Introducing Miss Joanna (Once a Wallflower Book 2)

by Maggi Andersen

  To her annoyance, Jo could not agree, for here she was foolishly thinking of the curly black locks and dark brown eyes of the most unsuitable gentleman in London.

  In his bedchamber at Albany, Reade woke when his valet knocked.

  “Come.” He threw back the covers. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rubbed the back of his neck. He’d had another nightmare and woken in a sweat. It was always the same dream. Reaching for his pocket watch, he thumbed it open. Nine o’clock. An indecent hour to rise. He ran a hand over his bare chest and yawned.

  “You asked me to wake you at nine, my lord,” Minshull said. “I have brought your coffee and hot water.”

  Reade took the coffee from him with a nod of thanks. “What sort of day is it?”

  “Rained earlier.” His valet went to the window and drew back the curtains, admitting the morning sun into the room. “Clouds have blown away. Promises to be a fine day.”

  Reade swallowed the last of the rich brew. He had an appointment at Horse-Guards. He’d be at the Regent’s beck and call on Friday. Prinny had taken to him, demanding Reade be among his entourage when he ventured out.

  At the washstand, Minshull poured more hot water into the basin from the jug.

  Reade briskly sponged himself all over with the soap he favored. He washed his hair over the basin, then, with a shiver, rubbed icy water over his face and torso with a sponge. Despite the sun, a cool breeze swept in through the window. He dried himself and rubbed his hair briskly with a towel.

  During his years in the army, he’d grown to appreciate a douse of cold water. It helped banish fatigue. But tiredness because of consistently poor sleep didn’t stay away for long. He applied shaving soap to his jaw and picked up his razor. His eyes stared back at him groggily. He hadn’t slept well since Waterloo. Every night when he rested his head on the pillow, his thoughts took him back there.

  Reade brushed his teeth, acknowledging that he did not join with others to relive the battle stories or to glorify the dethroned monarchs and victorious generals. It was the men who had died that he remembered—some who had been with him for years.

  He shrugged into his dark gray coat and settled the tall beaver on his head. Pulling on gloves, he walked through to the bay-fronted drawing room. Minshull rattled crockery in the small kitchen. Sometimes he wished for more space but resisted moving into the London house. This suited his needs. It was comfortable enough but provided no sanctuary from his troubled dreams. But nowhere could. While he yearned to put up his feet and read the books piled on his dresser, he doubted he would ever feel peaceful enough to do so.

  Reade strolled to the inn a block away in Piccadilly for breakfast. The dining room filled with the aroma of roasting coffee, warm patrons, and hops, and he washed bacon and eggs down with a mug of ale while perusing the newspaper.

  Beyond the window, the street was busy, men wending their way home from a late night at their clubs, women shopping with their maids, a hawker selling clocks. One of Reade’s men, Wallace, walked into sight. He raised his hand in welcome and entered the inn dining room.

  Reade gestured to a seat. He sawed into his bacon. “Anything new to report?”

  “Apparently, Mrs. Virden danced with a Mr. Dalrymple at the Lisle’s masked ball.”

  Reade paused as his stomach muscles constricted. “Dalrymple?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Virden seemed on friendly terms with him…” Wallace began.

  Reade waved his fork. “I heard you. Let me think.” He had not met Dalrymple. But according to his daughter, the lovely Miss Joanna, he was a shopkeeper from Marlborough. It was unlikely there’d be another Dalrymple at the ball. How the devil did the fellow who had been in London for less than a month, according to Miss Dalrymple, meet Mrs. Virden? Or had he known her for some time? “Friendly, were they?”

  “Yes. Seemed more than acquaintances.”

  How had Miss Dalrymple’s father come to know the Virdens? Letty had befriended the Dalrymple’s and might have some knowledge of them. He pulled out his watch. She was unlikely yet to have risen, and Cartwright, if he had any sense, would be with her. Reade swiftly banished seeking her opinion. She was too astute not to want to know the whole. And that he was not about to tell her.

  “There’s one other thing,” Wallace said, interrupting his train of thought.

  “What is it? Out with it, man,” Reade demanded, ignoring that he’d motioned him to be silent a moment earlier.

  “Yesterday afternoon, they followed Virden to a house in Upper Brook Street, Mayfair, owned by a Lord Pleasance.”

  “Don’t know the fellow. I will look into it, Wallace,” he said. “Any further news, bring straight to me.”

  Wallace stood and saluted. “Right, Captain Reade.”

  “Don’t salute me,” Reade said irritably.

  Wallace flushed. “Sorry, sir. Served under you. Old habits die hard.”

  “You are now engaged in undercover work,” Reade said, relenting. “Make it a habit not to go blathering a man’s name about. There’s a good fellow.”

  When the man hurried away, Reade called for a coffee.

  As he drank, his thoughts returned to Miss Dalrymple. Was it possible she could be in danger? What might the Virdens want with her father? Was he an innocent man caught in their web? It chilled Reade to think it. While he wasn’t ready to question Dalrymple, he’d make it his business to find out more about him.

  He finished his drink, rose, and tossed coins onto the table. He had an appointment to keep.

  Chapter Seven

  On Friday, Jo and Sally went to view the Prince Regent’s return to Carlton House from parliament after reading the king’s speech. While the sky was overcast, there’d been no sign of rain. Hopeful for fine weather, they positioned themselves on the pavement near Saint James’s gardens, crushed in among a rowdy crowd. Jo tried to ignore the unpleasant smell of unwashed bodies. Someone elbowed her hard in the side, but it failed to diminish her excitement.

  A ripple of noise rose from the crowd as the Regent’s royal coach and his entourage advanced down St. James’s Street, the horse guards splendid in their uniforms and the shiny coats of their mounts gleaming.

  Sally chatted as the coach came closer. The mutterings and murmurs around them became loud abuse. Men shook their fists, and a few pushed forward toward the coach.

  Nervous, Jo glanced around. “Stay close to me, Sally.” The shouting and raised voices drowned out Jo’s words.

  Drawn by six peerless white horses, the glossy, black royal coach, elaborately decorated in gold with red wheels, drew level to where they stood. Jo barely had a moment to admire it when a handful of gravel splattered against the coach door, tossed by someone in the crowd to the right of her. The horses sidled nervously as the horse-guards broke ranks and rode toward the people, seeking the assailant.

  Fearing they’d be trampled, Jo pulled Sally back, but like a surging sea, the crowd spread in all directions.

  Jo kept a grip on Sally’s arm, her stomach in knots. “We must leave.”

  They came up against a wall of people. They had only moved a few paces through the seething mob, when a loud bang, followed closely by another, rent the air. A far side window of the royal coach shattered, glass shards flying over the road. As screaming rent the air, His Royal Highness stared out, seemingly unharmed. For a moment, there was silence, and then a rumble of panic-stricken people.

  “Oh, miss, was that a pistol shot?” Sally cried as they struggled to move on. “Is it a revolution? We must get away!”

  The horse guards rode into the crowd, their mounts pushing the panicked people back. Barely able to escape a horse’s hooves, Jo lost hold of Sally’s hand, and the surge of people carried the maid away with them.

  Jo tried to follow, but was caught up and dragged in the opposite direction. Finally, free, she was pressed against a brick wall near the entrance to a narrow alley.

  Jo searched for Sally amongst the dispersing crowd but didn’t see her. Winded, she
leaned against the brick wall and tried to keep out of the way of those rushing past. A man tripped and cannoned into her, pushing her backward. Her head banged against the bricks, and she sank dizzily down. Once her head cleared, she struggled to her feet to stare into the shadowy laneway. Was it a way out? It looked forbidding, and she had no idea where it led. But she just couldn’t stay here. She stepped inside.

  A man watched her from the shadows. Her heart beating, Jo backed away and returned to the fray. Where was Sally? Was she hurt? With gritty determination, despite another bout of dizziness and a stinging forehead, she pushed her way into the surging mass of frightened people, who still ran in all directions.

  Jo realized she was in trouble when she’d only taken a few steps. The crowd was too strong for her, and they pulled her off her feet.

  An arm looped around her waist and scooped her up, robbing her of breath. Fear rushed through her, her protest muffled against a hard chest. “Put me down.”

  “You can’t stay here.”

  Jo tried to see who it was but could only see the hard edge of the man’s jaw. She squirmed in his arms with panicked breaths as she inhaled his clean scent. A hand clutching his steely shoulder, her palm pressed against the gold buttons on his silk waistcoat, feeling the unresistant hard muscle and bone beneath. Well, he was a gentleman at least and not one of those hollow-chested, pale men she met at balls. Growing desperate, she shoved again, harder, and looked up into his face.

  “Lord Reade!” His eyes dark, his mouth pressed in a firm line. “This is hardly necessary. I can walk!” Jo shouted, trying to make herself heard above the clamor swirling around them.

  “Don’t be foolish.” His deep voice rumbled against her ear as he dove through a gap in the eddying mob. People seemed to scatter in his wake.

  “I am not foolish,” she cried. “I am quite capable of taking care of myself.”

  “So, it would appear. Your forehead is bleeding. What the devil are you doing here?”

  What else would she be doing here? “I came to see the Prince of Wales and the royal procession.”

  He didn’t slow his determined stride. “Someone fired on the Regent.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “Mind where you’re going!” A man growled as Reade elbowed past him. He blanched at Reade’s expression and hastily moved aside.

  “Where are you taking me? I’ve lost my maid,” Jo yelled. “And, you are stifling me.”

  He rearranged her in his arms, tossing her as if she weighed nothing more than a bag of feathers. But at least her head was now on a level with his. She clung to his shoulder and cast a sideways glance at his fine profile. His dark eyes searched ahead, hard as flint. Jo loathed depending on him, although she’d seen women and children knocked over.

  She’d always considered herself indomitable. It had never occurred to her how easily someone like Reade could overpower her. If it were any other man, she would be scared witless, but she was not afraid of Reade. “Something bad could have happened to my maid, Sally. I must find her quickly,” she said in a more reasonable tone as she studied a glossy black lock flopping onto his forehead. She could smell his skin, his spicy soap.

  “Your maid will find her way,” he said grittily. “If you’d been dragged into that alley, something nasty could have happened to you.”

  “But you have kindly prevented that, so you can put me down now.”

  “Be patient. Not a virtue of yours, I suspect, Miss Dalrymple.”

  “Oh, how unfair…” She clamped down her lips when a woman ahead of them staggered after being viciously shoved.

  Reade mounted the half-dozen steps to the front door of a building. He placed her on her feet on the narrow porch. She bent to rearrange her skirts, which had ridden up her legs. Her head throbbed. Pressed against his muscular body while breathing in his male scent had shaken her almost as much as the attack on the prince regent.

  “Hold still.” He framed her face in large, capable hands and studied the wound on her forehead. “It’s not too bad. I doubt it will scar and mar your beauty.”

  She held her breath. Did he find her beautiful? His palms were warm against her skin, his eyes the color of dark chocolate, rimmed with thick black lashes. Up close, he looked less overbearing…somehow more vulnerable. Reade vulnerable? Ridiculous.

  Reade pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her. “Are you dizzy?”

  “No,” she lied. She was a little, but she feared he would carry her if she admitted to it.

  Dabbing her forehead with the linen square, she decided it was he who made her dizzy, for Reade acting concerned and gentle with her made her knees wobbly. Had she hit her head harder than she thought? She reluctantly dragged her gaze from his to look around the street. Bewildered people were wandering about like lost lambs. Pitiful cries rent the air as they called for lost loved ones. It made her eyes tear up. She stiffened and bit her lip hard. This was no time to weaken. She had to find Sally. “I am grateful for your assistance, Lord Reade,” she said, fighting to regain her equilibrium. “Please don’t let me keep you. I’ll search for my maid.”

  “Wait a while,” he cautioned.

  “Was the regent hurt?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  She craned her neck and tried to see what was happening farther down the road. The royal guard had left the chaotic scene. She turned back to Reade. “I will be all right. I doubt anyone is interested in me.”

  “You think not?” His gaze casually took measure of her. “What’s in that silk reticule? Money? Those are fine clothes. And I’ll wager the locket is gold. Prime pickings for a pickpocket. You’re young enough to attract a procuress in the area. They could have had you away down that alley before anyone was the wiser, and don’t think they wouldn’t.”

  Alarmed, she studied his hard face. “What is a procuress?”

  “They are women who snare innocent country girls by offering them what they think are respectable jobs.”

  “What sort of jobs?”

  “Something too good to be true. Their goal is to make the girls a prisoner in brothels and sometimes send them overseas. They search for girls at playhouses, coffee shops, and other public places, and have the men who work for them nab them off the streets. They sell young women to their gentlemen clients. The girls are then trapped in brothels for the rest of their lives,” he continued, ignoring Jo’s horrified gasp. “It’s a lucrative business. Female pimps have few morals. They prefer to offer a variety of women, virgins especially, who can fetch anything from a guinea to a hundred guineas.”

  As he spoke, his gaze remained on the crowd, which was just as well for his unemotional but terrifying revelation made her mouth drop open. “I…would never succumb to a woman like that, no matter what she offered me.”

  “They might not seek your opinion,” he said bluntly, turning, at last, to observe her, his eyes flinty.

  Jo shivered and held back from accusing him of exaggeration after a man paused to give her a studied look. Then there was the man in the alley. She could hardly argue the point when Reade would know far more of the evils of a big city than she.

  Perhaps he took pity on her for his mouth softened. “I merely make you aware that this is London, Miss Dalrymple. Life here differs vastly from your country town.”

  “I am aware of it. It seemed perfectly safe to come here. You can hardly accuse me of venturing into the Seven Dials.”

  He acknowledged it with a nod. “But even in Westminster, there is danger.”

  Jo thought of Sally and gasped. Had she fallen into the hands of one of those women? She gripped the lapel of his coat. “Lord Reade, please. Can we look for Sally?” She meant to plead with him, but it sounded more like a demand.

  “Which way did she go?”

  “I…I didn’t see.” They were now in Bridge Street, which led onto the Westminster Bridge. She pointed back toward James’s Park. “They pu
lled Sally in that direction.”

  “People fear arrest and are leaving,” he said. “It appears safe enough now.” He took a firm hold of her hand, and they descended the steps. “I doubt your Sally will have gone far. She will look for you.”

  His big hand wrapped around hers in a comforting grip. Jo walked beside him past Queen’s Garden into Stafford Street. There were small groups huddled on the side of the road, but Sally was not among them. Jo quickened her pace to keep up with his long stride. Didn’t it occur to him that her legs weren’t as long as his? She hated to think she was a nuisance, something he wished to deal with quickly. He must have somewhere to go. Something important to do. She drew in a deep breath to calm herself and admitted how fortunate she was that Reade had come to her aid. It was distressing to see bewildered folk sprawled on the ground, some weeping and in pain.

  “Why are the people so angry with the regent?” Jo asked as her bonnet tipped forward over her forehead. Impossible to push it into position with his powerful grip on her hand and her reticule clutched in the other. He surged ahead like a boat she’d seen on the Thames, driven by a high wind.

  “My bonnet!” Jo cried, reduced to pleading.

  Reade released her hand. “Hold still.”

  He bent his knees slightly and rearranged her hat. As if she couldn’t do it for herself. He was such a complex man. She subtly studied him at close quarters. When he wasn’t glowering, it was such an appealing face, with his straight nose and high cheekbones. What was she doing? He probably knew a great deal about a woman’s apparel. Would she never be able to think in his company? She should thank him, walk on, and leave him. Take control of the search herself. But before she could put some distance between them, he caught her hand up in his again.

  “People have good reasons for dissatisfaction with the government and with royalty,” he said, replying to the question she’d forgotten she’d asked, without lessening his punishing stride. “I don’t intend to go into it here.”

  Meaning he wouldn’t tell her.