Sara wiggled her toes once more. “I just want to visit my brother. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Nick snorted inelegantly, responding to her not-very-subtle demands by capturing her foot. His warm hands cupped her ankle as he kneaded the pad of her foot. Sara closed her eyes, almost purring as his hands made their way up her calf.

But before he could proceed further, the carriage rumbled to a halt. “Damn.” Nick sighed and released his hold.

Sara hurriedly pushed her skirts back down and thrust her feet into her shoes just as the footman opened the door.

Moments later, they were climbing the stairs to Greyley House. Surrounded by a wooded park, the house sat on a small knoll and cast a forbidding shadow across the front lawn. Large and square cut, the manor conveyed all the welcome of a mausoleum.

“It makes me yearn for Hibberton Hall,” Nick murmured.

“We won’t be long.” She was just as impatient to return home as he. She hated leaving their daughter for more than a day or two at most. The thought of little Delphi made Sara sigh. She would say what she came to say to her brother and then leave, not that Anthony would pay any attention. He rarely did. Still, it was her duty as his sister to keep a watchful eye on him and to offer advice. Whether he wanted it or not.

She and Nick had just reached the top step when the door opened and a horse-faced woman dressed in a sturdy traveling pelisse stomped onto the portico. A bandaged dog was tucked under her arm, a flowered bandbox dangling from her fingers.

Her clothing proclaimed her a step above a practical servant, but the state of her coiffure made Sara pause. The woman’s long, dull blond hair tangled to one side, a mass of feathers seeming to grow from the lump.

Jenkins, Greyley’s most proper butler, followed hard on the woman’s heels. “Miss Turner, pray reconsider. They were only teasing—”

Miss Turner whirled to face the butler. “Teasing? Were they teasing when they rubbed poor Fanny with catnip and then locked him in the loft? That orange tabby in the barn frightened him so badly he nearly had a seizure.”

“It was never proven that the children—”

“Are you suggesting that my sweet little dog opened the window in my room, climbed down a trellis from two stories up, and locked himself inside the barn loft?”

Sara’s glance slid to the nearly bald dog. He was as fat as a stuffed hen, his legs splayed in a most unattractive way. He truly was an ugly specimen. As if aware of her thoughts, the dog turned his bulging eyes toward her and lifted a lip to display crooked, yellowed teeth.

“Miss Turner,” Jenkins entreated. “If you’ll just listen! I’m certain your beloved Fanny is an excellent dog. But His Lordship was most insistent you stay for the contracted length of time.”

“Not for a hundred pounds!” Miss Turner descended the stairs at high speed, her chin so high, she didn’t see either Nick or Sara standing to one side.