I Sold the Cursed Duke One Hundred Nights, and He Never Counted Them novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The House

Jorrin's note came to the kitchen gate the evening before the first of December.

It was written in pencil on the back of a school exercise, in his cramped sixteen-year-old hand.

They come at eight tomorrow. Father went to the Silver Swan at noon and hasn't come back. I don't know what to pack.

Odalys told Caelan at the door of his study.

"Go," he said, without looking up from his papers. "I won't count it."

"You'll count it."

"I will not count the night you spend with your brother."

She was out of the palace in ten minutes.

She did not hope for much from Marenne House, and it was less than she had hoped.

The hall was bare of pictures.

The bailiffs had already tagged the sideboard, the long-case clock and the dining table, with labels on string.

Jorrin sat on the stairs in his school coat with a trunk beside him, his copper hair standing up where he'd pushed his fingers through it.

He stood when he saw her, and then he didn't know what to do with his arms.

"Odalys."

"Come here, idiot."

He was taller than she remembered, and thin as a rake.

She held on for a long time.

They spent the night in their mother's old sitting room, which the bailiffs had not yet reached, packing what they could carry into one trunk and two satchels.

He didn't ask what she did at the palace.

At three in the morning, with his head on her shoulder, he spoke.

"I saw the box at the opera. Father's been telling everyone you were taken. I didn't believe him."

"I wasn't taken."

"I know. I saw your face." He sniffed. "Is he kind?"

"He's rude."

"Is that a yes?"

"It's a yes."

At eight the bailiffs came up the steps with their ledgers, and Halcourt's black carriage drew up behind them.

He got out slowly, and he held out a hand for the keys.

"Miss Marenne."

She put the ring in his palm, one key at a time.

"The brass one sticks," she said. "You'll want to oil it. I hope you enjoy the house, my lord. It's got a damp wall in the east bedroom that my father never told you about."

His smile flickered.

"I'll send for the Duke's bill," she said, "when you've finished tagging the chairs."

Jorrin carried the trunk down the steps himself and wouldn't let the cab driver touch it.

"Where do we go?" he asked, once they were rolling.

"To the man I'm sleeping with."

He looked at his boots for a block.

"All right," he said.

Odalys got back to the palace at dawn, the real dawn, after a night of her brother's breathing and dust sheets.

She came in by the garden door and nearly walked into the Duke.

He stood in the passage in his riding coat, with his collar turned up and the cold of the outdoors still on him.

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