Page 17 of Tusk Love

“It’s jewels, I think,” said Guinevere. “I hear them rattling around like stones on occasion. My parents say it’s some kind of great treasure, at any rate. The trunk’s been in my bedroom since forever. It’s locked, and only Father has the key.”

Over the last two years, she had wondered why her parents did not simply sell the trunk’s contents. If it was as valuable as they claimed, it could surely have been the antidote to all their financial woes. Whatever it was, it was certainly valuable enough to entice Lord Wensleydale into marrying a merchant’s daughter.

Oskar was grumbling to himself, a stream of cantankerous words that Guinevere could barely make out despite their proximity. His obvious unhappiness at the prospect of her wedding a stranger was abalm to her soul—at leastsomeonewas enraged on her behalf. She couldn’t be, because that wouldn’t be dutiful; that simply wasn’t done. Everyone understood that marriage at high enough levels was just like any other business transaction.

She sighed, gripped by a melancholy sculpted from autumn air. She shifted against him until her head was tucked neatly under his chin. She hadn’t really meant to, but it felt so nice that she didn’t bother moving anymore. And it wasn’t long before Oskar’s grumbling faded away.

Chapter Twelve

Oskar

Simply put, Oskar was in the hells.

Guinevere’s bottom had been nestled snugly in the cradle of his thighs for the entire ride. It was a very soft, curvy,betrothedbottom. Every movement drove him half-mad, had him gritting his teeth.

The end result was that he spent the whole day at war with his erection. He lobbed cannonballs of shame at it, struck it down with arrows of guilt, employed evasive tactics of thinking about anything—anything—else, but it kept trying to spring back up after each ignominious retreat.

By the time they set up camp for the night, he was in a bad enough mood to ride all the way to the Menagerie Coast instead and punch her father. What kind of man bartered his daughter off just for the sake of having a title in the family?

But maybe he was overreacting. Maybe this Lord Wensleydale was actually a decent fellow and Guinevere would be happy with him. Shewas definitely happy with his wealth and his social status—after all, she wasn’t uttering a word of complaint about her fate.

And, anyway, it had nothing todowith Oskar. He was just her escort. After he dropped her off at Nicodranas, their paths would never cross again.

So why was it that, as he lay in his bedroll and gazed up at the two moons and the glimmering stars, he had the sudden urge to wring this faceless aristocrat’s inbred neck?

Lying beside him, Guinevere was also having a hard time falling asleep. She tossed and turned in her bedroll, the only thing separating her from the hard ground. He worried that she’d be black-and-blue come morning. But it wasn’t his place to worry, was it?

“Oskar.” Her glass-bell voice spun through the night in a silver thread. “How did you come to know Mr. Jimmybutcher and Mr. Warwick?”

To say that Oskar’s first instinct was to snap “None of your business” would have been a lie. Hewishedit was his first instinct. It should have been. But Guinevere sounded so genuinely interested, in that polite and careful way of hers. He remembered her holding him in the night, murmuring words of comfort, her arms catching his bitter tears. Would she receive his past just as softly, he wondered, and why did he want to find out so bad?

What was it about this girl?

“Warwick and the Butcher used to run in the same gang,” said Oskar. “It split last year when a brawl broke out during their secretariat elections. But, when I was fifteen, I…I worked with them.”

To Guinevere’s credit, she didn’t fall into a dead faint or anything like that. She waited, silently, patiently, and Oskar’s next words came easier.

“It was a lean year. The seam Ma worked was starting to dry up. At the same time, I’d outgrown all my clothes. To buy fabric for new ones, she sold something of hers. Something precious. I was friendly with the gang back then, and we had the bright idea to steal it back.”

“And were you—er—successful?”

“Yes.” He’d put the night watchman in a headlock and punched through the shop window with his bare fist, forever earning him Warwick’s and Jimmybutcher’s respect. The three of them had scampered off, out of Silverstreet, back into the seedy safety of the Dustbellows, the starlight pounding at their heels, and Oskar had been riding high on the rage and recklessness of youth. “But when she found out, my mother was…disappointed.” That slow shake of Idun’s head, the way her strong shoulders had slumped—all somehow worse than anger would have been. “She told me that what I stole had been bought fair and square. She couldn’t bring it back to the shop, because I’d end up in prison, but she said—”

And here the words hitched in his throat; here the stinging behind his eyes started up again. He blinked furiously, willing himself to get through this with at leastsomeof his dignity intact. “She said that life could get hard and mean, butIdidn’t have to be.” He’d forgotten that over the last few months; he’d lost it when she died. How bittersweet to remember it now, beneath a roof of moonlight. “The very next morning, I went around town looking to learn an honest trade. Smithing seemed as good as any. I wasn’t that invested, but Ma looked so proud when she saw me off on the first day of my apprenticeship.”

It wasn’t the most graceful way to end a story. It was awkward and abrupt. But it was all there was.

“Your mother was absolutely wonderful,” Guinevere said with a sigh. “I’m happy that you had someone like her.”

And that—helped, somewhat. It felt…good, and right, for Idun to be acknowledged in this way. It wasn’t that strange, after all, to lie next to someone in the dark and tell them things he’d never told anyone else. Maybe he’d been waiting all this time to say these words out loud.

“What was it?” Guinevere asked, soft and bright and curious. “The item that you, ah, liberated?”

Oskardidhesitate then. He didn’t want her to feel bad. That in itself was a shock—that he cared as much as he did. But he’d come too far to lie to her now.

“It was the flask of perfumed oil,” Oskar admitted. “The one that smells like tangerines. Ma brought that with her from Boroftkrah.”

Guinevere bolted upright. Catha and Ruidus cast the panic on her face in sharp silver relief. “Oskar!” she wailed. “You should have—oh, gods, I am mortified.” She wrung her dainty hands together, her plush bottom lip quivering. “I am so terribly sorry, I wasn’t thinking—I—how can you evenstandto look at me—”

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