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exceedingly. Costume ball?” He scoffed. “No, thanks. You go without me. I trust you’ll manage to have enough fun for us both,” Gabriel added, nodding toward the scattered love notes from Derek’s latest crop of feminine admirers.
    “That’s hardly the point. Tell me, brother.” He leaned forward with a wicked sparkle in his eyes. “Did you know there was a census taken a few years back? They counted over a million souls living here in London.”
    Gabriel eyed him suspiciously. “So?”
    “Figure half of them are female, and half of those of an age to be wooed. That leaves
two-hundred fifty thousand
ladies out there waiting for us.” He nodded toward the door, then sent his brother a lazy smile. “That’s over a hundred thousand girls apiece. I say we had better get started.”
    Gabriel shook his head at him, looking half annoyed and half amused. Derek knew the look well.
    “Oh, come on!” he protested, laughing. “Honestly, if I were you, I would want to make sure that everything still
worked
properly, if you take my meaning.”
    Gabriel’s stern, elder-brother look turned to a scowl.
    “Ah, never mind.” Derek waved him off and rose to get himself another drink. “But I’m not going to let you sit around in here and rot all by yourself. You know what I shall do? I’ll hire some gorgeous wench with no morals to take care of you. Now that would be amusing! An obliging little nurse to cater to your every whim. I am a most kind and thoughtful brother, am I not?”
    Gabriel gave him a formidable stare from across the room and did not smile.
    Derek laughed but did not press the issue. He took another swallow of liquor. “Killjoy.”
    “Derek, I nearly died,” Gabriel said. “I
did
die, as a matter of fact. For several minutes, I tell you, I was gone—”
    “Gabriel, that’s impossible! How many times have we been through this?”
    “The army surgeon told me that I didn’t have a pulse!”
    “Well, he must’ve been mistaken!”
    “No, he wasn’t. For God’s sake, I saw you all around my body from several feet up in the air—”
    “No, you didn’t! Obviously, it was a dream.”
    “This was no dream.”
    “Whatever it was, I don’t want to hear about it anymore. It gives me the gooseflesh, damn it. Dead is dead.”
    “Says who?”
    “Oh, I don’t know—natural law? The fact you seem to be missing here, brother, is that you
didn’t
die. You lived. I know you’ve got a long road back to regaining your full strength, but sooner or later, I’d like to see you really live again.”
    “I know you would, Derek.” Gabriel sighed. “But coming back from the dead, well, it makes a man rethink his life a bit.”
    Derek dropped his gaze, pressed with worry not just for his brother’s health but dashed well for his sanity, and not knowing what to say. He stared at the floor, then looked at his brother again. “You’re going to be all right, Gabriel.”
    “Of course I will. So will you.”
    “Me?” he asked in surprise. “You’re the one who’s wounded.”
    “Right.” Gabriel gave him a shrewd look.
    Derek dropped his gaze, feeling restless and uneasy in the silence that followed. What the hell was his brother trying to say? He was fine.
    He was perfectly fine.
    Or at least he would be when he was back where he belonged. With his troops. At the war.
    Back in Hell.

CHAPTER
              THREE          
    A fter two months in London, Lily’s quest to snare a rich husband was moving along nicely according to plan.
    Through Mrs. Clearwell’s selective introductions, the great Balfour name had won her many an entrée into some of London’s grandest homes, where, throughout the Season—at balls, at dinners, at concerts and routs—she had been presented to countless eligible bachelors, most of them rich and many blue-blooded, even a few titles in the mix. She had made it her policy to treat each one with cool reserve while she studied them surreptitiously to discover