Page 38 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

“Now who can that be?” Mrs May exclaimed, rising from her seat to answer the knock at her cottage door.

Jed, Wallace and Solomon were at Mrs May’s kitchen table, eating her bread.

It was almost noon now, but in the early hours of the morning Wallace had led them to this little fishing hamlet near Minehead, where Mrs May had let them sleep by her kitchen fire.

She was sister-in-law to the fisherman who had brought Wallace by boat from Barnstaple two days earlier.

The three of them exchanged anxious glances, craning their ears to hear what was happening in the cottage’s front room. But Mrs May’s cheerful greeting put them at ease.

“Good morning, Betty,” she said, and then, “Lord in Heaven, what good news you bring us.”

After a few minutes, she came back into the kitchen.

“That was my neighbour, Betty, as went into town early this morning. The press gang have left the Blacksmith’s Arms, it seems, and their boats are gone from the harbour.” She beamed at them.

“Gone never to come back?” Solomon said, more disbelief than hope in his voice.

“If it be true, ‘twill be a blessing from Heaven. It’s been a nightmare having the press on our doorstep. Never knowing if my Richard will come home each night.” Mrs May lowered herself into the seat she had left.

She was a little slip of a woman, with a ready smile.

“Nothing compared to what you poor boys have been through, howsomever. Have another piece of bread and cheese.”

“It’s very good of you to take us in,” Solomon said. “We’ll be out of your hair as soon as we can.” It had been almost dawn by the time they got to sleep, and they had only recently risen.

“Take your time, take your time,” she said, getting up to stir a pot bubbling over the fire.

The three of them looked at one another. Solomon and Wallace appeared as exhausted as Jed felt. Yesterday, they’d been fed through a wringer and miraculously come out alive, and everything still felt slightly unreal.

“You really think they’re gone?” Wallace said. “Moved on to somewhere with easier pickings?”

Solomon only shook his head. “I don’t know what it would take for me to believe that Vaughan is off our backs.”

“If they truly are gone, then I’m going to Ledcombe to see my sister,” Jed said. “Penwick won’t be able to go running off to Minehead to turn me in this time.”

Mrs May had stepped out with a bucket of scraps for her hens, but she returned just in time to hear this. “If you wait a little, my brother-in-law will bring you down the coast to Ledcombe by boat this afternoon.”

Jed accepted gratefully. It would save him an entire day’s walk.

“I’ll wait here for Emma,” Wallace said. She had slept in Minehead with a friend who was barmaid at an inn there. “Then we’ll go to see that land agent about the Jarret Arms. I’ll have to beg his pardon for arriving several days late.”

They both looked at Solomon. Solomon’s gaze flickered to Jed.

The two of them hadn’t had a moment to exchange two words in private since they’d been aboard the schooner.

Last night, Solomon had sat silently while Jed stitched his wound and Mrs May held a candle for them, oblivious to the tension that thrummed between them.

Then they’d slept uneasily, with Wallace lying between them.

Now, after a beat, Solomon said, “Maybe I’d better go back to the Rose and Crown to fetch Mrs Drake’s waggon, if it’s still there.”

“Don’t fret, Mrs Drake already sent someone to see to that,” Wallace said. “By the way, she conveys her sympathies to you and Jed, and says pray try not to get pressed next time you’re driving one of her waggons.”

Solomon smiled weakly. “Well, it sounds as though I still have a job, at least. I suppose I’d better go back to Barnstaple and make sure.”

Wallace glanced from Jed to Solomon, opened his mouth, and then closed it again. An uneasy silence settled over the table.

“I saw some wood outside as needs chopping,” Wallace said at last.

He and Solomon chopped wood, while Jed went to fetch water for Mrs May.

From the well, he had a clear view down to the sea, the sun sparkling on its surface. He stood there for a moment just to enjoy it. He’d grown up on the coast, but these past few months, the sea had been something to fear and avoid.

He turned his head to look towards Minehead, invisible around the headland.

Were the press truly gone from the district?

They’d be back someday, as the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed, and the Admiralty moved its pawns around on the high seas.

But maybe that day would be a year or more in the future—or maybe the war might even end first.

Everything that had happened last night still felt unreal, like a dream he might wake from at any moment. And to think that this afternoon he would see Carrie again— But he didn’t know how he would be received.

As Jed trudged back up the lane that led to the Mays’ cottage, he saw Emma in the distance, hurrying towards them.

Wallace was outside the cottage, and he dropped the log he was carrying and ran to meet her, taking her hand in greeting.

They exchanged a few words, then came back along the path together, arm in arm.

“Emma has brung us some good news,” Wallace said. He looked fairly bowled over.

“First of all, the press gang is gone from Minehead, sure and certain,” Emma said. “I spoke to one of the maids at the Blacksmith’s Arms. The little midshipman returned the keys this morning and paid off the gangers.”

“The midshipman?” said Solomon. “But where’s Vaughan?”

Emma grinned. “That’s my other bit of good news. Lieutenant Vaughan was seen at the harbour first thing this morning, not in uniform, going aboard a merchant vessel leaving the country. I had this from two fishermen who saw him with their own eyes.”

Solomon let out an odd sort of sound, half whistle and half sigh of relief.

“So he fled the country?” Jed said. “How much money was he filching off the Greenwich hospital, exactly?”

“The dirty swindler,” Emma said with satisfaction.

Wallace and Solomon exchanged stunned looks.

“I can’t seem to take it in,” Wallace said slowly.

Mrs May came out into the garden. “Who’s this, then?” she said, beaming at Emma.

Soon, they were deep in conversation, Wallace with Emma’s arm tucked into his and a constant smile on his face. Solomon stood alongside, speaking when addressed, though every so often his gaze flickered towards Jed.

Jed watched them, still with that feeling of distance hanging over him. He left them talking and carried his two water buckets through to the kitchen.

He was oddly reluctant to go back outside to join the others. So much had happened since that moment when he stood in the Rose and Crown’s stable loft, listening to Solomon betray him. He hadn’t had time to stop and think.

He stepped out the back door. Behind the row of cottages, a wide expanse of grass sloped down to the sea. Jed walked out a little way and sat on a rock at the top of the slope.

The distant murmur of the waves rose to his ears, overlaid by the nearby clucking of hens. It was a fine day, warm and dry. Jed closed his eyes.

After a minute or two, he heard the cottage door open, and Solomon came to stand beside him. They looked at each other in silence.

Then Solomon burst out, “Jed, I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t apologise.” He kept his voice steady with only a little difficulty. “I know why you did it.”

“There en’t any apology as would be good enough. Any explanation in the world as would be good enough—”

“You’d promised Wallace he’d never have to see Vaughan again.”

Solomon closed his eyes, briefly. “Yes.” He ran a hand through his hair, tugging sharply. “In the heartbeat of a second I had, there in the stables, that was all I could think about.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I already let him down once before, in London. I didn’t notice what Vaughan was doing to him, and it was right under my nose.”

Jed had opinions of his own about whether Solomon held any responsibility for that. But this was not the time to talk him out of his guilt.

Solomon went on, words pouring out of him, “And I thought—I know Vaughan very well, better than I’d like to…

We were close once. I thought there must surely be some way to talk or trick him into letting you go, too, once we got to Minehead.

But it all fell apart like a house of cards.

” His voice was urgent, willing Jed to listen.

“I was so sure there must be some way I could save you and Wallace both.”

It might have been better if you didn’t try to save anyone at all, Jed wanted to snap. But that wasn’t true. And indeed, this was one of the things he loved about Solomon: that ever-present impulse to help.

But that didn’t make this hurt any less.

The hens clucked in oblivious contentment. A seagull swooped overhead and dived to land on a nearby rock, fixing them with a beady eye.

Jed tilted his head to look up at Solomon, painfully close and painfully far. He thought of those long, cruel hours in the icehouse, when he’d feared they could be separated for ever.

“I wish I’d trusted you when you told me not to try to escape,” he said abruptly.

Solomon let out a pained laugh. “I can hardly be surprised that you didn’t trust me.” He crouched down by the rock, so that he was closer to Jed, looking up at him instead of towering over him. “Jed, I don’t want to lose you. I want to go on seeing you. Do you think— I’ll do anything—”

He broke off at the sound of the door behind them opening. It was Mrs May.

“My brother-in-law’s here,” she called.

Jed turned back to Solomon. Neither of them moved.

Dimly, Jed saw himself rising to his feet, walking down to the little harbour, perhaps never seeing Solomon again.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear to turn away now, leaving things like this between them: affairs unsettled, words unspoken.

If he left, he’d be walking away with an open wound in his chest.

Solomon’s gaze was on him, fear in its depths.