She grinned. But all things considered, she ought to stop with the vestigial toe business. It would be just her luck if she ended up giving birth to a baby with an extra digit.

“Am I interrupting?” Hugh asked.

“Of course not,” Harriet said with great enthusiasm. “Sarah is reading, and I am writing.”

“So I am interrupting.”

“No,” Harriet blurted out. She looked to Sarah for help, but Sarah saw no reason to intercede.

“I don’t need quiet to write,” Harriet explained.

His brows rose in question. “Didn’t you ask your sisters not to chatter in the carriage?”

“Oh, that’s different.” And then, before anyone might inquire how, Harriet turned to Hugh and asked, “Won’t you sit down and join us?”

He gave a polite nod and came into the room. Sarah watched as he made his way around a wingback chair. He was depending on his cane more heavily than usual; she could see it in his gait. She frowned, then remembered that he had rushed all the way down from his room the night before. Without his cane.

She waited until he took a seat at the other side of the sofa, then quietly asked, “Is your leg bothering you?”

“Just a little.” He set his cane down and idly rubbed the muscle. Sarah wondered if he even noticed when he did that.

Harriet suddenly shot to her feet. “I just remembered something,” she blurted out.

“What?” Sarah asked.

“It’s . . . ehrm . . . something about . . . Frances!”

“What about Frances?”

“Oh, nothing much, really, just . . .” She shuffled her papers together and grabbed the whole sheaf, folding a few sheets in the process.

“Careful there,” Hugh warned.

Harriet looked at him blankly.

“You’re crumpling,” he said, motioning to the paper.

“Oh! Right. All the more reason I should leave.” She took a sideways step to the door, and then another. “So I’ll be on my way . . .”

Sarah and Hugh both turned to watch her depart, but despite all of her protestations, she seemed to be hovering by the door.

“Did you need to find Frances?” Sarah asked.

“Yes.” Harriet rolled to her toes, came back down again, and said, “Right. Good-bye, then.” And she finally left.

Sarah and Hugh looked at each other for several seconds before chuckling.

“What was that ab—,” he started to say.

“Sorry!” Harriet called out, dashing back into the room. “I forgot one thing.” She ran over to the desk, picked up absolutely nothing that Sarah could see (although to be fair, Sarah did not have a clean line of sight), and hurried out, closing the door behind her.

Sarah’s mouth fell open.

“What is it?”

“That little minx. She just pretended to have forgotten something so she could shut the door.”

Hugh quirked a brow. “This bothers you?”