Page 30 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

When Jed woke, Solomon was sitting up in bed, looking out of the window at the wintry blue sky. He noticed Jed stir and smiled down at him: that lop-sided quirk of a smile that Jed had grown to love.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

There was a note in his voice that caught Jed’s attention. He propped himself up on one elbow, eying Solomon. “Oh?”

“Nothing bad! Something good, I hope. You see, Wallace and Emma are thinking of taking over the running of an inn together.”

Jed stared in shock. “Taking over an inn together?”

“Yes. It’s the Jarret Arms out by Jarret Down. I expect you know it?”

Jed hadn’t passed that way since he’d returned to England. He remembered it as an isolated place high up on the moors, though busy enough nonetheless, for it was the only inn along that lonely stretch of road.

“I do, yes,” he said cautiously.

“The previous innkeeper died not long ago, and the lease is available. Emma has been wanting to do something like this for years. Her aunt, Mrs Steele, is lending them the money for the lease. ‘Twas all planned before we ran into Vaughan, of course. But Wallace says he don’t want to let that scupper his plans.”

“Well… the inn is a good way inland, at least,” Jed offered. “It’s a small place, but it’s the only building along that road for miles along, I mind. Must get a fair amount of stopping trade.”

“Wallace is going out to see it on Friday. Sounds like it’s fallen into disrepair of late, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get things up and running. There’s a twenty-horse stables, too, and an Exeter businessman keeps five or six hire-horses there.”

Solomon sat propped against the headboard, limbs sprawled across the sheets. But there was an intensity in his gaze that belied the relaxed lines of his body. He seemed to be studying Jed’s reaction closely.

“Yes, sounds like a going proposition,” Jed said. “But, er… they’re both going to live out there together, then?”

Solomon caught his meaning. “They’re getting married.”

“They’ve only known each other, what, a couple of months?

Scarcely longer than we have. Unless—” Maybe it was just a business arrangement?

People married for all sorts of reasons, and sometimes on the merest acquaintance.

Anyroad, the whole thing was their own private affair. None of Jed’s business.

“You don’t believe people can fall in love that quickly?” There was an odd note in Solomon’s voice.

“I make sure they can, in ordinary circumstances, but not when—” He scratched his head. “I don’t know. I only wonder if… Is Wallace really in a state of mind to be making decisions of such import? Lord knows I’m not, and I en’t been through half what he has recently.”

“I think Wallace can be happy there. I hope so. I desperately want that for him.”

Jed nodded, still bemused. This was the last thing he had been expecting.

He would have been less surprised to hear that Wallace was running off to some other part of England, and he still thought the decision was sudden and possibly unwise.

But it was Wallace’s business, and Emma clearly knew what she was getting into.

“Well, I hope so too.”

There was a short silence. Jed could tell Solomon still had something else to say.

“There’s a reason I’m telling you all this,” Solomon said finally. “They’ve asked me to come with them and run the stables. But… it’s very much a two-man job.”

Jed sat up, turning so they were facing each other, the sheets falling to his waist. His pulse had quickened. “You mean—?”

“So, what do you think? Would you—be interested?”

Jed was suddenly lightheaded. It sounded like a dream: to be their own masters, working with horses, far from the sea and the press gang. It could be perfect.

But that was all it was: a dream. And to pursue it, Jed would have to let go of the lifeline he’d been clinging to these past five years.

The mere thought of it drove the breath from his chest. He’d said he didn’t think Wallace was in a fit state to be making decisions, and that went for him too.

He knew only that he’d been happy in Ledcombe before he was pressed.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m not sure if I can… You know I’m going home. Back to my village, back to my old life. As soon as we get word that the press gang have left Minehead, I’ll be able to go home.”

The bed was narrow, and they were touching in several places, arms brushing, legs entangled. Solomon was very still. Finally he said, “Of course. I understand.”

Jed’s gut wrenched with guilt. “I’m sorry, I— You wouldn’t be able to rely on me. My head en’t on straight. I can hardly keep it together enough for Mrs Drake not to dismiss me. I don’t know if I…” He trailed off. “Just give me some time to think about it?”

“Yes, of course.”

Jed wanted to apologise some more, but that would hardly do any good, nor change the look on Solomon’s face.

Solomon gave Jed a small, unconvincing smile. He threw off the sheets, swinging his legs to the floor. “We’d better go. Mrs Drake will be looking for us.”

Darkness filled the waggon, and no one but Jed seemed to be awake. A hearty young farm labourer snored gently in Jed’s left ear. On his other side, Solomon slept silently.

They’d left Barnstaple with five passengers the previous day: a lacemaker and her little daughter, two day labourers, and Wallace, who was on his way to see a land agent about the Jarret Arms. When the waggon made its scheduled overnight stop at the Rose and Crown, a village inn halfway to their destination, the woman had paid sixpence to sleep in the inn’s kitchen, but Wallace and the two labourers preferred to save their pennies and sleep in the waggon.

Jed sat up, his arm brushing Solomon’s.

Yesterday’s journey had been a strain on Jed’s nerves.

Solomon had behaved quite as normal, but in Jed’s imagination, the spectre of the Jarret Arms loomed between them.

It had been a relief to have the other passengers with them, so that he and Solomon never found themselves alone in a strained silence.

Now, Jed felt for his coat and shoes. Solomon stirred, and Jed bent to murmur into his ear. “I’m going to go see to the horses.”

He felt rather than saw Solomon nod.

Outside in the yard, the first light of dawn tinged the sky above the rolling line of moorland hills. A faint mist hung over the yard. They were only ten miles from the sea here. The inn was still in darkness, no lights burning in the windows.

Jed turned to look back at the waggon. For a second, he had thought Solomon might follow him. If he did, it would be the first time they were alone together in two days. But Solomon didn’t appear.

Jed stamped hard on the flash of disappointment he felt.

It was stupid of him: he was the one who’d been avoiding Solomon, not the other way around.

He picked his way across the muddy yard to the stables, where one of the inn’s stable hands was mucking out a stall by lanternlight.

Jed gave him a nod of greeting and continued along the line of horses to the six sturdy carthorses that pulled the Barnstaple waggon.

Their water trough had been refilled but their feed troughs were empty.

The stable hand put down his shovel and came hurrying up. “Sorry, I en’t got to it yet this morning. I’ve no oats left in the grain store. I’ll have to go up to the loft.”

“I’ll go,” Jed offered.

“Thanks, friend. Toss down a couple of extra sacks too, will you?”

Jed climbed the ladder in the corner of the stables, emerging into a loft filled with bales of hay at one end and stacked sacks of grain at the other.

Small, paneless windows at either end of the loft let in fresh air and the first glimmer of dawn.

Jed dragged a sack over to a hole in the floor and emptied the sack into the grain store below.

There was probably a loft like this at the Jarret Arms. It was a decent way to earn a living—working in the stables of an inn. Hard work, but with Solomon by his side it could be a good life.

Solomon certainly thought so. Jed heard again the enthusiasm in Solomon’s voice, saw the hope concealed under the feigned indifference.

In another life, it was something Jed could have had. Another life where he wasn’t a jumble of bad dreams and waking nightmares.

Would they still manage to see each other when Solomon was at the Jarret Arms, way up on the moors?

In the old days, Jed had only gone past the place once or twice a year.

Wallace, telling the other passengers about the reason for his journey, had said it would probably be a few months before the inn could open again.

Jed didn’t even know where he’d be in a few months’ time.

He couldn’t think about the past, and when he tried to think about the future, it seemed to slip through his fingers.

A crow cawed up on the roof, and he realised he had been standing there he knew not how long, an empty sack limp in his hands. He set it aside. As he dragged a second sack over to the hole, he heard faint voices from the stable below: Solomon and Wallace, talking to the stable hand.

Jed’s eyes were gritty, his head heavy from his restless night. He tugged sharply on the loose end of the twine holding the sack closed. What wouldn’t he give for a peaceful night’s sleep?

Then a sudden commotion out in the yard caught his attention, bringing him back to life.

He let the sack fall and hurried across the loft to look down through the nearest window.

The inn’s front door stood open, light and people spilling out into the yard.

Lanterns bobbed around, held by shadowy figures.

Women’s voices were raised in alarm. Jed caught a glimpse of a kitchen maid he’d spoken to the previous night, her face revealed by the light of the candle she held up.