Serena moved away to the window, where Mr Goring was standing. “The less she tries to talk the better it will be for her,”she said, in an undertone. “Now, tell me, if you please, what has happened to overset her like this?”
“Emily—Miss Laleham, I should say—has left the house,” he responded, still in that heavy tone. He saw that she was staring at him with knit brows, and added: “She has run away, ma’am. Leaving behind her a letter for her grandmother.”
“Good heavens! Where is it?”
“Give it to her, Ned!” commanded Mrs Floore, struggling to sit up. “Drat you, Stoke, don’t keep pushing me back! Give me those smelling-salts, and go away, do! I don’t need you any more, nor you neither, Betsey, crying all over me! No, don’t you go, Ned! If there’s anything to be done, there’s no one else to do it for me, for I can’t go careering all over the country—not that it would do a mite of good if I could, for who’s to say where she’s gone to? Oh, Emma, why ever didn’t you tell your grandma?”
Mr Goring had picked up a sheet of paper from the table, and had in silence handed it to Serena.
Dearest Grandmama, it began, in Emma’s unformed writing, “I am so very sorry and I do not like to grieve you but I cannot bear it and I cannot marry Lord R. in spite of coronets, because he frightens me, and I did not tell you but he has written me a dreadful letter and is coming here and he and Mama will make me do just what they want, and indeed I cannot bear it, though I hate excessively to leave you without saying goodbye. Pray do not be angry with me, my dear, dearest Grandmama. Your loving Emma. PS. Pray, pray do not tell Mama or Lord R. where I have gone.
“You would certainly be in a puzzle to do so!” said Serena, reaching the postscript. “Of all the bird-witted little idiots—! My dear ma’am, I beg your pardon, but she deserves to be slapped for such folly! What the devil does she mean by writing such stuff? Rotherham write her a “dreadful letter”? What nonsense! If he has grown impatient, it is not to be wondered at, but to write of him as though he were an ogre is quite abominable!”
“But she is afraid of him, Lady Serena,” said Mr Goring.
“I ought to have known it was Sukey’s doing!” said Mrs Floore, in an agony of remorse. “Right at the start, didn’t I suspect it? Only then Emma wrote me such a letter, so happy it seemed to me, that I thought—Poor little lamb, if I’d only had the sense to tell her what I think of Sukey, which I never did, not thinking it seemly, she wouldn’t have been afraid to tell me! And now there’s Sukey coming here this very day, and how to face her I don’t know, for there’s no denying I haven’t taken proper care of Emma. Not that I care a fig for Sukey, and so I shall tell her! And as for this precious Marquis, let him dare show his face here! Let him dare, that’s all I ask! Scaring the dear little soul out of her senses, which nobody can tell me he hasn’t done, because I know better! And last night—Oh, Ned, I thought she was moped because she didn’t want Sukey to take her away from me, and all I did was to tell her to think about her bride-clothes, so I daresay she took it into her head I was as set on this nasty marriage as her ma! And now what am I to do? When I think of my little Emma, running off all alone, to hide herself heaven knows where—”
“You may be certain of one thing at least, ma’am!” interrupted Serena. “She has not run away alone!”
Mr Goring directed a steady look at her. “Is there an attachment between her and young Monksleigh, ma’am?”
She shrugged. “On her side, I should very much doubt it; on his, evidently! I shall be sorry for him if it ever comes to Rotherham’s ears that he persuaded Emily into this escapade! It is the most disgraceful thing to have done, and if he comes off with a whole skin he may think himself fortunate! Mrs Floore, pray don’t cry! The matter is not past mending, I assure you. I collect that Gerard came to Bath to see Emily, not to stay with friends: has he been to this house? Had you no suspicion of what was in the wind?”
“No, my dear, because Emma said he was the Marquis’s ward, which made it seem right to me, and besides which I thought he was such a twiddle-poop there wasn’t the least harm in letting him go with us to the Gala night, which I did.”
Serena smiled, but said: “Depend upon it, this dramatic flight was his notion, not Emily’s, ma’am! What is more, I would wager my pearls all this nonsense about Rotherham was put into her silly head by him! But let us not waste time in discussing that! What we have to do is to get her back. Mr Goring, I shall need your help!”
“I shall be happy to do everything in my power. Lady Serena, to restore Miss Laleham to Mrs Floore, but I will have no hand in forcing her into marriage with a man whom she fears,” he replied bluntly.
“Let me see anyone dare!” said Mrs Floore. “Only fetch her back to me, and trust me to send this Marquis to the rightabout, and Sukey too!”
There is no question of forcing her to marry Rotherham,”said Serena. “When she meets him again, I fancy she will discover that the extremely unamiable portrait she has painted of him is wide of the mark. Is it known when she left the house?”
“No, because no one saw her go, only she wasn’t gone before ten o’clock, that Betsey swears to, for she heard her moving about in her bedroom when she passed the door. And she ate a bite of bread and butter, and drank a cup of coffee, before she went, and Stoke says the tray was taken up to her at a quarter to ten, just as usual. For I don’t get up to breakfast myself, so Emma has hers in bed too.”
“Come, this is much better!” said Serena. “I feared she might have left overnight, in which case we should have had something to do indeed. Mr Goring, have you met Gerard Monksleigh?”
“I met him at the theatre last night, ma’am.”
“Then you will be able to describe him,” said Serena briskly. “We may be sure of this: they are not lurking in Bath! I do Gerard the justice to think that he means to marry Emily—though how he imagines he may do so, when each of them is under age, is more than I can tell! It would be in keeping with all the rest if he is bearing her off to Gretna Green, but where he found the money for such a journey is again more than I can tell! He may, of course, be taking her to London, with some hopeful notion of procuring a special license there.”
“Oh, my dear, supposing he has it in his pocket already?” exclaimed Mrs Floore. “Supposing he went to Wells, or Bristol, and has married her? Oh, I don’t want her to go throwing herself away on that young fellow!”
“Don’t distress yourself, ma’am! He would find it difficult to induce anyone to believe he is of age.”
“Lady Serena is right, ma’am,” interpolated Mr Goring. “He would be required to bring proof of his age, for he looks a stripling. What do you wish me to do, Lady Serena?”
“To visit the posting-houses here, of course. I imagine you must know them well. Discover if Gerard hired a chaise, and where it was to take him. Did you ride here from Bristol? Is your horse in Bath?”
“I drove here, ma’am, in my curricle. If I should be able to discover the road they took, I can have the horses put to in a trice,” he replied. “I’ll set out immediately.”
“Ned Goring, I’ll go all the way to Land’s End for Emma, but I’ll do it decently!” declared Mrs Floore. “Don’t you think to hoist me into any nasty, open carriage! A chaise-and-four, that’s what you’ll hire!”
“My dear ma’am, you are going to remain quietly here,” said Serena. “It would be quite unfit for you to be rocked and jolted for heaven knows how many hours! Moreover, if this exploit is to be kept secret, it is most necessary that you should be here. If Rotherham is indeed on his way to Bath, he will have to be fobbed off, you know. Whatever be the issue between him and Emily, you cannot wish him to know how scandalously she is behaving—or Lady Laleham either, for that matter! You must tell them both that Emily has gone with a party on an expedition of pleasure. And as for your curricle, Mr Goring, leave it where it is! We shall catch our runaways very much more speedily if we ride, and we shan’t advertise to every pike-keeper, and every chance traveller, that we are racing in pursuit of someone. That is a thing we should do our best to avoid.”