Jed was hot on his heels.He hurried through the door.The interior was pitch black after the sunlight outside, but some instinct made him stop.A shadow loomed up over him.
He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
“Run!”he yelled in warning to Solomon, before something solid connected with his skull.
The darkness was familiar to Jed.He’d been here before, and his stomach clenched, sour with dread.This was the darkness of the receiving ship’s hold, locked in with dozens of other men, prisoners waiting to be assigned to a ship, all packed tightly together, the air thick with the stench of fear.
But no.The air here was clear, and someone was moving around nearby.
“Hold still for a minute.”Solomon’s voice came from the darkness.“I’m just going to—”
He scrambled over Jed.Then, with a splintering crash, a door burst open and light flooded in.Solomon stood outlined against the blue sky.
“Thank God,” Jed breathed, letting his head fall back onto the earthen floor.“Thank God.”
Solomon said dryly, “You won’t be thanking God when you find all your money has gone.At least, mine has.”
“I thought we’d been pressed.”
Vaguely, Jed patted himself down.His breeches had been torn open and the pockets cut off.But he could hardly bring himself to care.He still hadn’t recovered from that moment of terror when he’d thought he was in the receiving ship.
He clambered to his feet, set his clothing to rights, and stumbled out of the byre to join Solomon.Several hours had passed, and it was mid-afternoon.No one else was in sight.
He groaned, rubbing the lump on the back of his head.“I’m sorry.I just…”
“Lost your head?”Solomon said coolly, and for a moment Jed wanted to hit him, until he added, just as coolly, “Well, so did I.It can’t be helped.”
“I can’t go back to the Navy.”
Solomon nodded, acknowledging that without comment.
Jed sank down onto the wet grass, the full extent of the disaster only now sinking in.Four days’ journey ahead of them, four damp and hungry nights out in the open, with the chill of winter still in the air.And not a scrap of food to eat, save two hunks of bread.
“Christ.A right simpleton I was.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.Better spend our energy on thinking about what to do now.”
Jed was not averse to a spot of poaching, supplemented by foraging, but March was not the best month for filling your belly.Nor the best month for sleeping out of doors.
“We’ll have to find a few days’ work,” he said.He glanced up at Solomon.“Leastways, I say ‘we,’ but I’ll understand if you want us to go our separate ways.I en’t exactly led us very well so far.”
Though he tried not to show it, he found himself caring more than he had expected to about the answer.
Solomon studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then held out a hand to help him to his feet.“Reckon I’ll take my chances with you.”
Chapter Three
Mrs Farley was a short, sturdy woman with iron-grey hair and a sharpness of eye that probably stood her in good stead when buying livestock.She lived in a neat and comfortable farmhouse, set in a yard that gave her every appearance of being a well-to-do tenant farmer.
“We heard you needed two men to clear a rhyne,” Jed said when she answered the door to them.
She looked him and Solomon up and down.They had brushed off the mud as best they could, but no doubt she still saw them for exactly what they were: two tired and hungry men who’d been tramping the neighbourhood all afternoon, and nary a job in sight.
Jed’s feet ached.He’d spent the past five years doing hard labour, but he was more used to walking the deck in bare feet than tramping for miles, and a particularly nasty blister on his left heel stung like blazes.At least it distracted him from the pangs of hunger in his belly.
Mrs Farley’s gaze lingered suspiciously on Jed.But if she guessed he was a seaman, she didn’t mention it.Instead, she said, “You know the press is out in these parts?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
