The second book in the Bevelstoke series, 2009

By the age of twelve, Harry Valentine possessed two bits of knowledge that made him rather unlike other boys of his class in England of the early nineteenth century.

The first was his complete and absolute fluency in the languages of Russian and French. There was little mystery surrounding this talent; his grandmother, the extremely aristocratic and opinionated Olga Petrova Obolenskiy Dell, had come to reside with the Valentine family four months after Harry’s birth.

Olga loathed the English language. In her (frequently expressed) judgment, there was nothing in this world that needed to be said that could not be expressed in Russian or French.

As to why she had gone and married an Englishman, she never could quite explain.

“Probably because it needs explaining in English,” Harry’s sister Anne had muttered.

Harry just shrugged and smiled (as any proper brother would) when this got her ears boxed. Grandmère might disdain English, but she could understand it perfectly, and her ears were sharper than a hound’s. Muttering anything-in any language-was a bad idea when she was in the schoolroom. Doing so in English was incredibly foolish. Doing so in English whilst suggesting that French or Russian was not adequate for the verbal task at hand…

In all honesty, Harry was surprised Anne hadn’t been paddled.

But Anne loathed Russian with the same intensity Grandmère reserved for English. It was too much work, she complained, and French was almost as difficult. Anne had been five when Grandmère had arrived, and her English was far too entrenched for anything else to gain an equal footing.