The Dragon Duke's Heir Contract novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Clause
The Crown sells the Hartlow manor and a cousin takes her mother's ring, then a dragon duke offers her a one-year contract and she signs. The last clause is in his hand.
They sold Ysolene Hartlow's mother's ring at noon, in front of everyone the family knew.
The auctioneer stood on the manor's front steps and held it up between two fingers.
It was a thin gold band with a chip of garnet, worth maybe eleven crowns.
"Hartlow Manor, its contents and its debts," he called. "The commissioner has waived all fees but one keepsake."
The commissioner was Baron Hartlow's accuser, Lord Ignatius Vaskarys, and he took the ring out of the auctioneer's hand.
He turned it in the light.
"Lovely," he said. "Such a pity, Miss Hartlow."
Ysolene was twenty-four years old and standing in the yard with a single trunk at her feet.
The whole village had come to watch, and nobody would meet her eyes.
Behind Ignatius, two guards walked her father down the steps in iron cuffs.
Baron Wendric Hartlow had been convicted of selling the Crown's grain levy to a smuggler.
He had never taken a coin that wasn't his, and every neighbor in that yard knew it.
He found Ysolene over the guards' shoulders and winked.
"Chin up, Ysolene," he called. "They've spelled my name wrong on the warrant."
The guard shoved him into the cart.
"Your mother's ring is going to a good home," said Ignatius, and slid it onto his own smallest finger.
Ysolene said something she would never repeat, and a murmur went through the crowd.
He only smiled. "Careful. You have so little left to lose."
That was when the black carriage came up the lane.
It had no coachman's crest she knew, only a silver dragon on the door, and the horses were far too calm.
The man who stepped out of it was tall enough that he ducked under the door frame.
His hair was silver and he wore it loose.
At his left temple the skin had a faint pattern like scales under a dusting of frost.
The village went so quiet that Ysolene could hear the cart creak.
"Cousin," said Ignatius, and for the first time his voice slipped.
"Ignatius," said the man.
He did not look at his cousin again.
He looked at Ysolene, and his eyes were grey, and then for half a heartbeat they were gold.
"Miss Hartlow. I'd like an hour of your time, and I'll pay for it."
She should have said no.
But the cart was already rolling away with her father in it.
The Dragon Duke of Vaskary was the only man in the Kingdom of Orvael who could stop it.
They sat in what was left of the dining room.
The creditors had taken every chair but one, so the duke stood.
Ysolene sat, and a single paper lay between them on the bare table.
He had written it himself.
She could tell by the ink, which was blacker than any she owned.
"One year," he said.
"You marry me tonight, you bear me an heir, and when the child is weaned you leave with a hundred thousand crowns and no questions."
"And my father?"
"Freed on the day the physician confirms the child. His debts paid."
"His good name is another matter, and I'll help you with that too."
Ysolene read the first page twice.
The clauses were dry and plain and unreasonably fair.
On page two she found a sum that was wrong.
"This carries a figure for the keep's upkeep that doesn't match the line above it."
"By nine crowns."
"By nine crowns," she said.
"I wondered if you'd catch it."
"Why does it matter if I do?"
"Because I need a wife who reads before she signs."
He reached across her to turn the page, and his hand closed over hers on the table.
It was hot.
It wasn't the warmth of a hand that had been in a pocket.
It was hot.
The heat went up Ysolene's wrist and settled low in her stomach.
She didn't pull away.
She looked at the scales at his temple, and then at his mouth, and she heard herself say, "You run warm."
"Always."
His thumb moved once over her knuckles, slowly.
Her breath went short, and she hated that he heard it.
"Clause eleven is about the nights," he said, very low. "You'll want to read that one carefully."
She did.
It said the duke would come to her bed after the wedding.
It said she would grant it, and that nothing in the arrangement obliged her to pretend she liked it.
Ysolene looked up, and his face gave nothing away, but his hand had not moved.
"And if I don't like it?"
"Then you'll tell me. Nobody has ever called me a patient man, but I can be that."
She thought of the cart, and the ring on Ignatius's finger, and a hundred thousand crowns.
She thought of the heat under her skin, which had nothing to do with money.
She picked up his pen.
"Sign here and here," he said. "And the last clause, below the line."
It was a single sentence, written in his hand.
It was so blunt that she read it aloud before she could stop herself.
"Every night until it takes. More, if she asks."
Her face went red from collar to hairline.
And then she signed her name under it.
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