Hattie pressed her lips together, her cheeks warming—though not as much as her hand—and scrambled up to her feet, wincing at the way the blood rushed down her arm and into the burns lingering along the pads of her fingers.
“Poor thing,” murmured the baroness, placing a hand on her shoulder and guiding her outside. “Did you learn your other languages at the orphanage, my dear? Are there orphans from elsewhere on the Continent there?”
Hattie winced, glancing back at the other boy for help, but he was watching her warily, like he did not trust her or her sudden presence in their little coterie at all.
“No, my lady,” she said, pausing and grimacing at how common and coarse her own accent sounded against the baroness’s. She wondered if she could improve it if she tried.
She tried.
“I hear those languages during the carnivals,” she said overly carefully, enunciating entirely too much. “And you have an Italian groom.”
“Do I, indeed?” the baroness asked with a little chuckle. “There’s a Russian diplomat in the foyer, you know. Have you ever heard Russian?”
Hattie shrugged. “If I have, no one told me its name.”
“I am very curious to hear your thoughts about it once we get your hand wrapped up,” the baroness told her. “Tell me, Hattie, do you live here in the house with us or do you return to the orphanage every night?”
“I go back,” Hattie said, frowning. “I’m only new.”
“Yes, I suppose I ought to have guessed you were not a seasoned servant at your advanced age,” the baroness quipped, tittering to herself. “And can you read and write, Hattie?”
She nodded. “A little. My penmanship is poor, though.”
“Penmanship never defined anyone of note,” the baroness told her, switching to French. “Unless you can think of someone famous for their handwriting?”
Harriet shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, also in French, which made the other woman grin.
“My dear girl,” she said, “I fear you are wasted in the kitchens here.”
Hattie thought about that sentence quite a lot as the surgeon clucked as he slathered and wrapped her hand.
The wordwastedhovered in her mind. It spelled itself, the letters warm and fragrant on the empty canvas behind her eyelids. What did it mean?
Wasted in the kitchens.
Like kitchen waste? Like scraps?
Why did the word taste sweet, even without letting it escape off her tongue? Why did it taste so sweet?
She was brought into the drawing room, the only person not clad in black and the only person with holes in her stockings. No one seemed to mind. She was ushered forward to meet a gentleman with heavy wrinkles under his eyes and a mustache that gleamed like polished wood.
“I want to play a game,” the dowager baroness said immediately, by way of introduction. “I’ve a suspicion this little girl is a polyglot, and you’ve the most confounding language in the room. How shall we test her?”
“Russian is beautiful,” he assured her, his vowels deep and thrumming. “It has more rhythm and passion than English.”
“You could tell me a poem,” Hattie suggested, which made the man’s head snap to her, brows lifted, as though he had never expected her to speak. “Or a story, if you prefer?”
He narrowed his eyes, considering her. “You are not a guest,” he observed, eyeing her clothes. “My dear Lady Selwyn, what is this?”
“A game,” the baroness said, still grinning. “Go on, then, a story. Folklore from your frigid homeland.”
The man sighed, setting aside his drink, and turned to face Hattie, meeting her eye. And then he started to speak.
He was right, Hattie thought.
It had rhythm. It reminded her of the big bass drums at the end of a military parade. It reminded her a little of the way the baroness’s heels clicked on hard floors. She listened for the words that repeated. She watched his hands move and his expression change.
“Baba Yaga,” she repeated, mimicking his accent as best she could. “A witch?”
