I Sold the Cursed Duke One Hundred Nights, and He Never Counted Them novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Confession

"It broke on the first night," Caelan said.

He sat up against the headboard with the sheet at his waist and the last candles guttering on the mantel.

He did not look away from her.

"I felt it go under your hand. I thought it was the fever. I lay there until dawn and waited for it to come back, and it didn't."

"And you didn't tell me."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because you'd have taken the money and gone." His voice was flat, as if he had said it to the ceiling a thousand times. "You came into my study with a contract and a price. You didn't come for me. I'd looked at you across a ballroom for a minute and thought about you for eighteen months, and you were selling me a hundred nights because the alternative was Halcourt. The moment I told you the curse was gone, you had no reason to stay."

"So you counted wrong."

"So I counted wrong."

"For fifty-five nights."

"For most of them," he said.

Odalys laughed.

It hurt coming out.

"Do you know what I did with that number?" she said. "I carried it. I woke up every morning and it was a smaller number to get through. Forty-four. Forty-five. I told myself I had fifty-five more nights to get through and I'd get through them. I wrote it on the back of my hand, Caelan. I counted it down."

"I know."

"You let me think I owed you something."

"You owed me nothing. I owed you five hundred thousand crowns, all at once, the moment I lied. It's in your contract." He swallowed. "I put a note to the steward in the drawer. If you ever asked for your money, it was yours. I would have given you every crown. You never asked."

"I never asked," she said, "because I thought you were keeping an honest tally."

"I know."

"Don't say you know. Say what you did."

He closed his eyes.

"I lied to you every dawn," Caelan said. "You read the rest. I took your family's debt and your brother's school fees and made them a lock on a door. I would do it again tomorrow if I thought it would keep you. That's the whole of it. I won't say I'm sorry for wanting you. I'm sorry for the lie."

She stood and gathered her nightgown off the floor.

Her hands were shaking.

"The contract is void," she said. "You broke it. Every line of it."

"Yes."

"I'll take what I earned. Fifty-five nights, five thousand each. That's two hundred and seventy-five thousand."

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