Page 2 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
Then she recalled the woman’s identity—Lady Marianne. Stanley’s new wife and Cressida’s new sister-in-law.
“At last, you are awake.” The baroness peered down the length of her slightly turned-up nose at Cressida. The Lord had certainly known the appendage to affix upon this lofty peeress’s face.
Cressida’s tongue felt as heavy as her limbs, and she couldn’t move her lips.
“No doubt the herbs I added to your tea was the first time you’ve ever had them.”
That accounted for Cressida’s state! She’d been drugged.
“Blast and damn!” The heavily painted face of her companion twisted with more of her earlier annoyance. “Fellowes!” She shotup fingers encased in gold satin, formed them into a fist, and thumped even harder. “If I am late, I swear I’ll cut off your reining hand.”
Stanley’s carriage lurched with a force that sent Cressida’s languid body flying forward. Her hard-hearted companion caught Cressida by the shoulders and guided her none too gently back into the tattered folds of her upholstered bench.
The speed with which the team of four took flight sent a paint piece some two inches long falling onto Cressida’s lap.
The baroness stared at that remnant of Stanley’s declining chariot; the gilded seal had long since been chipped off by Cressida’s brother when he’d been particularly pinched for funds.
If possible, the woman’s tipped-up nose tilted up even farther. “How pathetic thesegentlemenare,” she muttered. “It is an absolute travesty that imprudent, insentient fools should be the ones to rule the world, while we’re left trying to find a way to survive.”
Hmm. It appeared Cressida could agree with the horrid lady on something after all.
“Fortunately, thanks to me, you and your brother won’t be in such straits for long,” the baroness declared.
At that pronouncement, the floodgates broke open and the memories came pouring through.
Stanley had found a husband for Cressida.
“…Harrowden will pay a hefty price for you…”
This time, with reality’s intrusion, Cressida curled onto her side and made herself as small as possible to hide from the truth that, with every turn of the carriage wheels and clip-clop of the horses’ steady trot, grew increasingly closer.
“…answer to all our problems…”
Their problems?
What problems had Cressida herself created for them? It’d been Stanley who’d arrived in London and promptly wagered away, drank away, and lechered his way out of funds. Contrarily, in the years they’d been in the capital, Cressida barely received funds for a wardrobe, and then only just enough so she could be trussed up in the hopes of securing a husband.
As if it’d ever been a possibility that a country girl from Somerset could find a good, honorable, proper nobleman to marry her of all people.
It seemed, in the end, Stanley had secured one.
Cressida’s stomach lurched and she closed her eyes. Or maybe the jolt of the chariot accounted for the lurching sensation.
She peeled back the moth-eaten, fraying curtain and took in the quadrangular arrangement outside. A bright glow of lampposts illuminated a grand central courtyard comprised of blue-gray cobblestones, brightly lit by the glow of candles. Between the symmetry of the paving and the artful design the Roman Rota Fortuna crafted within the stones, Cressida could almost convince herself she’d been brought to Wellington’s grand residence in Hyde Park Corner and not one of the dens of sin her brother frequented.
“…wants some other fellow to spare him the tedium of deflowering you…”
“At last.” The baroness gave a happy clap of her hands. “We’ve arrived and are early.”
Cressida’s tongue felt like a brick in her mouth, but she got a single, bitter word out. “Splendid.”
The baroness’s painted lips formed the first real smile Cressida would have believed the shrew capable of. “That is the spirit, my dear.” Her pencil-thin eyebrows dipped in the middle. “You have absolutely no idea how fortunate you are, Cressida. What I wouldn’tgiveto go back to when I was a young, naïvevirgin, unwise in the ways of carnality.” The vile woman’s gaze grew cloudy and far-off. “To learn it all again.” She rubbed a gloved hand over her ample breasts and moaned.
Oh, God. Dread pitted in Cressida’s belly. This is what they’d planned for her. She’d be given to some stranger. No, not given. With the debt her brother had built up and the constancy with which he found items of even a small value within their household to sell, she herself had been sold.
Repulsed, Cressida eyed the opposite carriage door, though her head proved too heavy to move, and contemplated escape. Among her accomplishments of darning tattered socks, stretching coin, and baking bread, Cressida could also count deftness on her feet. With all the times Stanley had raised a hand to strike her over the years—first when they’d been small children and he’d been a foul brute of a brother, and then when their father passed and he’d become Cressida’s protector—she’d become quite quick.
But to do so meant she’d forfeit Trudy’s life for Stanley would make Trudy pay if Cressida escaped. Trudy who, after the passing of Cressida’s father, had been the only family she’d truly known.
