Page 61 of Tusk Love

She should have blushed and preened. She should have been grateful that her future husband was attractive and charming on top of being wealthy and titled. She could have had it so much worse.

But there was more to life than settling forgood enough.She had watched clouds of mist wreathe craggy peaks and dawn break in gentle golden rivers through an autumnal forest. She had broken bread with goblins and feygiants and gone shopping with gangsters. She had wanted someone so much that it was impossible to breathe, and she’d had him in all sorts of glorious ways, and what she felt for him was stronger than any inferno.

There was a whole world out there, and she had only so recently found it. What a waste, to let go so soon.

Guinevere tucked one hand into the crook of Wensleydale’s arm.

“Ready, Miss Guinevere?” asked her would-be husband. Histwinkling eyes were blue, not liquid topaz. His elegantly coiffed hair was gold, not a soft, disheveled black. He didn’t have tusks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” said Guinevere.

And she fell into step beside him, down the marble staircase, down into her picture-perfect future.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Oskar

To put it bluntly, Oskar was having the worst day of his life.

He had spent most of it inspecting the mansion and its grounds. With Wensleydale’s blessing, he’d briefed Therault, the captain of the guard, on everything he knew about the surviving mercenaries—which wasn’t much, and certainly would amount to even less if Bharash and Selene were to call upon reinforcements whom he’d never encountered before.

But the captain had assured Oskar that he and his men were prepared for any eventuality. That, as the security force of one of the richest nobles on the Menagerie Coast, they were old hands at fending off burglars, and what were mercenaries, good sir, but burglars in uniform? It was rather more complicated than that, in Oskar’s opinion, but he had to admit that Wensleydale’s guards were well armed, knew how to establish and maintain a watchful perimeter, and were in possession of the kind of keen alertness most often found in people who were being paid very, very well to do their job. Several of them alsohad magical abilities. You couldn’t ask for a group better suited to taking on the Spider’s Web and their mysterious client, who was, apparently, little more than a sore loser. It couldn’t be denied that Guinevere was safer with them than she’d ever be with just Oskar for protection.

And it also couldn’t be denied that her betrothed was wealthy on a scale that Oskar couldn’t evenbeginto comprehend. The white four-story mansion and its sprawling fields and gardens and gazebos and hedge maze and follies were like a slap to the face of every wretched soul crammed into the Dustbellows tenement where he had grown up. How could a single family have amassed enough land and wealth to last a hundred generations?

How could Oskar even darethinkof asking Guinevere to give any of it up?

He had entertained the notion in his more unguarded moments—several times during last night’s supper, as a matter of fact. He’d fantasized about tearing off the stupid, too-tight formal coat, hefting her over his shoulder, and running from the room.

Let’s go, princess,he’d dreamed of saying.Your parents suck, and your betrothed is a ponce. Let’s get the hells out of here.

Yes, Oskar,she’d replied in the fevered depths of his imagination.Take me away from all this. Let’s be impoverished vagabonds together.

But even those relatively harmless flights of fancy had died a swift death when Wensleydale and Illiard took him around the estate and he saw for himself just how comfortable Guinevere’s life was going tobe.

And now he was in a crowded, overly warm ballroom, stuffed into another one of Wensleydale’s jackets, worn over his most presentable shirt, which had been starched to within an inch of its life, and a pair of formal trousers that had been purloined from one of the bulkier footmen. He was an impostor lurking within a sea of lords and ladies. He had absolutely no idea what had possessed him to agree to this.

A kindly if somewhat clueless elderly couple had taken Oskar under their velvet-clad wing. The Stannishes were halflings, and Dwendalian—from Zadash, specifically—but they spent the colder months here on the Menagerie Coast, at an estate that had beenbequeathed by Lord Stannish’s distant cousin in the absence of direct heirs.

There was no damn reason for somebody to havetwoestates, but Oskar kept that thought to himself, lest the horde of nobles tear him limb from limb for such sacrilege.

“Stormfang, eh?” Lord Stannish was peering up at Oskar through a diamond quizzing glass. “Would that be the Trostenwald Stormfangs? Fine old family.”

“No,” Oskar grunted.

Lord Stannish blinked, looking scandalized. “They’re not fine?”

“I’m not one of them,” Oskar clarified.

As her husband floundered, Lady Stannish bravely waded in to salvage the situation. “And how do you know Lord Wensleydale and his bride?” she asked Oskar.

Gods, it hurt.

“I’m a friend” was all Oskar said.

“We’d despaired of that boy ever settling down!” boomed Lord Stannish, visibly relieved to have been led back onto solid conversational ground. “But I told my wife—didn’t I tell you, Elaine—that he was only waiting for the right one.”

“The right woman or the right dowry?” a nearby elven socialite airily remarked to her friends, who all tittered.

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