Page 17 of King's Man

“But it’s two weeks in a stagecoach. I’ll probably kill him before the end of it.”

Cole smiled and tucked the clippings into his pocket. “Well, maybe I can help you there. Why not borrow the Bear’s post-chaise? It’ll cut a couple of days off your journey each way.”

“Is that possible?” He’d considered hiring a post-chaise from a public livery to speed up the journey, but that was the sort of mistake that got your neck stretched when you were on larcenous business. Anonymous stagecoaches were safer. A private hire, safer still. “Would Groves allow it?”

Cole’s lips twisted into a grin. “You leave Groves to me. Just make sure it comes back in one piece. He’ll have my guts otherwise, and I don’t mean metaphorically.”

“Not a scratch,” Sam promised and offered a hand to shake. “You have my word.”

“I wish you luck, my friend. With all of it. You deserve a change of fortune, that’s for sure.”

Sam snorted. “And since when did anyone ever get what they deserved in this world?”

To that, Cole had no clever reply.

Chapter Six

Nate spent the night tossed and turned by stormy dreams.

First came the memory of Sam’s tender smile and a rose moon above them as they lazed by the river, the warm taste of Sam’s lips and the weight of his urgent body pressing Nate into soft grass. Then, Sam watched from the shadow of his doorway as Nate walked away that last and fateful afternoon. Finally, a nightmare conjuring: Sam on his knees before Amos Holden, eyes burning fiercer than the mob’s rage. And Nate fighting through the jeering crowd, desperate to reach him, held back by Reed’s bony grip on his arm.

You did this, Sam spat through the pitch and the feathers. You did this…

He woke with a gasp to a spill of damp daylight, feeling brittle and fog-bound and unfit for the day ahead. Not that he had any choice but to face it. He shaved and dressed, fidgety with lack of sleep and weighed down by last night’s bad dreams. As often happened, his arm ached as if Reed’s fingers still dug into his flesh and he rubbed at it absently, regarding himself in the mirror. His reflection stared back ghost-like, dark rings under his eyes, lips a sallow line.

Was that how Sam saw him? Could Sam see him at all beneath the shadow cast by that horrifying night, five long years ago now?

He would soon find out.

By six o’clock, he was picking his way through the warren of filthy streets towards Lad Lane. Despite its strange name, The Swan with Two Necks turned out to be a large and prosperous coaching inn. Even this early in the day, the inn’s yard was bustling with people, coaches leaving for all corners of the kingdom. Nate tried not to feel provincial as he made his way inside. He’d traveled across an ocean, for God’s sake. He’d spent two months in Paris. A common coaching inn shouldn’t intimidate him.

But perhaps it was the prospect of seeing Sam again, rather than the coaches and horses, that had his pulse racing.

Glancing up at the inn’s large clock, he was pleased to see that the time showed ten minutes before seven. At least he wasn’t late. When they’d worked for John Reed, Sam had always teased him for his tardiness, but Sam had been a minister’s son and had lived his life by the tolling of the church bells. Nate had been the sophisticate, the Bostonian with rakish city ways.

How provincial that seemed now that they both found themselves here, in the biggest most dissipated city in the world: the very heart of the empire. Boston was a village in comparison with London. And yet, in London they had found each other again. It was difficult not to consider it fate, even for a man with Nate’s natural inclination towards rationality.

“Watch out, there!”

He jumped out of the way as a stage lumbered towards the yard’s entrance, several passengers crowded on top. It would be a long and uncomfortable journey, no doubt, and only the thought of sharing it with Sam made the idea tolerable. Slinging the strap of his portmanteau over his shoulder, Nate started to pick his way around the edge of the yard, avoiding the mud churned up by the horses’ hooves. How many must travel through such a place every day? Hundreds, probably.

On three sides of the yard rose a galleried building, men and women coming and going from their rooms, parcels and goods being loaded and unloaded, and the shouts of the working men mixing with the street calls of early morning hawkers as the great city stirred. Not that it ever really slumbered.

How on earth would he find Sam amid all this chaos?

A set of stairs rose to his left, up toward what appeared to be the ticket office. A likely spot for surveying the yard, but he’d only just set his foot on the first step when a young voice behind him called, “Mr. Tanner?”

He turned, not quickly because of his heavy luggage, and looked around. A scruffy street-boy stood a few feet away, peering up at him.

“I’m Tanner.”

“Follow me, if you would, sir,” said the lad, turning back towards the yard’s entrance. “There’s a gent waiting for you on the street with a post-chaise.”

Nate looked in the direction the boy was walking and, sure enough, a smart-looking post-chaise sat by the side of the road with a postilion holding the bridle of the nearside horse. Leaning against the carriage door, ankles crossed and gazing down at his boots, stood Sam. A curl of gold hair, darkened by the morning’s mist, was just visible beneath the brim of his cocked hat, a sliver of his profile catching the watery sunlight.

He looked achingly familiar.

Out of the blue, a memory stirred: they were standing in Sam’s parlor, laughing and damp after running in through a sudden rainstorm. Nate brushed that same damp curl aside and kissed Sam’s brow. Smiling, Sam called him a fool and kissed him in return, slowly at first, then catching light in a flare of heat and desire.

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