"Send a message to the stables, Jessup. I want the black saddled and ready in twenty minutes."

"Very good, my lord."

The butler turned to relay the message to a footman as Julian strode across the black-and-white marble-tiled hall and up the massive red-carpeted staircase.

Julian paid little attention to his grand surroundings. Although he had been raised there, he had cared little for Ravenwood Abbey since the early days of his marriage to Elizabeth. Once he had felt the same possessive pride toward the house as he did toward the fertile lands that surrounded it but now he only experienced a vague distaste toward his ancestral home. Every time he walked into a room he wondered if this was yet another chamber in which he had been cuckolded.

His land was quite a different matter. No woman could taint the good, rich fields of Ravenwood or his other estates. A man could count on the land. If he took care of it, he would be amply rewarded. To preserve the lands for future Earls of Ravenwood, Julian was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice: he would marry again.

He hoped the act of installing another wife there would scrub some of the lingering traces of Elizabeth out of the Abbey and most especially out of the oppressively lush, exotically sensuous bedchamber she had once made her own. Julian hated that room. He had not stepped foot in it since Elizabeth 's death.

One thing was for certain, he told himself as he climbed the stairs, he would not make the same mistakes with a new bride as he had made with his first. Never again would he play the part of a fly in a spider's web.

Fifteen minutes later Julian came back down the stairs dressed for riding. He was not surprised to find the black stallion he had named Angel ready and waiting. He had taken it for granted that the horse would be at the door when he was. Everyone in the household took care to anticipate the master of Ravenwood. No one in his right mind wanted to do anything that might invoke the devil's wrath. Julian went down the steps and vaulted into the saddle.