“Does Anyone Here Speak Russian?” the Duke Asked — His Little Girl Pointed at the Maid Serving Coffee
Chapter 15
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
"You have a name! You have a daughter who will need to be married one day to someone who does not laugh at her father in the clubs!" For the first time, the Dowager's voice moved. "I am not a fool. I see what is happening. That girl is clever, and she is good with the child, and I dare say she has been very badly used by the world. But she is a coffee girl from Birchin Lane, and you are the Duke of Ashkam. And there is no bridge between those two things that a man of your rank can walk across without falling off it.""There is one," said the Duke without turning round."And what is that?""My daughter."The Dowager looked at her son's back for a long moment. Then she went out, closed the door very quietly behind her, and went straight upstairs to the blue room next to the nursery.The Dowager did not sit down. She stood in the doorway in her dove-gray silk and looked at the coffee girl, who had risen so quickly that her sewing basket had gone over."I will be plain with you, Miss Fenwick, because I think you are a young woman who prefers it.""Yes, Your Grace.""You know that my son's engagement to Lady Cressida is to be announced at the Arsenyev dinner on Saturday. When Lady Sophia's nurse arrives on the next ship, the child will not need an interpreter. I have found you a place with a clergyman's widow in Bath who wants a companion with French. It is a respectable house, and I am prepared to make you a gift on the day you leave of a sum that will keep you comfortable for some years."She named it. It was more than Robert Fenwick had earned in five years on the English Embankment."You will go on Monday. You will tell my granddaughter yourself, in her own language, as kindly as you can, and you will not see my son again."Through the wall, Anna could hear Sonia in the nursery telling a long story to her wooden horse."I will go on Monday, Your Grace," she said.The Dowager inclined her head."But I will not take your money." Anna's voice was low and perfectly steady. "I did not come to this house to be paid. I came because a little girl asked me not to go away. I will tell her I am going, and it will be the hardest thing I have ever done, and I will do it properly. But I will not be paid for it. And I will not be paid to stay away from him either, because I would stay away from him without it. I know what I am, Your Grace. I have known it every hour since I walked through your front door. You do not need to buy it from me."The Dowager looked at her for a long, strange moment. Then she said, "No. I see that I do not." And went away.Anna told Sonia the next morning at breakfast, as gently as she knew how, kneeling by the little chair with her arms around her, in the language of the child's mother: that Martha was coming on the next ship, that Papa could speak to her now, that Grandmama loved her in her own stiff way, and that Anna had to go and live somewhere else, a long way off by the sea.