“Does Anyone Here Speak Russian?” the Duke Asked — His Little Girl Pointed at the Maid Serving Coffee
Chapter 13
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"And no one," the Duke said at last, "in all these years, ever asked you what you were doing behind a counter in Birchin Lane with Russian and French and an English Embankment voice?""Nobody asks the coffee girl anything, Your Grace," Anna said, "except for more coffee."He told her things, too, though she suspected he had told them to no one else: about the snowbound posting house in Prussia where he had decided to leave his daughter behind until the roads were safe, and the years that had gone by after that—one, and then two, and then four."I told myself it was for her," he said. "It was, mostly. But part of it was that every time I looked at her, I saw her mother's face, and I could not bear it. And then she was a stranger, and I was afraid of her. A grown man, afraid of a child of six.""I don't think you are afraid of her anymore," Anna said."No." He looked across the long room at her. "No, I am afraid of something quite different now."She did not ask him what. She picked up the stocking again, and her needle went in and out very fast, and she did not look up until she heard him say good night in very bad Russian, and go out past the dozing footman.But she lay awake a long time that night, listening to the child breathe through the wall and telling herself sternly and repeatedly that she was a coffee girl from Birchin Lane, that he was the Duke of Ashkam, that he was all but promised to Lady Cressida Hale, and that the only thing more foolish than what she was beginning to feel would be to let him see it.On the eighth morning, the Duke walked into the nursery, knelt down by his daughter's chair, and said:"Dobroye utro, dochka. Good morning, little daughter. Did you sleep well?"His accent was still dreadful, but every word was in the right place, and Sonia stared at him with her spoon halfway to her mouth. And then she answered him slowly and carefully, the way you would speak to a very large and very well-meaning dog, and he understood her. Anna saw him understand her. She saw his whole face change.Sonia had slept well. She had dreamed that Martha came over the sea on a ship made of gingerbread. She would like, please, to go and see the horses.So they went to see the horses. And then, because the October sun was out and the Duke had apparently decided that afternoon to stop caring what anybody thought, they walked across Park Lane into Hyde Park.