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    Jackson’s scowl ended the pathetic sentence.  He glared, a muscle ticking in his cheek. 
    When he’d fled England a decade earlier, he’d left because of Edward and Susan and their pending nuptials. 
    With the ardor only an immature swain can muster, he’d loved Susan for years, and he’d believed she loved him in return.  They had often talked of marriage until Beatrice had decided Susan would be the ideal bride for Edward instead.
    The moment Susan learned she could wed an earl—rather than the brother of an earl—she immediately noted that Edward would make a fine husband. 
    Jackson had pleaded with the three of them, had begged and debased himself in his attempts to stop the match.  He’d been particularly strident in imploring Edward.
    Don’t do this to me, he’d beseeched.  Please don’t hurt me this way.
    But their mother was like a force of nature, like a hurricane with winds that couldn’t be resisted.  Edward had been kind and easy-going, and he’d hated discord.  He never could stand up to Beatrice, not as a beleaguered boy, then a beleaguered man. 
    He’d accepted her decree with the same resignation he’d accepted every other of her dictates, but Jackson had continued to fight her.  So she’d cut off his funds, hoping a dose of poverty would bend him to her will, but she was a fool.  She’d never been able to manipulate him, which was the reason they’d always battled so fiercely.
    The night before Edward’s wedding to Susan, Jackson had left England on a freighter, had worked to pay his fare to the Mediterranean, arriving in Alexandria without a penny in his pocket.  Yet he’d thrived there, being completely determined to succeed despite how his heart had been broken, despite how he’d been betrayed.
    He’d never corresponded with any of them again, although British acquaintances occasionally mentioned that Edward was trying to locate him, to arrange a reconciliation.  Jackson had ignored all overtures and had received no pertinent news until a letter had notified him of Edward’s death and that Jackson was needed at home to oversee Percival and the estate.
    Curiosity had brought him back—as well as his enormous pride and conceit.  He’d wanted Susan and Beatrice to realize how he’d flourished.  And as the oldest male in the family, he now held the purse strings so he held all the power.  At least until Percival grew up and Jackson’s guardianship was over.
    Beatrice and Susan were at his mercy, were relegated to subservient roles and could only engage in an expenditure if he allowed it.  They’d be fretting over their fates, stewing and pondering his attitude and willingness to be generous. 
    He’d been in England for weeks, having come straight to Milton Abbey without calling on them in London.  They’d be in a dither, terrified over his lack of deference and what it might indicate.
    He enjoyed having them anxious and off-balance, but he really had no designs on either of them.  He didn’t care how they conducted themselves—so long as they didn’t pilfer Percival’s fortune.  Jackson planned to hire stringent fiscal managers, choose that boarding school for Percival, then leave for Egypt.  He had a full and fulfilling life there, and he was eager to return to it. 
    But if Duncan’s story was true, if Grace Bennett wasn’t a liar, if Michael Scott was Edward’s first-born son and Jackson’s nephew, Jackson would be trapped in England for ages.
    He saw months—nay, years!—of legal wrangling and conflict.  Susan would never blithely submit to the notion that her marriage to Edward was invalid, that Percival wasn’t the earl.  Beatrice would never admit that Edward had defied her by marrying a commoner. 
    Jackson would be stuck in the middle, forced to fix the mess Edward had made.  By the time he was back in Alexandria, he’d probably be a hundred years old.
    Just then, if Grace Bennett