Page 33 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

Solomon stirred, shifting his weight from foot to foot, but said nothing. He’d lost the confidence he’d seemed to have when they were first taken prisoner at the Rose and Crown, and now he only looked miserable.

The gangers tied Jed up and left the room.

Vaughan turned to Jed, bestowing a charming smile upon him. “I hope you will forgive me these precautions. Think of it as a compliment, if you will. I know you very much desire to be free—and who knows, perhaps you soon will be. But I must have a word with you first.”

Jed had been expecting to face an officer’s orders, not whatever this was. He stared in confusion.

“Perhaps you are aware that I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Vaughan went on. “Wallace Acton. Solomon here says you know where he is to be found. He has very helpfully suggested that I release you, so that you may lead me to Wallace.”

Jed felt the first precious stirrings of hope.

He looked properly at Solomon for the first time since he’d entered the room.

Solomon’s expression was full of meaning, but Jed couldn’t read it.

There was guilt there, certainly, but also something else.

Some wild idea that, having saved Wallace, he could now save Jed too?

Surely he did not really want Jed to lead Vaughan to Wallace—but maybe he was hoping that Jed would somehow escape on the way there.

Jed wished desperately that he knew what Solomon was thinking—or at least, that he knew what words Solomon and Vaughan had exchanged before Jed was brought to the room. If Solomon did have a plan, Jed wasn’t confident that there was anything more to it than wild ideas born of desperation.

“Jed, you’re a friend of Solomon’s, I understand?” Vaughan said, drawing their attention back to himself. He bestowed another gracious smile upon Jed. “You work together?”

“Ah…”—he shot Solomon an uncertain glance—“you could say that.”

Vaughan leaned forward. “Jed— I hope you don’t mind if I call you that?

Solomon refuses to tell me your surname.

” When Jed made a confused sort of noise of agreement, he went on, “Thank you. Now, Jed, I knew Solomon and Wallace in London. Indeed, Wallace is a particular friend of mine. We shared lodgings in London for several years.”

“Yes, I know.” He swallowed down the sir he had almost added to the end of that.

Vaughan’s smile broadened. “Then you’ll also know how happy I was to discover that Wallace was here in the district.”

“If you say so.”

“How is he? I’ve been worried about him.”

Solomon jumped in. “He’s well, Hugo. Jed will take you to him, just as soon as you let him go. Or I will do so. But not while Jed’s being held prisoner.”

Vaughan eyed him speculatively. “You said Jed was a friend of yours. Very close friends, I take it?”

Jed studied Vaughan, an unwelcome suspicion growing in his breast. The brief burst of hope he had felt was fading.

“He’s a friend, yes,” Solomon said cautiously. “Listen, Hugo, do you want Jed to take you to Wallace or not?”

Vaughan didn’t answer Solomon. “You’ve been to sea before, I understand, Jed? I’ve had report of a deserter living in Ledcombe: the able seaman Jedediah Trevithick—I presume you are he? You are quite desperate not to return to sea, I collect.”

Jed regarded him sourly. “Isn’t everyone?”

“So you’d be willing to make a little bargain with me? If I let you go, would you take me to see Wallace? Or maybe just carry a note from me to him? I would be most grateful if you could even help me that far.”

Jed had had enough. “Oh, bugger off, why don’t you?”

“Jed!” Solomon exclaimed, starting forward. “Hugo, listen, let Jed—”

Jed cut him off, his voice flat. “Solomon, he has no intention of letting either of us go. He don’t need us to tell him where Wallace is.

He already knows more nor enough to track him down.

” He could still hear the innkeeper saying, that’s the Barnstaple carrier.

“He’s just trying to find out whether Wallace is fucking someone else now. Me, for example.”

He was looking at Vaughan as he spoke. A split second of white hot anger crossed Vaughan’s face, and then he was smiling again.

“My, aren’t you the clever one,” he said in a soft, silky voice.

Solomon made a small, wounded noise. Jed glanced at him. He looked like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach.

Jed swallowed over the sickness in his throat.

Solomon shut his eyes. “Please, Vaughan, let Jed go. Wallace would want that.”

“ You want that, Dyer. And I don’t feel very kindly disposed towards you. You’ve been poisoning his mind against me. He loved me. He loves me. We were happy until you came between us.”

“What do you want from me? I’ll do anything. Only let Jed go.”

“Stop that!” Jed said, afraid to see Solomon make some sort of guilt-driven wild sacrifice.

“I want you out of my way, Dyer,” Vaughan snapped. “As far away as possible. The high seas will do nicely, I think.” He went to the door and opened it, calling down the corridor, “Bothwell!”

The ganger reappeared.

“Take these two men away. And don’t put them together. I’ll not have them conspiring against me. Put one in the cellar and one in the old icehouse.”

As a prison, the disused icehouse was even worse than the cellar: there was no window to help mark the passage of time.

Jed was locked up there with the day labourers who had been passengers on the waggon from Barnstaple, and two other men whom he could barely even distinguish in the dark.

Jed tried to talk to them—he was planning to run as soon as he saw his chance, and he thought he should take these poor sods along with him if he could.

But they all seemed to be sunk in despair, and no one spoke or moved except to try and find a better position on the cold flagstones.

Their guards came by twice to bring them food and water. Jed couldn’t tell how long he’d been there in the dark, but he thought at least an entire day had passed. Then, he was hauled out of the icehouse, tired and grimy, and marched upstairs to the room Lieutenant Vaughan was using as an office.

Vaughan stood by his desk, perusing a letter, while a scrawny child—he looked like some kind of messenger or boot boy—waited for an answer. There was no sign of Solomon.

Vaughan sat down, dashed off a quick note, and handed it to the waiting boy.

“Give that to your mistress with my compliments and tell her that her generosity is much appreciated. The invalided seamen will be most grateful.”

The boy went out, and Vaughan waved Jed and his guards in.

“Minehead is such a pleasant town,” he said in greeting to Jed. “Full of charming and charitable townsfolk.” He indicated the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, Jed. You’ll forgive me if I have you restrained again. The conversation will flow more freely, I daresay, if we can both be at ease.”

Silently, Jed submitted to being tied to the chair. Then Vaughan dismissed the guards and propped himself on the edge of his desk, looking down at Jed.

“The surgeon will be here shortly,” he said in a conversational tone.

Jed knew what that meant: one step closer to being transferred to a ship, the point after which it would be impossible to run. His stomach lurched.

The room seemed very warm after the bone-deep chill of the icehouse. It should have been a relief, but instead it made Jed’s head swim. Nausea rose into his throat, and he stared fixedly at the buttons of Vaughan’s uniform coat. He could feel Vaughan’s eyes on him.

“My men told me that Solomon set them onto you. To give Wallace time to get away, I presume?”

Jed tried not to react, but some expression must have crossed his face, for Vaughan gave a sympathetic wince.

“That must sting like the devil.”

It did. Jed didn’t admit it out loud.

“I’ve known Solomon a long time,” Vaughan continued.

“He’s a decent enough fellow, you know. But not an easy man to be around.

He hasn’t had an easy life.” He paused, as though to let Jed respond, but Jed said nothing.

“He cares deeply for Wallace, of course. Why, he’s known Wallace as long as I have. ”

“Longer, en’t it?” Jed couldn’t help but point out.

Vaughan smiled. Pleased to have got a reaction, was he?

“Longer, indeed. But he’s taken against me, Lord knows why.

Got it into his head that I am an injurious presence in Wallace’s life, and that he should have seen it.

And so he tries to keep Wallace away from me now to assuage what he sees as his own guilty conscience.

It does seem a pity that you should have been caught in the crossfire. ”

It was so close to what Jed had been thinking that it made him jump and stare.

A burst of guilt of his own made him fierce. “Nothing you’ve done is Solomon’s fault.”

Vaughan waved a hand. “Oh, Solomon thinks everything that happens to everyone is his fault. It’s how he was raised, I suspect.” The expression that crossed his face was thoughtful, almost fond—or a counterfeit of those emotions. “I understand him very well. He has told me so much.”

It had hurt, rather a lot, to hear Solomon speak of the evenings he had spent spilling his guts to Vaughan—while later Jed had to scrabble for breadcrumbs. And it hurt even more to hear it from Vaughan’s mouth now.

Jed didn’t know whether he wanted to defend Solomon against Vaughan or himself against Solomon.

“You know nothing about him,” he said shortly.

“No? You know him better, I collect?”

Jed opened his mouth, then shut it again. The only power he had in this moment was that Vaughan did not know him very well—did not know what strings to pluck to play him as he wished. The more Jed spoke, the more that power would slip away.

Vaughan pulled up a chair, its back to Jed, and straddled it so that they sat eye-to-eye. He said quietly, “I know what it is to be in love with a man who has turned against you.”

“I’m not—”