“In four months. She never takes a position for much longer as she trains her successor while she reorganizes the nursery. Everyone wants to secure her services.”

Everyone but Anthony. “I don’t care how good she is. Anna Thraxton is the last woman I would allow in my house. She’s stubborn, interfering, and impossibly bossy. I’d rather live in my own cellar than have her under my roof.”

“Such fervor,” Nick said, his smile wicked, “but I suppose I can understand. She’s an unforgettable woman. That rich auburn hair implies a very passionate nature.”

“Bridgeton, if you have nothing of value to contribute, then pray leave.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Sara stood, stopping only when her skirt stuck to the edge of the settee. Making a disgusted sound, she pulled the material free, then stared down at a dark splotch on the back of her skirt. “Glue.”

“Glue,” Anthony answered dully. His whole house was a series of traps and countertraps, all arranged by a set of impossible brats wanting to live elsewhere. He was tempted to let them. But the hope that he could, somehow and some way, save these few children and prove that the Elliot curse was nothing more than an illusion, kept him bound to his course. He would save them just as he himself had been saved. And by God, they’d be thankful, the whole lot of them, or he’d have something to say about it.

“Anthony,” Sara said, “Anna is the only one who can turn this mess about, and you know it.”

That was the most damnable part of it—he did know it. But he also knew what Anna Thraxton would do if she were allowed under his roof. Before she’d become a governess, forced by necessity to seek employment, she had been Sara’s best friend since boarding school. Anna had taken advantage of that relationship to tell Anthony what she thought about everything—including him. It was not an experience he desired to repeat.

Peace was all he craved, now more than ever, and Anna Thraxton was the equivalent of a twenty-four-hour display of fireworks—colorful but exhausting. Why, he wondered, did London’s finest governess have to also be London’s most irritating female? It was a damned shame.

Sara went to the door, Bridgeton following. “There is nothing I can do for you if you won’t listen to reason,” she said over her shoulder.

“Well, I won’t listen to crackbrained ideas like that. But thank you for coming, anyway.”

That put her nose out of joint. And it was with a very haughty air that Sara finally took her leave, her husband trailing in her wake, his eyes glowing with suppressed mirth.

Anthony stood at the window and watched the carriage rumble down the drive. Sara was his favorite sibling—he’d been attached to her since his stepfather had first laid the tiny bundle of baby in his arms. But her marriage to Bridgeton had changed her—happy with her wedded state, Sara was now determined to see as many of her brothers leg shackled as possible. Anthony snorted. If she thought Anna Thraxton was the answer to that problem, she was sadly mistaken.