Demon Blood

front of them. “Short-term or long-term?”
    “I’ll take care of the short-term.” He started toward her bedchamber. “What about the long haul?”
    She turned her face into his neck, breathed in his scent. “I’m making a plan for us to live happily, forever—and even after that.”
    “Happily, forever?” Deacon lifted her left hand and pressed a soft kiss to her ring finger. She heard the smile in his rough voice—and the promise. “I have no doubt we can pull it off, princess.”

Keep reading for a special preview of Meljean Brook’s next novel
    THE IRON DUKE
    Coming October 2010
from Berkley Sensation!

    London, England

    Mina hadn’t predicted that sugar would wreck the marchioness of Hartington’s ball; she’d thought the dancing would. Their hostess’s good humor had weathered them through the discovery that fewer than forty of her guests knew the steps, however, and they’d survived the first awkward quadrilles. But as the room grew warmer, the laughter louder, and the gossiping more vigorous, the refreshment table set the First Annual Victory Ball on a course for disaster.
    Which meant Mina was enjoying the event far more than she’d expected to.
    Not that it wasn’t as grand as everyone had said it would be. Despite the slowly increasing tension, the great ballroom had not begun to rip at the silk-papered seams; the restoration of Devonshire House had cost Hartington, and it showed. Candle-studded chandeliers displayed everyone to their best advantage. Discreet gas lamps highlighted the enormous paintings gracing the room but had not yet smudged the walls. Musicians played at the opposite end of the ballroom, and the violins did sound sweeter than the mechanical instruments Mina was accustomed to—and much sweeter than the hacking coughs from forty of the guests, all of them bounders.
    Two hundred years ago, when most of Europe was fleeing from the Horde’s war machines, some of the English had gone with them. But an ocean passage over the Atlantic hadn’t come cheaply, and although the families who’d abandoned England for the New World hadn’t all been aristocrats, they’d all been moneyed. After the Iron Duke had freed England from Horde control, many of them had returned to London, flaunting their titles and their gold. Now, nine years after Britain’s victory over the Horde, the aristocratic bounders had decided to hold a ball celebrating the country’s newfound freedom, though they had shed no blood to gain it. They’d charitably included all of the peers who had little to their names but their titles.
    At first glance, Mina could detect little distinction between the guests. The bounders spoke with flatter accents, and their women’s dresses exposed less skin, but everyone’s togs were at the height of New World fashion. Mina suspected, however, that forty of the guests could not begin to guess how dear those new togs were to the rest of the company.
    And they probably could not anticipate how stubborn the rest of the company could be, despite their thirst and hunger.
    At the side of the room, Mina sat with her friend and waited for the entertainment to begin. Considering her condition, Felicity might be the one to provide it. Pale blue satin covered Felicity’s hugely rounded belly, which seemed to Mina to require an enormous amount of food, not just the drink Felicity had assured her husband was all she’d needed.
    With such a belly, Mina could not see how Felicity wasn’t constantly ravenous, consuming everything in her path. If no sugarless cakes were available, she might start with the bounders.
    “If it has taken Richmond this long, he hasn’t found anything.” Beneath intricately curled blond hair that had made Mina burst into laughter when she had first seen it that evening—and who, thanks to her mother’s insistence, wore a similar style in her own black hair—Felicity’s gaze searched the crowd for her husband. With a sigh, she turned to regard her friend. “Oh, Mina. You are too amused. I doubt anyone will break into fisticuffs.”
    “They should.”
    “You think it’s an insult to supply sweet and strong lemonade? To stack cakes like towers?” Felicity rubbed her belly and looked longingly toward the towers. Mina supposed they were to have been demolished by now, symbolic of England’s victory over the Horde, but they still stood tall. “Surely, they did not realize how strongly we felt about it.”
    “Or they realized, but thought we