Page 126 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
“Oh, I’ve met him.” A vein pulsed at his right temple.
“You’ve…” Cressida’s blank question trailed off, and she recalled what Trudy predicted regarding the source of Benedict’s fury. “Tonight?”
“Yes,” Wakefield confirmed.
When he said nothing more on that meeting, she looked over. His hands were balled up tight, drawing her gaze to his bruised and battered knuckles.
“Oh, Benedict,” she whispered, her voice catching.
Hands shaking, she twined her fingers with his.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said tightly, his features strained.
He met Cressida’s eyes. His glittered with a sheen. “I wanted to, Cressida. I almost did.”
Her heart trembled. Inside, she shriveled with shame in thinking what that exchange between the two men had entailed. How she hated that Stanley was the brother she was—
“Cressida, look at me.” Benedict’s statement was an order, but it contained a gentleness and warmth that nearly brought her to tears.
She lifted her gaze to his.
“Your brother is a vile, wretched monster who doesn’t deserve a place on God’s earth.”
He slid his gaze over the marks Stanley had left upon her with such an infinite and aching tenderness that it brought tears to her eyes. Benedict lightly stroked the tip of his index finger ever so lightly in a feather-soft caress along the curve of her cheek.
“You are not your brother, Cressida. You are you. And it is my greatest sin that I automatically assumed you’d be working with him.”
“You didn’t know,” she said.
“Please,” he implored. “I’ve already asked you to stop trying to assuage my guilt. I have two sisters and a mother, all of whom were left either a widow, as my mother was, or my sisters, who were just about to have their come out and had no one to look after them. I was a boy at the time. I couldn’t do anything. I was helpless and hopeless to be the steady figure they needed. In that time, I discovered how powerless women truly are. And instead of reflecting on my own life experiences and understanding about this unfair world to women, I lumped you in with the baron.”
Cressida listened to him, her awe and admiration for Benedict, the Earl of Wakefield, growing. His life hadn’t been easy, not when he’d been a child. The steady presence she’d taken him for and that he was amidst Polite Society had once been a lost little boy at the mercy of the world.
Despite that, he’d risen up and become a man of honor, a man who’d observed his late father’s mistakes and the strife that had been brought to his mother and sisters and resolved to be better and do more than his father had ever done. How many other men simply followed in their father’s footsteps and continued on a trajectory of accumulating debt and overspending while they lived the grand life?
Abruptly, Benedict sat up, and she reflexively followed suit so they were seated, knees touching, and directly across from one another. Leaning over, he took her hands in his, clasped them, and drew them closer to his chest.
“Is the only reason you’re rejecting my offer because of the duke?”
Is that what he thought?she mused silently.
He thought she was rejecting him. She’d never rejected him. She had feared they couldn’t wed, given her circumstances and connections to the duke, but rejection had been furthest from her mind and nowhere near it or in it.
“Yes,” she confided, “it is.”
“I may be just an earl,” he said with a crooked smile, “but I have a good deal of power and certainly greater connections than Harrowden. He won’t be an impediment to us marrying.”
To us marrying.
Her heart skipped a dozen beats, and she was rather certain it’d never again relearn the correct tempo. He drew her hands to his mouth one at a time and kissed the tops of them.
“I’m going to handle this, Cressida. I’m going to sort this out. You needn’t worry. Do you trust me?”
“More than anything,” she answered, honesty pulling the response from her lips before the question had fully left his mouth.
With a contagious enthusiasm, Benedict jumped to his feet. Cressida made to rise, but he’d already caught Cressida by the hands and drew her to her feet in one swift, gentle motion.
“Worry not, love. I’ll have this settled and sorted out.”
