‘Beg pardon!’ Tom said, smiling a little.

‘Yes, very well! but don’t throw my rank in my face again! Good God, am I some money-grubbing Cit, sprung from obscurity, decorated with a title for political ends, and crowing like a cock on its own dunghill?’ He broke off, as Tom shouted with laughter, and regarded him almost with hostility. ‘It was not my intention to divert you!’

‘I know it wasn’t,’ said Tom, wiping his eyes. ‘Oh, don’t fall into a miff! I see precisely how it is! You are very like my father, Salford! It’s as natural for you to be a duke as it is for him to be the Squire, and the only time when either of you remembers what you are is when some impudent fellow don’t treat you with respect! Oh, lord, and I shall be just the same myself!’ He began to laugh again, but gasped: ‘Never mind! The thing is that you take it in snuff that Phoebe meddled in your affairs, as though she were encroaching! Well, she wasn’t. The only idea she had in her head was how to undo the harm she never meant to bring on you!’

Sylvester got up, and went back to the fire, and said, as he stirred a log with one booted foot: ‘You think I should be grateful to her, do you? No doubt her intentions were admirable, but when I think how easily I might but for her interference have recovered Edmund without creating the smallest noise, I am not at all grateful.’

‘Yes, I do think you should be grateful!’ retorted Tom. ‘If it hadn’t been for her looking after him on board the Betsy Anne he might have stuck his spoon in the wall! I never saw anyone in worse case, and there was no one else to care what became of him, let me tell you!’

‘Then I am grateful to her for that at least. If my gratitude is tempered by the reflection that Edmund would never have been taken to sea if she had not put the notion into his mother’s head-’

‘Salford, can’t you forget that trumpery novel?’ begged Tom. ‘If you mean to brood over it all the way home, a merry journey we shall have!’

Sylvester had been looking down at the fire, but he raised his head at that. ‘What?’

‘How do you imagine I’m to get Phoebe home?’ asked Tom. ‘Was you meaning to leave us stranded here?’

‘Stranded! I can’t conceive what need you can possibly have of my services when you appear to be on excellent terms with a man of far greater substance! I suggest you apply to Fotherby for a loan.’

‘Yes, that’s what I shall be forced to do, if you’re set on a paltry revenge,’ said Tom, with deliberation.

‘Take care!’ said Sylvester. ‘I’ve borne a good deal from you, Thomas, but that is a trifle too much! If I had a banking correspondent in France you might draw on me to any tune you pleased, but I have not! As for travelling Tab with Miss Marlow-no, by God, I won’t! Ask Fotherby to accommodate you. You may as well be indebted to him as to me!’

‘No, I may not,’ returned Tom. ‘You may not care for the mess Phoebe’s in, but I do! You know Lady Ingham! That business-all the kick-up over Phoebe’s book!-tried her pretty high, and she wasn’t in the best of humours when I saw her last. By now I should think she’s in a rare tweak, but you could bring her round your finger. If we go back to England with you, and you tell the old lady it was due to Phoebe you were able to recover young Edmund, all will be tidy. But if I have to take Phoebe back alone, and all you care for is to keep the business secret, we shall be lurched. You won’t be able to keep it secret, either. What about Swale? What about-’

‘The only one of my servants who knows where I have gone is Keighley. Swale is not with me. I am not as green as you think, Thomas!’

A slow grin spread over Tom’s face. ‘I don’t think you green, Salford!’ he said. ‘Touched in the upper works is what you are!’

Sylvester looked frowningly at him. ‘What the devil are you at now? Do you think me dependent on my valet? You should know better!’

‘Should I? Who is going to look after Edmund on the journey?’

‘I am.’

‘Have you ever looked after him?’ inquired Tom, grinning more widely.

‘No,’ said Sylvester, very slightly on the defensive.

‘You will enjoy the journey! You wait till you’ve had to wash him half a dozen times a day, my lord Duke! You’ll have to dress him, and undress him, and tell him stories when he begins to feel queasy in the chaise, and see he don’t eat what he shouldn’t-and I’ll wager you don’t know, so the chances are you’ll be up half the night with him!-and you won’t even be able to eat your dinner in peace, because he might wake up, and start kicking up a dust. He don’t like strange places, you know. And don’t think you can hand him over to a chambermaid, because he don’t like foreigners either! And if you’re gudgeon enough to spank him for being an infernal nuisance he’ll start sobbing his heart out, and you’ll have every soul in the place behaving as if you was Herod!’

‘For God’s sake, Thomas-’ Sylvester said, half laughing. ‘Damn you, I wish I’d never met you! Is it as bad as that?’

‘Much worse!’ Tom assured him.

‘My God! I ought to have brought Keighley, of course. But what you don’t realize is that when I drew from my bank what I supposed I should need I didn’t bargain for two more persons being added to my party. We should come to a standstill before we reached Calais!’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ admitted Tom. ‘Well, we shall have to pawn something, that’s all.’

‘Pawn something?’ repeated Sylvester. ‘Pawn what?’

‘We must think. Have you got that dressing case of yours with you?’

‘Oh, it’s I who must pawn something, is it? No, I am happy to say I didn’t bring anything but a portmanteau!’

‘It will have to be your watch and chain, then. It’s a pity you don’t sport diamond tie-pins and rings. Now, if only you had a spanking great emerald, like the one Fotherby’s dazzling us with today-’

‘Oh, be quiet!’ said Sylvester. ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll pawn my watch! Or anything else!’

‘I’ll do it for you,’ offered Tom. ‘I ain’t so high in the instep!’

‘What you are, Thomas, is a-’ Sylvester stopped, as the door opened, and Phoebe came into the room.

She was looking so haughty that Tom nearly laughed; and her voice was more frigid than Sylvester’s at its coldest. ‘Excuse me, if you please! Tom-’

‘Miss Marlow,’ interrupted Sylvester, ‘I understand that I did you an injustice. I beg you will accept my sincere apology.’

She threw him a disdainful glance. ‘It is not of the slightest consequence, sir. Tom, I came to tell you that I meant what I said to you on the stairs, and have settled what I shall do. I mean to beg Lady Ianthe to allow me to accompany her as far as to Paris. Once there I can await Grandmama at the Embassy. I am persuaded Sir Charles and Lady Elizabeth will permit me to remain with them when I tell them who I am. If you will go back to Dover with his grace-’

‘Yes, that’s a capital scheme!’ said Tom. ‘What’s more, I’d give my last coach-wheel to see the Ambassador’s face when you tripped in, and said you was Lady Ingham’s granddaughter, and had come to stay because you’d mislaid her ladyship on the road, with all your baggage! For heaven’s sake, don’t be so shatter-brained! Do you want to set Paris talking as well as London?’

She flinched at this, and Sylvester, seeing it, said: ‘That’s enough! Miss Marlow, you must see that that scheme is quite ineligible. Pray accept my escort to England!’

‘I had rather hire myself out as a cook-maid!’ she declared. ‘Anything would be preferable to travelling in your company!’

Having expressed himself in much the same terms, Sylvester was instantly nettled, and retorted: ‘You endured my company for a se’enight not so long since without suffering any ill-effect, and I daresay you will survive a few more days of it!’

‘I wish with all my heart I had never gone aboard that ship!’ said Phoebe, with deep feeling.

‘So do I wish it! For a more ill-judged- I beg your pardon! I believe you meant well!’

‘I shall never mean you well again!’ she told him fierily. ‘As for your condescension, my lord Duke-’

‘Phoebe, take a damper!’ commanded Tom sternly. ‘And listen to me! I’ve gone along with you till now, but I’m going no farther. You’ll do as I tell you, my girl. We shall go home with Salford, and you will not be beholden to him, if that’s what frets you, because he needs you to look after Edmund. Yes, and let me remind you that you promised that boy you wouldn’t leave him until he had his Button again!’

‘He won’t care for that now!’ she said.

But as Edmund peeped into the coffee room at that moment, and, upon being applied to by Tom, instantly said that he would not let Phoebe go away, this argument failed. She did suggest to Edmund that his uncle would suffice him, but he vigorously shook his curly head, saying: ‘No, acos Uncle Sylvester is damned if he will be plagued with me afore breakfast.’

This naive confidence did much to alleviate constraint. Phoebe could not help laughing, and Sylvester, wreaking awful vengeance on his small nephew, lost his stiffness.

But just as Edmund’s squeals and chuckles were at their height the company was startled by a roar of rage and anguish from above stairs. It seemed to emanate from a soul in torment, making Sylvester jerk up his head, and Edmund stop squirming in his hold.

‘What the devil-?’ exclaimed Sylvester.

24

‘Now what’s amiss?’ said Tom, limping to the door. ‘It sounds as if the Pink of the Ton has found a speck of mud on his coat.’

‘Pett! Pett!’ bellowed Sir Nugent, descending the stairs. ‘Pett, where are you? Pett, I say!’

As Tom pulled the door wide Sylvester set Edmund on his feet, demanding: ‘What in God’s name ails the fellow?’