The Fairest of Them All (4 page)

Bones had been found during that time in a shallow grave not far from the school. Some believed they were Jack's. Experts their father had hired to evaluate them could not reach a consensus.

But Gavin had known. In his heart of hearts, he'd always believed his twin was alive.

No one knew Jack better than Gavin. They had shared the same womb and the same ­mother's beating heart. In their childhood, there had always been just the two of them, in spite of their brother Ben's birth eight years later.

And now here they were, face-­to-­face.

At last.

There were no hellos, no outstretched hands or brotherly hugs. Instead, they squared off, stoic men, men much like their sire.

In a voice as familiar to Gavin as his own, Jack proudly said what Gavin already knew, “Your Grace, let me present myself to you. I am the leader of the American delegation.”

Behind him, the dowager stepped forward. “Jack,” she whispered. “
My son
.” She then fainted, falling into Gavin's arms, and the ball was at an end.

Chapter Four

M
enheim, his family's London home, had not changed, Jack reflected as he cooled his heels in the wood-­paneled library that the footmen had hustled him to while his brother had seen to his guests and brought a gracious end to his ball. The Duke of Baynton must always be the consummate host, in spite of the appearance of a brother he hadn't seen for over fifteen years.

However, Gavin was not allowing any chance for Jack to leave again. Two of the footmen stood guard outside the door. Jack had nothing to do save cool his heels. Such was the diplomat's lot.

The library had been his father's private domain. Apparently it served as his twin's as well although there was little sign of Gavin's presence here. The books appeared to be arranged in the same order on the shelves as they had been years ago, without any additions or subtractions. The chair behind the ornate desk was still well used, the leather molded to the bodies of two dukes. Even the India carpet on the floor was the same. It didn't even look more worn.

Certainly for the number of times his father had forced Jack to stand for hours in front of his desk, there should be bare patches in the imprint of his shoes.

He took a deep breath, trying to release the tightness in his chest. Memories roiled inside him. Good ones and bad ones.

Jack had not wanted to return to England. He had not wanted to meet his brother . . . not this way.

Call upon your family
, Governor-­elect of Massa­chusetts Caleb Strong had begged Jack. He was dead set against all the talk coming out of ­Congress about war with Britain, as was Jack.

It was a heady thing for a young lawyer to have the ear of such an influential man. And Strong knew what he was doing. Jack had no desire to return to London but the governor-­elect had ­appealed to Jack's vanity.

You are the only one who can help us
,
Strong had told him.
We are standing on the brink of disaster. I am convinced the British have no idea how reckless ­certain members of Congress are. You can help peace. Your brother has the power to change attitudes, and only you can persuade him. The future of this country is in your hands.

Only you
, he'd said and Jack had been powerless to resist.

Of course, the question was persuasion
,
the crux of the matter, and the fact Jack had not left his family on good terms. Or spoken to them since. He hadn't even known if they believed him alive.

He had been reluctant to tell Strong the truth. He'd some hollow idea in the back of his mind that he could be an effective diplomat
without
Gavin's help.

However, he had been in England for two weeks now and had accomplished nothing. He had presented his letters of introduction to all the proper persons and had not managed one productive ­interview. No one wanted to talk to the ­Americans, a situation that had given Silas ­Lawrence great satisfaction since his purpose for being on the trip seemed to be to thwart Jack's ­efforts.

And Matthew Rice? Jack had no idea why he'd come along, except to make a fool of himself.

Now, as Jack stood in this room that had served generations of dukes, he could almost hear his ancestors laughing at him, his father's voice rang loudest of all—­

The door to the library opened. Jack faced it as if he expected a hundred swordsmen to come flying at him.

Instead, just his twin entered. Baynton was still in evening dress, his expression one of annoyance.

He shut the door without looking at Jack. “Could you have chosen a more dramatic way to let us know you have returned?” He walked over to the cabinet holding the whisky decanter. He poured himself a generous measure. “Do you want one?”

“No.”

With a lift of one brow, an expression so reminiscent of their father Jack had endeavored never to use it, Gavin set the decanter down. He took his glass but didn't drink.

Silence stretched between them.

Jack broke it. “How is Mother?”

“Shocked.”

“I'd like to see her.” Years ago when he'd left, he'd not given a thought to what she would think or feel. His goal had been to escape.

Even when he'd walked into the house this evening he'd been more focused on Gavin than on the woman who had given birth to him—­until she'd fainted. Then he'd noticed. Then he'd started to gain some idea of what his disappearance had cost her.

She'd aged. The fact had surprised him and it shouldn't have. After all,
he
was no longer fifteen. Why could he not have anticipated his mother would advance in years as well?

Still, he had not expected her wrinkles or the silver in her hair. He'd pictured her the way she'd been when he'd left. She had once been very ­important to him, but he'd callously tossed her aside.

Doubt was an uncomfortable emotion.

“So,” Gavin said, “are you going to tell me?”

“Why I have presented myself to you?”

“Why you
left
.” Gavin set his drink down on his desk without having taken a taste. “You walked into this house this evening as if we'd only seen you yesterday. It has been almost seventeen years. Where the bloody hell have you been?”

Jack had always assumed that someday there would be an accounting. The knowledge did not make this any easier.

However, Gavin was not waiting for a response. Instead, in typical style, he charged ahead. “We searched for you for years. Father hired the very best men. They combed England, the face of the earth.
They said you were dead
.”

The raw emotion in his brother's voice caught Jack off guard. “And how did you feel about that, Gavin? My being dead?”

For a second, his brother's stare hardened as if he could not believe what he'd just heard . . . and then he spoke. “Devastated.”

The word rose in the air to take shape in the form of tiny daggers, a willing betrayal.

Jack had his reasons for leaving, reasons that now, he realized, years later, had been foolish—­or had they? What sort of man would he have been if he stayed?

And yet, in the face of Gavin's honesty, he owed his twin something. “I had to leave,” he said.

“By all that is holy, why?”

“Because.”

Again, his brother's brows came together. He leaned back as if rejecting what he'd heard, and then suddenly he began laughing. He laughed loud, hard. He sounded half mad.

Jack saw nothing funny, and then he noticed the tears in his twin's eyes. He took a step toward him, uncertain of what he could say. This reaction was not expected—­

A knock on the door interrupted them. “Your Grace, it is Ben.” Ben, their brother.

Gavin underwent a transformation. His shoulders straightened. Had there been tears? Jack could see no sign of them.

“Come in,” Gavin said. He reached for his drink.

Ben entered the room. He had the broad shoulders and strong nose of the Whitridges. However, he was a few inches taller than both Jack and Gavin and leaner in build.

Eight years separated the ages of the brothers. Jack barely knew Ben. He'd been off to school when Ben was born and had rarely returned home afterward. The more he stayed away from their father, the happier Jack was.

He now held out his hand to Ben. “We have not seen each other in a good while.”

Before Ben could respond, Gavin said, “You offer your hand to Ben and for me, you had nothing?”

Ben shut the door as if he didn't want Gavin to be overheard.

Letting his hand fall, Jack said to his twin, “There was a time we knew each other so well, we could read one another's thoughts. Did I need to explain?”

Gavin took a sip of his drink and frowned as if it tasted bitter. “Yes, I believe I am owed an explanation. Perhaps even an apology. I would dare to suggest you owe both to all of us.”

God, he sounded the very image of their father.

A wildness that had always been inside Jack reared its ugly head. For the past several years, he'd tamped it down but now here it was—­his pride, his independent spirit,
all
the things their father had attempted to beat out of him.

“Mother is the one who deserves an apology but I don't think I owe you anything, Your Grace. You seem to have fared well without me.”

“Perhaps the two of you wish to pound this out alone?” Ben suggested, placing his hand on the door handle.

“
Don't
think of going anywhere,” Gavin ­answered Ben. “The days of my knowing what my twin is thinking are long past. We are barely acquaintances now. Tell me, Jack, how
has
your life been?”

Jack had set off this evening aware that presenting himself to his family would not be easy. Hard questions would be asked and he was certain they would not like the answers. However, right now, he could just as happily rip off his twin's head. If he could have accomplished his mission to his chosen country without him, he would have walked out the door.

Instead, he forced back his anger. “My life has been good,” Jack answered. “And yours?”

The corners of Gavin's mouth tightened. “Father died.”

“I had heard.”

“Did you?
When?
”

Ben stood to the side, his body tense as if he wished he were anywhere else but here. However, now he, too, leveled his gaze on Jack.

Here was one of the answers that would damn him. “In 1808. He must have been dead for a year by then. A friend told me.”

The lines of Gavin's face deepened, and then he walked behind his desk, setting his glass on the blotter in front of him. He sat, taking on the air of a judge ready to weigh evidence. He did not speak.

Ben shifted his weight. Was it Jack's imag­ination, or did this younger brother that he barely knew seem to have some commiseration for him?

The truth. Clear the air and speak the truth
. The voice inside Jack, that voice that had prodded him to run, to escape, now urged him to not flinch from this moment. Indeed, Gavin deserved to know Jack's feelings . . . even if he would not like them.

“I felt no grief,” he admitted. “Our father was a tyrant. You might not recognize that fact. After all,
you
were the chosen one.”

Gavin did not move, not even an eyelash.

Ben bowed his head, and yet Jack sensed again that his younger brother knew of what he spoke.

“I was second best, Gavin, and according to Father, a serious disappointment.”

“Therefore you ran away? Let all of us think you were dead?” There was no heat in Gavin's voice but his words were tense.

The anger, the frustration, the bloody fear his fifteen-­year-­old self had harbored that
this
would be all his life held welled inside Jack. “I needed to be free.” He paused and then confessed, “I meant to come back. I thought I'd be gone a month, maybe two.” He looked to Ben, to the sympathetic one. “Catering to Father's demands, his expectations, and knowing I had no role other than as a backup in case something happened to the first born ate at my soul. I wanted more. I
deserved
more. I certainly didn't want to be compared to you, Gavin. You were everything Father expected, all that a duke should be. Studies were effortless for you. You had the ability to spend hours inside poring over the most boring books when such endeavors were misery for me. I could think of nothing but escaping the library. You did everything well, Gavin. This role, being duke, was the reason you were the first out of the womb. I had no talent for it.”

As Jack spoke, his twin had brought the full force of his attention upon him. He leaned ­forward, his hands on the arms of the chair as if he would rise. “No one expected you to be anything other than what you were—­my brother.”

“From your perspective,” Jack answered. “From mine, I felt trapped. Bloody trapped.”

“And so you bolted? You abandoned your family?”

Jack did not answer. He stood on a tinderbox.

“And you present yourself this evening,” Gavin continued, “in front of all my company, as a delegation from another country? You would deny your nationality, the very essence of who you are?
Father was a bastard
—­”

Gavin sounded as if the statement had been dragged from the depths of his being, as if he'd
never
spoken such words before, and there was a chance he hadn't. Jack had never heard him say such a thing. When they were lads together, Gavin had always defended their sire's decisions. Even Ben dropped his jaw in surprise.

“However,” Gavin continued, suppressed anger behind every word, “
what
gave you the license to treat
us
, who loved you, as if we were
nothing
?” He leaned on the desk. “We believed you murdered or worse. And you were merely playing devil-­may-­care—­?”

Jack rooted his feet to the ground. “I had ­reasons for not returning.”

“
What were they?
”

The rebellion that was a strong part of Jack's nature bristled at his brother's tone. When he was younger, he would have told him to sod off and be done with him.

However, he was wiser now and he had a ­mission to accomplish. An important mission. The future of his adopted country was at stake.

Besides, his family was owed an explanation, as much as it galled Jack to be forced in the matter.

“Do you remember the acting troupe that came to Windsor the week before I left?”

Gavin frowned and shrugged.

“Of course you don't,” Jack agreed. “You were so busy studying that you seemed indifferent to girls—­”

“I was not.”

“You gave that impression.”

“If one can't act on the desire, why allow it?”

“I'm not that stoic, Gavin. Back then, women were always on my mind. In that acting troupe there was a particular young lady I took a fancy to and she liked me as well. I decided to go with them when they moved on.”