Enticing the Earl

“No.” He grabbed the soap from her hand and rubbed it to a lather.

“No?”

“That’s what I said. A countess doesn’t leave her husband to live on a viscount’s land. You are my wife and you will stay with me. Now, it might help if you told me why you have suddenly decided I am some monster you need to be protected from.”

“Oh, indeed,” she said sarcastically. “You used me. Just like Lambert and just like Paul Smyth. Did you think I could attend a party and not find out about your reputation? I overheard several women talking about how you had no choice but to marry someone from the country who wouldn’t know of your horrible reputation.”

Simon’s jaw clenched and then slowly softened. “I couldn’t tell you about that,” he whispered.

“Of course not. If you had, I would never have agreed to marry you.”

He closed his eyes. “No, Mia. You would have been frightened of me after what you went through at Lambert’s hands.” He opened his gray eyes and stared at her. “That would have killed me. I could never live with myself knowing you thought I could harm you.”

“But you could,” she whispered.

“Any man can hurt a woman. But I would never do such a thing.”

She desperately wanted to believe him. “Then will you tell me what happened five years ago?”

He closed his eyes and released a long sigh. “Very well.”

She waited as he gathered his thoughts. Based on what James had told her, she knew this would be hard on Simon.

“I’ve always had a temper,” he started quietly. “But over the last four years, I found if I exercised, it released the frustration I felt. Five years ago, I was in London with Middleton. He pressed me to play cards.”

“But you can’t play cards well.”

He tilted his head and stared at her.

“I guess you already knew that,” Mia said sheepishly.

“I tried to get out of the game but everyone kept pressuring me to play.”

“So you played.”

Simon nodded. “I did. I figured it couldn’t hurt to lose a few pounds. Only I didn’t lose. I won a substantial amount of money. It infuriated Lewis Baxter, the man across from me. He assumed I was cheating somehow.”

“What were you doing?”

His cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I was counting the number of the suit on each card. It is the only way I can play cards.”

“Of course, but how did he think you were cheating?”

“There are some people who can keep track of the cards in play and determine the odds of the next card being drawn.” He looked away. “Not that I would ever be able to do such a feat.

I play so little that I normally just expect to lose. So I was furious that he called me out for cheating. Instead of dealing with it in the normal way of a duel, Baxter wanted to fight bare-knuckled. He was something of a pugilist so he thought he could best me easily.”

“Oh my,” she whispered.

“He had no idea I’d been fighting since I was ten.” Simon looked away. “Once the fight started, Baxter started to say a few things about how he’d heard I was an imbecile who couldn’t even do basic mathematics at Eton. That only increased my anger. Middleton had to pull me off of him.”

Mia closed her eyes, trying hard not to imagine the fight in her mind. “How bad was he?”

“Very bad. It took him months to recover only to die in a carriage accident a year later.” Simon released a staggering breath. “His family blames me for everything.”

“You could have told me this before,” she said softly. “I would have believed you.”

“Not after what Lambert did to you. I couldn’t have you hate me.”