“Does Anyone Here Speak Russian?” the Duke Asked — His Little Girl Pointed at the Maid Serving Coffee
Chapter 8
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"And then... and then the second winter after Sonia came, there was to be another child, and he came too early in the worst of the frost, and they were both gone within the week." He said it plainly, the way soldiers say things. "Sonia was two. She went round the house for a month afterwards, looking behind the curtains, because she thought her mama was playing at hide-and-seek."And then my brother broke his neck in the hunting field, and my father followed him inside a month, and I was the Duke of Ashkam, with a war and the whole of Europe between me and my own child.""She told me you wrote every month."He looked up sharply."She said that her grandmother read your letters aloud to her. Sonia says they were very dull." Anna allowed herself the smallest of smiles. "Mostly about the weather in Wiltshire and the price of wool. But her grandmother told her that a man who writes about wool every month for four years to a little girl who cannot read must love her very much, because nobody else on earth could bear to read about wool."For a moment, the Duke of Ashkam did not seem able to speak. Then, astonishingly, he laughed. It was a short, cracked, helpless sound, as if it had been a long time since he had last made it."The old Princess said that? So Sonia tells me. She hated me. She thought I had stolen her daughter and then let her die." He shook his head slowly. "Miss Fenwick, I owe you a debt I do not know how to pay.""You owe me nothing, Your Grace. You can ask her yourself tomorrow what she would like for her breakfast, and I'll tell you what she says."The next morning, he did. He came into the nursery at 8:00 in a dark blue coat, sat down at the little painted table—which was far too small for him, with his knees somewhere up near his chin—and asked his daughter, through Anna, what she wished to eat.Sonia told him: "Kasha."He asked her whether she had slept. She told him she had dreamed of Martha. He asked her whether she liked her room. She told him the wallpaper had birds on it, and she did not care for birds because they stared at her.The Duke had the wallpaper changed that same afternoon.The Dowager did not come to the nursery at all. Instead, on the third day, she sent for Anna.She received her in a small sitting room at the back of the house, all yellow silk and porcelain shepherdesses, and she did not ask her to sit down."You will understand, Miss Fenwick, that your position in this house is that of a servant engaged for a particular purpose.""Yes, Your Grace.""The purpose is to teach my granddaughter English. She is the daughter of an English duke. She will be presented one day at the Queen's drawing room. She cannot go about babbling in a language that half the servants think belongs to the devil and the other half think is a kind of sneeze." The Dowager arranged a fold of her dove-gray skirt. "You will speak to her in English. You will speak Russian only when it cannot be avoided, and never in front of company. Within a month, I expect her to be able to say good morning to me like a Christian. Is that understood?"