Page 27 of Twice Upon a Midnight

“He’s very handsome and charming, and someday, he’ll be a duke, just like your father.” Mama placed a kiss to the top of her head. “You might just like him and bump along well.”

He won’t recite poetry to me. He’s not the kind to think to send books as gifts. He won’t make me feel brilliant, beautiful, special…Somehow she managed not to cry at the desolate thoughts swirling in her head, but when she glanced out the window at Piccadilly as the carriage rolled toward home, the street blurred under her unshed tears.

Their search was over, and she hadn’t found the man she loved. In her heart, she knew the note she left with the printer would come to nothing. She had never been lucky in finding love before, and it seemed she never would be.

“Let Simon call on you,” Mama cajoled gently, “and don’t dismiss him out of hand simply because you don’t know him yet. Spend time together. Share stories with each other and your favorite pastimes. Give him a chance.” Mama squeezed her arm. “And then you can decide if you want to tell him to cease visiting. The final decision will always be yours. You know that your father and I will never press you into a marriage you do not want.”

Ella nodded stiffly in an attempt to maintain her composure, but she lost the battle when a single tear slipped down her cheek. She turned her face away so Mama wouldn’t see.

The carriage finally rolled through the wrought iron fence and up to the wide front portico. When the tiger lowered the step and opened the door, it wasn’t a moment too soon for Ella. She slipped from the coach and hurried up the front steps and through the door, held open wide by Hendricks. She fled upstairs to her room where she could be miserable in peace.

Just inside the door, she halted in mid step and caught her breath. Her eyes were still blurry and stinging, but she blinked several times, unable to believe what she was seeing.

A large bouquet of flowers sat on her dressing table. The vase was filled with all her favorite blooms, right down to the yellows of miniature sunflowers and the dark reds of roses, with pink and blue carnations nestled in delicate baby’s breath. A book and sealed note rested on the table against the vase.

Not daring to let herself hope, she came forward slowly and reached for the note. She knew before her shaking fingers broke the wax seal that it was from Spenser. Her heart pounded fiercely against her ribs as she scanned the message.

Dearest Ella,

I will meet you tonight at midnight in the park, just beyond your garden wall, so you can grace me with another dance, with one of your smiles—

Or simply to give me the favor of a few minutes to apologize and explain. I never meant to wound you.

‘I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy…’

~ Spenser

“Keats,” she whispered, recognizing the quote, and pressed the note against her bosom with a long sigh. Oh, she could have danced with joy!

She glanced at the small mantel clock and let out an impatient groan. Midnight was still an eternity away.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S

penser stood in the darkness of the park just beyond the Duke of Durham’s garden wall and waited. The rainy day had given way to a warm but overcast night, with the full moon shining in the cloudy sky like a street lamp through the fog. In the distance, the church bells of St James’s Piccadilly tolled softly through the night. He held his breath and counted…ten, eleven, twelve.

Midnight.Finally.

Yet the parkland around him was just as still and silent as before. Green Park was private, with direct access granted to the wealthy owners of the grand houses lining it, such as Spencer House, whose silhouette loomed less than a hundred yards away. When he was a child, his mother would walk with him past these houses, and even then, his little chest would swell with pride. In his young mind, he heardSpenser’sHouseand wrongly thought it was somehow his, even though he didn’t live there. Their own Mayfair townhouse, owned by his stepfather and located only a few streets away, was nearly as grand. Yet tonight, when he’d tossed the basket over the park fence, then illegally scrambled over after it, he realized exactly how far apart in wealth and power the Duke of Pensworth and the Earl Spencer actually were. Pensworth had not come out on top.

But the park, with its tall wrought iron fences and gates that kept out the riffraff of London—like him—was the perfect place to meet Ella. No one would think to look for them here, hidden away in a magical bubble in their own private Eden.

Until he would have to destroy it by telling her the truth about who he was.

She’d hate him for it—God help him, she might even laugh at him—but she deserved better than a man who could only walk in the park because he’d scaled the fence, not because he possessed a key to it. And never would.

Movement along the stone wall snagged his attention. He caught his breath.

Ella stepped out from the darkness, leaving open the little iron gate that connected the villa to the park. Air eased from his lungs with relief. He’d been half afraid she wouldn’t come, that she’d figured out his connection to the print shop and had already decided he wasn’t worth meeting.

But there she was, moving through the shadows toward him like a ghost. No—like an angel, ethereal and wholly untethered to the real world except where her dainty feet deigned to touch the grass.

In the moonlight, her eyes gleamed like emeralds, the only brightness in her appearance, having wrapped herself in a long coat that covered her from ankles to neck to wrists. If she were worried about looking too alluring tonight, he could have told her not to bother. She could have worn burlap and rolled in the mud, and she would still have been the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.

“He walks in beauty like the night,” she said quietly as she stopped in front of him. Her soft voice floated on the warm night air and reached him like the scent of the night-blooming jasmine covering the nearby wall.

He arched a brow. “No, he doesn’t.”