The Sum of All Kisses

“I’m here to congratulate you.”

Hugh stared at him with unconcealed suspicion. “On what?”

His father wagged a finger at him. “Don’t be coy. I heard a rumor you were to be engaged.”

“From whom?” Hugh had only just kissed Sarah for the first time the night before. How in God’s name did his father know he’d been planning to ask her to marry him?

Lord Ramsgate flicked his hand. “I have spies everywhere.”

This Hugh did not doubt. But still . . . His eyes narrowed. “Who were you spying upon?” he asked. “Winstead or me?”

His father shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Intensely.”

“Both, I suppose. You make it so easy to kill two birds with one stone.”

“You’d do well not to use such metaphors in my presence,” Hugh said with a raised eyebrow.

“Always so literal,” Lord Ramsgate said with a tsk-tsk sound. “You never could take a joke.”

Hugh gaped at him. His father accusing him of being without humor? It was staggering.

“I am not engaged to be married,” Hugh said to him, each word a crisp and precise dart from his lips. “And I won’t be anytime in the foreseeable future. So you can pack your things and go back to whatever hell you crawled out of.”

His father chuckled at the insult, which Hugh found unnerving. Lord Ramsgate never brushed off insults. He fisted them up into tight little balls, filled them with nettles and nails, and hurled them back at the sender.

And then laughed.

“Are we done?” Hugh asked coldly.

“Why such a rush?”

Hugh gave a sick smile. “Because I detest you.”

Again, his father chuckled. “Oh, Hugh, when will you ever learn?”

Hugh said nothing.

“It doesn’t matter if you detest me. It will never matter. I’m your father.” He leaned forward with an oily grin. “You can’t be rid of me.”

“No,” Hugh said. He leveled a frank stare across the table. “But you can be rid of me.”

Lord Ramsgate’s jaw twitched. “I assume you refer to that unholy document you forced me to sign.”

“No one forced you,” Hugh said with an insolent shrug.

“You really believe that?”

“Did I place the pen in your hand?” Hugh countered. “The contract was a formality. You know that as well as I do.”

“I know no such—”

“I told you what would happen if you harm Lord Winstead,” Hugh said with deadly calm, “and that stands whether it is in writing or not.”

It was true; Hugh had had the contract drawn up and placed before his father and his solicitor because he’d wanted them to know he was serious. He’d wanted his father to sign his name—his full name and the title that meant so much to him—acknowledging all he would lose if he did not let go of his vendetta against Daniel.

“I have kept my end of the bargain,” Lord Ramsgate snarled.

“Insofar as Lord Winstead is still alive, yes.”

“I—”

“I must say,” Hugh interrupted, taking great pleasure in cutting his father off at the very first pronoun, “that I’m not asking much of you. Most people would find it rather easy to conduct their lives without killing another human being.”

“He made you a cripple,” his father hissed.

“No,” Hugh said softly, remembering that magical night on the lawn at Whipple Hill. He had waltzed. For the first time since Daniel’s bullet had torn apart his thigh, Hugh had held a woman in his arms, and he had danced.

Sarah had refused to allow him to call himself a cripple. Was that the moment he had fallen in love with her? Or was it one of a hundred moments?

“I prefer to call myself lame,” Hugh murmured. With a smile.

“What the devil is the difference?”

“If I’m a cripple, then that’s all I—” Hugh looked up. His father’s face was red, the kind of veiny, mottled red that came from too much anger, or too much drink.

“Never mind,” Hugh said. “You’d never understand.” But Hugh hadn’t understood, either. It had taken Lady Sarah Pleinsworth to make him understand the difference.

Sarah. That was who she was now. Not Lady Sarah Pleinsworth or even Lady Sarah. Just Sarah. She’d been his, and he’d lost her. And he still didn’t quite understand why.

“You underestimate yourself, son,” Lord Ramsgate said.

“You just called me a cripple,” Hugh said, “and you’re accusing me of underestimating?”

“I do not refer to your athletic ability,” his father said, “although it is true that a lady will want a husband who can ride and fence and hunt.”

“Because you’re so good at all those things,” Hugh said, dropping his gaze to his father’s paunchy middle.

“I was,” his father replied, apparently taking no offense at the insult, “and I had my pick of the litter when I decided to marry.”

Of the litter. Was that really how his father saw women?

Of course it was.

“Two daughters of dukes, three of marquesses, and one of an earl. I could have had any of them.”

“Lucky Mother,” Hugh said flatly.

“Indeed,” Lord Ramsgate said, missing the sarcasm entirely. “Her father may have been the Duke of Farringdon, but she was one of six daughters, and her dowry was not large.”

“Larger than the other duke’s daughter, I assume?” Hugh drawled.