Chapter Five
“STAY DOWN!” GEOFFERY shouted toward her as Veronica tried to separate elbows and shoulders from each individual man. She could not look away, even though she felt most young women would.
The interior of a carriage did not seem to be an ideal arena for this sort of thing, and Veronica held her breath as Geoffery ducked under the man’s fist. As soon as he had cleared the punch, he clenched his hands together and pulled his elbow hard into the man’s back.
The brute screamed, and Veronica couldn’t help but scream with him as Geoffery hit his elbows into the same place again and again and again.
The man toppled forward, out of Veronica’s sight, and she heard the sound of more hitting and more grunting.
This time, she knew that Geoffery was completely besting the man.
The carriage door opened, and it sounded like the men toppled out in a heap. More hits from outside, some scuffles, a thud, more hitting, and then only the sound of one man’s heavy breathing.
Veronica blinked up from her place in the carriage box and reminded herself to breathe again. What had she just witnessed? Why had she . . . found it so exciting? Shouldn’t she be terrified?
Five seconds passed.
Ten.
“Mr. Meyers?”
“Get up, Miss Veronica!” he shouted from outside of the carriage. “We need to go.”
“Go?” she repeated, still curled up in the box.
The carriage shifted. She braced herself for whatever could be coming next, and then Geoffery’s face—swollen on one side with a trickle of blood on his chin—appeared above her.
The sight of his disheveled hair and unknotted cravat made her aware that her skirts were everywhere, and her knees were still up, which meant Geoffery had a more than adequate view of her petticoats.
Modesty spurred action, and he helped her scramble out of the box.
He jumped out of the carriage ahead of her and reached to help her down the two steps he’d ignored completely.
The sleeve of his mud-streaked coat was torn at the shoulder when she took his hand.
He held her steady as she descended the steps to the muddy roadside.
She knew immediately that they were not on the road typically used to travel from London.
This road was narrow, furrowed, and the woods on either side were very thick.
A large man was slumped on the ground beside the front wheel of the carriage. Unconscious, she thought.
By the time Veronica looked up from the brute, Geoffery had thrown off his ruined coat and was climbing up the back of the carriage in muddy feet with surprising grace, as though he did this sort of thing every day.
He tore off the leather gloves he’d been wearing, threw them into the road, and began unbuckling straps.
Once the straps were undone, he pulled back the oiled canvas that protected the top-stored luggage during travel.
In the time it took her to blink the rain from her eyes and look at him again, he’d pulled a large knife from a sheath strapped to his chest. He plunged the blade into the canvas cover, making her jump as she put a hand to her throat.
The knife made a relatively soft tearing sound as it sliced through the canvas; it must be very sharp.
He tore the last few inches, then slid the knife into the sheath she realized had been hidden from view when he’d had his coat on.
It was leather, and the straps went over one shoulder and across his chest, but through a slit in the side of his waistcoat so that it did not show in the front.
Bookish, boring Geoffery carried a knife beneath his coat in a specially made casing?
Did Robert know this side of his friend?
The portion of canvas Geoffery had cut landed in the branches of the trees behind Veronica, making her squeak and step to the side.
That step took her closer to the unconscious brute, however, so she picked up her skirts and hurried toward the back end of the carriage, following Geoffery in confusion.
“Mr. Meyers?” she said, watching the man on the ground as though he might at any moment jump to his feet, an action that would be no less surprising than what she’d seen of Geoffery these last few minutes. “What is happening? You said we had to go?”
He didn’t answer, and she looked up to see him opening a trunk.
On top of the carriage.
In the rain.
What could he possibly need from his dressing trunk right now? “Mr. Meyers?”
Shirts and breeches and a very fine velvet jacket began raining from the top of the carriage. A buckled shoe landed at her feet with a splat, then what she thought was a cravat unwound like a spool of ribbon and landed in a muddy pile next to the shoe.
“Catch this!” Geoffery called, and she looked up in time to stretch her arms out and catch a very heavy greatcoat.
She pulled the heavy fabric into her chest and then watched as Geoffery wrapped something up in what looked like another shirt.
He came back down the way he’d gone up, without bothering to close the trunk.
“Come on,” he said once he was beside her on the ground, tugging her arm and pulling her toward the trees. Rather than go along, she planted her feet and pulled out of his grasp.
“Miss Veronica,” he said in a forceful tone, “I can explain later, but we need to get off the road.”
“Your boots,” she said, glancing at his stockinged feet.
He looked down at his feet and swore again before hurrying back to the carriage.
He put his shirt-wrapped bundle inside the open carriage door before rolling the lumpy man onto his back and pulling the boot off the other man’s foot.
He shoved his wet and muddy foot into it, then leaned into the carriage to fetch the other boot from inside.
When he turned back to her, he used one hand to push his increasingly wet hair off his face so he could boot his other muddy foot.
Something in the movement caused a shiver to move through her that had nothing to do with the cold.
She looked upon this man she’d known all her life and never seen before, and felt something warm spring to life in her chest. How had she never noticed that Geoffery was handsome?
With his cravat loose around his neck, Geoffery’s shirt had fallen open to show far more skin than she had seen on a man.
Ever. His wet hair stuck to his face, and his nostrils flared slightly as he looked back at her.
She blinked and pushed her own hair off her face, wondering rather unexpectedly if any man would ever look at her the way she was looking at him.
Was what she was feeling . . . attraction?
Veronica could tell the difference between a handsome man and a plain one, of course, but what she felt right now was nothing like any of that sort of logical assessment.
Despite the cold of the rain slowly seeping into her clothing, she felt a warmth in her chest and an intense focus upon Geoffery’s form and shape.
She wanted to smooth his hair and retie his cravat .
. . or untuck his shirt. She couldn’t decide what exactly, but she wanted . . . something.
“You did not, uh, bring anything?” he asked her, a rivulet of rain trailing down his face.
She shook her head, still staring and trying to understand what this unexpected sensation was.
“Not even a hat?” he asked in a way that she felt implied he wished she had brought a hat.
She pushed her wet and scraggly hair off her face. “There was no space.” She remembered the peppermints and reached into the hidden pocket of her dress with her left hand. She pulled out her gloved hand to reveal four pink candies. “This is all I brought with me.”
Geoffery took a step closer and lifted his eyebrows as he met her eyes and smiled a smile that made her breath catch in her throat.
Surely he’d never smiled at her this way before, right?
No man had. Not in such a way to make her feel as though she wanted nothing other than his attention for the rest of her life.
As though nothing existed in this moment but the two of them.
The rain was suddenly warm. The day was suddenly bright.
“You have a pocket in your dress?” he asked.
Oh, that was what he had noticed while she’d been noticing everything about him?
“I sewed a pocket in all my dresses, even the ball gowns. Mother does not know—well, unless the washing maids have told her—but I’m sure she’d have railed me if she knew.” Veronica clamped her mouth shut; this was no time for babbling. “There are times I want to keep things close, is all.”
“Clever,” he said, and looked from her hand to her face. “May I have one? I do love peppermints.”
Was this the same man who had been so cross with her when he’d discovered her in the carriage? And then beat a larger man senseless?
“O-of course,” she said, unable to look away from his face.
He had a wide forehead and relatively large eyes, framed in dark lashes that matched his hair and thick eyebrows, but contrasted with his ice-blue eyes—which were the only physical feature she’d ever noted about him before.
His chin was strong, stubble darkening his jaw.
Apparently, the early-morning travel had kept him from his daily shave.
Oh yes, Geoffery Meyers was very handsome indeed.
He plucked one candy from her palm, threw it into his mouth, and then retrieved the shirt-wrapped bundle from the inside of the carriage. “Ah, Luther’s peppermints, then. Excellent choice.”
He picked up his hat from where it had fallen in the grass and brushed it off before placing it back on his head while she watched every movement as though she might need to account for it later.
Lastly, he reached for the velvet jacket he’d thrown into the trees.
It was the only item of clothing that hadn’t landed on the ground; had he done that on purpose?
The jacket was for evening dress, not what one would wear in the middle of the day like this, but he did not seem to care about the wrong setting as he pushed his arms into the coat, moving the bundle from one arm to the other as he did so.
Then he pulled the cut section of canvas—also caught up in the tree to protect it from the mud, she guessed—and rolled the shirt-wrapped bundle within it.
He held the bulky parcel against his side with one arm while reaching his other hand toward her.
She did not take his hand. “You bested that man in the carriage, but not on the road.”
“I threw a few elementary punches and learned what I needed to know,” he said, looking past her to survey the road behind them.
“As I suspected, he was strong but slow—both in wit and physicality. A small space would give me the advantage to disarm him.” He met her eyes and smiled.
“And an unexpected shifting of the seat was all I needed to get the upper hand. I am lucky, indeed, that you are such an impetuous debutante.”
She took this in soberly, unsure if she could trust his compliment and feeling silly for how much it thrilled her to hear it.
He did not wait for her reaction, which she took to mean that he was not trying to flatter her.
Though she could still see the shape of peppermint tucked in his left cheek, his expression was becoming more serious as he continued to look around them—the stoic Geoffery she remembered, but who was also very different.
He met her eyes again. “I will explain what is behind this, Miss Veronica, only, I can’t just this moment; we need to get off the road before they return. Can you please trust me a bit longer?”
She blinked at him again, trying to make sense of all she was thinking and feeling.
“You are safe with me,” he said in a lowered voice.
She popped a peppermint in her mouth while watching him and considering all that had happened.
She returned the other two candies to her pocket and then took his outstretched hand with a nod of agreement to both his terms and her willingness to trust him.
She was safe with him. Somehow, she knew it.