“Does Anyone Here Speak Russian?” the Duke Asked — His Little Girl Pointed at the Maid Serving Coffee
Chapter 10
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Anna looked down at her own hands. They were red at the knuckles from six years of hot pots and washing soda, and there was a brown stain along the side of one finger that no scrubbing had ever shifted. She had never been ashamed of them before. She was ashamed of them now, standing on a carpet that had cost more than Pello's whole house, and she hated that she was."Come here, Lady Sophia," Cressida said in the voice people keep for small dogs. "Come and see what I have brought you."She had brought a doll. It was a beautiful doll with a porcelain face and real golden ringlets and a blue silk gown exactly like the one Cressida had worn to Almack's in May, and she held it out at arm's length. Sonia looked at the doll, and then at the lady, and then she put her face into the back of Anna's knee and would not come out again."She is shy with strangers, my lady," Anna said. "She will come to you in a little while.""Shy?" Cressida laughed. "She is not shy. She has been taught to cling. They cling, you know, Felix—children brought up by servants. It is the first thing one must break them of." She set the doll down on the sofa beside her, quite carelessly, face down among the cushions. "Pour the tea, would you, Miss... I'm so sorry, I have forgotten your name. Felix only ever calls you the coffee girl.""Fenwick, my lady.""Pour the tea, Miss Fenwick. I'm sure you are wonderfully practiced."It was not her place to pour tea in the drawing room. There was a footman for that, standing by the door with his eyes fixed on the carpet. But the Dowager said nothing. And so Anna crossed to the table and poured, with Sonia still holding a fistful of her skirt, and her hands did not shake."Oh, beautifully done," said Cressida. "Not a drop, Felix! Didn't I say she would be good at it? It must be such a comfort to you, Duchess, to have someone in the house who really knows how to pour."She took her cup, sipped, and turned to her brother and said in rapid, careless French—the kind of French that is meant for the room and not for the servant in it:"Of course, she's pretty enough in a common way. But did you ever see such a gown? I suppose Ashkam found her under the counter with the cups. Mama says he's quite capable of keeping her somewhere in Chelsea after the wedding, you know. Men do."Felix laughed into his tea.Anna set the pot down very gently on its stand."Forgive me, my lady," she said in French that was rather better than Cressida's, with the soft Petersburg vowels her governess had drilled into her for eight years, "but Lady Sophia understands French. Her grandmother spoke it to her every evening at supper. I don't believe she followed all of that, but I would not like her to have followed any of it."