My Duke Became a Dragon, So I Took Him to the Ball novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bell Was Too High
Ysmerelle finds her fiance as a speaking thirty-centimetre dragon hanging from a bell rope; he orders her to say he is away, she refuses and walks him out to his waiting visitors. HOOK: his aunt announces a ball tonight.
Ysmerelle found her fiance hanging from the bell rope by his front claws.
The little dragon glared at her with the duke's amber eyes.
"Pull," he said in Caerovan's ordinary voice.
She looked at the cord stretched above him.
Then she looked at the chair he had evidently climbed to reach it.
"I thought you were receiving visitors."
"I am attempting to summon someone capable of opening the door."
"You're behind it," Ysmerelle said.
"It is heavy."
She had been engaged to him for a week.
Until this morning, his most inconvenient habit had been correcting people who weren't speaking to him.
Now his tail was wound around a tassel.
Ysmerelle lifted the brass dragon head mounted beside the door.
The door opened easily.
Caerovan looked at the handle she'd used.
"From this side," he said.
She didn't point out that he was also on this side.
He attempted to climb down with dignity.
His tail tightened around the tassel and left him hanging sideways.
She held out both hands beneath him.
"May I?"
"I can manage."
He loosened his claws.
The rope rose abruptly, taking the tassel with it.
She caught him before his wings could knock the lamp over.
For a moment, a thirty-centimetre duke lay on her palms with his tail across her wrist.
He was warm, heavier than she expected, and very still.
"Thank you," he said.
She put him on the desk.
He immediately stood with his foreclaws on a book.
It made him taller than the inkpot.
"You will tell the visitors I have been called away."
Ysmerelle shut the study door behind herself.
"Where?"
"That isn't important."
"They might ask," she said.
"Invent something credible."
He tried to move the book toward the front of the desk.
It didn't move.
She watched him push a second time before he climbed down.
"Our contract says six gatherings," she told him.
"It doesn't say six lies."
"This is a temporary difficulty," he said.
"How temporary?"
He spread his wings.
One struck the inkpot.
She caught the pot, and he folded the wing.
Neither of them mentioned it.
"I haven't determined that," he said.
She remembered his remark over breakfast.
She had accepted an invitation from his sister without first asking his permission.
He'd said his fiancee should prefer attending with him.
When she'd asked whether he intended to come, he'd told her to decline it.
Then he'd left the room quickly.
She looked at the closed wings and understood why.
"Does this happen when somebody disobeys you?"
"No," he said.
"When you dislike their choice?"
His tail slid over the edge of the desk.
He pulled it back before answering.
"Sometimes."
A knock came from the passage.
Caerovan lowered himself behind the book.
Ysmerelle opened the door a hand's width.
Virelle stood outside with her employer's evening gloves.
She looked past Ysmerelle at the desk.
The dragon's horns remained visible above the spine.
"His Grace will want a smaller book," the companion said.
"I want the visitors sent home," he told her.
Virelle looked at Ysmerelle instead.
She had agreed to be her companion, not his messenger.
Ysmerelle liked her more each day.
"We're going to receive them," she said.
She set her handbag on the desk and opened it.
Caerovan looked inside with an expression remarkably familiar on such a different face.
"Absolutely not."
"Then walk."
He went to the edge and looked down.
She waited.
He flew to the chair, caught the cushion with his foreclaws, and carefully climbed to the floor.
It took longer than getting into the bag.
She respected the effort enough not to say so.
Virelle held the study door open.
The duke reached it, turned sideways, and caught his wingtip on the frame.
He backed up and tried again with his wings folded.
Ysmerelle followed him into the passage.
For the first time since signing the contract, she wasn't afraid of what his visitors would think of her.
She was curious what he would say to them himself.
A silver-haired woman stood waiting outside the drawing room.
Her gaze dropped to the dragon approaching her shoes.
"We have a ball tonight," she said.
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