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.”