Just a Little Wickedness by Merry Farmer

Author:Merry Farmer [Farmer, Merry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798615770449
Google: zUljzQEACAAJ
Amazon: B085KJS5FC
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2020-03-04T15:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The note Joe was waiting for came just after midday, as most of the Eccles House staff was busy cleaning up after the ball.

“This just came for you,” Lucy said, handing Joe a tiny slip of paper as their paths crossed in the downstairs hallway.

Joe’s heart bounced from his stomach to his throat as he opened the note to read, “The Savoy under the name Mercer”. His elation lasted for only a second, though.

“Is something the matter?” he asked a distracted Lucy.

Lucy could hardly stand still. Her brow was furrowed, and she had chewed her lip so much that it looked as though she was wearing cosmetics. “Did you ever find Toby or Emma last night?” she asked, worry lining her face.

Joe’s already heightened emotions turned anxious and squeezed his chest. “They weren’t upstairs, spying on the guests?”

Lucy shook her head. “I thought you were right, that they would be found sleeping in some corner after the guests all left, but they weren’t. No one has seen hide nor hair of them.”

Alarm quickly swallowed everything else Joe felt. “We’ll search downstairs,” he said, launching into motion. “They have to be here somewhere.”

“I’ve already searched three times over,” Lucy said, following him. “And up in our quarters too, though neither Toby nor Emma would have any reason to be up there.”

She was right. The hall boy and scullery maid generally slept downstairs, wherever they could find a spare corner. They were the ones who were expected to wake up first and go to bed last every day and to work harder than anyone else in the house. A few minutes of searching brought to light things Joe should have noticed earlier but hadn’t—the way Mr. Vine was grumbling about downstairs fires not being lit on time, Cook’s complaint about dishes piling up in the scullery with no one cleaning them, the irritation of the maids who had been set to do Emma’s jobs. The life of a scullery maid was hard and thankless, but Emma had always been diligent and cheerful.

“You’re right,” Joe was forced to admit at last, after he and Lucy had been all through the servants’ hall and garret bedrooms. “They’re gone.”

Admitting as much was painful. It brought to mind how the staff must have felt when Lily went missing months before. The anger bubbling under the surface of every maid and footman he came across, the resentment that the lowliest servants in the house had shirked their duty, only added to his biting frustration at the situation. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Toby and Emma—and Lily—were in horrible danger, and the people who spent their days around them, who should care the most, were angry instead of anxious.

He paused in the crossway of two downstairs hallways, shoving a hand through his hair. The note from Alistair was still in his pocket, and he took it out to look at it again. His aristocratic lover wanted to meet him in a posh hotel for sex—something he’d

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