“Not—not just now.”
“Oh?”Perhaps they had quarrelled.“Well, you can stay here, if you like.”
“Won’t Bailey object?”
“I’m head ostler now.Bailey broke his leg and wound up retiring.”He could not keep the hint of pride from his voice.
Wallace’s face brightened.“Congratulations!”He looked genuinely happy for the first time since Solomon had caught sight of him, and Solomon realised that he was thinner than before, with shadows under his eyes that weren’t only cast by the lantern overhead.
“You don’t look at all well.Are you still working in one of them gentlemen’s drinking and gambling hells, and never seeing the light of day?”
Before Wallace could answer, a coachman leaned out of the coach-and-six that had just pulled into the yard.He called to Solomon, “Here, what’s the delay, man?”
“You go on through to the kitchens,” Solomon said to Wallace.“Kitty and Isabella are still working there, you remember them.Tell them I sent you.”
He hurried to greet the coachman, resolving to find a moment to talk to Wallace later that night.But by the time he could snatch a late supper, Wallace had left the kitchen.
Solomon was working overnight that night.At dawn, just as he was yawning and thinking longingly of bed, Hugo Vaughan strolled into the yard.
“Well met, my friend,” he greeted Solomon, with that little smile of his that invited a man to let himself be charmed.“I expect Wallace is here, isn’t he?Let him know I’ve come, will you?”
Solomon shook Vaughan’s hand.“Good to see you.It’s been too long.”He turned to see Wallace had just emerged from the kitchen door.“Ah, there he is.”
Wallace had stopped short, an odd expression on his face, looking at Solomon and Vaughan together.For a moment all three of them stood there, in a peculiar frozen tableau.
Then Vaughan held out his hand.“Wallace?”
Wallace bit his lip, but he came to join Vaughan.
“Well, what’s all this, then?”Solomon demanded.“Lovers’ quarrel?”They were standing in a secluded corner of the yard, speaking in low voices, quite privately.
“Afraid so,” Vaughan said with a rueful grin.His hand lay on Wallace’s arm in a proprietary way.
Wallace said nothing.He gave Solomon a sheepish look.
Vaughan gazed at him fondly.“Shall we go?We’re keeping Solomon here from his work.I expect to be accosted by an irate coachman at any minute here.”
“Before you go, tell me where the two of you are living these days,” Solomon said.“I’d rather like to see you both sooner nor this time next year.”
Vaughan laughed.“We’re just about to move to new lodgings,” he said before Wallace could reply.“But we’ll be sure to inform you as soon as we know where we’ll be.”
But they didn’t.Two months passed before Solomon saw Wallace again.It was on a crisp, clear winter afternoon shortly after Christmas, and Wallace was waiting by the Crown’s side entrance, as before.He looked worse than he had the last time: tired and worn.
“You all right?”Solomon asked.
There was a pause, and then Wallace shook his head.
“I’m out of work.I need to find a job.”
That wasn’t his only trouble, Solomon thought.But it was one that Solomon could do something about.
“Come on, let’s go see Sykes.”
Sykes was the chamberlain, managing both the inn and the stables.He was a short, balding man in middle age, with the red nose of a gin-drinker.
“Wallace Acton,” he said, looking Wallace up and down, his lips pursed in the sour expression that was habitual to him.“A bad penny always turns up again.But—as Master Dyer so earnestly reminds me—we do need another ostler just now.You can start tonight.”
“Thank you, sir.”
