The Wolf I Saved Was the Mad Duke novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Hunt of Autumn
At the Crown Prince's hunt Ianthe steps between the court's bows and a cornered black wolf and buys it with her dead mother's pearls; her betrothed breaks the engagement before everyone and calls in a 30,000-crown debt by the first snow.
"Five hundred crowns says His Highness puts the first arrow through its eye."
The wolf was backed against a rock at the bottom of the ravine, and the whole court was laughing.
Ianthe had never seen anything that big that wasn't a horse.
It was black from nose to tail, with an arrow standing out of its left shoulder.
The hounds had it in a half circle, baying and snapping, and it wasn't looking at the hounds.
It was looking up at the riders on the bank.
"A thousand on the Marquess," someone shouted.
The Marquess of Morcaine smiled and didn't take his eyes off the wolf.
"I never shoot first," he said. "I prefer to watch."
Ianthe was at the very back of the hunt, on a borrowed horse, in her mother's old green riding habit.
Her betrothed had asked her to stay there.
Orlian said the habit was ten years out of fashion and so, in his opinion, was she.
He was at the front now, beside the Crown Prince, laughing at whatever the Prince said before the Prince had finished saying it.
The Prince lifted his bow.
The court went quiet just before a joke.
The wolf didn't snarl.
It didn't run.
It just looked along the line of riders, one face at a time, until it came to hers.
Its eyes were grey.
Not yellow, like a dog's. Grey, like rain on a window.
Ianthe was off the horse before she knew she had moved.
The bank was steep and wet with leaves, and she went down most of it on her backside.
Somebody screamed her name.
She got up at the bottom with mud on her skirt and walked into the space between the hounds and the rock.
Then she turned around and spread her arms.
Twenty bows were pointed at her.
"Lady Ianthe," the Prince said, as if he were trying out an unfamiliar word. "You're in my shot."
"It's already hurt, Your Highness. It can't run. There's no sport in it."
"Sport," said the Marquess of Morcaine, "is whatever His Highness enjoys."
The court laughed.
Orlian's face had gone the color of a boiled ham.
"Ianthe, get out of there. You're embarrassing me."
"I'm embarrassing you?"
"She isn't well, Your Highness," Orlian said quickly. "Her family's had a difficult year."
That got a bigger laugh.
Everyone knew what kind of year the Belmoray family had had.
Behind Ianthe, the wolf breathed.
It was close enough that she could feel the warmth of it on the back of her neck.
She didn't turn around.
The Hunt Master rode down the far side of the ravine on a big grey horse and stopped in front of her.
"My lady, by forest law the quarry belongs to the Hunt Master until it's dead. Step aside."
"It belongs to you?"
"Until it's dead."
"Then sell it to me."
There was a moment of silence, and then the laughter came down the bank.
"With what?" someone called. "Belmoray hasn't paid its candlemaker since spring!"
Ianthe reached into her collar.
Her mother's pearls had been against her skin every day for eight years, since the day her mother died.
Thirty-three of them, with a gold clasp shaped like a sparrow.
She pulled them out over her head and held them up so the whole hunt could see.
The laughing stopped.
The Hunt Master looked at the pearls a long time.
"The beast is promised to His Highness," Morcaine said. His voice was very soft. "Hunt Master, you know that."
The Prince yawned.
"Oh, let her have it, Morcaine. I want to see what she does with it."
"Your Highness, I have money on this."
"Then you've lost it. How marvelous."
The Hunt Master leaned down from his saddle and took the pearls out of her hand.
His fingers closed over them.
"It's yours, my lady. God help you."
Ianthe turned around.
The wolf was even bigger up close.
Its head would have come to her chest.
There was blood matted all down its foreleg, and the arrow shook every time it breathed.
"Hello," she said. "I've just spent everything I own on you, so please don't eat me."
She untied the sash from her waist and held it out.
The wolf looked at the sash.
Then it looked at her.
Then it lowered its huge head and let her loop the sash around its neck.
Up on the bank, a woman fainted.
Ianthe led the wolf up the ravine on a strip of green silk while the whole court backed their horses out of the way.
Orlian was waiting at the top.
He had got down from his horse so everyone could hear him properly.
"I'm done, Ianthe."
"Done with what?"
"With you. I will not marry a woman who makes me a laughingstock in front of the Crown Prince. Our engagement is ended."
He said it loudly and turned a little toward the Prince, so he would be sure to get the credit.
"You were ashamed of me before I did a thing," Ianthe said.
"And now I don't have to be."
He pulled on his gloves, one finger at a time.
"My father lent yours thirty thousand crowns on the strength of this marriage. He'll want it back by the first snow."
Ianthe's stomach dropped.
She had known about the loan.
She hadn't known it was thirty thousand.
"Or he takes Belmoray House," Orlian said, "and everything in it."
He looked at the wolf.
"Including that."
Behind Ianthe, somebody remarked that it was going to snow early this year.
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