“And spoil it for the rest of us?” Jack chimed in, because after what he’d been subjected to, he didn’t much feel that anyone deserved a moment of privacy. And then, to achieve maximum irritation, he added, “After all I’ve been through…”

“He is your cousin,” the dowager announced sharply.

“He is the highwayman,” Miss Eversleigh said.

“Not,” Jack added, turning to display his bound hands, “here of my own volition, I assure you.”

“Your grandmother thought she recognized him last night,” Miss Eversleigh told the duke.

“I knew I recognized him,” the dowager snapped. Jack resisted the urge to duck as she flicked her hand at him. “Just look at him.”

Jack turned to the duke. “I was wearing a mask.” Because really, he shouldn’t have to take the blame for this.

He smiled cheerfully, watching the duke with interest as he brought his hand to his forehead and pressed his temples with enough force to crush his skull. And then, just like that, his hand fell away and he yelled, “Cecil!”

Jack was about to make a quip about another lost cousin, but at that moment a footman-presumably named Cecil-came skidding down the hall.

“The portrait,” Wyndham bit off. “Of my uncle.”

“The one we just brought up to-”

“Yes. In the drawing room. Now!”

Even Jack’s eyes widened at the furious energy in his voice.

And then-it was like acid in his belly-he saw Miss Eversleigh lay a hand on the duke’s arm. “Thomas,” she said softly, surprising him with her use of his given name, “please allow me to explain.”

“Did you know about this?” Wyndham demanded.

“Yes, but-”

“Last night,” he said icily. “Did you know last night?”

Last night?

“I did, but Thomas-”

What happened last night?

“Enough,” he spat. “Into the drawing room. All of you.”

Jack followed the duke, and then, once the door was shut behind them, held up his hands. “D’you think you might…?” he asked. Rather conversationally, if he did say so himself.

“For the love of Christ,” Wyndham muttered. He grabbed something from a writing table near the wall and then returned. With one angry swipe, he cut through the bindings with a gold letter opener.

Jack looked down to make sure he wasn’t bleeding. “Well done,” he murmured. Not even a scratch.

“Thomas,” Miss Eversleigh was saying, “I really think you ought to let me speak with you for a moment before-”

“Before what?” Wyndham snapped, turning on her with what Jack deemed rather unbecoming fury. “Before I am informed of another long-lost cousin whose head may or may not be wanted by the Crown?”

“Not by the Crown, I think,” Jack said mildly. He had his reputation to think of, after all. “But surely a few magistrates. And a vicar or two.” He turned to the dowager. “Highway robbery is not generally considered the most secure of all possible occupations.”

His levity was appreciated by no one, not even poor Miss Eversleigh, who had managed to incur the fury of both Wyndhams. Rather undeservedly, too, in his opinion. He hated bullies.

“Thomas,” Miss Eversleigh implored, her tone once again causing Jack to wonder just what, precisely, existed between those two. “Your grace,” she corrected, with a nervous glance over at the dowager, “there is something you need to know.”

“Indeed,” Wyndham bit off. “The identities of my true friends and confidantes, for one thing.”

Miss Eversleigh flinched as if struck, and at that moment Jack decided that he’d had quite enough. “I suggest,” he said, his voice light but steady, “that you speak to Miss Eversleigh with greater respect.”

The duke turned to him, his eyes as stunned as the silence that descended over the room. “I beg your pardon.”

Jack hated him in that moment, every prideful little aristocratic speck of him. “Not used to being spoken to like a man, are we?” he taunted.

The air went electric, and Jack knew he probably should have foreseen what would come next, but the duke’s face had positively twisted into fury, and Jack somehow could not seem to move as Wyndham launched himself forward, his hands wrapping themselves around his throat as the both of them went crashing down to the carpet.

Cursing himself for a fool, Jack tried to get traction as the duke’s fist slammed into his jaw. Pure animalistic survival set in, and he tensed his belly into a hard knot. With one lightning-quick movement he threw his torso forward, using his head as a weapon. There was a satisfying crack as he struck Wyndham’s jaw, and Jack took advantage of his stunned state to roll them over and reverse their positions.

“Don’t…you… ever strike me again,” Jack growled. He’d fought in gutters, on battlefields, for his country and for his life, and he’d never had patience for men who threw the first punch.

He took an elbow in the belly and was about to return the favor with a knee to the groin when Miss Eversleigh leapt into the fray, wedging herself between the two men with nary a thought to propriety or her own safety.

“Stop it! Both of you!”

Jack managed to nudge Wyndham’s upper arm just in time to stop his fist from reaching her cheek. It would have been an accident, of course, but then he’d have had to kill him, and that would have been a hanging offense.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Miss Eversleigh scolded, looking straight at the duke.

He merely raised a brow and said, “You might want to remove yourself from my, er…” He looked down at his midsection, upon which she was now seated.

“Oh!” She jumped up, and Jack would have defended her honor except that he had to admit he’d have said the same thing were he seated under her. Not to mention that she was still holding his arm.

“Tend to my wounds?” he asked, making his eyes big and green and brimming with the world’s most effective expression of seduction. Which was, of course, I need you. I need you and if you would only care for me I will forswear all other women and melt at your feet and quite possibly become filthy rich and if you’d like even royal all in one dreamy swoop.

It never failed.

Except, apparently, now. “You have no wounds,” she snapped, thrusting him away. She looked over at Wyndham, who had risen to his feet beside her. “And neither do you.”

Jack was about to make a comment about the milk of human kindness, but just then the dowager stepped forward and smacked her grandson-that would be the grandson of whose lineage they were quite certain-in the shoulder.

“Apologize at once!” she snapped. “He is a guest in our house.”

A guest. Jack was touched.

“My house,” the duke snapped back.

Jack watched the old lady with interest. She wouldn’t take well to that.

“He is your first cousin,” she said tightly. “One would think, given the lack of close relations in our family, that you would be eager to welcome him into the fold.”

Oh, right. The duke was just brimming with joy. “Would someone,” Wyndham bit off, “do me the service of explaining just how this man has come to be in my drawing room?”

Jack waited for someone to offer an explanation, and then, when none was forthcoming, offered his own version. “She kidnapped me,” he said with shrug, motioning toward the dowager.

Wyndham turned slowly to his grandmother. “You kidnapped him,” he said, his voice flat and strangely devoid of disbelief.

“Indeed,” she replied, her chin butting up in the air. “And I would do it again.”

“It’s true,” Miss Eversleigh said. And then she delighted him by turning in his direction and saying, “I’m sorry.”

“Accepted, of course,” Jack said graciously.

The duke, however, was not amused. To the extent that poor Miss Eversleigh felt the need to defend her actions with, “She kidnapped him!”

Wyndham ignored her. Jack was really starting to dislike him.

“And forced me to take part,” Miss Eversleigh muttered. She, on the other hand, was quickly becoming one of his favorite people.

“I recognized him last night,” the dowager announced.

Wyndham looked at her disbelievingly. “In the dark?”

“Under his mask,” she answered with pride. “He is the very image of his father. His voice, his laugh, every bit of it.”

Jack hadn’t thought this a particularly convincing argument himself, so he was curious to see how the duke responded.

“Grandmother,” he said, with what Jack had to allow was remarkable patience, “I understand that you still mourn your son-”

“Your uncle,” she cut in.

“My uncle.” He cleared his throat. “But it has been thirty years since his death.”

“Twenty-nine,” she corrected sharply.

“It has been a long time,” Wyndham said. “Memories fade.”

“Not mine,” she replied haughtily, “and certainly not the ones I have of John. Your father I have been more than pleased to forget entirely-”

“In that we are agreed,” Wyndham interrupted, leaving Jack to wonder at that story. And then, looking as if he very much still wished to strangle someone (Jack would have put his money on the dowager, since he’d already had the pleasure), Wyndham turned and bellowed, “Cecil!”

“Your grace!” came a voice from the hall. Jack watched as two footmen struggled to bring a massive painting around the corner and into the room.

“Set it down anywhere,” the duke ordered.

With a bit of grunting and one precarious moment during which it seemed the painting would topple what was, to Jack’s eye, an extremely expensive Chinese vase, the footmen managed to find a clear spot and set the painting down on the floor, leaning it gently against the wall.

Jack stepped forward. They all stepped forward. And Miss Eversleigh was the first to say it.