Page 28 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

I t appeared the mistresses of lofty noblemen didn’t care much for gardening. Shut away from Polite Society, with free reign to the grandest kitchen she’d ever entered with ceilings that didn’t leak, and hard plaster walls that didn’t let in the cold and walled-in gardens overgrown and in desperate need of cultivating.

Kneeling in Benedict’s overgrown garden, Cressida rather thought she could become accustomed to becoming a mistress. She paused her efforts to wrench out a particularly stubborn weed and sat back on her haunches. She dusted the back of her forearm over her perspiring brow. No. Being honest with herself, she could readily admit she wasn’t interested in being some kept woman for any gentleman. It was only for Benedict she’d be willing to make an exception.

With a groan, she arched her back and stretched her aching muscles. Here she’d been attempting to preserve her pride and keep Benedict from knowing the truth about her family, her circumstances, and her impoverished state. Only to find here, right now, that she had no pride where Benedict was concerned. Now she could admit the truth.

He’d been right in his earlier accusations. He’d called her out for not being forthright with him. It wasn’t a matter of pride. She’d made the choice to not tell him, not to protect herself, nor to preserve the little pride she had left, but to protect herself from the inevitable disdain and antipathy that would replace all the warmth he’d shown her. And in failing to disclose her connections, she’d inadvertently put him in harm’s way. Were Stanley to discover it had been Wakefield who’d purchased her and also now brought her into the shelter of his home, he’d most definitely find a way to exploit that to his benefit.

She’d let her desire and need for self-preservation come before all else. And if she truly loved Benedict, which she did, she was also selfishly choosing herself over him.

Cressida knew what she had to do. Her eyes slid shut. She had to tell him. Not only had she withheld the truth from him, but she’d also even evaded and dodged his questions when he was seeking the truth about her. As he’d reminded her a short while ago, they’d been intimate in every way, and he actually knew nothing about her. That’s how she’d lived her life. That’s just how it was safest.

“I have to tell him,” she murmured into the quiet, and hearing her voice utter those words aloud gave Cressida the courage to do just that.

She opened her eyes. The earlier unrestricted sun of before was now blocked and blacked out.

“What exactly is it you have to tell? And to whom?”

Cressida gasped and lost her balance. She would’ve went toppling on her face, but Benedict caught her by the arm with a firm, commanding but still gentle touch. He guided her up to her feet.

“Benedict,” she greeted warmly.

Her earlier cowardice and fears forgotten just being with him. His company alone left her with a buoyant lightness, or it usually did. Her smile wavered in a short while knowing him this intimately, she’d come to discover the nuances that made Benedict well…Benedict.

She had learned his warmth and humor was as vast and expressive as his fury and frustration, but this blank expressionless, unreadable Benedict she had no experience with and knew not how to be with him.

He winged one of those enigmatic blond eyebrows up.

“You were saying, Miss Alby?”

Cressida scoured her mind. What had she said? What had she been intending to say? Everything she had been thinking vanished in the presence of this cold-eyed stranger. And suddenly, what had seemed so easy just moments ago—telling Benedict everything—didn’t feel quite as easy. No, it felt truly impossible. Then what he’d said hit her like the force of one of Stanley’s meaty fists.

“Miss Alby,” she repeated blankly. He knew.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” The knife-like edge to his low baritone sent her shriveling inside.

Somehow though, Cressida managed to nod.

“How did you find…?” She bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

“How did I find out?” he finished for her almost gleefully.

His false humor vanished, and he scoffed.

“Do you take me for a dolt, Miss Alby? Is that why you, your brother, the baron and baroness, set your sights on me?”

Cressida winced. She’d have preferred a physical blow to this. “I was going to tell you. I don’t know her… Stanley… I know…” Just like that, she found herself transformed into a stuttering, stammering, pitiable, voiceless girl.

“Which is it? You know them or don’t, Cressida? Though I am happy to know that you, in fact, did share your actual name with me. That was a pleasant surprise.” The snarl on his lips told a different tale.

Everything was happening so fast, spinning out of control.

“You were right earlier,” she said earnestly, willing him to believe her. “I should have been completely truthful with you, and I was intending to. You even heard me say as much when you came upon me.”

“Yes, but it begs the question which him were you referring to? Me or your brother?”

She deserved his suspicions.

Cressida took a deep breath. “You are correct. I haven’t been forthright with you, but I haven’t been dishonest either.”

Benedict folded his arms across his broad chest, that same wide expansive blanket of muscle she’d cradled against earlier that morning, but he didn’t mock her or call her a liar. He stared mutinously, and she took faith in that.

“My name is Cressida Alby.” She started where she should have begun.

“Yes, I’ve gathered as much,” he said drolly.

This time, she managed to ignore the stinging bite of his sarcasm.

“Stanley, the Baron of Newhart, is my brother. He is a drunk, a cheat, a wastrel. He married Lady Marianne. The pair of them, to pay off my brother’s debts, made arrangements for me to marry.”

Whether he cared one way or another about the fact she was destined to marry another, he gave no indication.

“And I take it you disapproved of their selection and sought to find yourself a different candidate,” he said.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew what he was suggesting without saying it. Each doubt he leveled Cressida’s way came barbed with poison.

“Who?” she asked wistfully. “In other words, was I at The Devil’s Den that night to try and snare you as a husband, Benedict?” Her lips trembled at the corners in a heartbroken smile. “Did I think you’d marry me? I would have never dared believe that. I know that someone like you wouldn’t marry a woman of my family’s standing.”

He didn’t even deny it.

Misery assailed her.

Cressida moved her gaze over his impassive, granite-hard features. “You know I wouldn’t trap you, Benedict,” Cressida said haltingly.

His stony silence was as damning as it was agonizing.

The breath burned in her lungs.

This was all so out of control. The iciness in his gaze told her clearer than any words what he could have uttered about his opinion on that statement.

“How dare you?” A healthy rage took hold of her and she fed that emotion.

His eyelid twitched. “How dare me ?”

“Yes!” she hissed. “Need I point out that you were the one who bid on me? If I were attempting to trap you, don’t you think I would’ve had a way to do it? More specifically, to ensure that I went to you and didn’t risk putting myself up for sale in front of a room filled with eager gentlemen. Any of whom could have bought me that night.”

Benedict noticeably tensed.

Cressida stilled. The memories of that night trickled in.

“…Two hundred pounds…!”

There’d been a flurry of bidding from patrons; some of the men ones she knew of from events she’d attended. The others strangers. There’d been the Duke of Rothesby standing at the back, sipping from his drink.

“…Do I hear five hundred twenty-five, gentlemen…”

Through all of the horror of that degrading night, there’d been but one gentleman whom she’d looked to.

The duke continued to bid, and then, that ungodly sum he’d put on her.

“…Three-thousand pounds…”

There hadn’t been another amount called out after that. The auction had simply ended.

She would have remembered. She’d had eyes for only Benedict.

She drew in a breath. “You did bid on me, didn’t you?”

The corners of his mouth pulled taut but he remained stonily silent.

“You must be able to answer that question, my lord.” His unwillingness to explain added to her growing fury.

She sneered. “I never took you as a coward, but time and time again you continue to prove me wrong about all conclusions I’d drawn about your character.”

Benedict’s mouth pulled into a taut line. He didn’t, however, take the bait.

“I never took you for a coward, my lord, but then I’ve learned all number of things about you in our time together—few of them admirable.”

Other than the way his spine snapped erect, Benedict remained a master of restraint and as laconic as a rock.

“Pfft .” Cressida gave him a scathing once over. “From my vantage on the stage, you didn’t place a single bid on me.”

She waited for him to deny it. Cressida wanted him to point out that he’d competed for her that night. Strange how the absence of that confirmation should inflict even greater pain upon her heart.

“Lord Rothesby, on the other hand, settled a sizable fortune to spend the night with me,” she said bitterly.

A storm gathered in Benedict’s eyes; as black and dangerous as any tempest.

Cressida thought for a moment she’d gone too far in her challenge of him.

Despite herself, Cressida’s courage flagged. Somehow, she managed to find her voice.

“Someone stopped the action that night, and I found myself with you.” And, her life would never be the same for it. “So perhaps, if you have feelings that you were trapped, then maybe you should look elsewhere to the one who coordinated my transfer over to you.”

His expression startled; his gaze stunned; Benedict rocked back on his heels.

Cressida dusted her dirt-stained palms together. “Now, I bid you good day, my lord.”

In finding pride in herself for going toe to toe with the Earl of Wakefield, Cressida lifted her chin, marched right past him, and kept on walking. Only when she reached the end of the graveled path did she look back.

“Oh, and Benedict? My future betrothed didn’t want the burden of bedding a virgin. My brother and his wife found additional ways to make coin from my name. That’s why I was at The Devil’s Den.”

She continued her escape from the garden and as she did, she felt his gaze follow her the entire while.

Benedict may have broken her heart, but one thing he had taught her was the satisfaction to be had in speaking her mind and not backing down. That would be one of many things she’d leave this place with—that and a broken heart.

Sometime just before midnight, Cressida came to realize Benedict wasn’t coming back. Yet again, he’d called into question her character and questioned her motives. As resentful as she felt towards him, she could also accept the reason he’d reached the conclusions he had, and she wasn’t stupid, nor was she naive. She understood that after just a few days, no matter how much had come to pass between them, no matter how intimate they’d been, she was still a stranger to him…largely.

There was intimacy. They’d shared and done things together most intimate in a physical way. She’d even shared parts about her history and her love of baking. And, well, Benedict had continued to demonstrate and display the way in which he cared for those who were under his protection. Be it his sisters or some woman who he’d only just met under circumstances that were dubious at best, each were afforded the same care and regard.

He might not trust her. No, he did not trust her, but he saw that she was well looked after, and he would do the same for any babe she might conceive. A babe. Seated on the foyer bench, her knees curled up close to her chest, she cradled herself closely and slipped into the dreamlike imagining herself heavy with Benedict’s child, of him at her side, of the eventual babe born to them. The boy would have his father’s strong chin, with a slight cleft at the center, and long tousled strands of gold-blond hair.

Cressida closed her eyes. Back when she’d had her first Season and made her debut, she’d partaken in champagne. After but one glass, she’d been filled with this heady warmth and lightness. Not even those fine French spirits could compare to the buoyancy within her now.

There came a sharp rap at the front door, and her eyes went flying open.

Before Burgess could even step out from wherever it was he kept his post at this hour, Cressida went flying to her feet and tearing over to the door. She caught the door handle to keep herself upright and then yanked the door open.

A grim-faced stranger stared back. His square-set features were too pronounced and strong to lend even a remote handsomeness to him. His hard eyes were a shade of sapphire so dark as to nearly be black. All the guards she’d let down in her time here with Benedict went up, but too late.

Dressed all in black, from his trousers to his gleaming boots, to the layered cloak he wore, he bore a strong resemblance to the grim reaper come to claim the soul of whoever answered the door. And unfortunately, Cressida had been the wretched one to do so. Of course, it wouldn’t be Benedict. Fear left her throat dry.

Cressida tried to shut the door quick to save herself, but her savior came in the unlikely form of her temporary butler, Mr. Burgess. “May I be of any assistance?”

The evenness of Burgess’s distinguished voice had a calming effect. The servant hurriedly inserted himself between Cressida and the dark stranger at the doorway. She was all too happy to melt back into the shadows.

“I’m here to see his lordship, Lord Wakefield.”

He directed only his words at Burgess. All the while he withdrew a card and handed it over, the stranger’s gaze remained locked on Cressida.

Her thoughts screamed. What if her brother learned of her connection to Benedict? What if he’d sent someone here…?

But he’d have to possess the coin to hire someone as refined and elegant as this gentleman, and he certainly didn’t have means to do so on his own. But there was the Duke of Harrowden whom her brother planned to sell her to.

Burgess studied the card.

“I’m afraid his lordship is not in for the night.”

Finally, the stranger flickered his gaze in Burgess’s direction.

“The gentleman is expecting me. He will take my meeting.”

“That may be, sir—” Burgess began.

“Not maybe. Is .”

There contained a graveled edge to the enigmatic fellow’s baritone, like he’d consumed glass and chewed on the shards while he spoke.

“But,” Burgess said with greater adamance, impressively so, “his lordship is not at home.”

The unknown caller bore his gaze into Burgess. And even behind the servant as she was, she felt that stare drilling all the way into the kindly servant and into her.

“I’ll wait,” the gentleman said.

Before Burgess could shut the door in the stranger’s face, the gentleman shouldered his way inside. Presumptuous as could be, he claimed as his own throne the bench that Cressida had previously made hers.

Burgess’s mouth moved, but no words came out. She practically saw the other man—the kinder, less authoritative one—contemplating calling the footmen to eject the man.

Cressida sized him up: three or four inches past six feet and all strapping muscle. It would take a near army to do so.

It was as if Burgess only just remembered Cressida’s presence.

“Miss, you shouldn’t be here,” he murmured.

Cressida, however, had eyes only for the mystery guest looking for Benedict at this late hour.

“Are you employed by his lordship?” she demanded.

From where he sat like the king of the foyer, the gentleman looked up at Cressida like he’d only just seen her for the first time.

His stony silence indicated he had no intention of speaking a word to her. For Cressida’s part, she’d had enough. She’d grown damned tired of being invisible, and speaking and not being heard. Benedict had helped her find her voice.

“I asked you a question,” she repeated, hardening her gaze.

“Unless I’m now speaking with the Earl of Wakefield, I’m not here to take questions about what I’m doing here.”

Did she imagine the slight glint of amusement in his otherwise opaque gaze? It must have merely been a flick of the light in the sconces. For as quick as a flame fluttered to life, it was gone.

Cressida narrowed her eyes further. He wasn’t one accustomed to being questioned. She used that to her advantage.

“Are you here in the matter of a servant named Trudy?”

A vein pulsed at the side of his right temple.

“Miss Smith,” Burgess said imploringly.

They both ignored him. Cressida grabbed the stranger by the lapels of his jacket.

“Is this about Trudy?” she repeated more insistently.

His expression revealed nothing. Cursing silently, Cressida set him free. He might not answer her, but she had enough information in his being here and his silence to give her hope. And if he was, in fact, here regarding her nursemaid, then his waiting for Benedict to arrive only put Trudy in greater peril.

“Miss Smith.” Burgess’s voice contained the threat of tears.

Ignoring him, Cressida set over to the door with the same urgency of before. And this time, when she threw it open, she let herself out and bolted in search of the nearest hack.

With Burgess’s cries following after her, she scrambled into a waiting coach. She shouted her directions and then sat tensely on the upholstered bench as the churn of the carriage wheels rolled over first smooth cobblestones and then increasingly rough, uneven ones.

She fought to keep her heart from racing. Benedict would be upset and displeased.

“No, he’s going to be furious,” she whispered to herself.

But that appeared to be the most familiar of the emotions he extended to her. He already didn’t trust her. What reason did she have to sit and pine and wait for him to come and intervene if intervention was necessary? Something within her, a corner of her soul that knew all too well the evil that existed in this world and in her brother, however, told her what she would find. Nay, who she would find.

She set her jaw stonily. She’d extract Trudy, but she knew in doing so, it would come at a heavy price.

Cressida barreled up the steps without breaking stride. She threw the door open and stormed inside her townhouse.

“Trudy,” she shouted, shutting the door behind her. “Trudy!”

“Come girl, you’re going to bring the constables down upon us.”

Gasping, Cressida whipped around looking as hale and hearty as she did, despite her thinning, stringy, gray hair. The old woman smiled, revealing her two front-cracked teeth. With a sob, Cressida flung herself into her nursemaid’s arms, and it was as though a dam broke loose and all the sorrow, the fear, the misery, and joy she’d known these past days came flooding out.

It had been so long since she cried. She’d been but a babe, a small girl of maybe seven or eight, and only after her mother’s passing. Trudy held her the same way now that she had then. She wrapped two, thin arms about Cressida and cradled her, stroking her back, whispering nonsensical murmurings against her ear until Cressida cried her very last tear.

She gave a watery hiccup.

Trudy gave her one final, firm pat on the back and then released her.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, gel,” Trudy said gruffly.

Using the pads of her thumbs to wipe away Cressida’s tears, this time what emerged from Cressida was a half-laugh and a small sob. “You’ve been looking for me?”

“I’ve been searching every…”

“A touching reunion.”

Icy tentacles of dread tripped all along her spine and neck.

“It was only a matter of time before you both returned to the bosom of your family.”

Filled with a sickening dread, Cressida looked to where a corpulent Stanley stood like a bulwark. His arms folded over his enormous chest, he was an enormous human obstruction that stood between her and Trudy’s freedom. Impregnable walls of terror came closing in, siphoning air from her lungs and simultaneously pressing down on her chest.

Cressida caught her nursemaid’s hand and turned to lead them towards the kitchen exit. Her brother’s goon stood with a snide grin on his fleshy lips. He cracked his knuckles.

For years, she’d struggled to find her voice with these two men, and where there’d been an occasion where she’d gone toe to toe, she’d otherwise been overly cautious, knowing that Trudy paid the price for her insolence.

“Move out of the way, Stanley,” she said coldly and with remarkable calm. Cressida positioned herself between Trudy and the two soulless men.

“Did you hear her?” Stanley drawled. “Someone lands herself a fine protector, and suddenly thinks she doesn’t have to answer to me.”

“I heard her, I did,” Fellowes said, giving a chuckle of his own.

From the corner of her eye, she caught the way Trudy’s eyebrows came together at the mention of a fine protector. Questions and answers would come later. First and foremost, Cressida had to get them out of here. “I don’t have to answer to you, Stanley, and certainly not to your dull-witted lackey over there.”

Rage sent her brother’s nostrils into a full flare. “What did you say to me?” he whispered.

“Apparently, there’s something as wrong with your ears as there is with your brain and your soul.” She felt ten feet taller for standing up to him. “You act as though I’m a child who answers to you. Your child. I’m not, and I’m not your prisoner, so get him out of my way now because I will see you pay a price.”

Stanley’s mouth moved and he sputtered, “You are going to regret your behavior, and you’re going to see who’s really in charge here, Cressida.”

Cressida steeled herself. “Go upstairs and lock the door,” Cressida said to her maid.

“The hell I will, gel.”

“Please. I cannot do this unless you do,” she entreated.

Indecision warred in the old woman’s eyes. This time, however, she must have seen something different, something that had her listening to Cressida and giving up her place at her side. And maybe if Cressida had asserted herself more and displayed that she didn’t need Trudy to be at her side, Cressida would’ve settled it with Stanley long ago—like she was going to settle it now.