Page 124 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
“In the way my brother is,” she supplied for him without inflection.
“Yes,” he said, “he gambled, yes, but no more than the average gentleman, and he drank, but he wasn’t a drunkard. He provided for his family by the means afforded him as an earl, but he didn’t do anything to truly overlook the tenants who were reliant upon him, but nor did he put any or much thought at all into what should happen to his children and wife after he was gone. Maybe he thought he’d be around forever. Maybe he was too busy living to worry about the worst thing happening to him.”
But the worst thing had happened to him and in his dying, it had led to the worst thing happening to Wakefield’s entire family.
“My father had another family that he kept, a woman who was his mistress and who gave him two daughters.”
He felt Cressida’s gaze grow more intent upon him.
Throughout his years at Eton and then Oxford, there’d been plenty of gentlemen who knew about the previous earl: about the debts he’d accumulated wagering too much. A steady stream of lovers, and then one mistress whom the wastrel fell for. To Society, however, the greatest crime—the reason Wakefield had been treated poorly upon his father’s death—was because thefinancial state he’d left his legitimate family and bastard one, in. Those sins however, hadn’t been Wakefield’s. They’d alone been his sire's.
Unlike his father, Wakefield viewed his word as his bond. Vows had been taken between the late earl and Wakefield’s mother that had merited the earl’s devotion.
“After his death, I found his journals.” In his mind, Wakefield recalled the moment he’d discovered those books. The pain he’d felt reading them had stayed with him all the years after. “He loved his other family deeply,” he said, staring intently over the top of her blonde-brownish loose curls and into the merry fire dancing in the hearth, “and I didn’t begrudge my sisters for havingknownthat love.”
His jaw worked. “What I did, and do, and will always resent, however, is that he involved himself with another woman and altered her life and the lives of their children. He took on that which he couldn’t take care of when he already wasn’t sufficiently looking after his own wedded wife andtheirchildren together. I was determined not to be him.”
In the end, Wakefield had proven to be just as blackened. No. Evenmoreso.
The late Earl of Wakefield had loved outside of his marriage, but he certainly hadn’t treated the other woman like some whore or leveled hideous and heinous accusations against her as Wakefield had done to Cressida. Rather, his father had treated his mistress as he had his wife.
Through Wakefield’s telling, Cressida remained silent. Just as he knew this woman, she knew him so very well to have surmised he needed to speak about his past. Even while he found strength in her support, he struggled to face her.
Humbled and shamed, he had to bring himself to look at her. To not be a coward. “Cressida, I spent so much damned time worrying I’d become my father, I didn’t even realize I’d becomesomeone even worse, a priggish fellow who’d make an honest, good woman feel badly about herself when it was I, all along, who bore the real mark upon my character.”
An adorable crease of confusion lined her brow. God, she really didn’t know.
“You,” Wakefield said gently, “I’m talking about you.”
“Me,” she repeated back incredulously. She snorted. “I’d hardly describe myself as having been honest. As you’ve rightly pointed out, Benedict, you don’t really know me. I didn’t share any part about myself with you. And, yes, I did that deliberately, so I…”
He reached up and touched a fingertip gently to her mouth and then promptly regretted that hastiness. She flinched ever so slightly that, had he blinked, he would’ve missed the telltale mark of her discomfort. But he’d seen it. His gaze went to the bruising upon her face.
What manner of woman had the strength and wherewithal to take such a brutal beating and remain as composed as she’d been? When she’d greeted him with Dr. Carlson, she’d remained, poised and calm even lying in bed. Certainly, she was the only woman he’d ever known who’d conduct herself with such grace and formidability in the face of what she suffered.
“I’m so sorry,” he said thickly around the emotion clogging his throat, “I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. I—”
“You didn’t hurt me, Benedict.”
She’s soothing me. She’s soothingme?
“Please don’t do that,” he said, his voice hoarsened.
He didn’t even allow her to draw a full breath before he continued on a rush, “You do not need to assure me. You do not need to try and make me feel better. Cressida,youmatter. You mattersodamned much. And yet I’ve come to learn you’ve spent so much time worrying about others, looking out for Trudy, that you never putyourselffirst.”
Something that sounded very much like a sob tore from his chest. “Lord knows I am certainly the last of all people who is deserving of your coddling. You deserve to be loved and protected and cared for and cherished.”
Reaching down, he collected her left hand in his and drew it close to his mouth.
He pressed a tender kiss upon her knuckles and then moved his lips along the top of her hand. Wakefield turned her wrist over and delicately worshiped the delicate seam where her wrist met her hand.
“Please let me, Cressida Everly Alby. Let me be the one. Marry me.”
Marry me.
For a minute, Cressida believed her brother had struck her too hard on the head this time. How else to explain the dream that she had long carried, a dream of Benedict and she together, and now to have him before her, pleading with her, asking that she allow him to be the one to love her and cherish her?
Cressida lay motionless, unblinking. If she blinked, if she closed her eyes for so much as the span of a second, she’d awaken and the dream would come to a swift and likely death.
