Page 1 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

London, England

Bang-Bang-Bang

M iss Cressida Alby tried to figure out the source of the pounding that’d roused her from sleep. The world rocked and pitched and bounced under her, and she attempted to open her eyes.

It took several attempts to lift her seemingly weighted lashes. When she did, she was greeted by a shroud of darkness and biting chill. Considering Cressida lived in a hovel that served as her home in Ratcliffe, some of the most dangerous streets in England, it wasn’t an unfamiliar way to find herself.

This pitiless chill, however, proved even more unforgiving than what she’d become accustomed to over the years. That, combined with the jolting oscillation, put her somewhere else.

Cressida blinked slowly.

At some point, she’d fallen asleep in the corner of her brother’s once-grand chariot. Adorned in gilded paint, panels, and upholstery its chipped paint had long since faded to a sickly shade of yellow.

Why was she—?

Her gaze collided with a vaguely familiar lady. Between the woman’s classical Grecian-inspired coiffure, diaphanous gown, and graceful but voluptuous figure, a beauty such as her would only find someone like Cressida wanting. Why, with the lady’s creamy white complexion and her features, she may as well have been the Divine Lady herself—Emma, Lady Hamilton—resurrected.

The stranger—Cressida attempted to recall the exquisitely beautiful woman’s name—yelled and simultaneously pounded on the ceiling. Bang-Bang-Bang. “Would you hurry, you stupid dolt?”

Where was Cressida going and why was this nasty stranger accompanying her?

Something nagged at Cressida. Her sluggish mind struggled to recall her heated exchange with her brother Stanley Alby, Baron Newhart. He’d often struck her in the head, and her brain would become clouded afterwards. This fog felt very much like that.

At one point, he’d lifted his hand to strike Cressida, but Stanley’s recently wedded wife, Lady Marianne, had intervened and saved Cressida. What had her sister-in-law said?

Cressida grappled with the memory.

“…if you mark her, you’ll cost both of…”

She was close. So close to making out the details around that angry spat between the new husband and wife.

There came the crisp snap of a whip. “Hyah!”

As if she felt Cressida staring, the satin-cloaked lady’s gaze flickered Cressida’s way.

Then like a hideous and oppressive nightmare, the memories came, but in drips and drabs…

Cressida recalled being roughly yanked from a sound sleep by her brother’s man, Fellowes. The pockmarked, broken-nosed bastard, who served the baron in every role from footman to valet to guard to a grain bag for his employer to beat on, had dragged her through the cold, dark halls.

At nearly a foot taller than Cressida’s brother, Fellowes had a scrawny frame compared to Stanley’s bulk, but each man taught Cressida that, regardless of size, all men could pack a punch. She’d not put up a fight when he’d manhandled her or when she was deposited before her brother in their single furnished parlor.

She’d been forced to join Stanley and his wife, Lady Marianne. At that point, Cressida discovered the latest evil her brother had been up to this night.

Why couldn’t she remember? Why?

Something about the ancient Duke of Harrowden.

Concentrating, however, proved a strain to Cressida. She felt like she was floating, hovering outside of and above her body, staring down at the strange, nasty woman shrilly issuing orders while Cressida sat mute.

Bang-Bang-Bang. “Hurry, you bloody dolt!”

Flecks of gilded paint chips sprinkled down like specks of shining dust before her eyes, which had never felt heavier than they did in this moment.

What a rude thing. Everything about the lady marked her as high-born.

Only after the passing of a distant relative a few years earlier had Cressida’s family been elevated to the peerage; but she’d been inhabiting the noble world long enough to have ascertained that actual politeness , when it referred to Polite Society, was nothing more than an empty word.

Then she recalled the woman’s identity—Lady Marianne. Stanley’s new wife and Cressida’s new sister-in-law.

“At last, you are awake.” The baroness peered down the length of her slightly turned-up nose at Cressida. The Lord had certainly known the appendage to affix upon this lofty peeress’s face.

Cressida’s tongue felt as heavy as her limbs, and she couldn’t move her lips.

“No doubt the herbs I added to your tea was the first time you’ve ever had them.”

That accounted for Cressida’s state! She’d been drugged.

“Blast and damn!” The heavily painted face of her companion twisted with more of her earlier annoyance. “Fellowes!” She shot up fingers encased in gold satin, formed them into a fist, and thumped even harder. “If I am late, I swear I’ll cut off your reining hand.”

Stanley’s carriage lurched with a force that sent Cressida’s languid body flying forward. Her hard-hearted companion caught Cressida by the shoulders and guided her none too gently back into the tattered folds of her upholstered bench.

The speed with which the team of four took flight sent a paint piece some two inches long falling onto Cressida’s lap.

The baroness stared at that remnant of Stanley’s declining chariot; the gilded seal had long since been chipped off by Cressida’s brother when he’d been particularly pinched for funds.

If possible, the woman’s tipped-up nose tilted up even farther. “How pathetic these gentlemen are,” she muttered. “It is an absolute travesty that imprudent, insentient fools should be the ones to rule the world, while we’re left trying to find a way to survive.”

Hmm. It appeared Cressida could agree with the horrid lady on something after all.

“Fortunately, thanks to me, you and your brother won’t be in such straits for long,” the baroness declared.

At that pronouncement, the floodgates broke open and the memories came pouring through.

Stanley had found a husband for Cressida.

“…Harrowden will pay a hefty price for you…”

This time, with reality’s intrusion, Cressida curled onto her side and made herself as small as possible to hide from the truth that, with every turn of the carriage wheels and clip-clop of the horses’ steady trot, grew increasingly closer.

“…answer to all our problems…”

Their problems?

What problems had Cressida herself created for them? It’d been Stanley who’d arrived in London and promptly wagered away, drank away, and lechered his way out of funds. Contrarily, in the years they’d been in the capital, Cressida barely received funds for a wardrobe, and then only just enough so she could be trussed up in the hopes of securing a husband.

As if it’d ever been a possibility that a country girl from Somerset could find a good, honorable, proper nobleman to marry her of all people.

It seemed, in the end, Stanley had secured one.

Cressida’s stomach lurched and she closed her eyes. Or maybe the jolt of the chariot accounted for the lurching sensation.

She peeled back the moth-eaten, fraying curtain and took in the quadrangular arrangement outside. A bright glow of lampposts illuminated a grand central courtyard comprised of blue-gray cobblestones, brightly lit by the glow of candles. Between the symmetry of the paving and the artful design the Roman Rota Fortuna crafted within the stones, Cressida could almost convince herself she’d been brought to Wellington’s grand residence in Hyde Park Corner and not one of the dens of sin her brother frequented.

“…wants some other fellow to spare him the tedium of deflowering you…”

“At last.” The baroness gave a happy clap of her hands. “We’ve arrived and are early.”

Cressida’s tongue felt like a brick in her mouth, but she got a single, bitter word out. “Splendid.”

The baroness’s painted lips formed the first real smile Cressida would have believed the shrew capable of. “That is the spirit, my dear.” Her pencil-thin eyebrows dipped in the middle. “You have absolutely no idea how fortunate you are, Cressida. What I wouldn’t give to go back to when I was a young, na?ve virgin, unwise in the ways of carnality.” The vile woman’s gaze grew cloudy and far-off. “To learn it all again.” She rubbed a gloved hand over her ample breasts and moaned.

Oh, God. Dread pitted in Cressida’s belly. This is what they’d planned for her. She’d be given to some stranger. No, not given. With the debt her brother had built up and the constancy with which he found items of even a small value within their household to sell, she herself had been sold.

Repulsed, Cressida eyed the opposite carriage door, though her head proved too heavy to move, and contemplated escape. Among her accomplishments of darning tattered socks, stretching coin, and baking bread, Cressida could also count deftness on her feet. With all the times Stanley had raised a hand to strike her over the years—first when they’d been small children and he’d been a foul brute of a brother, and then when their father passed and he’d become Cressida’s protector—she’d become quite quick.

But to do so meant she’d forfeit Trudy’s life for Stanley would make Trudy pay if Cressida escaped. Trudy who, after the passing of Cressida’s father, had been the only family she’d truly known.

There was no escape.

Lady Marianne had apparently grown tired of whatever perverse thoughts she’d been entertaining in her head, for she gave Cressida a long, deep appraisal. “Your blasted brother,” she spat. “I should have loaned you one of my gowns and not this”—the noblewoman slashed a palm in Cressida’s direction—“burlap sack you’ve donned.”

She cast a familiarly disdainful glance over Cressida’s person. “Though my exquisitely crafted articles would likely fall off your frail, scrawny figure, which would prove helpful in its own right.”

Catching her chin in her left hand, the baroness proceeded to tap her forefinger against the side of her lips. “Hmm.” Suddenly, she stopped. Her brown eyes glowed. “Why, yes! I should have thought of that! It will add to the story crafted for you and will enflame them. You are a destitute virgin from the country with a dissolute, scapegrace of a brother, who has sold you against your will to cover his gaming debts and to fund his lavish lifestyle.”

A story? Enflame who , exactly? Them…as in plural.

The baroness moved to the edge of her seat so quick, Cressida didn’t even have time to curl deeper into herself.

This time, the lewd noblewoman did not roughly grab Cressida. Instead, her brother’s wife shoved her own cloak off to reveal a nearly translucent, diaphanous gown with a plunging neckline that had thin strings along the front. She gave them a yank and her bodice immediately fell open, revealing her pendulous, pale white breasts.

Revolted by the shameless way she exposed herself, Cressida closed her eyes.

“I continue to forget you are a virgin.” Her sister-in-law sighed. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

Cressida struggled to speak. “Disagree.”

As usual, her objections didn’t matter.

“Let us change quickly as we’re able,” the baroness said. “As it is—”

Knock-Knock-Knock .

“Keep your hair on, Fellowes!” The peeress’s shrill tones echoed about the chariot.

“It ain’t Fellowes. Dynevor asked if the lady is participating or not.”

Panic descended over the wanton woman’s suddenly wan features.

“We’ve arrived early,” the baroness called. For the first time since Cressida met the woman a week earlier, Lady Marianne’s voice was shaky.

“Dynevor and Latimer set the terms here. They say when you’ll meet, and if they ask you to come earlier than you’re there, there’s plenty of others to take your place.”

If possible, the noblewoman’s cheeks went an even paler shade of white. “It’ll be but one more moment, if you please,” she called, this time with less confidence and far more obsequiousness.

Dynevor and Latimer? Keeping the books for her brother, they were two names Cressida recognized, even in her cups as she was.

The proprietors of The Devil’s Den.

Why—?

“Of all the injustices.” Cursing under her breath, the horrid shrew hurriedly refastened her gown.

Cressida was to be granted a reprieve from at least one indignity this night.

“How dare those buffoons speak to me so. I shall speak to Dynevor myself.”

And yet, given the way in which the peeress whispered her outrage at that treatment, Cressida would be willing to place the first wager of her twenty-five years that Lady Marianne would do no such thing.

Her gown drawn into place, Stanley’s new wife turned all her attention back on Cressida. “This will not do,” she said to herself. In short order, she’d plucked the paste pins from Cressida’s hair and sent her blonde curls falling about her face. Lady Marianne went on to school Cressida. “You’ll determine quickly what he wants. Given he’s expecting a virgin, he’ll tolerate your chasteness, but he will expect more from you.”

More? More than the only thing of value she possessed—her virtue.

“Let him break you in well for the duke…”

Tears pricked her lashes. The spirits were beginning to wear off, which was good. The minute she was handed over to Dynevor or Latimer, she could explain there’d been a mistake. That she was given to him—to them—against her will.

“Yes, yes!” Lady Marianne praised. “He’ll like that very much. Perhaps fight him even. Men love that.”

Cressida’s teeth began to chatter.

Her sister-in-law’s eyebrows dipped. “You’re genuinely upset.”

Would most virgin spinsters sold to a stranger—twice, if one considered Cressida’s eventual and wizened bridegroom—respond differently?

Knock-Knock-Knock .

“A moment more, if you please,” the baroness called out with a honeyed husk to her voice. “I’m seeing to the final touches.”

This time, the other woman’s sultry tones appeared to have the intended effect, as the impatient servant granted that request without complaint.

Lady Marianne reached inside a small reticule; the fine, pearl-encrusted satin bag danced in some kind of suspended time, until Cressida went cross-eyed and the purse blurred. “Your brother is a disgusting, pathetic reprobate, but he does have his uses.”

“Does he?” Cressida managed to ask, truly curious, because she really did need to know.

The baroness looked up from the contents of her bag, stared at Cressida a moment, and then tossed back her golden-curls and laughed like Cressida was none other than London’s notorious clown, Joseph Grimaldi.

“No better rhetorical question was ever asserted than that,” Lady Marianne muttered after her amusement died down and she’d returned her focus to her bag. “This being one of his uses. Here.” The peeress wagged something in front of Cressida’s face. “This helped me my first time too.”

Cressida attempted to bring the present into focus.

“Here.” Lady Marianne pressed something cool, smooth, and metallic into Cressida’s fingers. “Drink, drink, drink.”

More drink?

Polite ladies didn’t drink. Wait, Cressida’s friend, Annalee, Baroness Darlington, did.

Or she had. She didn’t anymore.

Cressida’s mind moved like her feet did when she slogged through the mud and filth on Fleet Street.

Her sister-in-law pressed the silver flask against her lips. “Open up, my dear.”

As her inhibitions dulled, Cressida, from some far recess of her mind, knew rebuffing the offer was vital, but she found herself hovering above her body once more, watching on as she drank.

When she’d consumed some—all?—of the contents, Stanley’s wife plucked the flask from her fingers and returned the item to her reticule.

That same welcome, warm sensation she’d felt back at her abode on Ratcliffe found its way inside her body. The blood moved warmly through her veins and quieted the voices in her head.

An unfamiliar tingling started low in Cressida’s belly, and then alarmingly, shockingly, the sensation traveled to that most intimate place between her legs.

Biting at her lower lip, Cressida squirmed on the bench to alleviate the distressingly keen throbbing. Her efforts proved in vain. Some poor, pitiable animal released a forlorn moan.

Poor thing. Cressida felt deeply for the creature’s struggle.

“Oh, my poor, poor dear,” Lady Marianne whispered, her voice ragged and breathless.

Or wait. Was that Cressida’s moan?

“How I would dearly love to be the first to help you. As it is, you are late for your grand debut.”

Cressida’s debut. “Had one.” It’d been a nightmare. Invisibility would have been worse than the humiliating on dit about her the morning after her debut at Almack’s.

Her new sister-in-law’s garish laugh filtered around them. “Oh, not like this.” With that cryptic declaration, the baroness tapped the door.

The panel was immediately opened.

A bearded, muscle-hewn stranger in all black glanced back and forth between Cressida and Lady Marianne, before settling his grim countenance on the latter. “Dynevor and Latimer have space for one.”