Page 22 of King's Man

So why were they staring at each other in this excruciating silence?

Eventually, Sam shook himself and said gruffly, “Well, goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Nate said, and watched with his heart still racing as Sam walked away.

∞∞∞

The following morning dawned bright and sunny, incongruous after a long and restless night spent contemplating Sam’s hurtful words. At least there’d been no danger of oversleeping and Nate came downstairs in good time, bleary and unrefreshed.

Sam was already outside, loading his luggage onto the chaise while the post-boy drank coffee and checked the tack. As Nate picked his way wearily across the yard, Sam glanced over and then quickly away. Embarrassment? Irritation? Indifference? Hard to tell. Either way, Nate couldn’t bear the thought of being trapped inside the coach all day with Sam’s prickly, resentful silence.

So once Sam had settled himself in his usual corner of the chaise, staring morosely out of the side window, Nate jumped up onto the box seat and nodded to the post-boy to set off.

It turned out to be the right decision because, despite everything, the morning proved pleasant. Gentle sunshine in the east lifted his flagging spirits, the fresh morning air fragrant with summer. England may be falling into tyranny, but its sun occasionally shone, and its birds still sang. Even Nate couldn’t deny the sweetness of the country.

At the next staging post — some place called Daventry — they stopped for a breakfast of good bread rolls and cold beef. And ale. Always ale.

While Sam disappeared inside to eat, Nate brought his breakfast into the sunshine and sat on a wooden plank set across two barrels that served as a bench. He watched the new horses being hitched and the post-boys swapping news, leaning idly on the fence of the paddock — gnarly little men, hard-boned and leather-skinned from so much time in the saddle. Then the bench shifted beneath him and he turned, surprised to see Sam sitting next to him, staring straight ahead while he finished his beer.

Well, well.

Hope flickered in Nate’s chest, but he dared not speak in case he drove Sam off; things had been left so oddly between them last night. Sam didn’t speak either, so they sat in silence under the strengthening sun until it was time to leave.

Nate decided to ride on the box again, allowing Sam his space. Besides, it was stuffy with them both inside the carriage and the day promised to be sunny and warm. But when he climbed up, he found Sam climbing up the other side of the coach. Their eyes made glancing contact, like stones skimming across water, just long enough for Nate to understand that Sam was choosing to sit with him.

The flicker of hope in his chest grew a little brighter.

Nate kept his hat low as they drove into the midday heat, and after a while pulled off his coat. Sam did the same and they exchanged a look.

To the devil with English manners, it said,I’m not broiling for the sake of decorum.

It was pleasant with the wind whipping through the linen of his shirt and Nate loosened his neckcloth too, just a little. They’d crested a crop of low hills earlier and now the land fell away before them, a gentle rolling slope of trees and fields. “It’s pretty country,” he said at last, the first words spoken between them all day.

“Does it — ?” Sam cleared his throat. “Does it remind you of Rosemont? Sometimes I can’t quite remember.”

Nate couldn’t see much of Sam beneath the brim of his hat, only enough to know his eyes were fixed straight ahead. “A little,” he said, struck painfully by all that Sam had lost — even his memories of home were fading. “It’s not so wild here, though.”

“No.”

He wished he could reach out and take his hand, to offer comfort and show that he was sorry for all Sam had lost. That was impossible — Sam would never allow it — but Nate smiled anyway because even that short exchange between them felt like a rapprochement after yesterday’s harsh words.

He relaxed, uncoiling muscles held unconsciously tight, letting his shoulder bump against Sam’s, the heat of Sam’s arm pressing against his own through the fine linen of their shirts. So familiar, that touch. He swallowed but couldn’t beat back a cresting wave of longing. It flooded through him in a rush and he had to suck in a quick breath, fighting the urge to turn his head and bury his face into the damp curls above Sam’s ear, to breathe in his scent and savor the salt-sweet taste of his skin.

Christ, it was a special torture to sit so close to a man he’d once loved intimately and be forbidden to love him at all.

Sam shifted his long legs, cramped by the narrow seat, spreading them so that his thigh pressed against Nate’s with a solid heat. Nate’s pulse quickened, fluttering at the base of his throat. How easy it would be to rest his hand on Sam’s leg, to run his fingers up the length of his thigh. The post-boy would never know. No one would know but them.

They’d done such things once, dangerous as wild lightning strikes: a touch here, a press of bodies there, a kiss stolen in the silence of Reed’s file room with a promise of more, later. Once they’d started, they’d hardly been able to keep their hands from each other. Right up to the very last moments, before it all came crashing down, they’d sought each other out like that — even when their heads had been distant, their bodies had brought them close.

He wondered whether that could happen again, whether, beneath Sam’s anger, he felt the same excruciating longing. Whether they could fuck without forgiveness, make only a physical reconciliation. Did Nate even want that? His head didn’t know, but his body screamed ‘yes’ the longer Sam sat pressed next to him in the slow summer heat.

It would be a start, at least.

∞∞∞

The day dragged on, stage after stage, the trundle of the chaise making the base of Sam’s spine ache, much as the heavy silence between him and Nate made his heart ache.

His words had hurt Nate yesterday. At the time, in the moment of speaking, he’d relished striking the blow. But as the day had worn on, and Nate had sunk deeper and deeper into silence, Sam had begun to regret his harshness.

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