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I used the opportunity to sink into the chair he’d vacated. “I have a baby,” I said.
The table was littered with plates of mostly eaten food, tankards and glasses, and some of our supplies. The rest of our group’s supplies were scattered on the floor around the table. We’d come in and taken up more space than anyone else in the inn.
“Bring these three food and drink,” I heard Larth order from somewhere behind me.
I twisted to find him, and when I made eye-contact with him, Larth smiled sadly.
“I watched the whole thing from the hall,” he said. “You didn’t see me, but I saw what you did. Heard what my wife said too. But I always did think you were a good lad.”
“I…I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I’m so sorry for Agnes.”
Larth was far more circumspect about the whole thing than his wife. He came over and rested a hand on my shoulder, peering down at the baby.
“Agnes always was a strange one. I’m ashamed to say it, but I thought of her more as my wife’s pet than as a woman who could make a place for herself here. There’s no telling how her baby will turn out, but it seems to me like you’re taking responsibility for her.”
“I am,” I said, feeling something within me stir. “Your wife believes I am the only man who could be the father, and I agree. If you see it that way as well, then this is my daughter, and I will keep her and raise her.”
Larth laughed. “She is yours,” he said. “Agnes had no opportunity to conceive her with another, and she arrived here with the army two months before you came along. So it couldn’t belong to any of the soldiers. No, she’s definitely yours, and who are we to keep her from you if you want her?”
“I do want her,” I said, rubbing my hand lightly over her back as she started to stir against me. “I want her very much.”
Even though it was completely mad and wildly improbably.
What would Dushka say when I brought back not only Appius, but a baby as well? He would probably roar with laughter and shake his head at me. But I knew him well enough to know he would accept both of my heart’s new acquisitions without reservation.
At least, I hoped so.
“So this is really your baby?” Leander asked, moving to take Larth’s place when he moved to the kitchen, hopefully to fetch food. “You actually fucked a woman and made a baby?”
My face heated with embarrassment. “Yes, apparently I did.”
“Well, fuck,” Leander laughed.
“Where’s the mother?” Darius asked, glancing back to the stairs.
“Her corpse is upstairs,” Mara told them, a little more harshly than was necessary. “And you three are going to dispose of her body and clean up the mess that remains.”
Leander, Darius, and Lucius all gaped at her.
“Hang on,” Darius said, face flushing with agitation. “We didn’t come here to lug corpses around.”
“That poor woman just gave her life to bring this girl into the world,” Mara shouted with angry vehemence, pointing at my baby. “Conrad, Appius, and I had to tear her open to get this baby into the world. We’ve dealt with enough. The least you could do is stop acting like boys and be the men you are and help lay a poor woman to rest.”
Leander, Darius, and Lucius looked immediately cowed.
“Yes, Mara,” Lucius said, rising from his seat and heading straight to the stairs. “Which room is she in?”
“You’ll find it once you get upstairs,” Mara said with a tired wave of her hand.
The twins followed Lucius, and Appius and Mara joined me at the table. The three of us didn’t feel like talking, and when Larth brought our food, we all ate gratefully.
I felt like I was in some sort of dream that I couldn’t wake up from. Thoughts of giving the baby a more thorough bath and finding something for her to wear warred in my mind with panic about keeping her fed, worrying she could die, and not having the slightest clue how to care for a baby.
She was mine, though. The more I felt her move and breathe and cry against my chest, the more I knew it. I couldn’t have pushed her off even if I had that option.
“So what are you going to call her?” Appius asked later, after we’d eaten, after the twins and Lucius had carried Agnes’s body, wrapped in the bloodied sheets and blankets she’d been lying on, after Larth’s wife and Flora had come downstairs, after Flora had taken the baby from me long enough to feed her, then hand her back as if she could barely stand to look at her.
“I don’t know,” I said, cuddling the baby against my naked chest again. I’d at least taken a moment to wash myself while Flora was feeding the baby, so I didn’t feel so bad to have her right against my skin, where Larth’s wife insisted I keep her. “It should be something special.”
