An Earnest Favour

II

"At the end of the day, it isn't where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I'm going and never have been before." Warsan Shire

----

II.

The deepest glory for all gentlemen, titled or otherwise, is to sire a son. An heir. A namesake for which to pass on their legacy, to carry the family name into the next generation, and to keep land, fortune, and titles within the family.

But ... what if tragedy struck? What if smallpox spread through the estate? What if fever took hold? What if he fell from a horse? What if he ate spoiled game at suppertime and succumbed to poisoning?

The death of a son could spoil a legacy, just as much as it could spoil a family.

And thus, someone, somewhere, had coined the term "spare". The spare. The second son. The insurance. Should anything tragic happen to the first, the second was there.

It was not from his own parents that Jack Beresford had first heard himself called a spare, though it was not difficult to surmise why onlookers viewed him in such a way.

Adam was the first, the eldest, and his parents had spent much of his life preparing him for life as a duke. Adam was educated, drilled, lectured, and almost married to fulfil the role he was born to play. Jack, of course, was educated as well. Should he ever need to inherit, he ought to know how to read and write. Though Jack was not educated to inherit. Jack was kept, supervised by teachers, before he could take his place in one of the few options available to mere second sons.

Jack had been a naturally boisterous child. He had been energetic and playful, and not the sort of quiet spare his mother had hoped for. Jack hadn't known exactly the moment his mother had tired of him. Perhaps she had never really warmed to him. They were very different people, and Cecily Beresford liked things her way. Jack was not a boy who could be easily moulded.

His father had been kinder, though as warm as a father of his status could be. Peregrine was not the type of man to play with his children. But Jack had loved him, and perhaps even more so seeing as he never really found middle ground with his mother.

Cecily had meant Jack for the church from a very early age. Jack had soon got into the habit of doing the exact opposite of what his mother wanted. As an adult, Jack realised, that in rebelling, it really was the only time that Cecily paid him any attention.

Jack was clever, but reckless, and was often the student with the best marks and the most welts from the cane. The letters from his mother, scolding him for being an embarrassment, had once amused him, encouraged him to go further. But when he reached university, the amusement waned quite quickly.

Being only two years younger than Adam, Jack did spend quite a bit of time with him while they were at Cambridge. The differences he noticed between them began to really affect him or take its toll. They had always affected him. The letters Adam received from their mother were full of hope and plans. Cecily spoke of his future, the ladies she wanted him to meet, to ask when he would be home to see Susanna.

The letters Jack received were often short, curt, scolding him for one thing or another.

One could only read I am so disappointed in you so many times before it became a part of their identity. He was a disappointment, and he had been from the moment he could talk. Jack was the spare, and that was all he ever would be.

Second best and second place.

Rebelling, as his mother saw it, was no longer humorous to Jack. At nineteen or twenty, a time in a young man's life when they were truly becoming men, Jack realised that he had never really known what it was like to feel wanted, to be valued, to be loved. He had never been held before, never been comforted by someone. He had never known what it was to make a mistake and not be called a fool. He had never known a place where he belonged.