I Sold the Cursed Duke One Hundred Nights, and He Never Counted Them novel · Chapter 11 of 24
Chapter 11: The Broadsheet
Calanthe read it aloud at breakfast.
She had propped the broadsheet against the teapot, and she cleared her throat before a recital.
"The Count's Daughter and the Grand Duke's Ledger," she read. "It is said in the capital's best drawing rooms that Lady O. M., the ruined Count's eldest, has sold one hundred nights in the bed of a certain Grand Duke, at five thousand crowns the night."
Jorrin's spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.
"A contract was signed in the Duke's own study, and this paper has seen it. The Duke himself keeps the count of the nights." She lowered the paper. "How very businesslike. I do wonder who sells a thing like that to a newspaper."
"I wonder, too," said the Dowager.
She sat at the head of the table, in the Duke's usual chair, with her cane against her knee.
Her eyes were on Calanthe.
"Do you?" said Calanthe.
"I do."
"I certainly didn't."
"No," said the Dowager. "I don't suppose you did."
Odalys put down her cup because her hand wasn't steady.
The drawing rooms.
Everyone who had stared at her in the opera house would have it by noon, and everyone who hadn't would have it by dark.
Halcourt had learned the terms of a contract she had signed in a locked study.
She thought of the notary who had witnessed it, a stooped man with an ink-stained thumb.
The door opened.
Caelan came in with the morning light behind him, in a black coat, and crossed straight to Calanthe's end of the table and took the paper out of her hands.
He read the headline.
He folded it in four, very carefully, and set it on the fire.
"Lady Calanthe," he said, "you will give my aunt your arm. Jorrin, finish your eggs. Odalys."
"Yes."
"Stand up."
She stood.
"You'll come with me to the levee."
"The levee," said the Dowager, "is at noon, before four hundred people, and the Council's clerks."
"Yes."
"Caelan, be sensible."
"I am being sensible," said the Duke. "I'm very rarely anything else."
The Great Hall of Drevoss held the morning levee on the first Tuesday of every month, and it had never been so crowded.
The gilded doors were thrown open.
Four hundred people in satin stood in two rows along the marble, and they all went quiet the instant the Duke's heralds banged their staves.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of I Sold the Cursed Duke One Hundred Nights, and He Never Counted Them are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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