not know the model unless she looked at the paperwork, but it was a pretty powder blue and was more of less what she had had in mind. She had been warned that it would be useless 6-8 months out of the year, but for now it was perfect and she would worry about winter when the time came.
Stowing her luggage in the trunk, she got behind the wheel and looked at the directions she had written down and quickly started south, heading deeper into the overgrown wild. After about thirty minutes Aria checked the address twice before she pulled down a long dirt road. The cabin was not at all what she had expected. It was actually more of a proper family sized home than the modest dwelling she had been expecting. She noticed the road went off deeper into the woods past her property and she briefly wondered who lived up the hill.
Aria had to pinch herself to make sure she was not dreaming. She could have never afforded anything so nice on her bartender salary at home, and now she could live here in this big place – and all rent free. The estate even had the fees and taxes paid off for years to come. It had all been worked into the will. She didn’t have much in her pocket, but she knew that she would find something to do out there that would pay for food and her meager expenses. The first thing was to settle in.
Her hands touched the large support beams in the main room. They looked like they had been made from tree trunks they were so thick. Every log was cut perfectly to fit and though there didn’t seem to be any electricity running to the house from the outside, she had seen several solar panels on the roof. She was digging the Alaskan self-sufficiency already. The place was fully furnished and though it was not of her taste exactly, it was perfect for the setting, and she wasn’t about to be ungrateful. Aria suspected her tastes would be changing. She actually imagined she would be doing some changing herself. In fact, she already felt different, she realized.
Aria put her bag down in the bedroom, her bedroom, she reminded herself, and grabbed a blanket off the couch to cover her shoulders. There were a couple of rocking chairs out on the front deck, and the deck was high enough that she could see the ocean in the distance. She sat there for some time, knowing that her great aunt Martha must have sat there doing the very same thing many times. Her cheeks were beat red and her teeth chattering by the time she finally tore herself away from the view and went in to start a fire.
No Alaskan home was complete without a raging fire she decided, and Aria was satisfied that she had successfully started her first fire all by herself in the small fire place. That was the first time she had put her Girl Scout training to use in years, but it all came back to her pretty easily. She started off towards the kitchen and was happy to find several days-worth of groceries still in the cupboards. It looked like her great aunt relied heavily on canned goods, so for the most part she didn’t have to worry much about cleaning out food that had gone bad. She started a mental list of things in her head that she needed to pick up when she made her first run into town. The list quickly became too long though, and she was soon searching for a pen among the many kitchen drawers.
In the third drawer she opened, she noticed a strange drawing on the bottom of the drawer. It looked like a strange star with many points and weaving lines that ran through it. Her fingers touched the drawing and she realized that it was burnt into the thin wood.
At that very moment, smoke entered the kitchen and as she turned around she thick black smoke billowing from the fireplace and filling the air. Covering her mouth, she walked closer and realized that something in the chimney must have caught fire – or maybe it was just blocked. She had no idea how these things worked. She quickly filled a trashcan with water and doused the fire before the entire house was smoked out. Still, she had to open every door to the house to air it out properly. As she contemplated dealing with the problem with the fireplace she realized just how exhausted she was from her trip. She decided to lay down for a few minutes. Of course she was quickly off to dreamland, only waking must have been hours later, although there was no way to tell by the light outside. It never seemed to get any darker. She had heard it could daylight for months up her but it was still weird to experience. But what actually awakened her was not the light, but the cold. She realized that she had left the doors wide open.
Throwing on a thick sweatshirt, Aria quickly headed to kitchen to make some coffee and looked at the mini -mess in the living room. There was soot on most of the objects near the fireplace and the whole place now smelled like an old fire pit. She ripped up an old box she found and laid the cardboard out in the fireplace so she could wriggle in a get a look up the chimney. She did not see any light, which she decided was bad. It must be blocked, she decided.
Her fear of heights did not rest solely in flying. She was afraid to get on anything over her own height, so she was not exactly enthusiastic about what she had to do next. In the end her fear of freezing trumped her fear of heights, and so after a couple of cups of coffee and a lot of nervous looks at the precarious roof, Aria looked around for a ladder. Truth be told, she was not too thrilled to find one on the garage wall. She also found a tall wand looking thing that she thought may be the tool used for just this sort of cleaning. With the ladder settled against the house and the cleaning contraption in hand, she prepared herself for the climb. Her hands shook as much as her insides as she scaled what felt like a mountain about halfway up , before pausing to look down. She shouldn’t have done that, she quickly realized.
Aria gasped and grabbed the sides of the ladder for dear life. The vertigo made the entire world seem to swim before her for a moment and she closed her eyes tight to stop it. She was almost prepared to open them when she heard someone underneath her laughing.
“What in the world are you doing up there?”
Aria gripped the ladder harder, steeling herself in case he was going to shake it. She knew it was a man, but she was too petrified to look down. She was all of ten feet of the ground.