“We got your letters, Jacques. It’s not like we didn’t know you were thinking about us. And I figured you probably had your hands full back home. Besides,” his tone darkened, despite his very best efforts, “like you say, Alley and I had each other. And the twins. And Honor, once she got back from Nouveau Paris, for that matter.”

Jacques started to say something more, then stopped. It wouldn’t have done any good…and there was no need to actually say it, anyway. He and Alfred had been friends for almost eighty T-years. In fact, it had been Jacques who (much to the surprise of the rest of his all-too-prominent family) had introduced the towering young Manticoran naval officer, yeoman, and ex-Marine sergeant to his younger sister.

Technically, Jacques and Allison were fraternal twins, although he’d been born five T-years before she had. Their parents had filed for a single-birth pregnancy, only to discover they’d conceived twins. The second child could have been placed for adoption, of course, but they’d known they wanted a fourth child after they packed their eldest off to college and qualified for another. So the second embryo had been held in cryo until that day, and Jacques had ended up with a younger sister as well as a twin.

He’d always adored her, and he’d developed a fiercely protective streak where she was concerned as they both grew older. There’d been times when she’d cut him down to size with bloody efficiency for “interfering” in her life, but he hadn’t let that faze him. It wasn’t easy being a Benton-Ramirez y Chou, and he’d known how much Allison hated the thought of being squeezed and molded into one of the roles expected out of her family. He hadn’t wanted her forced to be anyone she didn’t want to be, and he’d been damned if he’d let anyone do that to her, even if his “nosiness” and “rock-headedness” had pissed her off upon occasion. And he’d been picky as hell about who he encouraged to get close to her, too. Yet he’d never had a single qualm about introducing her to Alfred Harrington…and he’d stood as Alfred’s best man at the wedding.

There’d never been a moment in all the years since when he’d felt the least trace of regret, either. Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou had two birth brothers, and he loved both of them (although Anthony could really piss him off; not all sibling rivalries died with the mere passage of time), yet the truth was that he was closer to Alfred than to either of them.