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evening. I doubt he even remembers. He kept looking over my shoulder
    the whole time to see who was dancing with his precious Elizabeth."
    "Don't fret yourself about the first Lady Ravenwood. She's gone and no loss,"
    Lord Dorring said with his usual straightforward attitude in such matters. "Take
    my advice, young lady. Refrain from provoking Ravenwood and you'll get on quite
    well with him. Don't expect more from him than is reasonable and he'll be a good
    husband to you. The man looks after his land and he'll look after his wife. He
    takes care of his own."
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    Her grandfather was undoubtedly right, Sophy decided later that night as she lay
    awake in bed. She was reasonably certain that if she refrained from provoking
    him excessively, Ravenwood would probably be no worse than most husbands. In any
    event, she was not likely to see much of him. During the course of her single
    season in town she had learned that husbands and wives of the ton tended to live
    separate lives.
    That would be to her advantage she told herself stoutly. She had interests of
    her own to pursue. As Ravenwood's wife she would have time and opportunity to
    make her investigations on behalf of poor Amelia. One day, Sophy vowed, she
    would succeed in tracking down the man who had seduced and abandoned her sister.
    During the past three years Sophy had managed to follow Old Bess's advice for
    the most part and put her sister's death behind her. Her initial rage had slowly
    settled into a bleak acceptance. After all, trapped in the country, there was
    little hope of finding and confronting the unknown man responsible.
    But things would be different if she married the Earl.
    Restlessly Sophy pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed. She padded
    barefoot across the threadbare carpet and opened the small jewelry case that sat
    on the dressing table. It was easy to reach inside and find the black metal ring
    without the aid of a candle. She had handled it often enough to recognize it by
    touch. Her fingers closed around it.
    The ring lay cold and hard in her hand as she drew it out of the case. Against
    her palm she could feel the impression of the strange triangular design embossed
    on its surface.
    Sophy hated the ring. She had found it clutched in her sister's hand the night
    Amelia had taken the overdose of laudanum. Sophy had known then that the black
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    ring belonged to the man who had seduced her beautiful fair-haired sister and
    gotten her with child—the lover Amelia had refused to name. One of the few
    things Sophy had deduced for certain was that the man had been one of Lady
    Ravenwood's lovers.
    The other thing of which Sophy was almost certain was that her sister and the
    unknown man had used the ruins of an old Norman castle on Ravenwood land for
    their secret rendezvous. Sophy had been fond of sketching the ancient pile of
    stone until she had found one of Amelia's handkerchiefs there. She had
    discovered it a few weeks after her sister's death. After that fateful day,
    Sophy had never returned to the scenic ruin.
    What better way to find out the identity of the man who had caused Amelia to
    kill herself than to become the new Lady Ravenwood?
    Sophy's hand clenched around the ring for a moment and then she dropped it back
    into the jewelry chest. It was just as well she had a rational, sensible,
    realistic reason for marrying the Earl of Ravenwood because her other reason for
    marrying him was likely to prove a wild, fruitless quest.
    For she intended to try to teach the devil to love again.
    Julian sprawled with negligent grace in the well-sprung traveling coach and
    regarded his new Countess with a critical eye. He had seen very little of Sophy
    during the past few weeks. He had told himself there had been no need to make an
    excessive number of trips from London to Hampshire. He had