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Dushka shook his head. “No further battles. I would hardly call what General Rufus tried here in Kettering a battle either. The treaties that were signed at the meeting of four kingdoms last year, and the Agreement of Good Port afterwards, have plunged most of the frontier into unprecedented peace and cooperation between the cities and the forest-dwellers.”
“Agreement of Good Port?” I blinked and shook my head. “What was this meeting?”
“Which answer do you want most, love?” Dushka said with a teasing smirk. “Answers about the new alliance between the Wolf River Kingdom, the Kostya Kingdom, Good Port, and the Northern Kingdom, or the story of how General Rufus managed to convince Boris, Igor, and Yates to ally with him so they could fortify and extend what they now call the Kingdom of Cremona.”
I was too stunned by word of that particular alliance to react, but Mara burst into laughter. When everyone turned to her, she said, “Cremona is General Rufus’s family name. The bastard named the entire kingdom after himself.”
Dushka grinned along with her. “Magnus had much the same reaction when he found out.”
That brought Mara’s laughing to an immediate stop. “I need to meet my Uncle Magnus,” she said, smiling.
“Yes, you do,” Dushka smiled back at her.
I could tell he liked her, which was important. Dushka liked all of my friends, but he seemed particularly taken with Mara. And maybe with Appius, but since Appius had hardly said anything since we’d all sat down in my and Dushka’s house, I assumed he liked Appius because I did.
The conversation about changes in the frontier continued from there. Supper was brought in as the discussion continued, since we sat around swapping stories that long. The crowd stuffing into Dushka’s house disbursed a little as people went back to their own houses for dinner, and at last, we all reached a point where Dushka asked Pasha to make arrangements for my friends to have a place to sleep that night, and for as long as they cared to stay in Kettering.
“Do you think they will stay in Kettering?” Dushka asked when the house was empty of everyone except for him, me, Appius, and Flora and her boy, since Aurora was hungry again. “That is to say, they are welcome to stay for as long as they’d like. You are welcome to stay as well, miss,” he told Flora.
“I want to return to my mother and father,” Flora said, still sad and weary, after everything she’d been through. “I will not abandon this baby to starve,” she said, glancing down at Aurora as she sucked away, eyes closed, “but please.” Flora looked up imploringly at Dushka. “Please tell me you have a woman here in your town who could be this baby’s wet nurse. I mean no offense, but I have lost my husband and two of my children. I’ve no wish to lose more.”
Dushka looked at her pityingly. “I can think of at least two or three women in Kettering who are nursing right now,” he said. “I will ask them to take over the necessary duty for my beloved’s daughter tomorrow.”
Flora lit up for the first time since we’d left Larth’s inn. “Then, can you provide someone to accompany me home tomorrow?”
Dushka could have been mean or put Flora off, but he smiled at her and said, “I will make certain you have the strongest escort I can provide.”
I felt much better once that was settled. Once Aurora was full, I took her from Flora and cuddled with her until she settled into a deep sleep. Arrangements were made for Flora and her son to stay in our house for the night, and for Aurora to sleep near her so that she would be least inconvenienced when Aurora awoke in the night to eat.
“I will admit,” I said as Dushka, Appius, and I retired to my and Dushka’s room at the other side of the house to prepare for bed, “I didn’t think through what it would mean to have a baby when I claimed Aurora as my own. We’ll need to have a wet nurse sleep in the house until Aurora is old enough to sleep through the night. How long does it take for a baby to no longer need the breast anyhow?”
“I’ve no idea,” Dushka laughed. “But we’ll manage.”
Appius and I needed baths—and I would have done just about anything for the bathhouse at the college right then—but we had to make due with Dushka’s large wash basin, since I didn’t want to trek all the way to Kettering’s crude bathhouse. At least he had soap and towels to go along with it, and as I stripped down without any self-consciousness and scrubbed from head to toe, I felt like what I had was good enough.
It was good enough because it was home.
“I had no idea there were that many women of childbearing age in Kettering,” I said as I rinsed off, spilling a little too much water on the floor, then offering Appius the rag so he could wash.
Appius seemed to be extremely body-shy with Dushka in the room, especially as Dushka had already started undressing for bed himself. He’d taken off most of his things, but he still wore his shirt and underwear, and he glanced nervously between me and Dushka. It was a strange contrast, since the two of us were completely at ease.
“There was a huge influx of refugees from the cities after the Agreement of Good Port was made,” Dushka explained. Appius’s eyes went wide when he took off his shirt to reveal his strong, hairy chest. “Magnus was brilliant to negotiate the free movement of young people to any of the settlements in the Wolf River Kingdom. You know his first and most important objective in building up the kingdom is to have our citizens reproduce as much as possible.”
He paused as he undid the fastenings of his trousers and laughed. “Magnus will be mightily pleased with you bringing a daughter back from the Old Realm.”
“She isn’t technically from the Old Realm. She was born at the mountain inn,” I said.
“All the same,” Dushka continued, shucking his breeches. “He’ll be deeply happy to know you’ve done your part to continue the Wolf River Kingdom.”
I heated with desire as Dushka stepped out of his trousers. I’d missed the rough, firm sight of his body. I’d missed what he could do with that body too.
Appius, on the other hand, looked as if I’d led him to the slaughter. He moved so that both the washstand and I were between him and Dushka, and his eyes were wide and wary.
“Incidentally,” Dushka went on, standing with no concern whatsoever for his nakedness, “you’re not the only one of your Sons friends who has a baby now.”
I blinked. “I’m not?”
Neil had mentioned that he and Peter and Magnus were committed to having children eventually, but I had thought they wanted to wait until Magnus stepped down as king.
