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Chapter Thirty-Five

Guinevere

Guinevere had insisted on changing into more presentable attire because she wanted her parents to see that she’d been well cared for throughout the journey south.

She and Oskar might have done unspeakable things to each other in bed—and up against a tree, and in a lake, and one extra-memorable night on the floor of a cave—but he had ensured that she was always fed, and he had always snatched her back from the jaws of peril.

She’d put on that new dress out of a desire to make clear that she was none the worse for wear, all thanks to him.

But she should have known that it wouldn’t be enough to convince Illiard and Betha.

“Traveling with a complete stranger for days on end!” Illiard paced the floor of the guest bedroom that had been assigned to Guinevere. “You’re lucky that his lordship is the amiable sort, girl, no two ways about it!”

“Technically, those guards you sent were strangers, too,” Guinevere pointed out. She was seated at the dressing table while her mother tugged a comb through her hair, removing the mats and leaves and gods knew what else.

“That was all very proper and official,” Illiard snapped. “They were hired guards. Not—not virile young men who undress maidens with their golden eyes!”

Guinevere wanted to argue that that was just the way Oskar always looked at people. He had a very intense, broody sort of stare. She was also seized by the very wicked urge to assert that she wasn’t exactly a maiden anymore.

How strange—she’d expected to be ridden with guilt once she saw her parents again, and perhaps also upon meeting Wensleydale.

But regretting any part of what she and Oskar had done seemed to require an energy that she didn’t have.

In fact, when her betrothed had made his way toward her in the gardens, all she’d been able to do, her heart in her throat, was offer up a silent prayer to the heavens in gratitude and overwhelming relief that her first time had been with Oskar.

Not this man who wanted only her dowry, this man whom she didn’t already know and respect and admire.

“I can’t imagine the scandal if this gets out.

” Betha tugged the comb at a stubborn knot of hair, and Guinevere winced.

“Lord Wensleydale is too much of a gentleman to say anything, of course, but it’s best if you convince that peasant not to overstay his welcome, my dear.

High society can be rather unforgiving, you know.

And soon you will be at the center of it.

” Guinevere watched a proud smile flit across her mother’s reflection in the ornately framed mirror.

“My daughter—Lady Wensleydale! How extraordinary!”

“If she doesn’t muck it up,” said Illiard. “I don’t think we can get out of that ruffian attending the ball, as his lordship personally invited him, but it must be impressed upon young Oskar that he is not to breathe a word of you two traveling together all by yourselves.”

Guinevere watched her reflection roll its eyes. “Well, at least you got his name right, this time.”

Illiard and Betha let out identical gasps.

“What’s gotten into you, Guinevere?” Betha cried. “Not now, not when we’re so close to everything we’ve ever wanted…”

“It’s that boy’s fault,” Illiard growled. “He taught you how to talk back to your parents, eh? That lowborn—”

Guinevere thought about Oskar crying in her arms in a house that had two of everything.

She thought about a man who had stayed with the horses in the pouring rain, who had been endearingly attentive as she taught him how to sew.

She thought about a dutiful child entering a darkness he feared, just so his mother would be able to eat lunch.

“If he is lowborn, then so are we, Father.” She met Illiard’s eyes in the mirror. “You and Mother grew up in Yrrosa, after all.”

Illiard blanched. Yrrosa was in the Zemni Fields, a ramshackle township mired in crime syndicates and abject poverty. He and Betha didn’t like to be reminded of their origins, and Guinevere wondered why she’d waited so long to throw them in his face whenever he embarked on one of his rants.

And, not for the first time since they’d reunited, she wondered if he was lying to her.

The bad dream came back in flashes. The dagger in his hands, the figure over his shoulder. The name that had slipped from her memory upon waking.

She refused to believe that her father had actually stabbed her when she was a child—that was too cruel, even for him—but it occurred to her now that the strange vision might have been a warning from her subconscious.

A warning that she wasn’t loved as she ought to have been.

“Who was the man you won the Parure from, Father?” Guinevere asked.

“What?” Illiard was visibly annoyed. “Some minor lord. Cholmondeley, I think it was. Why does it matter?”

That didn’t feel right. That wasn’t the name she’d forgotten. Before Guinevere could pry, though, Betha came charging to her husband’s defense.

“We may have grown up in Yrrosa, but your father got us out,” she hissed at Guinevere. “He got out, and he worked himself to the bone so that you would never find yourself in any place like it. I had no idea that we’d raised such an ungrateful child.”

The old Guinevere would have cowered and apologized. And there was a part of her for whom this was still the instinct, to slink duly back to her assigned role of obedient daughter in the careful order of things.

But she realized, with some surprise, that she was more than that.

She was the Guinevere who’d killed those bandits.

Who preferred ale to champagne. Who’d interrupted a mercenary illusionist’s spell and survived.

She was the Guinevere who summoned the wildfire that Oskar found beautiful.

She was the Guinevere who knew the song of the universe.

Guinevere of the ravine, Guinevere of the woods, Guinevere of the Amber Road.

She snatched the comb out of her mother’s grasp.

“I would have liked for the two of you to be happy to see me,” she told her parents.

“To be glad that I made it through, what with the mercenaries and all. However, if there is nothing to emerge from your mouths but the same brand of criticism that I’ve endured most of my life, then—I can comb my hair myself.

” She nodded in cool dismissal at a stricken Illiard, at a fast-paling Betha. “I shall see you later.”

Supper that night was by far the grandest meal that Guinevere’d had in weeks.

In a dining room lavishly appointed in rich shades of mulberry and gold, amidst damask wallpaper and plush carpets and display cabinets of crystal and porcelain, at a long and glossy mahogany table underneath a blazing brass chandelier—Guinevere, Oskar, Wensleydale, Illiard, and Betha partook of several courses created with the highest artistry by the best chefs gold could hire.

They began with raw oysters on the half shell, flecked with sea salt, followed by turtle consommé and then haddock so light and airy that it melted in the mouth.

The main course was roast beef, served with gravy and freshly picked vegetables.

It was an enticing array of quality ingredients, of sophisticated flavors bursting upon the tongue.

But Guinevere was hard-pressed to enjoy any of it.

Oskar was seated directly across from her, looking stiff and uncomfortable in a formal red jacket borrowed from Wensleydale, the seams let out to accommodate his wider shoulders.

And all she could think about was that he was leaving her soon.

They filled Wensleydale in on the threat of the Spider’s Web.

To his credit, he took it in stride that his betrothed’s dowry had been rather crassly won in a game of cards years ago and that dangerously armed mercenaries were now trying to get it back.

His private army was more than enough to fend off those vagrants, he assured them.

There was no safer place for the trunk than his estate.

“I only regret, Master Illiard, that you did not take me into your confidence,” he good-naturedly chided. “Had I been aware of the peril, I would have sent an entire battalion to fetch my lovely bride.”

Illiard ducked his head and mumbled something about how he’d had no wish to trouble him.

Guinevere knew the real reason, though: pride.

Her father hadn’t wanted to admit to his future son-in-law that he didn’t have the means to fund an adequate security escort.

He’d gambled with his only child’s life, just as he’d gambled for her dowry.

“What is your interest in the Parure, my lord?” Guinevere asked Wensleydale.

Of course, what she really meant was, What’s so valuable about it that someone of your illustrious pedigree is willing to marry a trader’s daughter?

He crooked a smile from where he sat to her left, at the head of the table.

“I am a collector of antiquities, Miss Guinevere. When your sire described the Parure to me, I realized that it’s a very fine set of great historical significance.

It belonged to a lady of House Truscan of the Vale and was lost at some point during the Marrow War. ”

Ah, Guinevere thought. It all made sense now. The Truscan family was staggeringly influential, a longtime ally of the Dwendalian royal bloodline. Wensleydale would either return their lost treasure to them in order to curry favor or sell it back for an exorbitant sum.

This was to be the rest of her life. Social one-upmanship, political maneuvers, and parlor games. It was what she’d been trained for.

But was it what she wanted?