“I can understand that but then your education must come first and I promise you, although it is a very difficult language, it will be an asset when we arrive.”
“Of course it will,” William said, “and we must insist that John attends to his lessons. I have a feeling he will dislike it if I beat him!”
“I have to be first in everything, as you well know,” the Duke answered. “I must make sure that Alnina points me out as her best and most promising pupil!”
Because she had anticipated that they would, when she was not actually teaching them, ask her a number of questions, she had been sensible enough to bring with her a few books on Russia and text books on the language.
Some of them she had used when she was learning it herself and, when she told the Duke and William what she had done, th
