Page 117 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
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.
Chapter 30
She’d prayed for Benedict to leave, and he’d done just that.
How funny that for all the prayers she’d put to God, this should be the only one He’d ever answered.
The one she hadn’t meant.
Seated at the gilded vanity, with Trudy gently brushing her hair, Cressida stared miserably at her equally miserable reflection.
For as long as she lived, she’d remember Benedict’s expression as he’d caught sight of her face.
Horror. Shock. Disgust. And pain. So much of it. That eclectic swirl of so many emotions; she’d gone dizzy from deciphering each one as his handsome features spasmed.
No one had ever looked upon Cressida so—as though her suffering had become their suffering, and the same feelings of rage at her lot had been absorbed within them. Trudy’s life had been even harder than Cressida’s and had left the older woman jaded. Though angered at Stanley’s violence, she viewed it more as a woman’s lot.
But Benedict? Benedict had seemed to feel, in that instant, everything Cressida had carried for years, and that he, another soul, not only understood but raged with her, railed with her, mourned and hurt, made her feel seen.
Cressida stared vacantly at the silver brush in Trudy’s gnarled fingers; sightlessly, Cressida followed its slow drag through her hair.
He hadn’t needn’t to speak a single thought. She and Benedict had lived on a previously single plane that Cressida had inhabited alone.
Until he’d asked if she’d met with Stanley, and upon confirmation from Cressida, Benedict had walked out.
A fresh wave of tears filled her throat.
Trudy grunted. “Why do you look like that fancy fellow kicked your pup?”
