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.”
