Fluently Speaking Baron (The Starling Legacy #1)

Prologue

When Harriet French was eleven years old, she said a naughty word in Italian.

Followed by one in French.

And a third in German.

The fourth thing she said was not so much a curse as a crass self-rebuke, in a language she only thought of as “Fishmonger Talk,” due to only ever hearing it down at the wharfs on the days they bought fish for the kitchens.

It was still coarse enough that, had anyone understood it as it had come out of the mouth of an eleven-year-old girl, it would have caused gasps.

In Harriet’s defense, she had just burned her hand touching a hot pan, sent the pan flying, and then knocked several more dishes onto her little body as she’d toppled to the floor, bruised and scalding.

Unfortunately, the hot pan had contained part of the day’s main course.

Worse, the day’s main course was dinner for the master of the house’s funeral.

And perhaps most unfortunate at all was that Harriet’s flurry of vulgarity happened to explode from her mouth as the widow herself was walking past the open door of the kitchens, with the late baron’s sister-in-law and his nephew in tow.

Even at eleven, and clutching a hand that still sang like fire, Harriet was not certain it could have been timed any worse.

They had all turned to stare at her, with her skirt up over her tatty stockings, her bruised knees on display, and her hand turning pinker and angrier by the second.

“Was that Norwegian?” the baron’s sister-in-law asked, her narrow, brown eyes sweeping over Hattie’s disheveled appearance.

“Danish, I think,” the dowager baroness had replied, turning and stepping into the kitchen with a curious little click of her black heel, her auburn chignon glinting in rows of contained curls as she moved. “Like the fishermen from whom we buy our catch. Was that what it was, little maid?”

Harriet stared, awestruck and horrified. “It’s the Fish Tongue,” she blurted out, blinking away the sounds of the rest of the kitchen staff exploding in a panic around her. “I don’t know its real name.”

“Remarkable,” said the baroness, her dark eyes flicking up once, impatiently, at the staff. “Is no one going to get this child a poultice?”

The cook huffed, her cheeks pink. “She can dip it in cold water once she gets off her wagon, my lady. ’Twas just a scald.”

“Scalding would require water,” Harriet said, a little dazed from the pain. “There was no water. The pan was dry. No steam. No water.”

The cook’s beady eyes had narrowed and her thick neck was turning pink. Harriet knew it, even without looking at her. “My mistake, little madam. I didn’t know they spoke so proper at the foundlings’ home. Get up. You’ve distressed the mourners on a somber day!”

“I am not distressed.” The baroness turned over her shoulder to the young boy who was watching from just beyond the door. “Elias, are you distressed?”

He blinked his dark-blue eyes, hugging his arms around his plump body, and shook his head.

“See? We’re all in fine form,” the dowager baroness declared, ignoring her sister-in-law’s pinched lips at not having her own potential distress acknowledged. “Except for this little scullery maid here, who is blistering. If you aren’t going to help her, then I will.”

“Oh, we’ll help her,” the cook muttered.

Harriet knew what that meant.

Tonight she’d have to tell the mistress at the foundling home that she’d lost her job.

She liked this job. She had enjoyed her many months here, listening to the fancy people who came in and out of the Rest, even if they did not look at or speak to her.

She had liked the baron too and was sad that he had died.

“Come along with me, girl,” the baroness said suddenly, snapping her fingers toward Harriet’s face. “What is your name?”

“Hattie,” she said without thinking. “Harriet. I mean Harriet. It means head of household. But I’m not. I’m not one.”

The baroness’s lips twitched. “Let’s get that hand wrapped up. Lucky for you, a surgeon cared enough about my late husband to be sad that he died. He’s just in the drawing room. Come now.”

Hattie hesitated, glancing at the cook, who actually appeared to be steaming well enough now to cause a scald in the proper sense of the word.

“Don’t mind anyone else,” the baroness instructed. “I am in charge here and I say come with me. You will not be punished for obeying your mistress.”

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 word wasted hovered 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?”

The man froze, staring at her with his mouth hanging open.

“I am being teased,” he guessed, looking up at the baroness for confirmation. “Are you teasing me, Willa?”

“I am not,” the baroness said, sounding utterly pleased. “Hattie, my girl. I’m afraid I’m stuck attending this funeral for the next several hours, but would you be a dear and fetch a footman for me? He can take you back to the foundling home to gather your things and bring them here.”

“‘Bring them here’?” Hattie repeated, her hand still throbbing, her mind still muddled and dazed. “To live in the kitchens?”

“No, my dear girl,” the baroness said with a grin. “You will be living upstairs with me. You see, death sometimes does funny things to our lives. I suppose you already know that, as an orphan?”

“Willa!” the Russian man balked, wrinkling his nose in distaste and stalking away, muttering to himself.

Hattie gave an uncertain lift of her shoulder. “Well, yes,” she said. “If I had parents, I suppose things would be different.”

“Precisely,” the baroness said with pleasure. “When my husband the baron died, my life changed too. I’ve been wondering how I ought to change with it, and then I walked past you, screaming profanity that would sober a demon in mine own kitchens. Perhaps it is fate.”

“Fortuna,” said Hattie, teetering a little on her feet. “Isn’t that funny? There’s Fortuna and then there are the Fates. Do you think they get along?”

“No,” said the baroness with a laugh. “I do not.”

“I’ll just go get the footman,” Hattie said, turning and wavering as the room turned further, even after she had stopped.

The last thing she saw before she slumped to the floor was that other child. The boy, Elias.

He had a valise with him, she saw. He was holding a valise.

Americans called it a ‘grip.’

She opened her mouth to tell him that, because he clearly was expecting her to say something, the way he was staring.

But the words didn’t come out.

Because she fainted.