A Dictionary for the Young

“A dictionary for the young?”

The book in Mikhail’s hand was quite heavy.

“Ah, it must have gotten swept up when I cleared out the whole shelf… I’ll be going now!”

Having just admitted with his own mouth that he had scraped everything together at random, Yury caught the narrowing of Mikhail’s eyes and bolted for the door.

Mikhail clicked his tongue and leafed through the volume he still held. Though it was a dictionary, it had been made for children; the explanations were far simpler than those in the volumes already on the study shelves, and illustrations appeared here and there.

As he turned the thin pages, a look of satisfaction settled over Mikhail’s face.

“This should do.”

He set the dictionary on the desk, thinking he would give it to Anastasia when she arrived. Quite a few books already lay stacked there—the very ones she had begged to take with her the day before.

In truth, Mikhail had not been teaching Anastasia much of late. She already read with ease, and she was drawing knowledge of the world from books without rest. Most of the time she spent in the study was spent asking about the passages she had failed to understand the night before.

What Anastasia wanted was knowledge books alone could not give her.

When a travelogue declared, for instance, that “as everyone knows, a voyage by ship is far from pleasant,” Anastasia could not grasp why boarding a vessel should be so difficult. Mikhail would then describe the size of ships, the roughness of the sea, and even the shape of the cabins in which people lodged.

Once she had understood what he told her, Anastasia would move on to another book. Studying a diagram of a sailing ship’s construction—he never knew where she had found it—she would work out for herself why a vessel was built that way.

She took the fragments of information she gathered and, through his explanations, assembled them into something complete inside herself. Every time Mikhail watched her do it, he was left speechless.

A fool, was she?

He remembered the words the Lauderdales and their servants had used about Anastasia when he first came to Edenhurst. Dull. Stupid. Shameful. Every last one of them had been wrong.

Anastasia possessed a memory and an intelligence sharp enough to send a chill through even Mikhail at times. That was why he threw himself still more eagerly into giving her knowledge. He wanted to know where her limits lay.

And he was angry. Had she ever been given a proper chance at education, she would never have lived like this.

Cursing the already-dead count, Mikhail dragged a hand down his face.

What am I even doing?

This had never been the plan.

He had meant only to build up enough strength in her that she could endure him, take her a few times, and then let her go. Elizabeth and Catherine both seemed none too fond of her; he had even considered sending her somewhere she could live in comfort, if that was what she wanted.

Recalling everything he had done these past three weeks, Mikhail suddenly found the whole thing absurd.

Playing nursemaid was never in my stars.

After the kiss on her forehead he had not touched Anastasia again. When they met at breakfast the next morning her face had been scarlet; she could not even look him in the eye. That a single brush of lips against her brow could startle her so… if she ever learned what else he wanted from her, she would faint on the spot.

Mikhail thought of the thing he had put away in the drawer of his bedroom desk. On the first day, when he left the study, a sheet of paper had been in his hand—the one on which Anastasia had practiced writing his name. He only realized he was still holding it after he reached his rooms.

It was paper no one would ever have use for. A page covered in such a mess of letters would normally end its life in a wastebasket or the fire. Yet Mikhail had not thrown it away. He had kept it in the drawer.

Anastasia’s handwriting was now settling firmly into a style of its own. When she first took up a pen he could never have imagined the small, round, beautiful letters she produced now. He had expected her to scribble carelessly, still being so new to writing, but instead she formed every character with painstaking care, as though determined to match print exactly.

It will be amusing to show her later.

When her hand was fully formed, what would she say if he produced this ruin of a page? She would surely look ready to cry and beg him to give it back. If he held it high out of reach she would hang on him with that same woeful face, unable to snatch it down.

“……”

The smile that had been playing about his mouth vanished. He was confused. He no longer knew whether he wanted to take Anastasia into his arms or not.

The marks of past abuse had vanished from her face. Her long limbs had filled out until they were pleasant to look at; the mottled skin had cleared. Her hair had deepened to a rich red and shone with health, and the small mouth that once could barely accept the bread he offered her had colored to a pretty shade nearly matching those locks. She even wore gowns that bared not only her arms but a little of her throat and breast without flinching.

Every time he looked at that face and that body, Mikhail wanted to seize her by the wrist then and there and drag her to his bed. If he forced himself roughly into the pretty body he had spent so much care creating, she would not be able to endure it at first and would weep. That, too, would be a lovely sight.

He would wait, buried deep inside her, until the tears stopped, and then begin to move—what sounds would she make then? Voices he had never yet heard, surely, calling the name she now spoke so naturally.

And yet, in the midst of such thoughts, other images always returned.

The way she brightened when she no longer misspelled a word. The way she urged him to try a new dish because it was so delicious. The way her eyes shone like a child’s hearing the most thrilling story in the world whenever he told her about the things that happened in the course of his work.

And the way, when he leaned in close out of pure mischief, she squeezed her eyes shut yet did not flee, as though she were waiting for something.

Mikhail grew still more uncertain whether he wanted to hold her or protect her. Only one thing was certain: the day would come when he would have to choose one or the other.

Resting his chin on his hand, he looked outside. Far beyond the sky that had been clear for weeks, clouds were gathering.

Anastasia hurried toward the study with the book she had finished. These days she no longer walked with Natasha. Every servant from Sokolov was kind to her, and the Lauderdale women and the maids who followed them almost never crossed paths with Anastasia, who moved only between the study and the annex.

She quickened her steps down a corridor she would once never have dared to walk. Beyond the freshly polished glass she could see the well-kept garden, and beyond that the forest.

“……”

Anastasia stopped for a moment and looked at the distant trees.

“I haven’t gone even once.”

It was the place she had visited almost every day. Except in winter, from spring through autumn, that was where she had spent her time. Once she had believed the forest was the only space permitted to her.

“I ought to bring it back.”

Still gazing at the woods, she remembered what she had left inside them. The shoes Mikhail had first given her were still in the little chapel deep in the forest. She had hidden them there for fear someone might discover or snatch them away; now there was no reason not to fetch them. Her own room in the house was safer.

“……!”

The thought startled her. To think of the inside of Edenhurst as her own space—she had never once done so in ten years.

Lately her heart had been restless. Three weeks earlier, after kissing her forehead, Mikhail had not come near her again. It ought to have been a relief; why, then, did it leave her feeling so bereft?

Anastasia tore her gaze from the forest and hurried on to the study. Today, too, she had a great many things to ask him.

She had just passed the annex and turned the corner of the corridor when—

Thud! Someone collided with her, and every book she carried scattered across the floor.

“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going…”

As she scrambled to gather the fallen volumes, Anastasia’s eyes fell on a pair of pretty, unmarred shoes. She raised her head slowly. Someone was looking down at her with an impassive face.

“Miss Elizabeth…”

No matter how much had changed in the meantime, Elizabeth was still “Miss” to Anastasia. That fact would never alter, even if Anastasia’s appearance changed, even if she learned a great deal, even if she was given a room of her own at Edenhurst.

“You’re on your way to the study, I see.”

“Yes, that is… You knew?”

Anastasia had been about to answer simply when she looked up in surprise that Elizabeth already knew her destination. Elizabeth smiled faintly.

“Who at Edenhurst doesn’t know that?”

Her voice was quiet and even. Only then did Anastasia realize: this was the first time Elizabeth had ever spoken to her first.

In all the years Anastasia had lived at Edenhurst, Elizabeth had never once held a conversation with her—as though Anastasia were invisible. Perhaps that was why the first words between them sent a shiver down her spine.

“And what do you do in the study?”

“Mikhail…”

At the name, a faint crack appeared in Elizabeth’s composed expression. Anastasia realized her mistake at once and hastily corrected herself.

“No—Lord Mikhail has been teaching me to read and write.”

“And what else?”

“Pardon?”

“What else is he teaching you?”

“Well… how to do sums, and the proper manners for each occasion…”

At her answer Elizabeth let out a soft little laugh.

“Manners, is it. The sort a mistress is expected to know?”