Chapter Seven #2
“That makes absolute sense to me,” she said.
“You have put to words a feeling I share; I desire to be a bit more than Society has deemed me capable of. That is why London has been so intolerable. At home, I have had freedom to be myself, and I had no idea what a gift that was until London pressed upon me all the rules and expectations—what to wear, who to know, what to say, and why to say it. After every event we attend, Mother lists my mistakes and gives me a new set of requirements I am to fulfill. I have never felt so confined and . . . unknown. And then I meet men who see me as just the sort of woman Mother is demanding me to be. They measure my connections and my looks against the role they want me to play in their lives. It is . . . disgusting and has spurred a greater desire to find my own place somehow.” She cleared her throat, embarrassed at the passionate tone that had seeped into her words.
Geoffery looked at her with what seemed to be respect, however, which made her blush for different reasons.
He pursed his lips and then smiled. “We share that desire, then, to be a bit more than the world around us expects.”
She grinned back at him and held the look for a few seconds before he began looking about them again.
He lowered his voice. “Now, you shall need to follow me for a bit, as we are close.”
The leaves and branches were still dripping from the morning rain, but the barest warmth of the day was starting to change the cool temperatures, which had been a welcome balm to the exertion. “We are? How can you tell?”
“Do you not smell the hickory?”
Veronica took a deep inhale, focusing on the scents. “I smell damp, and earth, and smoke.”
He grinned. “Hickory smoke, to be exact. The driver has arrived ahead of us and given the signal that we are clear to complete the delivery.”
“I’d have never thought to interpret the smoke.”
“You and everyone else, we hope; otherwise, it is a poor signal. I shall lead from here, but if I put up my hand”—he lifted his hand parallel with his shoulder, palm forward—“you are to stop and not make a sound. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said with butterflies in her stomach.
“We best not continue conversation from here forward.”
She nodded as they stepped off the path and moved slowly and carefully through the trees. The smoke grew thicker the farther ahead they moved, and she remembered that he’d said they would reach a rude shelter; she couldn’t see anything but green through the trees ahead of them.
After a few minutes, Geoffery put up his hand, and she froze, per his instructions.
He turned toward her, put a finger to his lips, and took her hand before leading her a few meters farther ahead, then ducking between two trees.
With his hand, he swept clean a rock, and although it was still wet from the rain, what did a bit of damp matter after all that had happened already?
They were not in a clearing as they’d been the last time they stopped; it was just a gap between a few trees that concealed them.
As soon as she sat, he laid the canvas-wrapped bundle next to the rock, handed her his hat, and then pulled what looked like a tiny square of thick black paper from an invisible trouser pocket.
He pinched one corner of the square and snapped it in the air, making Veronica jump and put a hand to her mouth to keep from exclaiming her surprise.
The flourish unbound the sharp creases of what was actually a large, thin—though not sheer—square of black fabric.
He glanced through the trees while going about what looked like a rather complicated arrangement of the fabric around his head and face, tucking and folding in precise places to secure it.
Veronica watched in absolute fascination as Geoffery Meyers became Rogue; his hair, neck, and entire face were covered by the cloth, save for a rectangle that showed his eyes.
He took the hat from her and replaced it on his head, pulling it low so that the brim put those beautiful eyes in shadow.
When he turned to look at her, she did not attempt to hide her awe of having witnessed the transformation.
“Remarkable,” she said under her breath.
The only reason she knew he’d heard her was by the crinkling of his eyes.
He nodded toward her and used his finger to gesture that she should turn around.
She stood and did as instructed, then tried to hide the shiver she felt when he stepped up behind her.
He lifted the capes on the coat she’d been wearing—the second cape, she assumed—and removed something from that hidden pocket. The cipher on silk, no doubt.
When he was in front of her again, the cipher already out of sight, he made a pressing motion, which she took as an instruction for her to sit back down.
His eyes crinkled again when she did just that.
He put his palm toward her as a signal, and she nodded her understanding—she’d stay right there.
Lastly, he put a finger to where his lips must be beneath the black fabric that was surprisingly opaque for its thinness, and without repeating any instruction, he slipped into the trees.
Veronica kept her eyes on the place through which he’d disappeared and, once certain she was alone, barely suppressed a laugh at all that had happened.
Could she have ever imagined such a thing as this when she’d first formulated her cotton-headed idea over watered-down lemonade?
They had left London only that morning, and she had assisted in overtaking a highwayman, learned of an entire secret network avowed to protect all of England, and spent hours in the company of a most interesting man.
It was stunning and thrilling and hard to believe!