I Sold the Cursed Duke One Hundred Nights, and He Never Counted Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Dowager
The Duke's aunt offers twenty thousand crowns to leave and names the bride the family chose; Odalys won't sell by the week. In the library the Duke makes her say his name. A carriage with eleven trunks pulls into the courtyard.
The Dowager Grand Duchess of Drevoss kept Odalys waiting a night and a morning, which she understood was the first part of the inspection.
At eleven on the fourth day a footman led her into the blue drawing room, and the old woman did not stand.
She sat in a high-backed chair by the window in a black gown buttoned to the chin.
Her white hair was braided into a crown, and an ebony cane lay across her knees.
Her eyes were Caelan's eyes, grey and level, in a face thirty years older.
"Turn around," she said.
"No."
The cane tapped once on the floor.
"I've had mares turn around for less."
"Then buy me, Your Grace, and I'll turn around for the price."
There was a silence long enough to hear the fire.
"Sit," said Isaura Drevoss.
Odalys sat.
The Dowager looked her over from her boots to her hair without any attempt at manners.
"You are the third," she said. "The first was an actress, and the second was a widow with a good figure. Each one lasted a week. They came to his bed paid and frightened, and they left the same way."
"I'm paid. I'm not frightened."
"No. I can see that." She tilted her head. "Twenty thousand crowns. In my hand, by Friday. You'll walk out of this house with a fine character, a fair settlement and no one the wiser."
"It's a fair offer."
"It is the best you'll get."
"I don't sell by the week, Your Grace." Odalys put her hands on her knees to keep them still. "I sold a hundred nights. I mean to deliver every one of them, and I mean to be paid for every one."
"My nephew will marry at Midsummer."
Odalys had not known that.
She kept her face quite blank.
"Lady Calanthe Aldervane," the Dowager said. "Twenty-two, a granddaughter of the late Chancellor, and the only girl in the Empire whose family will risk a Drevoss bed. The match is arranged. Every house in the capital knows it but you."
"The hundredth night falls before Midsummer."
"Does it?"
"By my count it does."
"Then you will be gone, and my nephew will be a married man, and we shall all be content." She leaned on the cane. "I like you, girl. You answer back. The last two cried."
"I'm not here for you to like."
"No. You're here to sell yourself to a man for a house." Her voice softened by exactly one degree. "I did not say it was a sin. I said it was a bargain, and that a bargain has an end."
Odalys stood.
"With respect, Your Grace, I know exactly where it ends."
The Dowager watched her all the way to the door.
Odalys did not go back to the west room.
She went to the library, where nobody would look, and spent the afternoon with a volume of tax law she couldn't read because every line swam.
The library was the biggest room in the north wing, two floors of black oak shelves with a rolling ladder on a brass rail.
By moonset she was at the top of the ladder with a book she had already read, her back against the shelf.
She wasn't thinking about anything at all.
A footman had come at dusk and put out every lamp without a word, and she had stayed where she was, in the dark.
The door opened.
She didn't look down.
"You are not in my bed."
"It's not moonset yet."
"It's moonset in four minutes." He crossed the floor without a sound. "My aunt saw you."
"She offered me twenty thousand to go."
"And?"
"I said no."
The ladder creaked as he took hold of the rail.
He came up three rungs and stopped below her, with his face level with her knees.
His hands closed over her ankles.
"Why?"
"Because I wrote the price. Not her."
He stayed there with his thumbs moving on the bones of her ankles.
When he looked up, the hunger in his face was almost indecent.
"Come down."
"I'm comfortable."
"Odalys."
"You haven't asked politely."
"I don't ask politely."
"Then I'll stay where I am."
He went up another rung.
Both his hands ran up the backs of her calves, under the hem of her skirt, and her breath caught and she let the book fall.
It hit the floor with a crack.
"You've called me Your Grace for four days," he said. His voice had dropped into the register she felt in her stomach. "You say it like an insult. Say my name."
"I don't use it."
"Tonight you do."
His hands slid up her thighs, and stopped, and she heard how loud she was breathing.
"Caelan," she said.
It came out.
He closed his eyes for a second.
"Again."
"Caelan."
He took her off the ladder by the waist.
He set her against the oak with her back to the spines and her skirt crushed between them.
His hand went to the front of her bodice and ripped.
Odalys wasn't going to say that she liked it.
She said, "Do it again," and he did.
Her bodice was already in pieces, and Odalys could not bring herself to care.
His hand found her bare breast and her whole body went taut against the shelves.
"Say it again," he said.
"Make me."
His thumb rolled over her nipple, slow, deliberate, and the sound she made was not a word.
"Caelan."
"Louder."
"Caelan."
His other hand was already under her skirt, pushing the fabric up her thighs.
"This is not in the contract."
"Nothing about tonight is." His breath was hot against her ear. "Say it while my fingers are inside you."
"I haven't agreed to that."
"You will."
His hand slid higher and found her already wet through her stockings and the thin linen beneath.
He made a low sound in his chest, almost pained.
"Fuck," he said. "You're soaked."
"It's the ladder. It's what you did on the ladder."
His fingers hooked into the waist of her underthings and pulled hard enough that she heard the seam give.
Then his bare hand was on her, two fingers sliding through her wetness, and her head fell back against the books.
"Caelan."
"Good girl."
He pressed two fingers inside her and her hips jerked forward on their own.
Books shifted behind her back.
"Tell me how it feels," she said, but her voice was shaking.
"Like you were made for my hand." He curled his fingers and she gasped. "Hot. Tight. Mine."
"I'm not yours."
"Your cunt says otherwise."
The word landed in her stomach like a spark.
He worked her with a patience that felt like cruelty, his thumb finding her clit and circling while his fingers moved in and out.
The pleasure built high and sharp, and she grabbed the shelf behind her for something solid.
A book fell off the shelf, and neither of them flinched.
"Say my name when you come," he said against her throat. "Say it loud enough they hear it in the north wing."
"Then you'd better work harder."
He laughed, low and mean, the first time she had heard him laugh.
Then his hand moved faster, and his thumb pressed down on her clit in a slow, hard circle, and the world narrowed to his fingers in her and his hot mouth on her throat.
"You've been wound tight for four days," he said. "I can feel it. Let go."
"I don't take orders."
"Liar."
The pressure built and broke all at once, and she came with his name torn out of her.
"Caelan."
"That's it."
His fingers kept moving through the aftershocks, drawing it out until her legs shook.
She heard two more books hit the floor.
When she could breathe, she shoved his hand away and reached for the front of his breeches.
"My turn."
He went still.
"Odalys."
"I want to see what four days of wanting me has done to you."
She undid the buttons with fingers that only trembled a little.
His cock was hard and hot in her hand the second she wrapped her fingers around him.
He made a sound like she had struck him, and both his palms slammed against the shelf on either side of her head.
"Fuck," he said, and his hips rolled into her grip.
She stroked him slowly, learning him.
The skin was soft over iron, and he was so hard it looked painful.
"Tell me what it feels like."
"Like falling." His voice was rough, barely his own. "Like drowning. I can't think."
"Good."
She tightened her grip and moved faster.
His forehead dropped to her shoulder and he shuddered.
"Don't stop."
"Say it again."
"Don't stop, Odalys."
She used her thumb to circle the head of his cock, and he made a broken sound against her neck.
"Please."
The word hit harder than anything else he had said all night.
"Please what?"
"Please don't stop."
She stroked him hard and fast, her other hand sliding up to the back of his neck, holding him to her.
He was shaking apart in her hands and both of them knew it.
"It has never been like this," he said, the words half a sob. "Not with anyone."
"Say my name."
"Odalys."
"Again."
"Odalys."
He came over her hand and the shelf, hot and thick, his whole body shuddering through it.
She held him through it and did not look away from his face.
When he could move, he did not pull back.
He kissed her shoulder, open-mouthed and grateful, and the touch of his mouth there was more intimate than anything they had done.
They slid down to the floor together, into the wreckage of books and torn linen, and Odalys started to laugh.
"Look at what I've done to your library."
He looked at the books scattered across the dark carpet.
"Worth it."
"You're a degenerate."
"I am a Duke." He pulled his coat off and tucked it under her head. "I'm a Duke with a ruined library and a woman who says my name like a curse."
"Maybe it is one."
He didn't answer.
He just lay there in the dark, breathing, his arm across her waist, and she didn't move because she didn't want to.
At dawn Odalys was still on the floor of the library with his coat under her head.
He had gone up to the north wing before the servants woke.
"Night four," he'd said at the door, and walked off.
She pricked four holes into the back of her prayer book, feeling each one with her thumb.
Four.
She got up and went to the window, wearing his coat.
A carriage was rolling into the courtyard, painted pale blue, drawn by four grey horses.
A second carriage followed it, piled high with trunks.
A small woman with golden hair stepped down, and the footmen bowed so low that their foreheads nearly touched their knees.
She tilted her face up at the north wing, as if she knew exactly which window Odalys stood at, and smiled.
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