"Translate for Her, She's Only the Nursemaid," the Countess Said — The Ambassador Bowed to Her
Chapter 4
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By the time the lamps were lit, Natasha had laughed twice.Lady Honoria came up at 9:00 in a gown that had been made for being looked at, to say that the Duke of Calderwood had dined with Papa and the Count and was staying to take wine, and that Mama thought it very promising. She found the nursemaid sitting on the edge of the sixth bed."You needn't say 'o-o' at it in that gibberish," said Lady Honoria. "It is only a few words, I suppose, picked up from somewhere. Mama says it is unwholesome for the others. Speak English to it, and it will learn as servants do.""Yes, Lady Honoria," said Theodora."And it is to be called Natalia, not whatever that was.""Yes, Lady Honoria."When the door had shut, Theodora waited until the candle on the landing had gone away. Then she sang, as she sang every night, low enough not to carry. She sang the old one, the one Avdotya had sung, which begins: Bayu, bayushki, bayu. Hush, little one, hush.Louisa was asleep before the second verse. Frances put her book down. Rupert, who claimed he was too old for singing, lay very still and listened. Perry breathed through his mouth. And Natasha, in the sixth bed, turned her face into the pillow and wept, quietly this time—the way children weep when something they thought was lost has come back. And then she slept.Theodora went out onto the nursery stairs to fetch the water jug and found a man standing three steps down in the dark. He was tall, and he was not moving, and for one terrible second she thought he was the Earl."I beg your pardon," said the Duke of Calderwood. "I was shown the wrong staircase. I did not mean to listen.""Your Grace." She curtsied with the jug in her hands.He did not go. He said after a moment, "I heard that song once in Vienna. A Russian officer's wife sang it to a baby in a carriage waiting outside the Hofburg in the snow. I have never forgotten it.""It is a very old song, Your Grace.""It is a very old song," he agreed. "Sung, I think, by someone who learned it very young."He looked at her a moment longer in the dark. Then he bowed as one bows to a lady, not to a servant, and went down. She stood on the stairs with the jug until her hands stopped shaking.