Page 29 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

W akefield arrived at The Devil’s Den with one intention only: to meet with his two business partners and get some answers. What he ended up with was a several-hours-long visit with his sister, Livian, before Wakefield had his face-to-face with his two business partners in Latimer’s private suites.

Sprawled like King George IV himself, long known as Prinny, upon the King Louis XIV throne, the Earl of Dynevor stretched his legs out. “Do tell us what has brought you here this evening, Wakefield?”

“Given I own a third of the club, Dynevor, I expect my being here shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise. That is, unless you were anticipating a silent partner.”

Latimer shot his two partners a warning glance, his meaning clear. They were still in Latimer’s suites, with Livian nearby. To leave, however, would rouse her suspicion and ensure they had an additional participant in their exchange.

Wakefield let his full rage shine on through. “I’ve hired a man and found out information about the young woman whose ruin you helped coordinate,” he whispered furiously.

Dynevor smirked. “Or we could just refer to her as the woman you ruined.”

With a hiss, Wakefield stormed the room and charged at the other man.

Latimer barely intervened in time.

“It’s you, Goddammit. I know it’s you. This has your work all over it,” Wakefield barked. “This is what I get for involving myself with a man like you.”

Latimer frowned.

“Oh yeah, Wakefield, and what manner of man am I? Do you mean from the streets? Like your brother-in-law here?” He hitched a chin in Latimer’s direction. He knew what they were both thinking. It was the same thing Roxborough had accused him of.

“I’m not being a bloody prick,” Wakefield gritted out.

“But you’re the one who said it.” His brother-in-law spoke quietly in clearly condemning tones.

Wakefield dragged a hand through his hair and cursed. He’d not be made to feel guilty. He wasn’t in the wrong here. Getting his temper under control, he put all his focus on Dynevor.

“How did the lady come to be here?” Wakefield demanded. He alternated his focus between Latimer and Dynevor. “Which one of you brought her into this club?”

Latimer put his palms up. “That’s not my role.”

“How convenient,” Wakefield sneered. “That way, you can distance yourself from any disasters such as this?”

It became clear neither of them intended to venture anything for Wakefield. He gave his head a disgusted shake. “Are you aware the lady is related to Baron Newhart, who is involved with Lady Marianne Carew? The former Baroness Featherstone is now the Baroness Newhart.”

Those were two names the two men who dealt in sin were clearly very familiar with.

Where both men were irritated before with Wakefield, now all their features went on high alert. Gone was Dynevor’s usual swagger. He no more liked being the recipient of this information than Wakefield enjoyed discovering Cressida’s familial connections.

“As I understand it,” Wakefield said for his brother-in-law exclusively, “this one extended membership to Newhart.”

“He was a patron,” Dynevor said bluntly. “He isn’t any longer. I revoked his membership. He got particularly rough with one of the women, a woman who didn’t want it rough. I threatened to send him to Marshalsea if he didn’t pay his debts before he went. He did.” The young earl shrugged. “That was the last I heard of him.”

“Perhaps Newhart is using the lady to bring down trouble on the club,” Latimer suggested.

“Nah.” The Earl of Dynevor rejected that assertion with such speed, both men looked to him.

“Ain’t that. I’ve got some experience with that from my younger days.”—The lad’s younger days? But then, with the hard existence this one had eeked out, maybe he’d never even been a child.— “With the lady’s family and origins, the ton wouldn’t notice if the lady kicked up her heels,” Dynevor said flatly. “They certainly ain’t going to give ten shites if she whored herself here.”

Rage blackened Wakefield’s vision.

With a venomous hiss, he grabbed the younger man by his jacket and dragged him in until their noses touched. “She didn’t whore herself.”

Dynevor remained motionless, expressionless, through Wakefield’s tumult.

Breathing hard, he released the earl quick and backed away. He stood rigid, his every muscle strung as tight as a bow.

“It might still be worth looking into,” Latimer proposed.

Dynevor nodded. “I’ll have my brother-in-law, Steele, look into it. But I’m telling you. That’s not what’s at play here.”

After Latimer excused himself, Wakefield and Dynevor were left alone in the private suites.

The two earls sized one another up. One warily. For Dynevor, he made no attempt to conceal his disgust.

Wakefield edged his chest forward. “Do you have something to say?”

“Yea, I have something to say,” the street-hardened proprietor said emotionlessly. “Since you clapped eyes on Miss Alby, your wits gone begging after her.”

A muscle twitched in Wakefield’s jaw.

“You want to deny it.” Dynevor’s eyes lit with a mocking glint. “Go ahead and try. Say it, Wakefield.” The earl flicked a glance up and down his person. “But I was talking business to ye that night, and you couldn’t stop staring at her like a lad at a sweetshop window.”

Wakefield recalled the first time his eyes locked with Cressida’s.

He’d been lost.

Dynevor knew it.

Wakefield closed his eyes. He was only just figuring it out for himself.

The younger earl sensed weakness. His stare held nothing but ruthless derision. “This ain’t the first time ye come in here in a rage, flying off the handle because of Miss Alby. Ye hired Markham to find out what he could about the young lady.”

Wakefield tried—and failed—to mask his surprise.

“Aye, that’s right.” Dynevor curved a scarred lip. “I know about that. I know about everything.”

“You know your problem?” the Earl of Dynevor said, each syllable a well-crafted slight.

Ah, they were going to do this.

Wakefield gave a low, mirthless laugh. “I trust you intend to tell—”

“Yer so worried about trying to be better because why? Your papa pissed away his money and had bastards?” he said without recrimination. “Pfft. That’s the same as a Sunday in England. You’re always on your high-horse, making everyone else feel like lessers because you yourself feel less. That lady whose secrets you’ve been hunting down?” He gave his head a shake. “She doesn’t deserve that.”

The absolute brutality of the truth knocked the wind out of him, and Wakefield took an involuntary step back.

His breathing grew thin and reedy; it filled his ears. My God, he’d spent his life trying to be better than his father, trying to be a good and honorable man. He’d become so obsessed with that goal, so lost in it, he’d lost himself.

What was it Markham said at their initial meeting?

“… Various circumstances drive every person. Maybe the lady landing in your bed doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with you specifically. Perhaps the lady is in some other kind of trouble. Perhaps there’s a villainous family member whom she’s trying to escape from. Who the hell knows? But again, all you need do is put out discrete feelers, and you’ll have every last answer …”

Wakefield dragged both hands down his haggard face.

“Ye wanna know why I offered ye the lady, Wakefield?”

Wakefield let his arms fall. “I have wondered.”

“The minute I met the lady, I knew she wasn’t like our clientele. I knew she was desperate. I’ve been desperate,” the earl said bluntly. “Desperate people have a way of finding each other. She wasn’t leaving. Some fellow was going to get her that night. I knew you’d be good to her.”

Chuckling, Dynevor fished a cheroot from his jacket pocket and touched it to a nearby sconce.

“I knew you’d be good to the lady.” The young man pulled a long breath through the leaf and loosed a slow curl of smoke on a smooth exhale. “I just didn’t think you’d treat her like you were too good for her.” A sneer lived in the stillness of his smile. “That was my mistake.”

The younger earl’s profession sucked the air from Wakefield lungs like the man had dealt a gut punch.

Lord Dynevor indulged in another pull of his cigarette and released a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “I should’ve let Rothesby have her,” he said, flicking his ashes aside.

Wakefield flinched. I deserved that.

With that death blow, Dynevor exited, and Wakefield was left alone. He tortured himself with thoughts of Cressida and another man.

Thoughts of Cressida with Rothesby. Cressida, delicate, willowy, lithe, and fair in the arms of the strapping, darkly handsome, Rothesby. Cressida smiling for the duke and because of him.

Each moment Wakefield spent with Cressida played again in his head, each like they were happening for the first time: Wakefield finding her in the kitchens. The two of them sitting alone together in the dead of night while the house slept. Wakefield taking his first bite of the bread she’d made with her own beautifully real, callused hands…then making love to her with his mouth.

Then, Wakefield twisted each and every wondrous moment. He inserted another gentleman into the narrative. He supplanted himself with Rothesby, so it was Rothesby who’d lived those moments with Cressida instead.

His open palms reflexively flexed, his hands empty and restless.

But there was no escaping.

Wakefield had already let the devil inside, and the insidious beast was there to stay, poisoning Wakefield’s remembrances, perverting them so that it was Rothesby kneeling between Cressida’s legs and worshipping her with his mouth.

The visual imagery was so raw, so very real, that Wakefield curled his shoulders in and hunched to erase them. The most soul-crushing of all was the thought of Cressida bestowing her hard-earned smile for Rothesby.

Wakefield’s throat worked.

For Rothesby would be deserving of Cressida—without a single doubt. He’d always possessed the charm Wakefield hadn’t. Wakefield wasn’t Rothesby. He was his own damned self, and a bloody stupid arse at that.

Cressida saw him. He’d made Cressida smile, not because he’d needed to try, just because with her, it’d been easy, natural.

His heart buckled.

He’d not only doubted her today, but he’d also been an absolute boor to her throughout.

Unable to return home and face her, Wakefield took the coward’s way and found his table at The Devil’s Den.

With the memory of her as she’d been hurt and wounded, his fingers curled reflexively around his snifter.

“…I haven’t been forthright with you, but I haven’t been dishonest either…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…”

Each question and statement hit Wakefield’s heart like a battering ram.

His tongue, mouth, and throat suddenly dry as dust, he took a small drink.

It didn’t help.

He’d hurt her. He’d doubted her. And he’d never forgive himself either.

What he would do, if she let him, was spend the rest of his life atoning for being such a bloody, crack-brained noddy.

Wakefield stared into the golden-brown contents of his drink and saw the flecks that’d danced in Cressida’s like-colored eyes. God, she’d been magnificent.

She’d come alive, blazing to life in her fury. From the ashes of her sadness and despair, she’d sizzled with indignation and disdain for him.

“… As it may be, you, my lord, from my vantage on the stage for that matter, didn’t even bid on me. Lord Rothesby settled a sizable fortune to spend the night with me, and yet somehow the action was stopped and I found myself with you. 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 …”

A painful grin eased one corner of his mouth.

Here at The Devil’s Den, this club where debauchery reigned, all seven deadly sins corrupted men nightly. In the end, it hadn’t been anything nefarious that’d brought Cressida into his life. Dynevor—ruthless, merciless, hard-hearted—of all people had played matchmaker between Wakefield and Cressida.

Oh, irony was not only alive and well; it was bloody flourishing.

Wakefield took another drink.

He toyed with the sides of his glass. But he’d come to know Cressida. His doubts about her had cut as any knife.

His throat spasmed. Christ. He downed a long swallow and set the glass down hard.

Hell, an entire bottle wasn’t enough to drown his guilt.

A shadow fell across his table, and he peeked up at the unwanted intrusion.

“Wakefield,” the gentleman drawled with his usual charm, “we meet again.”

The Lord had teamed up with the universe to rightly punish Wakefield this day.

“Rothesby,” he said stiffly. He’d rather trade ten years of his life than keep company with the gentleman who’d hungered for Cressida with a ferocity to rival Wakefield’s, but he motioned for the duke to join him anyway.

“I’ve sent you several notes, old chap,” Rothesby remarked, the moment he’d sat. “I’d begun to think you were ignoring me, or that you’d perhaps taken offense to things said at our last visit.”

“No.” Wakefield hadn’t liked the call out, but he’d needed it.

Determined to punish himself, he pushed his bottle in the other man’s direction and further welcomed his company.

A serving girl with cat-shaped eyes and a feline smile appeared with a crystal snifter. Her shrewd gaze moved between the two men, and rightly assessing the situation, she left Wakefield and Rothesby.

Wakefield tossed back his drink, downing it in a long, slow, painful swallow with a grimace.

Wakefield’s current rage stemmed from an altogether different reason. In his head, all he could hear while the other man spoke was Cressida as she’d pointed at the point that it had been Rothesby who’d been willing to put up a fortune for just one night with her.

But Wakefield had been too damned terrified of all the out-of-control feelings she made him feel. At every turn, he’d sought to explain her presence in his life, and what had brought her to him, because it’d been too fantastical to land on the simplest and ultimately accurate answer and truth—she was meant for him.

Just as Wakefield had been meant for her.

He’d been searching all these years—Marcia and Miss Kearsley—when all along Wakefield should have been waiting.

He and Cressida had been fated for one another, ordained by the stars.

Dynevor had been correct in his condemnation of Wakefield, but the other man had been dead wrong about something. It hadn’t been her background that made Wakefield fight the pull Cressida had over him. It’d been the fact that Wakefield hadn’t been able to recognize for himself that love had found him at last.

A silly grin formed on his lips.

“Wakefield, old fellow,” Rothesby said worriedly. “Are you sure everything is all right?”

“I…I…” Dazed, he looked to the other man for help.

Chuckling, the duke toasted Wakefield. “This here, chum, is why I do not dabble with respectable ladies,” he drawled.

What am I doing here? When there were so many things to say to Cressida. So many vows. So many apologies…

Wakefield tossed back the remainder of his drink and grimaced. “I fear this is where we part ways, Rothes—” Wakefield’s stare collided with his brother-in-law, Latimer, in a frantic exchange with—

“Burgess?”

The duke turned back to look at the action and followed Wakefield’s focus to the pair conversing at the front of the club.

An odd whirring filled Wakefield’s ears.

Latimer said something and pointed the tip of his finger. It landed upon Wakefield.

Wakefield jumped up, turning the table over in his haste to get to his butler. Dread fueled his every step.

“The miss has run off,” Burgess said, struggling to get in air as he gasped and panted.

Wakefield grabbed him by the front of his coattails and tugged him closer.

“What do you mean?” Fear lent his voice a harsher quality.

“The gentleman, Markham’s fellow, arrived with a note and the lady took off after him. He asked that I fetch you immediately. Said you’d know where she was running off to,” he gritted out.

To see her brother or to find Trudy. Either way, Wakefield tore off, thundering for his horse.

Cressida .

He’d be damned if he lost her now, not when he’d realized he was head over heels, upside down, and inside out in love with her.