Page 30 of Introducing Miss Joanna (Once a Wallflower 2)

A gentleman with a purple and yellow paisley waistcoat raised his quizzing glass to ogle them.

Jo flushed. “How rude,” she said under her breath, frowning at a gentleman whose collar was so high he could barely turn his head. He still viewed their progress as they hurried along.

Loaded up with parcels, they reached the corner. Jo breathed more easily when a hackney appeared at the top of the street. “Wait here with the boxes, Sally. I’ll hail that jarvey.”

The jarvey ignored her and drove his horse past. Jo dropped her arm. Several vehicles passed up and down the busy street. When another hackney appeared, Jo, determined not to let him escape, rushed onto the road. She waved her handkerchief as the carriage advanced down the street, the horse at a fast trot.

The jarvey drew his horse to a stop some yards further along. Jo hurried to give him directions. When she turned back, there was no sign of Sally. Their hat boxes and parcels were still on the pavement where she’d left them. Fancy leaving them like that. Annoyed, Jo ran over and gathered them up, expecting Sally to emerge from a shop. She’d barely turned her back for a minute. Where had the girl got to?

The jarvey yelled at her. He was losing his patience. Jo smiled sweetly and held up her hand, then darted into a nearby shop. She came out a few minutes later, none the wiser. The shopkeeper had not seen Sally.

Jo ran to where the men still loitered about and approached the exquisitely dressed young gentleman in the purple and yellow waistcoat who dabbed at his mouth with a lace-edged handkerchief.

“Have you seen my maid, sir?”

He waved the handkerchief, releasing a cloying scent. “Yes.”

“Quickly. Tell me! Where did she go?”

He grinned. “She walked around the corner into Oxford Street with you.”

The man standing next to him guffawed.

“Oh!” With a glare, Jo ran back to where she’d last seen Sally, gasping, boxes dropping from her nerveless fingers. Sally had not returned. Now thoroughly alarmed, Jo retraced her steps, her throat tight. What could have happened to her? It was as if she’d disappeared into thin air.

With a curse, the jarvey drove on, leaving Jo alone, her mind blank with confusion. Her chest heaved. Could it be as Reade had said? Had a procurer taken Sally?

Fighting tears, she stood unable to think as pedestrians pushed past her. Some glanced at her curiously, but no one stopped to ask if they could help. Jo waited. A sharp wind blew dark clouds overhead. Rain sent people scurrying. Water dripped off the brim of her hat, her parcels in danger of slipping from her shaky hands. Was she panicking unnecessarily? She tried to think. Sally must have dashed into a shop for something she’d seen and become lost. The maid would find her way back to Upper Brook Street. She seemed a capable, sensible girl.

When a hackney stopped for her, she climbed inside, damp and shivering.

Arriving home, she paid him and ran up the path, her arms full of parcels. The butler answered the knocker. “Mr. Spears,” she gasped, gazing into eyes, which bore a distant expression. “Has my maid, Sally, arrived home?”

“I couldn’t say, Miss Dalrymple. Servants do not enter through the front door if they know what is good for them.”

With a frown, Jo dumped the packages and boxes at his feet and flew upstairs, and finding no sign of Sally, ran down to the servants’ quarters. Two servants sat on the sofa in the servants’ hall, resting between chores.

“Sally is not here, Miss Dalrymple,” Agnes said.

“I haven’t set eyes on Sally since she left with you this morning,” the housekeeper confirmed, looking surprised. “Not like that girl to wander off. She has a good head on her shoulders.”

That was what Jo thought, and it only frightened her. She climbed the stairs, weeping. Her father sat with Aunt Mary in the parlor. Between choking sobs and hiccoughs, Jo explained what had happened.

“My goodness, my girl, there’s no need for this,” he said soothingly, patting her on the back. “She has merely gone off on an errand of her own. You didn’t see where she went?”

“No,” Jo wailed. “Sally waited on the pavement with the packages while I went out onto the road to hail a hackney. One jarvey refused to stop,” she confessed as her father’s eyebrows lowered. “I stopped the next by waving my handkerchief.”

“Sally will know the way home, Jo.” Aunt Mary said. “She is more familiar with London streets than we are.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Jo grasped it eagerly, desperate to believe it.

But the hours passed, and Sally did not come home.

They dispatched a servant to search the area where Sally disappeared. He returned two hours later with the distressing news that no one had seen a young blonde maid.

Jo’s dinner sat untouched before her. As soon as she could, she went to her bedchamber and sat on the window seat watching the street. Her aunt brought a cup of hot chocolate and a plate of biscuits. She sat with Jo until she drank the whole cup and nibbled a biscuit and then urged her to get into bed. There was nothing she could do until morning, and Sally may well be home by then.

Heavy with exhaustion, Jo slid beneath the covers, but her mind was too busy for sleep. She kept returning to when Sally disappeared. There had been a lot of traffic on the road, she remembered. She barely took notice of the carriages which passed her, so intent was she in gaining the jarvey’s attention. Surely someone would have seen something? She would return in the morning and make more inquiries, although in her heart she knew it was useless. Sally was not there. Where was she now? In danger? In pain? Or…worse? Her throat tight, Jo turned her face to the pillow and wept.

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