Hugh, on the other hand, was ready to spit nails.
“I’d hoped you’d be further along with your courtship by now,” Lord Ramsgate said, pausing to turn a page in his newspaper. “When did it all start, again? Oh, yes, that night at Fensmore. With Lady Danbury. God, she’s an old bat.”
Hugh felt ill. “How do you know this?”
Lord Ramsgate held up his hand and rubbed his fingers together. “I have people in my employ.”
“Who?”
Lord Ramsgate cocked his head, as if he was debating the wisdom of revealing this information. Then he shrugged and said, “Your valet. Might as well tell you. You would have figured it out.”
Hugh stared at the ceiling in queasy shock. “He’s been with me for two years.”
“Anyone can be bribed.” The marquess lowered the newspaper and peered over the top. “Have I taught you nothing?”
Hugh took a breath and tried to remain calm. “You need to untie me right now.”
“Not yet.” Lord Ramsgate picked up the newspaper again. “Oh, bloody hell, this wasn’t ironed.” He set the paper back down and irritably inspected his hands, now streaked with black ink. “I hate travel.”
“I must return to Whipple Hill,” Hugh said in as reasonable a voice as he could muster.
“Really?” The marquess smiled blandly. “Because I heard you were leaving.”
Hugh’s fingers curled into claws. His father was disturbingly well informed.
“I received a note from your valet while you were indisposed,” Lord Ramsgate continued. “He wrote that you’d told him to pack your things. This concerns me, I must say.”
Hugh yanked against his bonds, but they did not slip even a hairsbreadth. His father clearly knew his knots.
“I hope it won’t be much longer.” Lord Ramsgate stood, walked over to a small basin, and dunked his hands. He picked up a small white cloth, then looked over his shoulder at Hugh to say, “We’re just waiting for the lovely Lady Sarah to arrive.”
Hugh gaped at him. “What did you say?”
His father dried his hands with meticulous precision, then pulled out his pocket watch and snapped it open. “Soon, I should think.” He glanced over at Hugh with an unnervingly mild expression. “Your man will have informed her by now of your whereabouts.”
“Why the bloody hell are you so certain she will come here?” Hugh snarled. But he sounded desperate. He could hear it in his own voice, and it terrified him.
“I’m not,” his father replied. “But I’m hopeful.” He glanced over at Hugh. “You should be, too. God only knows how long you’ll be stuck in that bed if she doesn’t.”
Hugh shut his eyes and groaned. How on earth had he let his father get the best of him? “What was on that cloth?” he demanded. He still felt dizzy. And tired, as if he’d just run a mile at top speed. No, not that. He wasn’t breathless, just—
His lungs felt shallow. Deflated. He didn’t know how else to explain it.
Hugh repeated his question, his voice rising with impatience. “What was on that cloth?”
“Eh? Oh, that. Oil of sweet vitriol. Clever stuff, isn’t it?”
Hugh blinked against the dots still swimming before his eyes. Clever was not quite the word he would have chosen.
“She’s not going to come to the White Hart,” Hugh said, trying to keep his voice dismissive. Derisive. Anything that might lead his father to doubt the efficacy of his plan.
“Of course she will,” Lord Ramsgate said. “She loves you, although God only knows why.”
“Your paternal tenderness never ceases to amaze me.” Hugh gave his bindings a little yank to further illustrate the point.
“Wouldn’t you go to her if she’d run off to an inn?”
“That’s completely different,” Hugh snapped.
Lord Ramsgate just smiled.
“You do realize that there are countless reasons why this will not work,” Hugh said, trying to sound reasonable.
His father glanced over at him.
“It’s pouring, for one,” Hugh improvised, trying to motion to the window with his head. “She’d have to be mad to go out in this.”
“You did.”
“You didn’t leave me much choice,” Hugh said in a tight voice. “And furthermore, Lady Sarah has no reason to worry over my coming here to see you.”
“Oh, come now,” his father scoffed. “Our mutual distaste is no secret. I daresay everyone knows of it by now.”
“Our mutual distaste, yes,” Hugh said, aware that his words were spilling too quickly from his lips. “But she does not know how deep the enmity goes.”
“You did not tell Lady Sarah of our”—Lord Ramsgate sneered—“contract?”
“Of course not,” Hugh lied. “Do you think she’d accept my suit if she knew?”
His father considered that for a moment, then said, “All the more reason to carry out my plan.”
“Which is?”
“Ensuring your marriage, of course.”
“By tying me to a bed?”
His father smiled smugly. “And allowing her to be the one to release you.”
“You are mad,” Hugh whispered, but to his horror, he felt something stirring in his loins. The thought of Sarah, bending over him, crawling over him to reach the knot around the bedpost . . .
He clamped his eyes shut, trying to think of tortoises, and fisheyes, and the fat vicar in the village where he’d grown up. Anything but Sarah. Anything but Sarah.