“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.

“I should think you would be grateful,” Lord Ramsgate said. “Isn’t she what you wanted?”

“Not like this,” Hugh ground out.

“I’ll have the two of you locked up tight in here for at least an hour,” his father continued. “She’ll be compromised in full whether you do the deed or not.” Lord Ramsgate leaned over and leered. “All will be well. You will get what you want, and I will get what I want.”

“What about what she wants?”

Lord Ramsgate quirked a brow, then cocked his head to the side, then shrugged. Apparently that would be all the thought he would give to Sarah’s hopes and dreams. “She will be grateful,” he decided. He started to say something more, but then stopped, tilting his head to better aim his ear toward the door. “I do believe she’s arrived,” he murmured.

Hugh didn’t hear anything, but sure enough, a moment later an insistent knock sounded at the door.

Hugh pulled furiously against his bonds. He wanted Sarah Pleinsworth; dear Lord, he wanted her with everything that he was. He wanted to stand up with her before God and man, slide his ring onto her finger, and pledge his eternal devotion. He wanted to take her to bed and with his body show her everything that was in his heart, and he wanted to cherish her as she grew heavy with their child.

But he would not steal these things from her. She had to want them, as well.