Page 22 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

“I cannot make her choose between her husband and her brother. But I did think she might—” He broke off, crumpling the letter in his fist. He had been planning to write to her, but now he could not even begin to imagine what he would say.

“Thank you, Mistress Yates,” he said to Emma, as evenly as he could, and then, dully, to Solomon, “I suppose we’d better see if Johns and Norris are back. ”

“Want to stop here a minute?” Jed suggested, indicating the coaching inn up ahead. “I could do with a drink.” It hadn’t rained in a few days, and his throat was parched from the dust of the road.

“All right,” Solomon said.

He drew up outside the inn, and Jed climbed down from the cart and went inside.

They were on their way back to Barnstaple from the brewery. It had been a short journey, and a subdued one. Jed spent most of it brooding over Carrie’s letter. Solomon’s quiet presence had been a comfort to him.

In the taproom, it took him a few minutes to get the barmaid’s attention; she had her hands full with the crowd waiting for the Exeter-to-Taunton stagecoach.

When he finally emerged from the inn carrying two tankards of ale, the stagecoach had just pulled into the yard.

Ostlers came running forward with fresh horses, and the passengers piled off the coach, making for the inn to down a hurried drink, or towards the bushes for a piss.

New passengers emerged from the inn and flocked around the coach, fighting over the best places to stow their luggage.

Across the crowded yard, Jed could see Solomon up on the driving seat. He plunged into the crowd, clutching the two tankards to his chest so no one could jostle them.

But when he reached the far side of the yard, Solomon wasn’t there. The cart was empty. The horses stood waiting patiently, grazing on weeds by the roadside.

Jed put down the two drinks on the driving seat and looked around, puzzled. Solomon seemed to have vanished into thin air.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder, and Jed turned. It was a gentleman about Jed’s age, dressed in the blue coat and cocked hat favoured by Naval officers. Jed froze.

“Where’s the other man who was in your cart a moment ago?” the officer demanded.

Was he alone? Or did he have a gang of men nearby whom he could summon to clap Jed in irons? But they were miles from the sea here, and there was no reason, surely, for him to suspect that Jed was a seafaring man.

“Where’s the man who was in your cart?” the officer repeated. There was something familiar about his voice. “A tall, thinnish, dark-haired man.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” Jed said automatically.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t play me for a fool, fellow.”

Jed had heard that voice before, at Mrs Farley’s farm. “Dreadfully sorry to impose on you, ma’am…” Could this be the Lieutenant Vaughan that Solomon was so afraid of? Jed stared at him in shock. He was a short, trim man with hard eyes. Handsome in a sneering way.

Vaughan returned the stare, giving Jed a long, appraising look.

“Show me your hands,” he said suddenly.

Reflexively, Jed clenched his hands into fists. The tar-stains had worn off after numerous washings, but the distinctive rope callouses were still there. He summoned up an aggrieved voice. “I don’t know who you are to think you can order me around.”

“Show me at once, man.”

Jed twitched, so accustomed was he to obeying gentlemen speaking in that tone of voice, wearing that uniform.

But he didn’t move. Better to brazen it out.

He was an innocent carter, going about his business, and not a seafaring man.

He repeated that over and over in his head.

This fellow Vaughan might have spotted and recognised Solomon, but he couldn’t possibly know who Jed was.

Vaughan strolled around the cart, hands behind his back, and took a good look at the cargo. Jed fought the urge to jump into the cart and hurtle away from the inn, lashing the horses. I’m just an innocent carter… I’m just an innocent carter…

Vaughan returned to face Jed. His gaze raked Jed again, uncomfortably piercing. “I ask you once more—” But he broke off when a young gentleman—the boy looked to be a midshipman—appeared at his elbow.

“Stagecoach is leaving, sir. The coachman says he’ll go without us if we don’t make shift.”

Vaughan made a noise of frustration.

The midshipman cast a curious glance at Jed. “What’s going on, sir? Who’s this fellow?”

“Nothing,” Vaughan said hastily. “No one. It’s of no importance. Come along.”

He turned away, hurrying the midshipman towards the stagecoach.

But before he himself climbed in, he turned back to give Jed another long, hard look.

Then he disappeared into the coach, the guard put up the steps, and the ponderous equipage jerked into motion.

Soon, it had disappeared from sight along the Taunton road.

A sudden hush descended over the yard. No one was in sight save for two elderly women who had left the coach here and were now negotiating the hire of a cart with one of the ostlers. A cat strolled out from behind the stables and settled down in the sun.

Jed sank back against the cart. He couldn’t stay here. He felt too nervous and exposed, even as he told himself that Lieutenant Vaughan would hardly jump down from the stagecoach and come striding back.

And where in buggery was Solomon?

He ran to the taproom and thrust the two full tankards into the hands of the first person he bumped into. Then he hurried back to the cart and started the horses, urging them down the Barnstaple road as fast as possible.

Half a mile down the road, he pulled the cart up under a tree to wait. He climbed down to pace around, then sat on the grass to brood.

Some time later, Solomon arrived on foot.

Jed jumped to his feet. “Where the fuck were you?” he demanded as soon as Solomon was near enough to hear him.

Solomon didn’t answer. His face was pinched and unhappy, his mouth tight.

Jed was feeling fairly unhappy himself. “That was your Lieutenant Vaughan, wasn’t it? The same man as tried to press us at Mrs Farley’s farm?”

Solomon nodded.

“You saw him coming,” Jed said. His anger was spilling over. “And you just turned tail and bolted. You couldn’t let me know that there was, I don’t know… a Naval officer right there at the inn with me? You could have come into the taproom to warn me, I think?”

“Yes, I could have. I should have. I know. But I couldn’t let him see me. I couldn’t let him know I’m here in these parts.”

“Yes, well, that cat’s already out of the basket.”

Solomon’s face fell. “Bugger. He spoke to you?”

“He asked about you, and had a good look in the back of the cart.”

“Hell and the devil. I thought maybe he didn’t see me.” He rubbed his face.

Jed regarded him sourly. “Well? I reckon you’ve got a mint of explaining to do. Got a good reason for letting me walk into the lion’s den?”

“But he didn’t press you. He didn’t have the gangers with him, I suppose?”

“You didn’t know that, though, did you? I could be in chains in their tender right now, on the way to the receiving ship.

” He shuddered. “And now he knows there’s an ex-seaman working on that road.

He saw we were coming from a brewery. Won’t be impossible to track me down to Drake’s yard in Barnstaple.

” Fuck. He didn’t want to lose this job, much as it grated on his nerves at times.

Would he have to spend the rest of the war running, always running?

Jed took a deep breath. His anger was already draining away, and he was sorry he’d lashed out. He said in a calmer voice, “Just… tell me why?”

Solomon shook his head, a clear refusal.

It was like a punch to the gut. Jed gaped at him. “Why not?”

“I’m sorry, Jed.”

“Why are you like this?” Sometimes he felt like he’d been spilling his guts to Solomon without once stopping since they’d first met. “I tell you everything, and you give me nothing.” His voice came out flat. He didn’t have any energy left for anger now.

Solomon winced, but he didn’t try to defend himself.

Jed swallowed around the bitterness rising up within him. He climbed into the cart and picked up the reins, waiting silently for Solomon to climb in beside him.

It was a long journey back into town in a strained silence.

Restlessly, Jed moved from the bed to the window and back again. There was a shirt he ought to be mending, but he’d tossed it aside on the bed a few minutes earlier.

He was alone in his room at the Boar, the two men who’d shared the other bed having left town that morning. He got up and went to the little attic window again, staring down at the twilit street.

The hollow ache in his stomach hadn’t moved since they returned to Barnstaple earlier that day. Restlessness jittered under his skin. He wanted so much from Solomon, but he didn’t know how to ask for it.

There came a knock at the door. It was Solomon. Wallace was with him.

“Can we come in?” Solomon asked.

Silently, Jed stood aside. The two of them filed into the room, and they all stood there awkwardly for a moment.

Solomon glanced at Wallace as though asking permission, and Wallace nodded.

“We want to tell you how we met Hugo Vaughan,” Solomon said.