‘Thank the lord!’ said Tom. ‘Phoebe, we must discuss what’s to be done. I don’t want to croak, but the fact is we’re in the devil of a fix.’

‘I suppose we are,’ she agreed, with remarkable calm. ‘But at least I know what I must do. Should you mind, Tom, if I write two letters before we discuss anything? I have spoken to the courier, and he engages to have them conveyed to England by the next packet, by a private hand. My letter to Grandmama, and the passports, will be taken directly to the Ship, but the courier warns me that if this wind continues the packet may not sail tomorrow.’ She sighed, and said resignedly: ‘I hope it may, but if it doesn’t there’s no other way of reaching poor Grandmama, so it’s no use fretting.’

‘Who is the other letter for? Salford?’ asked Tom shrewdly.

‘Yes, of course. If he is unable to discover in which direction Ianthe fled-’

‘I shouldn’t think that likely,’ interrupted Tom. ‘Not if he gets wind of that carriage!’

‘No, that’s what I hope,’ she agreed. ‘But he might not, you know. So I shall send him word, and tell him also that I don’t mean to leave Edmund, and will contrive somehow to leave word for him wherever we stop on the road.’

‘Oh!’ said Tom. ‘So that’s it, is it? Never mind the letters yet! We’ll discuss this business first. How much money have you?’ She shook her head. ‘None, eh? I thought not. Well, all I have is the ready in my pockets, and it don’t amount to more than a couple of Yellow Boys, fifteen shillings in coach-wheels, and a few ha’pence. The roll of soft Father gave me is locked in my portmanteau. I daresay I could borrow from Fotherby, but I don’t mind telling you it’ll go against the shins with me to do it! I’ve had to borrow one of his shirts already, and a few neck-cloths and handkerchiefs, you know. What about you?’

‘Oh, isn’t it horrid?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve had to borrow from Lady Ianthe, and one would so much prefer not to be beholden to either of them! But perhaps we may be able to set it right again, if things go as I hope they may. Grandmama will receive those passports with my letter, and surely she must set out at once, whatever the weather?’

‘I should think so,’ he agreed. ‘And a rare tweak she’ll be in! Phew!’

‘Yes, and how could one blame her? And if I were obliged to go beyond Paris- No, I think Salford must have overtaken us before that could happen, even if he doesn’t start until he has read my letter. I know that Sir Nugent means to take four days on the road to Paris, and I fancy he will find he must take more, with Edmund on his hands. If he leaves Calais at all!’

‘Leaving tomorrow, aren’t they?’

‘Yes, that’s what they mean to do, but I shouldn’t wonder at it if they find themselves fixed here for several days. Tom, I think Lady Ianthe really is ill!’

‘Well, I own that would be nuts for us, but what if she ain’t?’

‘Then I am going with them,’ said Phoebe. ‘I won’t leave Edmund. Oh, Tom, for all his quaint ways he’s the merest baby! When I kissed him goodnight he put his arms round my neck, and made me promise not to go away! I nearly cried myself, for it was so very affecting. He can’t understand what is happening to him, and he was afraid I might slip away if he let me out of his sight. But when I said I would stay until he has Button again he was quite satisfied. I don’t mean to break faith with him, I assure you.’

‘I see,’ Tom said.

She looked gratefully at him. ‘I knew you would. But I have been thinking whether it might not be best, perhaps, if you borrowed enough money from Sir Nugent to buy your passage back to Dover, to escort Grandmama?’

‘You needn’t say any more!’ he interrupted. ‘If you think I’ll leave you to career across France with this ramshackle pair you were never more mistaken in your life!’

‘Well, to own the truth I didn’t think you would,’ she said candidly. ‘And I must say I am thankful for it! Not but what Sir Nugent is very good-natured.’

‘Oh, he’s good-natured enough!’ Tom said. ‘But don’t you get it into your head that he’s a man of character, because he ain’t! He’s a pretty loose fish, if you want the truth! He was talking to me for ever aboard the schooner, and it’s as plain as a pack-saddle he hobnobs with a set of dashed Queer Nabs: all sorts upon the lark! In fact, he’s what my father calls half flash and half foolish. Well, good God, if he had any principles he wouldn’t have kidnapped Edmund!’

She smiled. ‘A Bad Man!’

‘Ah, there’s a deal of sense in young Edmund’s cock-loft!’ he said, grinning.

On the following morning Phoebe led Edmund down to breakfast to find that Ianthe was still keeping her bed; but her hopes of delay were dashed when Sir Nugent informed her with an air of grave concern that although her la’ship was feeling devilish poorly she was determined to leave Calais that morning. She had not closed her eyes all night. People had tramped past her door; boots had been flung about in the room above hers; doors had been slammed; and the rumble of vehicles over the pavé had brought on her nervous tic. Though it killed her she would drive to Abbeville that day.

Edmund, who was seated beside Phoebe at the table, a napkin knotted round his neck, looked up at this. ‘You wish to kill Mama,’ he stated.

‘Eh?’ ejaculated Sir Nugent. ‘No, dash it-! You can’t say things like that!’

‘Mama said it,’ replied Edmund. ‘On that boat she said it.’

‘Did she? Well, but-well, what I mean is it’s a bag of moonshine! Devoted to her! Ask anyone!’

‘And you told lies, and-’

‘You eat your egg and don’t talk so much!’ intervened Tom, adding in an undervoice to his perturbed host: ‘I shouldn’t argue with him, if I were you.’

‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ objected Sir Nugent. ‘He don’t go about telling people you are a regular hedge-bird! Where will he draw the line, that’s what I should like to know?’

‘When Uncle Vester knows what you did to me he will punish you in a terrible way!’ said Edmund ghoulishly.

‘You see?’ exclaimed Sir Nugent. ‘Now we shall have him setting it about I’ve been ill-using him!’

‘Uncle Vester,’ pursued his small tormentor, ‘is the terriblest person in the world!’

‘You know, you shouldn’t talk like that about your uncle,’ Sir Nugent said earnestly. ‘I don’t say I like him myself, but I don’t go about saying he’s terrible! Top-lofty, yes, but-’

‘Uncle Vester doesn’t wish you to like him!’ declared Edmund, very much flushed.

‘I daresay he don’t, but if you mean he’ll call me out-well, I don’t think he will. Mind, if he chooses to do so-’

‘Lord, Fotherby, don’t encourage him!’ said Tom, exasperated.

‘Uncle Vester will grind your bones!’ said Edmund.

‘Grind my bones?’ repeated Sir Nugent, astonished. ‘You’ve got windmills in your head, boy! What the deuce should he do that for?’

‘To make him bread,’ responded Edmund promptly.

‘But you don’t make bread with bones!’

‘Uncle Vester does,’ said Edmund.

‘That’s enough!’ said Tom, trying not to laugh. ‘It’s you that’s telling whiskers now! You know very well your uncle doesn’t do any such thing, so just you stop pitching it rum!’

Edmund, apparently recognizing Tom as a force to be reckoned with, subsided, and applied himself to his egg again. But when he had finished it he shot a speculative glance at Tom under his curling lashes, and said: ‘P’raps Uncle Vester will nap him a rum ‘un.’

Tom gave a shout of laughter, but Phoebe scooped Edmund up and bore him off. Edmund, pleased by the success of his audacious sally, twinkled engagingly at Tom over her shoulder, but was heard to say before the door closed: ‘We Raynes do not like to be carried!’

The party left for Abbeville an hour later, in impressive style. Sir Nugent having loftily rejected a suggestion that the heavy baggage should be sent to Paris by the roulier, no fewer than four vehicles set out from the Lion d’Argent. The velvet-lined chariot bearing Sir Nugent and his bride headed the cavalcade; Phoebe, Tom, and Edmund followed in a hired post-chaise; and the rear was brought up by two cabriolets, one occupied by Pett and the Young Person hired to wait on my lady, and the other crammed with baggage. Quite a number of people gathered to watch this departure, a circumstance that seemed to afford Sir Nugent great satisfaction until a jarring note was introduced by Edmund, who strenuously resisted all efforts to make him enter the chaise, and was finally picked up, kicking and screaming, by Tom, and unceremoniously tossed onto the seat. As he saw fit to reiterate at the top of his voice that his father-in-law was a Bad Man, Sir Nugent fell into acute embarrassment, which was only alleviated when Tom reminded him that the interested onlookers were probably unable to understand anything Edmund said.

Once inside the chaise Edmund stopped screaming. He bore up well for the first stages, beguiled by a game of Travelling Piquet. But as the number of flocks of geese, parsons riding grey horses, or old women sitting under hedges was limited on the post-road from Calais to Boulogne, this entertainment soon palled, and he began to be restive. By the time Boulogne was reached Phoebe’s repertoire of stories had been exhausted, and Edmund, who had been growing steadily more silent, said in a very tight voice that he felt as sick as a horse. He was granted a respite at Boulogne, where the travellers stopped for half an hour to refresh, but the look of despair on his face when he was lifted again into the chaise moved Tom to say, over his head: ‘I call it downright cruel to drag the poor little devil along on a journey like this!’

At Abbeville, which they reached at a late hour, Sinderby was awaiting them at the best hotel with tidings which caused Sir Nugent to suffer almost as much incredulity as vexation. Sinderby had to report failure. He had been unable to persuade the best hotel’s proprietor either to eject his other clients from the premises, or to sell the place outright to Sir Nugent. ‘As I ventured, sir, to warn you would be the case,’ added Sinderby, in a voice wholly devoid of expression.