Chapter Nine
THE CHAOS VERONICA had told Geoffery she expected was in full force when she let herself in through the front door of the house on Hill Street.
Two maids and a footman had already been sent out to search for her.
Upon her arrival, another set of maids and footmen were sent after those already put to task.
There were, therefore, no servants on hand when Mother not only shouted her fury but slapped Veronica when she attempted to repeat the explanation she’d been practicing the whole ride back to London.
Veronica had never imagined her mother would be violent with her, but as the two of them faced one another, she realized yet another level of foolishness within the original escape plan she’d concocted.
She’d known her mother would be angry, but she had not factored in the fear she now saw as her mother wiped frantic tears from her reddened face.
Just as Veronica had only seen her flight from London in Geoffery’s carriage from her perspective, not his, she had not accounted for what a missing daughter might do to her mother.
Realizing how fear showed as anger in her mother’s words and actions made her also wonder if the intensity of her mother’s plans to see Veronica well matched might also be a symptom of another sort of fear.
Fear of Veronica not finding a secure future.
Fear of how she—a woman who married below her station—might feel if her daughter fell out of the upper class completely.
Had her mother had any say in her own match all those years ago?
There were so many things Veronica had never thought of before, or worse, assumed she understood that she did not truly know.
“I am so sorry, Mother,” Veronica said as tears came to her own eyes, and she lifted a hand to her stinging cheek. “I did not . . . I did not think it through.”
Forgiveness was not easily won, and Veronica was sent to her room; however, a tea tray soon arrived.
Once the maids and footmen had returned from their search for her and the house was back to order, Mother sent up a bath.
As Veronica scrubbed the dirt from her ankles and lathered her hair, she realized the water must have been started on the stove only minutes after her return for a full tub to be ready so soon.
Would that delay the preparation of the servants’ meal, usually cooked at this time of day?
Mother would right now be sending apologies for the invitation to tonight’s dinner party; the slap had left a mark, which was still red and swollen, making a public appearance impossible.
It was poor manners to send regrets the day of an event when the guest list had been perfectly balanced on the part of the host. And Cook would need to make dinner for the family, who would now be eating at home.
What of tomorrow’s engagements if she was still unable to go out?
How would what she’d done affect those hosts and the household staff who usually planned menus a week in advance?
The awareness of how her self-centeredness had affected so many other people and schedules was very loud in her mind as the water in her bath cooled.
“Shall I get more hot water, miss?” her maid asked from the other side of the screen.
“Goodness, no,” Veronica said, reaching for the towel as she stood from the tub. “Please share my apologies below stairs for the trouble I’ve caused today. I shall dress myself. Thank you, Gwen.”
“Very good, miss.” The maid let herself out of the room, and Veronica hoped she really would pass on her apologies.
At 8:30 that evening, Veronica rang for her maid to collect her supper tray—a hastily prepared stew and soda bread—and reflected that it had only been twelve hours ago that she’d watched Geoffery snap a square of black paper into a scarf that served as his disguise while he delivered what might be his last message as a spy for the Crown.
There was so much more to the world and to the lives of people than she ever had considered. So much could change in a day.
When Veronica said her prayers that night, more heartfelt than her usual repetitions, she prayed that she would not lose this wider view today had brought her.
She prayed that, instead, she would find a way to seek out other perspectives than her own.
Perhaps this “more” she wanted in her life could be as simple as that.
Usefulness. Kindness. Attention to the circumstances of other people so that she might see when she might be able to be a remedy rather than a problem.
It was two days before her mother let her know that their time at home was over.
She’d told everyone that Veronica had contracted a summer cold, and since the injury to Veronica’s face had not turned to a bruise, they could now reenter Society.
Veronica was in the library reading the day’s paper with a specific focus on politics she’d never cared about before, when Mother informed her of the evening plans to attend a dinner party they’d accepted an invitation to weeks ago.
“I would like you to wear the pink dress,” Mother said, a note of defensiveness only just noticeable in her tone.
Veronica folded the paper before meeting her mother’s eyes.
“I do not feel that pink is my best color,” she said evenly.
“I know it was a favorite of Blanche during her Season, and it is a very good color for you, but with my lighter hair, I feel it leaves my overall presentation somehow . . . pale and childish. I would prefer to wear the green silk, which I think complements my eyes, although I know it is not quite as fashionable as the pink. I will wear whichever you feel is best.”
Her mother lifted her chin and seemed braced for the argument Veronica had already promised not to make. “I prefer the pink.”
“Very well,” Veronica said with a nod, happier to please her mother in this than to get her way. “I shall wear the pink, then.”
Mother hesitated as though finding it difficult to believe that Veronica meant what she’d said. Then she nodded stiffly and left the room with a swish of skirts.
Veronica wore the pink.
When Mr. Ormanshire asked her to dance, she danced and smiled and listened to him prattle on.
When he asked her to walk in the garden, she politely declined and asked if, instead, they might have some punch on the veranda, where he continued to prattle and ask her not one single question about herself.
When he asked her for a second dance later in the evening, she declined; accepting a second dance would show him, and everyone, a preference.
When he asked if he might call on her the next day, she said that she was otherwise engaged, and then she spent the day in her room with a headache she did not have.
“You are not encouraging Mr. Ormanshire’s attention,” her mother said at dinner that night. They would be going to the Mortons’ for cards as soon as they finished.
“As I am here for the duration of the Season,” Veronica said evenly as she cut a bite of her roast chicken, “I would like to appear available to the attention of other men by not allowing Mr. Ormanshire to silently pronounce himself my only suitor through his flood of attention.” It wasn’t refusing him outright.
“Hmm,” Mother said before returning to her meal.
Even if Mother did not quite agree, that she had not argued the points was a victory.
That was progress. Veronica took a sheet of paper from Father’s study that night and numbered it one to fourteen.
She marked off the first three days until she could hope to see Geoffery again.
She hid the paper in the pages of a book she’d chosen from the library about spy networks during Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
On Sunday, Veronica attended church without argument; on Monday, she attended a garden party in Wimbledon and a ball close to home in Mayfair.
Tuesday was Vauxhall Gardens, and Wednesday was a ladies’ luncheon and another dinner party.
For each event, she asked her mother to choose her dress and hair.
She said the right things, smiled at the right times, danced the right dances with eligible men—though she never danced with anyone twice—and accepted their morning calls the next day for the expected quarter of an hour before she stood and thanked them for their visit.
Each night, she read some of the book she kept on her bedside table and marked off another day from the list of fourteen.
There were no promises surrounding Geoffery’s return, but there was a rising hope she chose to encourage, if only to herself, that there was something for the two of them to explore.
He’d said he was ready to settle into his own future with a wife of steadiness.
She dared to hope that they were both thinking that woman might be her.
On the thirteenth day, after returning from a musical performance, she opened the book where she’d been hiding her countdown and found a piece of patterned yellow silk, which sent a tremor of excitement through her body and soul.
Upon closer inspection, what had looked to be a design on the fabric was a collection of loops and curves, which seemed to have no pattern at all. Ink, not dye.
It was a cipher, and she only knew of one person who might send such a thing.
She looked about the room, but she was quite alone.
Geoffery had been in her room, however, and that awareness made her shiver with delight.
She turned her attention back to the book, turning all the pages to find the coded message she was meant to use the cipher to reveal.
There was nothing else hidden in the pages, however.
She looked through every page of every book she had in her room, under every item on her dressing table, through every drawer, and every pocket of every gown hanging in the wardrobe.
It was very late when she finally turned down her lamp without having found the note.
She pushed away the frustration and focused on the lovely anticipation that the note was still to be found.
The next morning, she came down to breakfast early, having not slept very well for the excitement of the game. The day’s paper was next to Father’s place setting, but as he was not yet down, she decided it would not be untoward to read it first.
When she picked up the folded sheets, something fell to the floor. She bent to pick up what she thought was paper only to find yet another piece of translucent silk—blue this time—with markings of horizontal lines without pattern, much as the one last night. A second cipher?
Had Geoffery known she’d sleep poorly and come to breakfast ahead of Father?
She looked around the breakfast room, empty but for the footmen coming in and out with the cloches of breakfast foods.
Not wanting to raise questions, she put the silk in that ever-handy left-side pocket of her day dress and hurried through her breakfast while reading a few articles in the paper.
When she returned to her room, she went to retrieve the first silk from where she’d left it in her book only to find a sheet of paper, cut, as the silks, to the exact dimensions of the book.
The markings on the paper were all short vertical lines, and when she laid the first cipher over it, she could only make out letters here and there.
It wasn’t until she laid the second cipher over the first and lined up the edges perfectly under the strongest light of her lamp that the loops and lines turned into words.
LOOK FOR LUTHER’S AT THE MARSHALL DINNER PARTY