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.
