Rut the problem had been resolved when Sophy had come across a key buried at the back of a desk drawer in the library. On a hunch she had tried her discovery on the locked door and found that it worked perfectly. She had investigated Elizabeth's old bedchamber with deep curiosity.

She had decided immediately that she would not move in until it had been completely cleaned and aired. She could not bring herself to occupy it in its present condition. It had apparently been left untouched since Elizabeth's death.

When Lord and Lady Dorring eventually took their leave after dinner, Sophy discovered she was exhausted. She went wearily up to the room she was using and allowed her maid to prepare her for bed.

"Thank you, Mary." Sophy delicately patted away a yawn. "I seem to be very tired tonight."

"Hardly surprisin' m'lady, after all the work you've been doin' around here. You ought to take it easy, if you don't mind my sayin' so. His lordship won't be pleased if he finds out you've been workin' yourself to the bone what with you carryin' the baby and all."

Sophy's eyes widened. "How did you know about the baby?"

Mary grinned unabashedly. "Ain't no secret, ma'am. I've been lookin' after you long enough now to know certain things ain't occurred on schedule. Congratulations, if I may say so. Have you told his lordship the good news yet? He'll be pleased as pie."

Sophy sighed. "Yes, Mary, he knows."

"I'll wager that's why he sent us back to the country, then. He wouldn't want you in that filthy London air while you're breedin'. His lordship's the type who looks after his female folk."

"Yes he is, isn't he? Go on to bed, Mary. I am going to read for a while."

There were few secrets in a large household and Sophy knew it. Still, she had thought to keep her precious one about the baby quiet a while longer. She was still adjusting to the idea of being pregnant with Julian's child.

"Very good, ma'am. Shall I take Cook the ointment you promised her for her hands?"

"The ointment. Oh, dear, I nearly forgot." Sophy went quickly to her medicine chest. "I must remember to visit Old Bess tomorrow and get some fresh supplies. I did not trust the freshness of the herbs the London apothecaries stocked."

"Yes, ma'am. Well, good night, then, ma'am," Mary said as Sophy put the container of ointment into her hand. "Cook'll be grateful."

"Good night, Mary."

Sophy watched the door close behind her maid and then she wandered restlessly over to the shelf that contained her books. She really was very tired but now that she was ready for bed she did not feel like sleeping.

But she did not feel like reading, either, she discovered as she flipped idly through a few pages of Byron's latest effort, The Giaour. She had purchased the volume a few days before Julian had sent her into the country and she had been eager to read it. It said a great deal about her present mood that she was now unable to work up a ready interest in the poet's latest tale of adventure and intrigue in the exotic Orient.

Turning aside from her books, her eye fell on the small jewelry case on her dressing table. The black ring was no longer in it but every time she looked at the case, Sophy thought of it and fretted a little over her thwarted plans to find Amelia's seducer.

Then she touched her still-flat belly and shuddered. There was no way she could carry out her detecting project now. She could never bring herself to put Julian's life in jeopardy because of her own desire for vengeance. He was the father of her child and she was irrevocably in love with him. Even if that had not been the case, she would have had no right to let another take risks for the sake of her own personal honor.

A part of her wondered at the ease with which she had abandoned her quest. She had been distraught and furious at the time but she was not nearly so angry now. Indeed, she suspected she was experiencing a small, niggling sense of relief. There was no doubt but that other matters were taking precedence in her life again and deep inside she longed to be able to give them her full attention.

I am carrying Julian's child.

It was still difficult to believe but each day the notion became more and more real. Julian wanted this baby, she reminded herself, on a wave of hope. Perhaps it would help strengthen the bond she sometimes allowed herself to believe was growing between them.

Sophy moved around the room, still unusually restless. She eyed the bed once more, telling herself she ought to climb into it and get some sleep and then she thought of the room down the hall, the one she planned to move into as soon as possible.

On impulse Sophy picked up a candle, opened her door and went down the dark hall to the bedchamber that had once belonged to Elizabeth. She had been inside once or twice and did not find it pleasant. It was decorated with a bold sensuality that, to Sophy's taste, was unseemly.

The underlying theme of the room had obviously been heavily influenced by a taste for chinoiserie but it had gone far beyond the normal standards of the style into a realm of dark, lush, overwhelming eroticism. When Sophy had first glanced into the bedchamber she had thought it a room ruled by the night. There was a strange, unwholesome quality about the place. She and Mrs. Ashkettle had not tarried long after getting the door open.

Holding the candle in one hand, Sophy opened the door now and found that, even though she was prepared for it, the chamber affected her again in the same way it had earlier. Heavy velvet drapes kept out all light, even that of the moon.

The designs on the black-and-green lacquer furniture were probably supposed to represent exotic, iridescent dragons but the creatures looked very much like writhing snakes to Sophy. The bed was a thickly draped monstrosity with huge clawed feet and a smothering layer of pillows. Dark wallpaper covered the walls.

It was a room that a man such as Lord Byron with his penchant for sensual melodrama might have found exciting, Sophy reflected, but one in which Julian must have felt uneasy and unwelcome.

A dragon seemed to snarl in the candlelight as Sophy moved past a tall lacquer chest of drawers. Lurid, evil-looking flowers patterned a nearby table.

Sophy shuddered with distaste and tried to imagine the room as it would be when she was finished with it. The first thing she would do was replace the furniture and the drapes. There were several pieces in storage that would go nicely in here.

Yes, Julian must have disliked this room intensely, Sophy thought. It was definitely not done in his style at all. She had learned he favored clean, elegant, classic lines.

But, then, this had not been his room, she reminded herself. It had been Elizabeth's temple of passion, the place where she had spun her silken webs and lured men into them.

Compelled by a deep, morbid curiosity, Sophy wandered about the chamber, opening drawers and wardrobe doors. There were no personal effects left. Apparently Julian had ordered the room emptied of Elizabeth's belongings before he had locked it for the last time.

It was not until she casually opened the last of a series of tiny drawers in a lacquer chest that Sophy found the small, bound volume. She stared uneasily at it for a long moment before she opened the cover and saw that it was Elizabeth's journal.

Sophy could not stop herself. Setting the candle on the table, she picked up the small book and began to read.

Two hours later she knew why Elizabeth had been near the pond on the night of her death.

"She came to you that night, did she not, Bess?" Sophy, seated on the small bench outside the old woman's thatched cottage, did not look up as she sorted through both fresh and dried herbs.

Bess heaved a deep sigh, her eyes mere slits in her wrinkled face. "So ye know, do ye? Aye, lass. She came to me, poor woman. She was beside herself that night, she was. How did ye discover that she was here?"

"I found her journal last night in her room."

"Bah. The little fool." Bess shook her head in disgust. "This business o' the ladies o' the quality scribblin' everythin' down in their little journals is dangerous. I hope ye don't go in for it."

"No." Sophy smiled. "I do not keep a diary. I sometimes make notes about my reading, but nothing more. It is all I can do to keep up with my correspondence."

"For years I've always said no good'll ever come of teachin' so many people readin' and writin'," Bess stated. "The real important knowledge don't come out of books. Comes from payin' attention to what's around and about us and what's in here." She tapped her ample bosom in the region of her heart.

"That may be true but unfortunately not all of us have your instincts for that kind of knowledge, Bess. And many of us lack your memory. For us, being able to read and write is the only solution."

"Tweren't no good solution for the first Countess, was it? She put her secrets down in her little book and now ye know them."

"Maybe Elizabeth wrote down her secrets because she hoped that someday someone would find them and read them," Sophy said thoughtfully. "Maybe she took a sort of pride in her wickedness."

Bess shook her head. "More'n likely the poor woman could nay help herself. Maybe the writin' was her way o' leeching some of the poison out of her blood from time to time.

"Lord knows there was a poison of some kind in her veins." Sophy remembered the entries, some jubilant, some obscene, some vindictive, and some tragic that recorded Elizabeth's affairs. "We'll never know for certain." Sophy was silent for a moment as she sealed herbs in a series of small pouches. The late afternoon sunlight felt good on her shoulders and the smells of the woods around Bess's cottage were very sweet and soothing after the air of London.