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Assuredly, he was living one.
    Alasdair—who now had tears running down his face—was gesticulating wildly as he recounted the rest of the misadventure. “Finally, Quin Hewitt and I knocked the door off its hinges, and I swear on my life, gentleman, that the old boy was buck-arsed naked with one wrist still tied to the bed when we burst in,” he recounted as the crowd roared. “And bellowing like a bull with his horns hung in a hedgerow. I tell you, it was a frightful vision indeed.”
    “Tell ’em about the window, MacLachlan!” shouted a young blade near the front.
    Half-hidden behind a column, Devellyn watched Alasdair clutch his belly and laugh. “Well, he’d already ripped one wrist loose, and wh-when Quin f-f-finally got the other, he went—he went—oh, Lord!—he went straight for the bloody windowsill!” Alasdair was fighting off spurts of laughter now. “Crawled half out the window wearing nary a stitch. Took two of us to drag him out again! And Dev was kicking us, and throwing punches, and hollering that he meant to follow her out and throttle her! And I said to him, ‘Dev, Dev, old chap! That’s a fifteen-foot drop!’ ”
    “And then he said—” interjected Devellyn loudly as he strode into the room, “ ‘—stand back, Alasdair, you fool, or I’ll throttle you, too.’ And I shall yet do it, old boy, if you don’t sit down and shut the hell up.”
    Alasdair’s mouth fell open. His audience turned to gape. Then, like a flock of startled crows, the gentlemen burst into flight, most of them scurrying from the room. A few coughed, rattled their newspapers, and looked away. Alasdair and a couple of braver souls approached Devellyn to pound him heartily on the back and offer varying degrees of sympathy.
    It was all Devellyn could do not to wince when Lord Francis Tenby tried to drape one arm over his shoulder. But Tenby was a full foot shorter, and Devellyn had no interest in empathy, camaraderie, or anything else from a spoilt, overbred fop, so he stepped away.
    Tenby didn’t take the hint. “Dashed sorry, Dev, that you got rooked by that bitch,” he said. “That makes almost a dozen of us she’s humiliated, and for my part, I mean to make her pay.”
    The crowd was falling away now. Devellyn stared down his crooked nose at Tenby. “Oh?” he said. “And just how do you mean to do that?”
    Tenby’s mouth turned up into a sour smile. “Some of us have got together and set a Runner on our Black Angel,” he answered. “And when he catches her, he’s bringing her to us.”
    Devellyn grunted in disdain. “He’ll have to beat me to her.”
    Tenby’s smile tightened. “Nonetheless, old chap, send me a description of what was stolen,” he suggested. “Our man has connections—pawnbrokers, fences, and such. One never knows what he’ll turn up.”
    Devellyn considered it. “Perhaps I shall,” he said.
    Alasdair elbowed Tenby out of his way. “Brave of you, Dev, to turn up so soon,” he remarked, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Never knew you to crawl out of bed at such an hour.”
    Devellyn glowered at him. “By God, I’ll not be called a coward, Alasdair,” he snapped. “And I’ve not yet seen my bed. I’m too bloody infuriated to sleep.”
    Alasdair dragged him toward the coffee room. “Come along, Dev,” he said. “What you need now is a cup of bilgewater down the gullet. And after you’ve had it, you can call me out if you’re still of a mind to shoot me.”
    “Believe it or not, Alasdair, you are the very least of my plagues just now,” Devellyn answered.
    They sat down in the nearly empty coffee room, and Alasdair sent a waiter scurrying off. “All right, Dev,” he said, turning back to his friend. “What’s wrong?”
    Devellyn looked at him in mute amazement. “Wrong?” he finally muttered. “You dare ask?”
    Alasdair narrowed his eyes. “Well, you looked merely infuriated last night when we untied you,” he said. “But now you look…I don’t