The Wolf I Saved Was the Mad Duke novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Marquess at Midnight

Morcaine insults her mother, offers 2,000 crowns for the wolf and greets the animal like an old acquaintance; Ianthe refuses, then reads aloud about the missing Mad Duke and declares him dreadful; at dawn her ex-fiancé arrives with bailiffs.

He came in without waiting for an answer.

His men stayed on the step with the lantern, and the cold came in with him and didn't leave.

The Marquess stood in the Belmoray front hall and looked around it slowly.

At the dust sheets over the chairs.

At the dark squares on the wallpaper where the paintings used to hang.

At Ianthe's mother's harp, standing in the parlor doorway with two strings missing.

"I remember your mother playing that at court," he said. "Such a talent. Then she married a count who mends clocks, and died poor."

"She died of a fever, my lord."

"Poor people do."

Ianthe held the candle very still so he wouldn't see her hand shake.

"It's after midnight. What do you want?"

"The wolf. I'll give you two thousand crowns for it. Tonight. In gold."

Two thousand crowns.

It was more money than had been in this house since Ianthe was sixteen.

It was a fifteenth of what the family owed.

"Why?" she asked.

He tilted his head.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're the Minister of War. You could buy a hundred wolves. Why do you want a hurt one that's already sold?"

"Because I had five hundred crowns on it, Lady Ianthe, and I dislike losing."

He smiled, and it didn't get anywhere near his eyes.

"Also, I'm told I'm petty."

Something moved in the dark at the end of the hall.

The wolf had come out of the kitchen.

He didn't growl.

He didn't make any sound at all.

He just walked down the hall on his bad leg and stopped beside Ianthe, between her and the Marquess.

Out on the step, one of the men dropped the lantern.

The Marquess didn't step back.

He looked down at the wolf, and the wolf looked up at him, and for a long moment neither of them moved.

"Hello," the Marquess said softly.

It was the way you'd speak to someone you had known for years.

Ianthe didn't like it.

"He's not for sale," she said.

"Everything in this house is for sale. You just don't know the date yet."

"Then come back when you do. Good night, my lord."

He pulled his gloves tight.

"The city watch shoots stray dogs, you know. A wolf without a collar is a stray."

"Then I'll buy him a collar."

"With what?" He glanced at the empty wall where the big mirror had been. "Lock your doors, Lady Ianthe. Beasts get out."

He left.

Ianthe shut the door and put her back against it and slid all the way down to the floor.

The wolf stood over her.

Then he sat down, pressed against her shoulder, and stayed there until her teeth stopped chattering.

Papa slept through all of it. Papa could sleep through a siege.

Ianthe didn't sleep at all.

Toward three in the morning she gave up and went back to the kitchen and lit a lamp.

Odalie had left the broadsheet on the table, folded open to the court page.

"Listen to this," Ianthe told the wolf. "It's about you."

He looked up.

"Not you. Other beasts."

She smoothed the paper flat.

"'The Duke of Norvaine is still missing, seven weeks after the Emperor's victory feast.'"

She turned the page toward the lamp.

"'His Imperial Majesty has named the Marquess of Morcaine regent of Norvaine and acting commander of the northern army.'"

She put the paper down.

"So that's why he can afford two thousand crowns at midnight. He's spending somebody else's duchy."

The wolf's ears went flat.

Ianthe picked the paper up again.

"'The Duke, called the Mad Duke since he rode alone through the burning gate of Halvreth...'"

She skipped a bit.

"'...took a sword cut to the left shoulder in that action, and rode on.'"

"Of course he did," she said. "Of course he rode on. Men like that always ride on. Then somebody else has to wash the shirt."

There was more.

The Mad Duke didn't dance.

He didn't attend court if he could help it.

He was said to have thrown one of his own captains down a well for cowardice.

His grandmother was said to be the only person alive who was allowed to speak to him before noon.

"Listen to him," Ianthe said. "He sounds dreadful."

The wolf made a small noise.

"I'm serious. I saw him once, at a ball, when I was eighteen."

"He stood against the wall all night and glared at the dancing like it owed him money."

She folded the paper in half.

"Imagine having to marry that. Imagine breakfast."

She did an impression of a large man scowling at an egg.

"I'd sooner marry the wine merchant on Tanner Street," she said. "At least he laughs. Wetly, but he laughs."

The wolf got up.

He walked, very deliberately, all the way around the table on his bad leg.

Then he lay down again, facing the wall, with his back to her.

"Oh, don't sulk," Ianthe said. "You didn't even know him."

The back of his neck said he didn't care to discuss it.

She laughed, which surprised her.

She hadn't laughed since the ravine.

She fell asleep at the table eventually, with her cheek on the page about the missing Duke.

What woke her was Odalie's hand shaking her shoulder.

It was light outside.

Odalie's face was white.

"Ianthe, get up. Orlian's on the front step."

"Tell him to go away."

"He brought two bailiffs," Odalie said. "They've got a list. They're here to count the furniture."

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