“Does Anyone Here Speak Russian?” the Duke Asked — His Little Girl Pointed at the Maid Serving Coffee
Chapter 6
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Anna had never once gone in at the front door of such a house. She went in at the front door of this one because the Duke was holding it open for her, and stopped dead on the threshold.The hall was enormous. Black and white marble ran away from her feet like a chessboard. A staircase rose in a great white curve to a landing hung with portraits of men in armor.And on that staircase, halfway down, one hand on the rail, stood a woman in dove-gray silk, with a lace cap on her silver hair and a face like a closed door."Edmund," said the Dowager Duchess of Ashkam. "What is this?""This is Miss Fenwick, Mama. She speaks Russian. Sonia is asleep, as you see, for the first time in nine days."The Dowager came down three more steps and looked at Anna. She looked at the apron, the scorch mark, the darned blue gown, the cheap shawl, the red hands. She took a very long time about it."Where did you find her?""At Pello's coffee house in Birchin Lane.""A coffee house." The Dowager said it the way another woman might have said "a sewer." "You have brought a girl from a coffee house into this house, through that door, in front of the servants, carrying my granddaughter.""I have brought the only person in London who could make your granddaughter stop screaming," said the Duke evenly. "Through the door I happened to be standing at."The Dowager's eyes did not leave Anna's face."Felix Hale has already been here. He came straight from the city in a hackney. He was very amusing about it. By dinner, it will be in every drawing room in Mayfair that the Duke of Ashkam went down on his knees in a coffee house in front of the whole Baltic trade." Her voice did not rise at all. "Lady Cressida will hear of it before the soup.""Then Lady Cressida will hear of it.""Edmund." For the first time, something moved in the Dowager's face. "Your father gave his word to Thursby. The engagement is all but announced. You are thirty-four years old, and you have no son. I will not have that girl's name said in the same breath as yours.""Nobody is saying her name, Mama. They are saying mine." He turned to the housekeeper, who had been hovering by the green baize door with her keys. "Mrs. Dunston, Miss Fenwick will have the blue room next to the nursery. She will take her meals with Lady Sophia. She is to have whatever she asks for.""The blue room," said the Dowager, "is a guest room.""Then she will be a guest."There was a silence in the hall. Two footmen became very interested in the plasterwork on the ceiling."She will use the back stairs," said the Dowager at last, and turned and went up the great white staircase without another word.Anna stood on the cold marble with the sleeping child in her arms, and understood quite clearly that she had made an enemy before she had taken off her shawl.