Duchess in Diamonds (Satin and Silk Historical Romance Book 1)

Chapter 1

Twenty years ago

Make ready.” Eleven-year-old Eamon Stone’s whisper held tension.

The two boys with him, who until this morning had been his enemies, nodded.

One of them had dark hair, flinty gray eyes, and an arrogance he’d been born with.

Lord Dominic Wolfe, whose father was a lofty marquis, held himself apart from the students at Hallbridge School for Young Gentlemen in Buckinghamshire.

This had earned him mockery and a few beatings, until his attackers had gotten a taste of Wolfe’s fists. Nothing weak about Wolfe.

The second youth’s flame-red hair was like a beacon, his freckled face and blue eyes holding an incessant cheer that could be as irritating as Wolfe’s brooding.

Eamon had made McCormick put on his knit cap so his bright head didn’t give away their position, but it had been a futile attempt. Their enemies were closing in.

Eamon and his companions would have to fight hard to get past Pebbly Pollard and his compatriots, the vilest bullies in the school. These included the Viking, a boy who was six feet tall at twelve years old, with white-blond hair and blue eyes that held both ingenuousness and petty cruelty.

This morning, Eamon had persuaded the Viking to pinch cakes from the hamper Pebbly’s indulgent nanny had sent to him and bring them to Eamon.

When Pebbly discovered the deception, he’d rallied an army to go after Eamon.

The Viking had turned coat, joining Pebbly’s troops and putting the full blame on Eamon.

Pebbly and his crew had cornered Eamon in an empty lecture room, but he’d found unexpected allies in Wolfe and Hayden McCormick, who’d been caught in the chase.

Wolfe had temporarily baffled the mob with disdainful words, while McCormick helped Eamon wrench open a window so all three of them could flee.

They now hid together below the ridge over which passed the only road to the school.

Eamon had discovered this hollow soon after he’d been dumped at Hallbridge, his late father’s man of business having no idea what else to do with him.

Evidence of Eamon’s refuge here—cigar ends, dog-eared books, a well-used notebook, and a flask of brandy—littered the yellowed grass.

Eamon had expected Wolfe and McCormick to turn on him once they reached his hiding place and blame him for their current predicament. Instead, McCormick sat cross-legged on the ground, calmly leafing through Eamon’s notebook of drawings, while Wolfe kept a sharp eye on the enemy below.

When Eamon apologized for catching them up in his war, Wolfe spat on the grass. “Pollard needs to be crushed.”

McCormick looked up from the notebook in amazement. “You expect us to do the crushing, do you, Wolfe?” he asked in his accent of the Shetland Isles.

Wolfe lifted his well-clad shoulders. “Why not? The three of us have more brains than Pollard’s dozen toadies, and we each have our strengths. I’ve been drilled in tactics since I could crawl. McCormick, you’re brilliant at maths. Stone, you—” Wolfe broke off, as though at a loss.

Eamon’s eyes narrowed. “I what? Can draw pretty pictures?”

“Good ones too,” McCormick said in admiration. “This is beautiful.” His tattered glove rested on a portrait of a young woman whose silken ringlets framed a comely face, the gleam in her eyes matching her coy smile. “Who is she? I’d be obliged if you could introduce us.”

“I have no idea,” Eamon answered. “That’s a copy of an Albrecht Dürer. You’ve fallen for a woman three hundred years gone.”

“Oh.” McCormick’s syllable held vast disappointment.

“Your gift is your golden tongue, Stone,” Wolfe concluded. “I’ve listened to you nattering since you arrived this term. Even Wilson is putty in your hands.”

Wilson was the Classics master, who used martial tactics to drill Greek and Latin into small boys who’d rather be anywhere but a stuffy lecture hall. Eamon had managed to sidestep the worst of Wilson’s assignments and had yet to be called upon to recite.

“Wilson just wants a bit of flattering,” Eamon said reasonably. The man pretended to be tough but was in truth sentimentally in love with heroic poetry.

“But it’s a trick to know exactly how to flatter,” Wolfe said. “Somehow you convinced the Viking to steal from Pollard, when the Viking would die for him.”

Eamon shrugged. “Neither of them is what I’d call quick-witted.”

“Whereas you …” Wolfe shook his head. “Never mind. I’d rather have you on my side, where I can keep an eye on you.

” He gazed down the hill where Pebbly and the Viking were conferring.

“McCormick and I are going to think of a way out of this mess. Stone, you will execute the plan, and we’ll back you up. ”

Eamon stared at him. “You’ll throw me out to take the first blow, you mean?”

“It’s you and your tongue that got us into this situation,” Wolfe pointed out. “That same tongue is going to take us to safety.”

Mirth trickled through Eamon’s uneasiness. “My tongue, eh? I’m not that fond of Pollard.”

“Don’t be disgusting.” Wolfe wrinkled his aristocratic nose. “I mean you’re going to talk, while McCormick and I focus on strategy.”

“Not sure I can help you there.” McCormick moved on to landscape drawings Eamon had copied from seventeenth-century Dutch painters, and paused at an original Eamon had done of the school grounds from this very hill.

“Maths are very helpful in military planning,” Wolfe informed him.

“I don’t think we have time for all that,” McCormack said, reluctantly dragging his attention from the notebook. “Look.”

One of Pebbly’s search parties had returned to him, and several lads pointed up the hill toward Eamon’s hiding place. Eamon knew he and his new friends were well concealed, but if they stayed too long, they’d be trapped.

“We’ll have to rush them,” Wolfe said tightly. “Both of you, get in as many blows as you can to thin the ranks and then make a dash for the senior common room. All the masters will be there.”

“They’ll thrash us,” McCormick protested. “And throw us into the brig.” The brig was a cold, grimy room in the cellar where the worst miscreants were shoved for a day to think about their transgressions.

“That is where Stone’s gift of the gab will come in handy. He’ll talk them out of punishing us.” Wolfe stuck out a fist, his pristine kid glove fitting him like a second skin. “We’re in this together. Right?”

McCormick touched his fist to Wolfe’s, his freckled hand peeping from holes in his woolen glove. “If you two take me out of here alive, I’ll be glad to call you my brothers.”

“As will I,” Wolfe said. “We will be there for one another, no matter what.”

They eyed Eamon, waiting for him to join the pledge. Eamon balled his hand—his bare fingers dry, cracked, and stained with blue paint—and bumped it against the others.

“Be careful about this vow,” Eamon said. “It means that wherever we are, whatever trouble we face, we each must answer.”

His respect for Wolfe rose when the man didn’t demur. McCormick nodded. “Done.”

“Very well then,” Eamon said.

Their three fists touched, sealing the pact.

A shiver ran through Eamon, as though something had begun on this hill, something whose ending he could not see. He always liked to know outcomes three moves in advance, but since the day his father had died, his life had become more uncertain than ever, an empty and sometimes terrifying sensation.

Forming a bond with these two boys who’d followed him without question felt strange, but it was a welcome change to the bleakness.

On Wolfe’s signal, they charged down the hill, yelling like Highlanders at Culloden Moor, and took on their enemy.

They ended up fairly badly beaten, but Eamon’s charm, as Wolfe predicted, landed Pollard, the Viking, and their followers in the worst trouble, including a stint in the brig.

The three newfound friends, let off with only a lecture, met on the hill again that evening, wounded but triumphant, to share a celebratory cigar and brandy.

This was definitely the beginning of something, Eamon reflected as the three bruised boys passed around the flask. It would be interesting to see what.

June 1815

“Make ready.” Eamon’s whisper could barely be heard above the noise of battle, but his friends caught it.

The two men at his side were poised to run, though Wolfe could barely walk with the wound he’d sustained to his leg. They had no choice. It was flee or die.

“When I give the signal,” Eamon said.

McCormick acknowledged this with a nod of his filth-streaked red head.

Wolfe remained flinty-eyed. “What signal?” he croaked, hoarse with pain.

Eamon grinned so hard he felt the dirt cracking on his cheeks. “You’ll know.”

“God help us then,” Wolfe muttered.

The three had been sent to report on Bonaparte’s right flank, which stretched southward toward a thick wood. They were to discover weaknesses and do any damage along the way that they could.

They’d slunk through the grass and brush in the long June twilight, taking cover on a low rise above a stream, backed by woods.

Bonaparte did indeed have a hole in his defenses nearby, where several columns had been moved away to confront the new danger from the Prussians.

Eamon used his drawing skills to sketch a quick map of the enemy’s positions for their commander.

Unfortunately for the three scouts, someone in Bonaparte’s forces had also seen the hole, and a line marched up to plug it. As the three men had fled, Wolfe had taken a bullet in the leg, and they’d been cut off from their escape route.

The three at last managed to find cover, but here they were, trapped between enemy lines and a long way from their own camp.

While they waited for darkness, Eamon had slipped out on his own to complete the second part of their orders—inflict whatever damage they could. Eamon had found the powder horn in his bag useful, as well as a few musket balls and a slow match.