Page 116 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
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. “Youcaredabout me for all these years,” he said thickly.
Cressida shook her head. “No.” Her throat worked. “Ilovedyou.”
“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 withhimself.
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 tobuyme 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 isneverhow 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.”
