Chapter 1 #2
Both Wolfe and McCormick relaxed in relief when Eamon returned unscathed, then pretended not to, as though they hadn’t worried about him. Their expressions of nonchalance amused Eamon at the same time their concern touched him.
Their commander, a congenial colonel who’d be more at home with books and a brandy, had sent Eamon with Wolfe and McCormick because he’d learned they’d been comrades since boyhood. They’d aid and protect each other, he’d reasoned.
What the colonel hadn’t realized was that Eamon and McCormick hadn’t seen each other since they’d dispersed from Hallbridge, though they’d kept up an irregular correspondence.
McCormick’s red hair had darkened somewhat, and his rawboned body had filled out to the rugged sturdiness of his warrior ancestors, though his freckled face and wide smile hadn’t changed.
He’d returned to his native Shetland, after a few cursory years at Cambridge, to study maths with a brilliant tutor.
He’d spent part of the Peninsular War on Wellington’s staff, making perfect maps and plotting trajectories for the artillery.
Lord Dominic Wolfe had shared a regiment with Eamon in Spain, but Wolfe had grown into a hard man Eamon barely recognized. He quickly realized that Wolfe’s coldness came from grief at his father’s death coupled with Wolfe’s older brother’s enmity for him.
Wolfe had done what many second sons had—bought a commission, then moved rapidly through the ranks in field promotions until he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Eamon suspected he’d gained his epaulets by terrifying the enemy with his gray-eyed gaze, very like a wolf’s.
Now, in Belgium, the three had been thrown together as veterans to answer the new threat from Bonaparte. But Eamon had no idea if they were still friends.
“If we go separately, we’ll have a better chance of making it through,” Wolfe said. He lay supine on the dried summer grass, his leg stiff, blood dark on his uniform trousers.
“No, we won’t,” Eamon argued. “At least, you won’t. You’ll need our help to get you out of here.”
“Aye, that’s so,” McCormick put in.
Wolfe let out a growl. “If you expect me to say you should leave me here and save yourselves, I won’t,” he snapped. “I want to live too. So, very well, you’ll take me out.”
“Agreed,” McCormick said. “Which way is best? Skirt the hill just below the ridge?”
“I wouldn’t,” Eamon said quickly.
“Why not?” Wolfe mouth tightened. “What the devil did you do, Stone?”
“Trust me.” Eamon stuck out his fist. “Remember our vow?”
“The one that got me into more difficulties than anything else in my life?” Wolfe demanded.
“And me,” McCormick put in. “Usually because of you, Wolfe. Don’t blame it all on Stony.”
Wolfe’s dark brows rose, but he didn’t argue.
Three fists came together, their hands so covered with mud it was impossible to see skin. Wolfe had more or less retained his gloves, but his valet—he’d brought the man to Belgium with him—would be unhappy.
Eamon pulled out a pocket watch, one he’d blackened so it wouldn’t gleam. “Soon,” he said.
Below them, flashes of blue showed Bonaparte’s men marching into position. They moved with precision, looking neither left nor right, luckily for the three men barely hidden in scrub a few feet above them.
“I’ll be glad to finish this,” Wolfe whispered when the French line had passed. “Old Nosey was wise to pin him here. No chasing Bonaparte all over the Continent again.”
“What will you do after?” McCormick asked. “Regiment’s been my life for a while. Might stay with it. Or become a maths tutor, which sounds less exciting.”
Wolfe didn’t answer, but his eyes flickered, as though he hadn’t wanted to think much further than this night.
“Me, I’ll marry and settle down,” Eamon said. “I need some rest.”
The other two stared at him in amazement.
“Marry?” McCormick asked with a muffled version of his good-hearted laugh. “Wolfe could, yes. He’s titled, but the pair of us are nobodies.”
“My brother is titled,” Wolfe corrected him. “Once his dear icicle of a wife gives him a son, I will inherit nothing.”
“I intend to marry for love,” Eamon informed them. “I’m a romantic, me.”
“There is no such thing as marrying for love,” Wolfe stated. “It is a business arrangement. Only on the stage does it happen, and you’ll notice that the lovers always turn out to have wealthy relations or be disguised princes and other such rubbish.”
“Interesting that you know so much about these plays,” Eamon said in a mild tone.
“Dragged to the damned theatre by my grandmother. Give up, Stone. You have nothing to offer a lady but your clever conversation. Which grows wearying, trust me.”
“Good thing I don’t want to marry you then. Believe me, I will search until I find a lady who loves me for who I am.” Eamon shrugged. “If she has a fine dowry, so much the better.”
“Her family will forbid it,” Wolfe predicted. “Wisely.”
“He must have someone in mind,” McCormick said. “Who is the lady, Stone? Anyone we know?”
“No one specific, more’s the pity.” Eamon gave a heartfelt sigh. “These are musings to while away an idle hour.”
McCormick flashed his grin. “Care to make a wager?”
Of course, the man who could skim through complicated odds in his head would say that.
Wolfe scoffed, but Eamon let anticipation bubble inside him. They might die this day, unable to escape the troops that surrounded them. At McCormick’s words, though, something within Eamon believed they would live. Perhaps this very wager would compel them to survive against all odds.
“What terms?” Eamon asked.
“You find a lady willing to marry you,” McCormick said. “Legally, I mean, in the parish register, with the blessing of her family and all.”
Eamon leaned in. “Let’s make it more interesting, shall we? We each attempt to find wives—the loser is the last bachelor standing.”
McCormick’s blue eyes twinkled. “The stakes?”
Wolfe broke in. “Dear God, the pair of you. What can any of us wager?”
“A bottle of the finest brandy smuggled from France?” McCormick suggested. “Or, let’s say, the final bachelor has to host a spectacular soiree for the lucky couples.”
Eamon shook his head. “I have another idea. We pool what we have—money, any property we acquire, whatever we have that is worth anything. The dividends go to the sons and daughters from these marriages so they won’t have to scratch for a living like we did.
That way, we all win. Once we produce offspring, that is.
We’ll think of some amusing forfeit for the losing bachelor. ”
Wolfe contemplated Eamon a moment, thoughts hidden behind his flinty gaze, then he relented. “It’s never likely to happen, so why not?”
He held out his tattered-gloved fist once more. McCormick and Eamon met it with theirs so rapidly that they both laughed.
Wind scraped branches above them. Eamon went quiet and again checked his watch.
As the long hand clicked to the top of the hour, a blast sounded down the ridge to the right.
“There we are,” Eamon said in an everyday tone, but McCormick had already hauled Wolfe to his feet and was staggering with him away from the explosion.
The ridge suddenly cleared of Frenchmen who raced toward the noise. Eamon caught up to the other two, lending his arm to steady Wolfe. The three gained the top of the hill, deeper twilight and smoke giving them cover. Wolfe paused, Eamon beside him, to catch his breath.
“Don’t stop, my friends,” McCormick said in alarm. “We need to get clear.”
“We are clear.” Eamon readjusted his hold on Wolfe, who grunted with pain.
McCormick shook his head. “You should have told me you’d lit a slow match, Stone.”
Wolfe’s eyes filled with apprehension. “Why is that?”
“Because I wouldn’t have lit mine.”
A second explosion roared into the night.
The three men jerked forward along the path toward Wellington’s army, moving as fast as they could with Wolfe stumbling between them. The boom of powder and the shouts of panicked French soldiers barely muffled Wolfe’s continuing curses and Eamon’s echoing laughter.