“He shot you.”

“I shot him first.”

“In the shoulder.”

Hugh clenched his teeth. Arguing with his father had always been exhausting, and he was far overdue for his laudanum. “It was my fault,” he bit out.

“I don’t care,” the marquess said. “He left on his own two feet. You’re a cripple who may not even be able to sire children now.”

Hugh felt his eyes grow wide with alarm. He had been shot in the leg. The leg.

“Didn’t think of that, did you?” his father taunted. “That bullet hit an artery. It’s a miracle you didn’t bleed to death. The doctor thinks your leg got enough blood to survive, but God only knows about the rest of you.” He yanked the door open and tossed his last statement over his shoulder. “Winstead has ruined my life. I can bloody well ruin his.”

The full extent of Hugh’s injuries would not become known for several months. His femur healed. Somewhat.

His muscle slowly knit back together. What was left of it.

On the bright side, all signs pointed toward his still being able to father a child.

Not that he wanted to. Or perhaps more to the point, not that he’d been presented with an opportunity.

But when his father inquired . . . or, rather, demanded . . . or, rather, yanked off the bedsheets in the presence of some German doctor Hugh would not have wanted to come across in a dark alley . . .

Hugh pulled the covers right back up, feigned mortal embarrassment, and let his father think he’d been irreparably damaged.

And the whole time, throughout the entire excruciating recuperation, Hugh was confined to his father’s house, trapped in bed, and forced to endure daily ministrations from a nurse whose special brand of care brought to mind Attila the Hun.

She looked like him, too. Or at least she had a face that Hugh imagined would be at home on Attila. The truth was, the comparison wasn’t very complimentary.

To Attila.

But Attila the nurse, however rough and crude she might be, was still preferable to Hugh’s father, who came by every day at four in the afternoon, brandy in hand (just one; none for Hugh), with the latest news on his hunt for Daniel Smythe-Smith.

And every day, at four-oh-one in the afternoon, Hugh asked his father to stop.

Just stop.

But of course he didn’t. Lord Ramsgate vowed to hunt Daniel until one of them was dead.

Eventually Hugh was well enough to leave Ramsgate House. He didn’t have much money—just his gambling winnings from back when he gambled—but he had enough to hire a valet and take a small apartment in The Albany, which was well known as the premier building in London for gentlemen of exceptional birth and unexceptional fortune.

He taught himself to walk again. He needed a cane for any real distance, but he could make it the length of a ballroom on his own two feet.