Page 111 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
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 andbecauseof 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 Wakefieldhadn’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 somehowthe 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.
