Page 22 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

C ressida would give credit where credit was due. Benedict hadn’t so much as batted an eye when she directed his driver to Red Cross Street. Nor had he batted an eye when they’d reached the Mint Street Workhouse. In the end, it was Borough High Street that had pulled a reaction from Benedict. Marshalsea Prison, to be exact.

With him walking close at her side, she stole yet another peek from the corner of her eye to gauge his reaction. He wore a frown.

She wagered Marshalsea Prison had been something he’d only known of by word, or perhaps he’d read about the men who’d been sent there in his copy of The Times while he’d been seated at his respectable, comfortable London townhouse. Cressida, however, had not only crossed beside this notorious establishment nearly every day. She thought about it often too. With Stanley’s spending, she’d been left to wonder at which point a gentleman might actually land himself behind bars in that place. If not Stanley, then who?

“You’ve been here before,” Benedict observed.

“Yes.”

“Because of your friend?” he ventured.

Because of Cressida’s circumstances would be more apt.

“Yes,” she said, equally taciturn. That way he might be discouraged from asking any further questions. She should have known better.

“What manner of business does she have here?”

She felt a wry smile tug at her lips. A man such as he would have no idea. Cressida turned an innocent look up at him.

“Why, what all servants do here, Benedict.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

The slight stain of red on his cheeks indicated he had absolutely no idea, but he didn’t want to reveal how out of touch he was in terms of his household staff. That said, it wasn’t truly fair of her to let him believe this was where his servants went.

All around them, peddlers shouted what wares they had for sale. Pickpockets angled in between the men and women shopping here, be it the peddler, the shopper, or the thief. One was as desperate as the next.

“This is just one of the markets,” she explained. “There are other fine ones where other servants go.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “The family that employs your old nursemaid is anything but noble.”

Cressida glanced at the cobblestones they crossed over. “No, they are not,” she murmured. She knew her family was the terrible, low-class sort, but knowing how he’d look at her were he to know…how he’d revile Cressida…

Anger lit his eyes. “The squalor of that place.” He shook his head in disgust. “That residence isn’t fit for a stray dog. No decent person would ever live so.”

Not unless said person had absolutely no choice—as happened to be the case for Cressida.

His features pulled with distaste. “Furthermore, no respectable gentleman or lady would ever live on this side of London.” Benedict shook his head. “What a horrid lot your friend finds herself with.”

Cressida’s stomach knotted up. Every word he spoke was true. Every word he spoke also sent a pinprick of shame poking at her breast. She hardly needed Benedict to remind her that she wasn’t an actual lady. Her life had become a farce of Shakespearean proportions.

Cressida’s gaze caught on a young child squeezing through a throng of people. His eyes, ancient for a child, squared on an unsuspecting Benedict. Benedict continued speaking, oblivious to the impending threat to his purse.

“How long has Trudy been employed by this family?”

“Too long,” Cressida said. “Having reached a point well-beyond working years where she’d be seen of any value to a respectable family, she’s had no other options but the ones that see her living here. I’ve been looking after her since.” Cressida grimaced. “Or trying to,” she added.

Trying and failing.

All the while she spoke, she kept her eyes on the boy who’d grown closer.

“And what exactly does she come here for?”

“To purchase stock for the kitchen.”

They reached an uneven cobblestone with a divot and a deep puddle. Benedict lightly caught her elbow before she could herself step over it, squeezed as they were on the cobblestones.

He waited until a path became available and ushered her around it. Her heart danced in the same breeze that sent the folds of her borrowed cloak fluttering and her hood whipping slightly back before it could go flying from her head and reveal her identity.

Benedict took the sides lightly and drew them closer.

The tenderness with which he protected her, and the gentleness with which he handled her cloak, ushered such a beautiful warmth within her. They remained like that face to face, but her identity concealed, and his gaze squarely upon her. It was as though, even though her face remained concealed, he saw all the way through Cressida, past her exterior and all the way deep inside her.

At some point, a tendril slipped free and fluttered about her face like a brownish-blonde flag.

With an aching tenderness, Benedict reached inside, collected the strand, and carefully tucked the lock back behind her ear.

The pad of his thumb brushed against the sensitive shell of her ear. Cressida trembled. The world ceased to exist. The market dissolved into a muffled hum belonging to some other plane she and Benedict were no longer part of. For here, with the Earth and the people on it continuing around them, only she and Benedict existed. The world, however, proved as ruthless, cold, and unfeeling as it always was, and Cressida found them snatched back to the reality that was Burrough High Street and Burrough’s Market.

Cressida opened her mouth to alert Benedict to the pickpocket with a hand half stretched up, about to disappear inside his jacket, when Benedict lightly rested his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. Just like that, the moment between Cressida and Benedict ended as another player slipped into their stolen interlude.

“Gor, I didn’t take anything,” the lad cried out, trembling. Even as he shook, his eyes radiated a belligerence that came only to those who’d known life’s greatest cruelties.

He’d been about to take something, but Benedict did not point out as much. Another gentleman, certainly any other lord, would’ve berated the boy. The earl, however, did neither of those things. He sank onto his haunches. Just as the child would’ve scrambled off, Benedict tightened his hold enough so the boy couldn’t go, but he did so with a clear gentleness to his hold.

“Ah, but I believe you did,” he said with a grave solemnity that sent the boy further shaking.

Benedict reached up and swept his hand along the outside of the soot-covered pickpocket’s ear. The boy curled up into himself in a clear bid to avoid the blow he knew was coming because that’s what he’d expect. But he didn’t know Benedict, not in the way Cressida had come to know him. With a flick of his hand, Benedict brandished a gold coin and presented it before the child’s eyes. Had Benedict handed over an entire pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the lad couldn’t have been more transfixed.

“Gor, sir, yer a wizard.”

Emotion filled Cressida’s throat. He most certainly was.

A half-grin tipped Benedict’s lips up. “Hardly that, lad.”

The boy’s stunned expression wavered, and the momentary illusion of an innocent childhood vanished under the weight of the twelve or thirteen years in which the boy had lived in such squalor. And he considered that coin with a desperation that Cressida knew all too well.

If only she’d been a lady who’d inherited a life that was grand, or if she had funds of her own. She’d have been all too happy to give the gift of enough coin to last the boy’s life, sparing him from such.

Wordlessly, Benedict pressed the coin into the child’s fingers. Knuckles that were bruised and swollen—an indication of the battles the child had been forced to fight in these merciless streets—wrapped quickly around the offering as though the Lord had granted him an eternal gift of life and wealth that he sought to protect and guard.

Wide-eyed, the pickpocket peeked at the tiny flash of gold exposed underneath his fingertips, and he protected that coveted gift the way he knew it ought to be protected in this part of London. Hell, anywhere. Cressida herself was testament to that.

So captivated was she by the fortune bestowed upon the young lad, and so utterly captivated by the play of astonishment upon his features, she stared on. Then, with quiet grace, Benedict reached inside and proffered a velvet purse. The child stared at it warily. His gaze a mix of envy, greed, and longing.

“You’re free to take it.”

“What for?” the boy asked with a wary and rightful suspicion for one who lived in these parts.

“You’re impressively stealthy,” Benedict said.

The boy grew at least a foot under that praise and then almost instantly shrunk. He wrinkled a sharp nose that had been broken numerous times and wore a slight bend.

“Not so stealthy that you didn’t catch me.”

“No.” Benedict didn’t seek to lie and give the boy false praise. Certainly, not praise the child wouldn’t believe anyway, given his life. “But I expect you could have trained a whole army with the experience you’ve had. You’ve just merely, with your height, grown to have a disadvantage. You’re ready for new work. Your skills and talents would be best put to better use in a different endeavor. One that won’t have you swinging for it either.”

Cressida took in the exchange with wide-eyed fascination, noting how casually and respectfully Benedict spoke to the young boy.

He didn’t give false platitudes. He gave him honesty and directness.

“Here’s my address,” Benedict said, reaching inside his jacket. “I have someone I’m going to put you in touch with. We can give you good, honest work there.”

Cressida’s ears perked up. He handed over a card, and Cressida leaned in, straining to see the location or details written there. But the thief had it pocketed inside his jacket before Cressida could steal so much as a full look. She strained, waiting for either of them to give a clue or an indication. Benedict hadn’t sent him to his residence, she knew, because those he himself owned. Her intrigue doubled.

“You don’t look like the sort of gent who has dealings with that place and those people.” This time Benedict sneaked a look at Cressida, and as the boy followed his pointed stare, she knew that look wasn’t for her. It was a reminder for the boy to hold his tongue.

She wrinkled her nose, oddly cross at the fact he’d let this stranger in on secrets he held and yet kept from her, a woman whom he’d made love to dozens of times and done the most intimate things with.

“ But then as if you aren’t keeping secrets enough from him …”

The young man gave a slight nod, nearly imperceptible, indicating he’d taken the earl’s cue. With that, Wakefield shot out a hand. The lad eyed it and, without hesitation, took it in a firm grip and shook.

After the young man had gone, Cressida and Wakefield continued on through Burroughs Market, and she resumed her search for Trudy, filled with her own questions about Benedict, the Earl of Wakefield.