Page 30 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

A fter having been on what seemed like an endless goose chase, Wakefield arrived home, or at least at the place which had begun to feel increasingly like home with the amount of time spent here. Or is it the manner of exchanges and discussions you’ve had with a woman temporarily living here?

Burgess, who’d fetched him at his clubs, had since returned and was there to greet him the moment he reached the top step of the entryway.

“Is she…”

Burgess cut him off. “She is, my lord, and I should mention…”

He didn’t need him to mention anything. “Where?”

“In her chambers, but…Lord Markham was here a moment ago. He only just left. The gentleman wished to speak with you.”

“If he’d wanted to speak with me, he could have stayed.”

“My lord,” Burgess called from belowstairs. Wakefield, at the top, landing kept on going. The minute he turned the corner that led to Cressida’s chambers, he stopped in his tracks.

A frowning old woman had positioned a hallway chair and now sat outside Cressida’s rooms.

Wakefield walked the rest of the way.

Frail of body, but possessed of a seemingly indomitable spirit, the old woman made to rise.

Wakefield urged her to remain seated out of gentlemanly habit.

The wizened weathered woman brushed off that allowance. When she stood, she couldn’t be more than an inch past five feet, if that. The fire in her eyes, however, sparkled with a fighting spirit and revealed her to be a woman who’d at one time been stronger and greater than time had left her.

She looked him over with critical eyes.

Wakefield bowed at the waist.

The suspicion in the old woman’s rheumy gaze deepened. “I take it you’re the protector.”

That assertion knocked him off-balance. With the frail figure’s bluntness, there could be no doubt she’d raised Cressida.

“I take it you are Trudy,” he murmured.

“The very same.”

That’s why he’d been summoned. That’s why Cressida stormed off. Not to meet her brother, but rather because she’d deduced the men Wakefield hired had located Trudy’s whereabouts, which also meant… She’d most likely gone back to Ratcliffe on her own.

A crippling pressure tightened his chest. “Miss Alby?”

Fear lent his voice a hoarsened quality.

“What business is she of yours?” Trudy said, as her staunch defender.

And it surely spoke volumes about the old nursemaid that, despite the treatment Cressida had described, she’d abandoned her post and come here with—

“Wait…” A sick sensation churned in his belly. “Are you employed by the baron?”

She narrowed her eyes into thin, icy slits. “What’s it to you?”

“You work for Miss Alby.”

“Is that a question?” Old Trudy scowled. “I don’t work for anyone. Working suggests I get some kind of payment. I don’t.”

Any sane person would have evinced some level of resentment. Where was this woman’s?

Wakefield peered more sharply at the colorful woman. “Despite receiving no salary, you continue to remain with Miss Alby. Why?”

“Why do you think?” she reposted with a question of her own.

Some of the pieces began to slide together into a form that made shape.

“Out of loyalty,” he murmured.

Trudy’s eyes became tiny slits. “Out of love .”

His gaze slid to the pretty painted panel.

What sane person would put up with and endure the abuse this woman clearly had? And why? Unless there had been at least one person in her midst whom she’d felt a loyalty, love, and devotion to. Such a figure would never be Lord Stanley. And the fact was that she stood like one of Markham’s fiercest guards outside of Cressida’s room now. All of which fit with the woman he had come to know these past handful of days.

Voices from within Cressida’s room brought his attention back to the doorway. His brows dipped. Who the hell was in Cressida’s—?

Old Trudy grunted. “She’s in with a doctor.”

Wakefield stilled. His stomach pitched like he’d been thrown into a storm at sea.

“The doctor ?” his voice sounded funny to his own ears.

“Aye,” the nursemaid grunted. “My girl said she didn’t need to see one, but your fellow Burgess insisted. I myself could have told him there was no need—”

Wakefield wedged himself around Trudy, and after moving the older woman’s hall chair, he let himself in and nearly collided with a handsome, middle-aged doctor carrying his bag.

His heart pounding, Wakefield attempted to step around the distinguished, bespectacled fellow. Just as Trudy before, the man blocked Wakefield’s access to Cressida.

“My lord.” The gentleman’s voice was eminently polite but for the frosty undertones.

“Step out of my way,” he clipped out.

The other man held his ground. “The lady requires her rest.” The doctor couldn’t have looked more disgusted with Wakefield than had he scraped dung from the bottom of his serviceable leather boots.

Wakefield’s nostrils went into a full flare. Not even God himself could keep Wakefield away from Cressida, and that this man should try?

“It is fine, Dr. Carlson,” Cressida said quietly.

Reluctantly, Dr. Carlson stepped to the side to reveal Cressida in the middle of the bed, pushing herself up from repose.

Wakefield stared, and stared, and stared. More than half thinking…no, half believing…hoping, the sight before him would change. He stood motionless and stared, and yet no matter how long he did, the sight of her remained the same.

Her lips.

Her beautiful mouth that he’d once been left swollen and bruised from the passion of their kisses, flesh that he’d lightly sucked and nipped and licked and worshiped the way some men did before an altar were now swollen. The cracks within them hinted at the blood that had existed at some point between Wakefield’s departure—his furious departure—and his midnight return.

I’m going to be ill…

“I’m fine, Benedict,” she said, waking him from his trance.

She was fine? She was fine. How could she be fine when he’d been transformed into an elemental, tortured creature incapable of speaking sentences or any words at all?

Wakefield balled and unballed his fists. The bruise upon her left cheek had since begun to fade. Now, the imprint of a large hand had marked her other one. This time, the blow of whichever dead man had landed this one left a ring of purple around her right eye. The blows she had taken had been so violent, they’d already begun to leave her black and blue.

Now the doctor’s vitriolic rage made sense. The man had assumed that it had been Wakefield who’d left Cressida bruised so.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Cressida said as placidly and politely as if she were ushering a gentlemanly caller from a parlor and not a bloody doctor who’d come to tend her wounds. Both Dr. Carlson and Trudy honored Cressida’s request for a private meeting and stepped out.

The moment they’d gone, Cressida lay back down. She rested her hands behind her head and leaned in a relaxed pose against the pillows knocking them slightly. How was she able to move? How was she able to make so many slight and obvious movements? How, when Wakefield found himself made of concrete stone?

Immobile, Wakefield couldn’t take his gaze from the horrific bruising of her delicate features. The walls of his chest began closing in, even as a weighted pressure settled somewhere in the place where his heart beat, crushing him until his heart pounded and thudded sickeningly, as if it were about to explode.

“I really am fine, Benedict,” she said comfortingly.

As if I am the one in need of consoling… The column of his throat worked painfully as he continued to stare unblinkingly at her.

Those bruised and previously bloodied lips tipped up in a wistful smile for his benefit. And the way she relaxed against the pillows, he couldn’t tell if she’d adopted an affected air in a bid to ease his worries, or whether she used them to borrow support for herself. He’d wager both.

“I’ve upset you,” Cressida said softly, her smile falling. The slight way her body flinched was a testament to how even that subtlest slide to her lips wrought pain. “I expected your men had found Trudy, and I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t know when you’d be back, and…”

“Is that what you believe?” he asked incredulously. “That I am upset with you? With you?” he repeated. He both felt and saw her hesitation.

Closing his eyes, Wakefield shook his head. How strange to think not even three days earlier, the doctor’s assumption would’ve been what mattered first and foremost. How his reputation had been an obsession.

But that had been before Cressida. Now he couldn’t see past the evil that had been done to her, and his own murderous intent to hunt down the fiend responsible.

“Your brother?” He marveled at his ability to get those two words out.

Cressida’s expression instantly closed up. And lifting her chin, she stared him squarely in the eyes and glared with all the spirited fiery beauty of a queen. “What of him?”

Did she truly not understand what he was asking? Was she bent on torturing Benedict?

“Is he the one who did this to you?” he asked, unable to keep that question from exploding from his lungs.

Wakefield thought she might not answer, and then he’d go mad from not knowing and would be forced to kill any and every man until he landed upon the one guilty of the crimes against Cressida this day.

She hesitated and then nodded.

Oh, God.

Wakefield sucked in a shuddery breath. He made himself speak for her benefit. “I…see.”

This is what she endured.

Anguish consumed his heart before he smothered his own self-suffering. Cressida. It was her pain that mattered. Hers and only hers.

Oh, Cressida. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Cressida said tersely. “Tell you who my brother was?”

Wakefield jolted, so dispossessed he’d not even realized he’d spoken aloud.

Cressida kept coming. “Or should I have told you where I lived? Or why I was at The Devil’s Den?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Any of it? All of it? Something , Cressida!” Emotion wrenched that from him.

“Let me ask you a question, Benedict. You’ve continued to put questions to me, all number of them, any of which are deserving of answers. But on what grounds? Why?” she asked intriguingly. “What reason would I have to tell you about my life? So I could what?” she scoffed. “Be humiliated? Further humiliated.”

He shifted closer. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“ Please ,” she said, her voice quavering. “Yes, why didn’t I do just that? Why didn’t I bear my soul, life, and everything to a man whom I’ve admired, respected, and dreamed of?”

By her own admission, she’d admired him. He squeezed his eyes tight. Not only that, she’d carried a candle for him. How it must have hurt to find out he’d been oblivious as to her existence. “You cared about me for all these years,” he said thickly.

Cressida shook her head. “No.” Her throat worked. “I loved you.”

“I didn’t know,” he whispered.

“Yes, well, now you do.” Cressida threw her hands up. “And, if it suits you all the same, I’m long past caring.”—He ached to take her in his arms, but as the one responsible for her suffering, he didn’t have that right.—“I have absolutely no pride left where you are concerned,” she spat. “You’ve taken the last of it, Benedict Adamson.”

Impossible . Her pride was one of the beautiful parts that defined her. She spoke of being humbled, but here and now, no one—certainly not her—could be more ashamed than Benedict was with himself .

Then it was like Cressida was finally freed by her truth and each revelation that came spilling out of her.

“Imagine that there was me who’s known you as long as I’ve been in London.” A bitter-tinged laugh bubbled from her throat and spilled from her lips like so much pain-filled regret. “You danced with me. You bowed over my hand. You kissed it and inquired about my evening. And then you saved me from being sold like a whore at The Devil’s Den. You are no different than all the other gentlemen there. You were there to buy me like a whore.”

No!

“Yes!” she cried, confirming again his words and thoughts were all twisted up, and he couldn’t sort them out from one another. “You weren’t there to save me or help me, but because you thought I was some lightskirt, and for you, Benedict, that’s the truth. It’s all I’ve ever been to you.”

His heart buckled. She was no whore. He’d never seen her that way. “I didn’t…” But it’d been her first time and he’d certainly treated her like one. What other opinion would Cressida have reached?

Shame consumed him.

His throat grew impossibly thick, narrowing off his airflow. “Never,” he said hoarsely. “That is never how I saw you,” he repeated, a thread of desperation leant his voice a pitchy quality he didn’t even recognize.

Cressida lifted her tired, bruised eyes to his. She gave him the saddest smile, and it broke every corner of his now broken heart into even smaller, more brutal shards.

Then it was as if the light within Cressida went out.

“I’m not sure if you’re lying for my benefit or whether you do so in an attempt to make yourself feel better about the fact that you took my virginity. Worry not, you took nothing that I didn’t freely give. Either way,” she said, shaking her head, “it doesn’t matter. You offered me little to no reason at all to feel comfortable confiding in you.”

A sharp, stabbing ache bloomed in his chest, fierce as a wound, though no blade had touched him.

How did she have all these words when he couldn’t muster a one?

Her words would’ve been easier to bear had they contained the vitriol she was entitled to. But this calm, quiet, solemn, matter-of-factness of her reasoning for having withheld and never sharing the truth of her circumstances was like the cruelest, most vicious lash upon his skin. She was right in so many ways.

No. She was right in every way, about everything. With every charge she leveled at him, with every obvious assumption she’d drawn, the respect he’d already developed and come to hold for her only magnified under her staunch, unwavering spirit and frankness.

“Not once have you said anything about why you, a good, honorable, respectable gentleman, should come to have been at The Devil’s Den. Hmm,” she said almost wistfully. “But then there’s nothing to say there either.”

Cressida’s lips curved in the saddest, most faraway, smile, breaking him completely. “You are no different than everyone else in my life who disappointed me.”

His entire body jerked.

He’d been wrong. That regretful utterance proved there was still some parts within his aching body and soul left to shatter.

Her gaze found his, and it was like she’d just remembered he was standing there.

He flinched.

“I’m not saying this, Benedict, to hurt you or to insult you,” she hurried to say.

He briefly closed his eyes. There she went, always reassuring him.

“It’s just the simple truth, Benedict.”

Wakefield didn’t realize he was shaking his head; she’d taken his jerky movements as some kind of contribution in this agony-laced, one-sided discussion.

“I had stars in my eyes. Romantic illusions that you were some great hero on a white steed charging to my rescue.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “That isn’t your fault.” Cressida shrugged. “That is mine.”

A chill sluiced through him.

The matter-of-factness with which she now spoke terrified him more than the hate he’d detected in her eyes.

Or maybe that is my own self-loathing reflected back.

“It’s not your fault how naive I’ve been, how foolish, how stupid,” she continued on in that same pragmatic way, like she were ticking off items on a list and not enumerating her own perceived failings. “There are no heroes.”

Yes! Me. Let me be that hero. Let me prove myself…

Cressida took in a soft but audible breath. “I know that now.” She added that last part like Benedict were gone from her life, and she spoke the reminder to herself so as to never forget.

All the revelations she’d made seemed to take the last of her energy.

I am the one who hurt her…Me.

And that sin he’d be guilty of for the entirety of his miserable existence, and one he’d spend his life atoning for.

With a shaky, tired sigh, Cressida lay down and remained there. With her knees up, she folded her hands on her stomach. “Please go,” she silently prayed. She closed her eyes, scrunching them tightly. “Just leave me alone.”

He nodded, before he remembered she couldn’t see him, but he could see her and all those marks she wore upon her beautiful face.

Overtaken by a black, all-encompassing rage with the fiend who’d hurt her, Wakefield somehow managed to walk out.

And as he did, Wakefield knew one thing with absolute certainty…

I’m the real fiend.