Josi S. Kilpack First Love Collection (Timeless Regency Collection #22)

Chapter One

VERONICA SHIFTED WITHIN the tiny confines of the seat box, her teeth rattling in her head from the cold seeping through the sides of the carriage and the bumping road beneath it.

Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea .

. . and yet she could not abide London for another minute, and this had seemed to be her only chance of having a say in her own future.

Mother refused to take her feelings seriously, and Father, well, he just nodded to whatever Mother said as though he’d thought of it first.

She might only be a woman, and she might be very lucky to have had the chance to go to London at all since her family was only just considered gentry because of Mother’s side, but Veronica was done with this Society nonsense all the same. Completely and utterly done.

And, possibly, done in by this carriage ride.

In order to make her escape, she’d hidden in the extra luggage compartment under the front seat of a family friend’s carriage.

Said carriage was destined for her hometown, but her hiding place was meant to accommodate parcels, blankets, and warming stones, not a person.

Her backside was numb. Something jabbed into her side. It was very cold.

The escape plan had seemed bold and brave at first; she had felt like one of the heroines in the novels she loved—taking their future into their own hands.

But she was questioning herself only an hour into her own taking hold, which was something those heroines never did.

There were several hours left to travel, but she could barely think about it due to the current discomfort.

How much more uncomfortable would she be six hours from now?

The carriage wheel hit something hard, jolting Veronica against the front of the box and causing a squeak she couldn’t cover her mouth to prevent.

She’d heard nothing from her unknowing companion.

Thankfully, the road noise seemed to cover her exclamation.

The only movement she could manage within the limited space was the shifting of her spine now and then, which accomplished very little by way of improved comfort.

She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes closed as the road became rough.

As she understood it, there would be a change of horses in Windlesham—the halfway mark between London and her home in Andover.

She would be able to stand up from the box and stretch her poor arms and legs for a few minutes while the horses were changed out and Geoffery went into the posting inn for a late breakfast. Second only to being out of London for good, she was looking forward to that stop.

Geoffery, of course, had no idea she was joining him on this trip back to Andover.

She had known Geoffery Meyers her whole life as the bookish friend of her eldest brother, Robert.

Geoffery, for his part, had known her as a gangly child, annoying younger sister, silly girl, and then awkward adolescent.

Though they’d moved in similar circles in London, he’d not once gone out of his way to notice her.

Which was all fine and good; she did not want or need his attention.

Her time in London had convinced her that she did not want or need any man’s attention.

Choosing his carriage for her escape was about convenience and circumstance, not him personally.

He would never know his part, and, perhaps, her secret triumph would give her an additional boost of confidence when their paths crossed in the future—a secret she would always have, and he would never know.

Food was something else Veronica hadn’t properly considered in this plan, and while she had some peppermints in her pocket—she’d picked out the seams and sewed a left-hand pocket into all her dresses without Mother’s approval—the smell of them might reveal her, and a peppermint would not stave off hunger as would a breakfast of kidney pie and fried potatoes, with buttered toast and marmalade.

It had seemed heroic to give up every worldly comfort as a testament to her determination.

She hadn’t counted on how very uncomfortable heroism could be. Or, rather, heroine-ism.

The carriage began to slow—oh, thank heavens—and she pushed all thoughts of sustenance from her mind. I have been through far more difficult circumstances than this, she told herself, but . . . had she?

The uncomfortable trip was raising significant questions about her own self-determination.

If she were to present her case to a panel of judges, for instance, what would she use as examples of her suffering?

Lady Lampton’s garden party, where she’d been the only one without white feathers in her hat; she wasn’t sure anyone would appreciate the embarrassment.

She’d been horrified when the Bastians served lamb at their dinner party; Veronica had raised the abandoned lambs at home.

She wasn’t about to eat one of them. Her refusal had been noticed, and Mother had claimed herself “humiliated.”

To say nothing about the attention of Richard Ormanshire, who gave her such a rotten feeling in her stomach.

When she’d told her mother that his attention made her feel quite nauseated, her mother had rolled her eyes and said Veronica would be lucky to land a man of his merit.

Oh, and she’d invited him for supper tomorrow evening, and that Veronica would act like a lady and accept his request to walk in Hyde Park afterward.

Imagining walking in the park with the man twenty years her senior, while he touted his many excellent qualities without asking her a single question about herself, had been the final straw for Veronica’s metaphorical camel.

It seemed to Veronica that London had stripped her of her freedom, independence, and even her own identity.

She had become a molded doll who was expected to adopt whatever pose she was put into.

To the extent of who she would marry, it seemed.

Such arguments before her imagined panel of judges would sound lukewarm—she knew this—but this was her life, and being a pawn on someone else’s chessboard was a horrific realization.

After yet another particularly bad row with Mother—they were at odds about everything these days—she’d overheard Geoffery’s plan to return to Andover for a fortnight.

She’d listened to the details while sipping watered-down lemonade at the Thurstons’ ball two nights ago and had begun formulating her plan.

Veronica had no quarrel with knowing that her role in life was meant to be that of a wife and mother.

They would be wonderful parts of her future, she was sure, but she wanted .

. . more. Her parents, though good people who loved her, associated with each other very little.

She’d never seen what she would call warmth between them.

And she’d known just enough women who had that little extra to know it was possible for her to live a more expansive life.

Mrs. Shaw, for instance, was the wife of Andover’s vicar and mother to four.

She managed the ladies’ auxiliary in town, coordinated clothing donations she brought to London twice a year for reasons of charity, not ballrooms, and had been key in bringing additional livestock auctions to their valley for the betterment of several farms in their area.

She was interesting to talk to and encouraged young women of the parish to walk in step with their husbands, not behind them.

Mrs. Fordington, the wife of the local squire, was as politically active as her husband and helped with campaigns and elections throughout the county every year.

Veronica had snuck into a rally where Mrs. Fordington had encouraged women to improve their reading and writing so that they could share their opinions.

These were not radical women necessarily, but they were strong in themselves; what they did was important and had shown Veronica a side of life—and womanhood, in particular—that she craved.

She’d tried to explain her feelings to Mother more than once; it ended in shouting every time.

Father said the two of them were too much alike—too stubborn for their own good.

Then he went back to his paper or left for the club.

Mother had made it clear that her aspirations for Veronica lay in her making a match in London.

Veronica, however, was determined to make clear that Mother’s aspirations were not more important than her own.

Learning of Geoffery’s return home had brought the details of her escape from London together.

No one would allow her to go with him, of course.

He was a single man, she a marriageable young woman, and her parents would never allow her to leave London at all, let alone with him.

She’d found her own way out, and she was proud of that, but she couldn’t wait for it to be over.

The carriage began to slow and finally came to a stop.

Veronica felt the shifting weight as Geoffery stood up.

The door latch opened, and the carriage lifted an inch or so when Geoffery jumped to the ground.

The sound of voices outside—one of them Geoffery’s and the other the carriage driver’s—assured her that he was out of the carriage.

She counted to forty-seven before she pushed up on the seat she’d been folded beneath.

The seat was little more than fabric nailed to a board and settled in place, so it lifted easily enough, and she was able to hold it back with one hand while she stepped out, careful to lift her skirts so that they would not catch on a splintered corner.

The woodwork within the bench was not finished, and though she’d worn her oldest and most comfortable traveling dress—the one Mother despised and would not allow Veronica to wear in public while they’d been in London—she did not want it ruined.

She, of course, was without any of her other things and would need to rely on the country dresses and limited underthings she’d left behind in Andover until her trunks were sent after her.

Once out of the box, she stretched her tingling arms, though the carriage did not allow a full expression of the action, and then sat on the cushioned seat Geoffery had occupied and stretched first one leg and then another.

It felt glorious! If they were at Windlesham already, then she was not gauging time correctly, and they would be home in Andover before she knew it.

That was a sunny thought on what had become a rather gray day.

The sound of the door unlatching cut off her thoughts, and she froze, then jumped to her feet, hitting her head on the upper rail of the carriage.

She winced and lifted a hand to her smarting head as she turned toward the door, which now framed Geoffery Meyers staring back at her with his ice-blue eyes narrowed.

He glanced at the open box seat and, in the space of her held breath, seemed to figure out what she’d done.