Page 3 of Twice Upon a Midnight

Spenser stared at the spectacle. He’d witnessed grand parties before, but this…Good lord.

“You’re mad.”

He slid a look across the compartment at Martin Harrow. Of all the partners in crime he could have imagined for tonight, the old man would not have been one of them. But Spenser had made the mistake of stopping by Martin’s room in Cheapside on his way to the party to check in on his friend. When Martin discovered why Spenser was wearing the most expensive evening finery he’d ever donned, the old man insisted on riding with him to the ball, to talk him out of his plans.

“Mad as a hatter,” Martin elaborated.

Or perhaps berate him out of them.

“Come on, Martin.” Spenser eased back against the squabs of the rented carriage and smiled. “Haven’t you ever wanted to party with theton?”

“Ihavepartied with them.” The older man snorted dismissively. ”"It’s not nearly as much fun as it looks.”

“Really?” He nodded out the window. Two beautiful women dripping jewels and furs waved their fans flirtatiously as they passed his carriage. He grinned back at them. “Because it looks like damnable fun to me.”

“Will it still be fun when they throw you into Newgate for impersonating a peer?”

“The Marquess of Walmesley is not a peer.”Not yet.Someday, his half brother Simon would inherit their father’s dukedom while Spenser, as the stepson, would inherit nothing, but until then, Simon’s title was only a courtesy. That technicality would protect Spenser from prison, if not from the ire of his stepfather. “Besides, they have to catch me first, and I have no intention of being caught.”

“People never do,” Martin grumbled.

“It’s simple.” Spenser leaned forward, elbows on knees. “It’s a masquerade. Everyone’s behind a mask, and I have my esteemed brother’s invitation.”

He held up the card with Simon’s name written elegantly across the linen paper. No one would think twice about the invitation, not with Spenser wearing a mask, and certainly not when he and Simon looked so much alike, both favoring their late mother instead of their fathers.

But that was where all similarities ended. Their characters were nothing alike.

Spenser’s blood family held no connection to the aristocracy. Instead, he’d been forced to make his way in the world via his own merits because his stepfather, Charles Radcliff, Duke of Pensworth, barely acknowledged Spenser even existed; he certainly would never have helped raise him into the upper class with Simon, his son and heir. But Spenser succeeded more than anyone would have thought possible. He owned the second most successful print shop in London and was well on his way to acquiring his own fortune, yet he also could hope for nothing more from thetonthan to hover at its fringes, tolerated but never fully accepted.

He held no delusions. A printer would never have been invited to a ball like this. The only way he was able to attend was by forging an invitation. It wasn’t difficult, given that his own shop had printed the party invitations. All he had to do was take one and have his housekeeper write his brother’s name in her elegant handwriting across the front. Unless he and Simon stood right beside each other, no one would notice anything amiss.

“I’ll slip in as Walmesley and enjoy myself at the party. That’s all. I’ll help myself to a couple glasses of Madeira, a few plates of refreshments—perhaps a waltz with an accommodating lady.” Martin scowled at the wink Spenser sent him. “Then I slip out with the departing guests when the night’s over. No one harmed, no one embarrassed. No one the wiser but me. Just a fun evening.”

One spent among the people whose world he should have been part of had life been fair.

But it wasn’t, and the lords and ladies and all their ilk filing into the Duke of Durham’s villa would never accept someone from the working-class in their midst, no matter how successful he was. What mattered to them was social rank determined by birth, not merit gained through hard work.

Tonight, he simply wanted to have what should have been his, if only for a few hours.

“Why are you so determined to do this?”

Spenser leveled a hard yet utterly honest look on Martin. “Because I’m tired of being treated as lesser even when I’ve worked harder and been more successful than ninety percent of the men inside that house. Because I’m tired of being the kid who has his nose pressed against the glass of a candy shop window with no hope of ever being let inside, no matter how much money he has in his pocket.”

Because he was tired of being treated like an outcast who wasn’t as good as his brother simply because the old duke had sired Simon but Spenser had come as a package with his mother.

Elizabeth Rhodes was Pensworth’s second wife and the war widow of Major James Rhodes, who had died in the Battle of Lincelles saving his men from the French in the War of the First Coalition. No matter that Spenser’s mother was the only woman the duke ever claimed to have loved, no matter how distraught he had been when she died less than five years into their marriage and four years after Simon’s birth, Spenser was her child from her first marriage and so meant nothing to Pensworth. So at the tender age of ten, Spenser had been shipped away to Yorkshire to live with relatives he didn’t know, while his younger half brother Simon had remained with Pensworth in their home and been trained to inherit a dukedom.

That exile had proven to be a godsend in the end, because the second cousin whom Spenser had been sent to live with was a talented printer. The man ensured that Spenser received a good education and taught him everything about the printing and publishing industries. He’d given him a solid skill that Spenser parlayed into his own business and the formal education necessary to make it successful.

But he had taught Spenser nothing about how to straddle two different worlds without truly belonging to either. Spenser was reminded of that everywhere he went in London. So if he couldn’t belong to this world, he’d sneak his way into it.

From the look on Martin’s face, though, his friend didn’t agree .

Spenser shook his head in exasperation. “Haven’t you ever wanted to be part of a different world, if only for one night? A world you would otherwise never belong to?”

“No.” He brushed at a fleck of invisible lint on his old, threadbare coat. “I like my world just as it is…casual and common.”

Spenser rolled his eyes as the carriage crept slowly forward toward the footpath where uniformed footmen took turns opening carriage doors and helping ladies to the ground. “I should have left you in Cheapside.”