Page 47 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
“Wakefield’s lady—”
“She is notmy lady,” Wakefield gritted out.
The icy gentleman fixed a frosty glance on him. “That’s good. Then maybe I shouldn’t have come to tell you she asked for a carriage. I had her wait in the kitchens.”
The lady was leaving?
Latimer was the first to speak. “Thank you, Mauley.”
The guard nodded.
“The hell she’s leaving,”Wakefield growled. “See that she doesn’t, Mauley.”
Mauley inclined his head and backed out of the office.
Wakefield tightened his jaw. He not only needed answers from his beguiling lover, he required them—and he intended to get the truth out of her mouth.
Chapter 9
Seated at the kitchen table in London’s latestgreatgaming hell, with servants hurriedly seeing to their chores and tasks, it appeared to Cressida how utterly ridiculous she must look. Her drab skirts paled even in comparison to the high-quality livery donned by male and female servants alike. The ridiculously ornate mask she’d worn last night to accompany her luxuriant but outrageously decadent gown was now the only article of value that she wore, leaving Cressida feeling a lot like Cinderella after the ball.
A wry smile twisted her lips. How many women before her had sat in this very spot while a carriage was readied to take her away from the sinning she’d done here?
Certainly that accounted for why no one paid the strange sight she made any heed. They knew precisely what a woman here had been up to the night before.
Not for the first time since Mauley deposited her at the kitchen table, Cressida consulted the hideous gilt bronze wall clock. It portrayed a chilling rendering of Chronos holding up time as the hounds of hell crept towards the god, while those macabre pets of Lucifer bared their teeth. No doubt the young earl had installed that as a help to his servants, but also as a deterrent to keep a person from worrying their attention on the passing moments they spent here.
No, they were an efficient lot, all of them. Since she’d been abandoned by Mauley and forgotten by the staff, she’d had a full twenty minutes now to witness their efforts firsthand.
Failing to be seen was an all too familiar state for Cressida, and it wasn’t even a recent development.
As a child, when her mother fell ill, Cressida woke before the sun rose and spent hours upon hours wandering throughoutthe hills and meadows of Somerset. She’d scour the earth for patches of clovers, desperately—and tirelessly—searching for the coveted four-leaf ones. When her endless searches proved futile, she resorted to traipsing around during the rainstorms, on the odd chance the rain clouds lifted and the sun ushered a rainbow across the horizon.
On the rare occasions when the doleful English sky allowed the sun its fair turn to shine, Cressida went hiking. She’d just known if she could locate the start of that polychromatic masterpiece, she could follow all the way to the end to a treasure.
Oh, it hadn’t been that she cared, needed, or even wanted the resulting pot of gold. She’d merely needed the treasure to lure the leprechauns Trudy oft regaled Cressida with tales of. Because there’d been only one thing she cared about—her mother being cured of whatever sickness that’d stolen her vitality. More times than not, when Cressida fell asleep out in the wild, her father had been so consumed with grief that he’d not noticed his daughter missing. Trudy invariably came for Cressida.
Because the world was terrible and the worst things always happened, Cressida’s beloved mama went on to be with Jesus.
From there, Cressida’s ability to remain invisible became her superhuman strength.
Her beloved father never recovered from the loss of his wife, and Cressida became an afterthought for him.
Distractedly, Cressida picked up the silver fork and toyed with the untouched food on her plate.
Of course, she’d always been invisible to her brother. She grimaced. Not that she’d have it any other way. He’d always been a cruel, heartless wastrel.
Then there was Benedict. Benedict, whom she’d done her best to charm with discourse on the rare times they’d spoken, and whom she’d loved so long as to be an embarrassment.Hehadn’t even been able to identify Cressida when she’d been the only woman on a stage.
Her shoulders hunched inward.
Now, it was the guard, Mauley, who’d clearly forgotten her. After all, just sitting in this one room in his clubs proved no driver in the Earl of Dynevor’s crew of efficacious servants would tarry, and certainly not this long.
Her sense of desperation building inside, Cressida looked again to that ominous clock. She’d been counting on the use of Lord Dynevor’s carriage. Cressida had but a handful of coins to her name, and though she’d acquired a fine dress and even finer mask, which she’d sell, having to useanymoney meant parting with the only funds she had to care for herself and Trudy.
Now, she’d unwittingly, with Benedict’shelp, landed herself in very real danger of having another life to be responsible for.
That hated pounding started in her head and spread to her chest.
