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Spending the rest of the day out and getting a good hot and spicy meal to wash down this airdrop would normally have been an easy choice for you- but there was a new weight of responsibility these days.
“I’ve had enough heat today,” you said with a stretch, “Let’s head to your place. I’ll say hi to Herr Falkenstein, and you’ve got to help take care of Eike, don’t you?”
Linda sniffed questioningly at you. “Dad's out right now. Mom takes care of Eike just fine without me, but okay. You never cared much for babies before, did you?”
The Falkensteins hadn’t kept going at it without cease like your folks did. You’d done plenty your share of help child-rearing, but it didn’t have the same magic that Linda seemed to see in it. “I do feel a bit bad for him. Doesn’t get the best part of being a baby.”
Linda glanced up into the sky at the implication. “…You <span class="mu-i">are</span> right, though. A baby <span class="mu-i">should</span> have something besides substitute milk and mash. I got a friend to find me some mother’s joy root.”
You choked at that. Mother’s Joy was a medicinal herb root that encouraged the body to produce milk, but it being imbibed by anybody but a mother with difficulties producing was…questionable. “Surely you don’t have to do that.”
Linda blinked at you. “Why not? Food’s not so easy to come by, Reinhold, for babies, either. There’s already a demand for more mother’s milk than wet nurses can provide. It’s a good example anyways.”
“Yes, but,” you couldn’t actually think of a good reason. If it was anybody else’s kid, if he was an actual orphan, then… “You know, forget about it.”
“Hmph.” Linda squeezed her eyes tight in indignance, “Well, it’s too late anyways. I spend a pretty pfenning for it, and it’s already getting to work. You could have a little more good cheer about giving, Rein. 'Tis the season.” She pulled you along, “Let’s hurry, then. It’ll be time for his nap in an hour and a half.”
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Eike Douran Von Lowenkreuz, though for now, his true name was secret, embraced within the house of the Falkensteins. Plenty knew of the household of Von Lowenkreuz, or rather, that it was defunct. Broken up and purged when they and other nobility plotted a conspiracy against the Kaiser, early in his reign. There was no legacy to claim in that name, and as far as any of the Falkensteins or people they knew were concerned, the baby had been left on their doorstep out of a hope to capitalize off of their celebrity- and lack of more than one child. None would even have believed Von Lowenkreuz had official continuation, were it not for the silver seal that the baby had been left with.
You knew the truth of why he had been left there, though. The boy had much of his mother in him. The odd-colored eyes, the speckles that showed in the sun- and he had his father’s traits as well, if you knew to look for them. He was your son, with Winnifred Von Lowenkreuz.
