I Sold the Cursed Duke One Hundred Nights, and He Never Counted Them novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Gate
Odalys's father came to the Drevoss gates on a grey afternoon in a hired cab.
She was crossing the courtyard when the porter sent word, and she went out on foot with her cloak still unfastened.
He stood on the far side of the iron bars in an old greatcoat that smelled of brandy even from there.
He had not shaved.
Behind him at the curb stood Halcourt's black carriage, with its blinds drawn.
"Odalys," Count Marenne said.
"Father."
"You look well." His eyes went over her cloak, her boots, her pearls. "You look rich."
"I'm not."
"Halcourt has made an offer." He said it fast, in a voice that had practiced it. "He'll forgive the whole hundred and forty thousand. The house stays ours. Jorrin's school is paid to the end of his schooling. You'll come home with me today, and you'll marry Halcourt on Lady Day."
She held on to the bars.
"He's forty-six," she said. "He's been robbing us for three years. Did you read what you signed?"
"I trusted him."
"I know you did."
"He's a respectable man. He holds a seat on the Exchange."
"He holds a seat because he steals better than the others."
Her father's face worked.
"You will not speak to me like that on a public street."
"You called me a whore in the opera house."
"I was..." He stopped.
"Drunk," she said.
He looked at the ground, and at the carriage, and back at her.
She saw the thing she had known all her life under the bluster, a man who would rather be somewhere else.
"Come home, Odalys."
"No."
"Then I have no daughter."
"You pawned Mother's pearls," she said.
He froze.
"You told us they were stolen. I have them back."
"Who..."
"The man I'm sleeping with bought them back for me. Did you want to tell the street that part, or shall I?"
He went the color of paper.
"You are no daughter of mine," the Count said. "You hear me? You are nothing to this family. Don't come to my door."
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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