Chapter 6
Caro’s face lit, and she abandoned Eamon in a heartbeat.
For a brief instant, the words the Duke of Aylesmore conjured in Eamon’s mind the middle-aged duke with a love of books and an indulgent smile for his duchess. He’d charge to Eamon and demand to know what he was doing holding his wife’s hand, perhaps call him out for his audacity.
Then Eamon remembered that, of course, the duke these days was a child. Caro’s son.
Caro ran on light feet to a lad with unruly dark hair in a too-formal suit, with a somewhat rebellious expression on his small face.
“Darling, what are you doing out of the schoolroom?” Caro reached her son and leaned to kiss his forehead. “It’s history today. You like history.”
But a healthy boy could only sit and stare at musty books for so long, Eamon well knew.
“Art is history,” Eamon said as he moved to them. “And there must be history in all these tomes.” He waved a hand at the bookcase looming behind him. “I well remember Waterloo and the Peninsular campaign. That’s history for you.”
The boy’s mutinous look evaporated as he riveted his gaze on Eamon. “You were in the war, sir?” he asked with youthful eagerness.
“I was indeed. A captain, for my sins.” Eamon gave the lad a military bow. “At your service, Your Grace.”
His Grace grinned, showing charming dimples. “My name’s Leo. How do you do, Captain Stone?”
“Plain Mister now. I sold my commission.”
“I shall call you Captain anyway,” Leo announced. “It’s more exciting. Were you really at Waterloo?”
Caro, instead of admonishing her son for speaking familiarly with a stranger, gazed at him with so much love it was heart-wrenching.
“I was indeed,” Eamon told the lad. “Had a grand adventure in the middle of that battle, stranded on a ridge with the French army all around me and my friends. But we escaped, mostly unscathed, as you see.” He spread his arms.
Leo listened in round-eyed fascination. “What happened?”
Eamon glanced at Caro, who gave him a minute nod to proceed. Eamon launched into the tale of the harrowing few hours on that ridge, brushing aside his, Wolfe’s, and McCormick’s real conviction that they’d not make it back to their camp, let alone home, alive.
Leo listened with flattering attention as the tale progressed. Eamon made light of the serious situation and played up the three men’s banter as they strove to escape.
“You blew up the Frenchies?” Leo gasped when Eamon ended with the black powder exploding, confusing the soldiers that were almost on top of them.
The blinding smoke had let him and his two friends slip through, both he and McCormick half carrying Wolfe between them.
“I don’t know if we actually blew up anyone,” Eamon said.
“But it disoriented them. They thought they were under attack by an entire platoon. One French officer even shouted at us to join the line, because the damned—er, the rotten—British had broken through. McCormick, who can speak French like a native, said, Oui, oui, on arrive, and started cursing out Wellington in vivid terms. It was all Wolfe and I could do to keep from falling about in laughter.”
That had been a tense moment. If the well-armed officer had seen through the smoke that Eamon and his companions wore the colors of their British regiment, he and his soldiers would have shot them dead.
Eamon met Caro’s gaze above Leo’s head. He read in her eyes that she knew exactly how lucky the escape had been, how close Eamon had come to not surviving at all.
Also, he saw her gratitude for understating the danger for Leo’s sake.
Eamon sensed that Leo was a tougher nut than Caro realized, but mothers worried for their sons.
Leo bounced on his toes. “What else happened, Captain? Were you shot?”
“Leo,” Caro said, aggrieved. “A battlefield is a terrible place. I am pleased Mr. Stone was not hurt.”
Before Leo could become too crestfallen, Eamon broke in. “I wasn’t injured, no, except for minor cuts and bruises. Wolfe, though, took a ball through the leg. He was furious. Laid him up a long time.”
“He must be jolly brave,” Leo declared. “I wish I could have been at Waterloo.”
Eamon expected his mother to admonish him, but she nodded, her eyes sparkling. “They were indeed very brave,” she agreed.
Eamon wished she did not look so beautiful when she said this.
“It was an adventure.” Eamon waved away the fear, the tense moments, the certainty they’d feel bullets in their backs at any moment.
“Here, lad, let me show you.” He retrieved a few books from the shelves and carried them to the table that held the bust of Vespasian.
“We’ll say the Roman emperor here is Wellington.
” He laid large tomes along the floor in front of the table.
“Here is the river Sambre, and here is how Boney lined up his men.”
He seized more books, organizing them by color, red to represent the British forces, and blue to represent the French, brown for the Prussians poised to attack from the woods.
Leo dove in to help, arranging the books where Eamon directed.
Eamon hadn’t known where his own platoon had stood at the time, but McCormick and other officers at their veterans’ club had refought the battle on maps many times since.
Three very small tomes became himself, Wolfe, and McCormick. “My friends and I were here,” Eamon explained as he and Leo set them between encircling lines of blue books. “A very tight spot.”
“You have to tell me again what you did,” Leo said, eyes shining. He didn’t command as a haughty duke but an excited child.
“Of course.” Eamon hunkered down next to the books, and Leo joined him, arms around his small knees.
Eamon went over every word of the tale, embellishing it with more details, moving his props as necessary.
He was not so engrossed that he didn’t spy Caro give them a little smile and silently glide away, leaving them to it.
“The Duchess of Aylesmore,” a tall young man, resplendent in powdered wig and satin livery, announced into the Princess of Osagard’s opulent drawing room the next afternoon.
A fine rain fell outside but no damp would dare penetrate the warm elegance of the Portman Square home. Caro had let the coziness of the house embrace her as she entered then followed the footman up the grand flight of stairs to the first floor.
She’d hoped for a quiet visit, but the drawing room was crowded, morning calls in full fervor. One of this year’s debutantes was pounding out a rather heavy-handed minuet by Mozart as her mother proudly observed her.
The young ladies and matrons in the room came alert when Caro was announced, feathered headdresses bobbing like a startled flock of colorful birds. Caro strove not to cringe as quizzing glasses rose to train on her.
The rare occasions Caro paid calls these days subjected her to many a stare, ranging from delighted surprise to barely concealed hostility. When the nobody Miss Arnott had landed herself the Duke of Aylesmore, she’d made enemies overnight of people she’d never met.
The hostess of the drawing room, a tall, middle-aged woman with a turban that rose higher than any of her guests’, came to her feet in welcome. Her pleasure in beholding Caro was genuine, though the dignified lady would never reveal such a thing.
Her daughter, on the other hand, sprang up with a squeal of gladness and rushed across the room.
“Caro, my dearest darling.” Princess Josephine Anne-Marie Sophia Vollen of Osagard flung her arms around Caro and crushed her in a pink-and-cream silk embrace. “You ought to have warned me you were coming. I’d have had Mason lay on a feast.”
“Nonsense.” Caro kissed Jo’s cheek when her friend released her. “The only feast I need is seeing you.”
The other ladies in the room witnessed this display with a fluttering of fans and a few whispers, but when Jo led Caro across the room and placed her in the seat of honor—a comfortable armchair nearest the fire—many stares, though not all, became ones of grudging acceptance.
Josephine’s father, Prince Rupert, was no longer welcome in his tiny kingdom on the Austria-Bohemia border, but he’d been instrumental in providing money and a squadron of men in the recent battles with Napoleon, which had won him respect and honor.
In addition, Prince Rupert might any day be restored from his exile, when the ancient king who’d pushed him away years ago finally expired. The ladies and gentlemen of London cultivated the approval of Josephine’s prestigious family, just in case.
Jo’s friendship with Caro, and her parents’ approval of her, had gone a long way to ease Caro’s entry into society as the new Duchess of Aylesmore.
Caro hadn’t been out much since Leopold’s death, but today, she’d very much wanted to speak to her friends.
Jo dragged a chair close to Caro’s and gazed at her as though she hadn’t seen her for months.
Princess Jo was a beauty, a fact so many misses tried and failed to despise her for.
She had the golden hair and fair complexion common in northern European climes, her eyes a crystalline blue.
Ladies whispered that Jo must secretly rub buttermilk on her skin and rinse her hair with lemon juice, but Caro knew she’d simply inherited the coloring of her parents.
The kingdom of Osagard had been settled by Northmen a thousand years ago, at about the same time those marauders had made their way into northern England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as Normandy and what was now the great empire of Russia.
The small kingdom had managed to survive the machinations of the Holy Roman Empire and retained its autonomy to this day.
Young ladies of society found they couldn’t dislike Jo, however much they tried, because she was sunny-natured, kind, and generous.
Any debutante terrified of scrutiny, or weeping because the gentleman she fancied didn’t notice her, had a sympathetic ear in Jo as well as sound advice to bolster said lady’s spirits.
“Darling, it’s been an age,” Jo gushed to Caro.
“It has been since last Tuesday,” Caro corrected her good-naturedly. Jo had called on Caro at the Grosvenor Square house, and they’d had a fine tea with the dowager and Leo.
“Well, it seems an age. It is a sad time for me when I do not look upon you every day.”
“You’re a goose.” Caro laughed, Jo easily calming her agitation. “I do admit, though, that I’ve been languishing for a good gab with you.” She tried not to glance around the very full room, but Jo caught her unease.
“It is the height of the Season, my friend,” Jo said. “We must all rush around to each other’s drawing rooms and stuff ourselves with lemonade, macaroons, and gossip. Fortification for sailing out to evening balls and soirees to do it all again.”
“I had forgotten,” Caro said with a pang. The year since Leopold’s death had passed in monotony, Caro uncertain of her welcome at any gathering not hosted by her closest friends.
“My poor dearest.” Jo squeezed Caro’s hands, her compassion unfeigned. “I have neglected you. That will change, beginning this instant. I am frivoling, while you have been abandoned in that great, dreary house.”
“Don’t be so silly. I have plenty to do at home, including raising a son who has more energy than a live volcano.” Caro warmed, as always, when she thought of her beloved Leo.
“Where is dear Leo this afternoon? In the care of Singleton? The poor man will be run off his feet.” Jo grinned, picturing Singleton’s discomfiture.
“No, Mr. Stone has rather taken Leo under his wing,” Caro said before she thought.
A sharp light entered Jo’s eyes. “Mr. Stone? Who is Mr. Stone?”
“No one at all.” Caro tried to keep her cheeks from scalding, to no avail. “He works for Cheswell’s gallery and was sent to look over a few art pieces I wished to sell. Mr. Stone became interested in the duke’s collection and is inventorying it.”
Jo’s steady gaze was unnerving. She was no fool, and Caro regretted the easy way Mr. Stone’s name had tripped off her tongue. Caro had just revealed to Jo that she trusted Mr. Stone with both her husband’s artwork and her son.
“I see we do need to have a chat,” Jo said. “Wait here. I must do my duty and not disappear, but after the crowd has gone, we will withdraw.”
Caro had called today to bury the disquieting feelings Mr. Stone stirred in her by listening to Jo rattle out the latest gossip. She hadn’t intended to bare her soul, but nothing slipped past the astute Jo.
“Very well,” Caro said meekly.
Jo slid away to chat with the other ladies in the room, and Princess Maude, as good-natured as her daughter, made certain that Caro had a glass of cool lemonade to sip.
Princess Maude was nothing like the mother Caro remembered from her childhood, a beautiful lady taken from Caro far too young. However, the dignified Maude always had a kind word for Caro and a reassuring hand on her shoulder when needed.
The callers drifted away more quickly than Caro anticipated, and soon Jo waved at Caro to follow her.
On an upper floor of the house decorated by the Adam brothers, Jo ushered Caro into a sitting room that was no less luxurious than the drawing room they’d left.
Gilded moldings surrounded panels that held paintings of soft landscapes and one portrait of Jo as a child, her golden ringlets surrounding a winsome chubby face.
The same eyes and smile from the portrait fixed on Caro as soon as the door shut, leaving them alone.
“Now then.” Jo tugged Caro to a rose-and-white striped settee and pulled her down upon it. “Tell me everything.”