“This is not a social call,” Sheridan bit out.
Juncker lifted his glass. “Suit yourself.” He sipped some before narrowing his gaze on Sheridan. “You’re not planning to punch me again, are you?”
“That depends on what you tell me about your involvement with my wife.”
* * *
Vanessa paced her bedchamber. Where in creation was Sheridan? She’d asked the staff when dinner was generally served, and they had said seven P.M. It was six-forty-five and no sign of Sheridan. So much for his promise to be home shortly.
It made her nervous. This was the first meal she was in charge of in her new home—well, her new London home—and she didn’t want to ruin it. Sheridan struck her as the sort of man to expect things to be timely and orderly.
Except for in the bedchamber. No, she wouldn’t think of that. It would just start her worrying again.
The connecting door opened, and her husband stepped in. “There you are. I thought you’d be down in the drawing room having a glass of wine.”
She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She pointed to his bedchamber. “You just have time to change for dinner. The staff told me—”
“Don’t fret. As soon as I came in, I told them to delay it an hour.”
“All right.” She thought about telling him that meals in progress didn’t keep well when delayed but figured he probably wouldn’t understand. He was a man, after all. “Did your meeting go well?”
“Quite well, actually.” He was watching her particularly closely, for some reason.
Oh, dear, did she have something in her teeth? She shouldn’t have eaten that pear after arriving. Perhaps there was a piece of peel in her teeth. Now, how was she to give a reason for needing to look in the mirror despite being fully dressed?
“So,” he went on, “I have a question for you. It’s the same one you refused to answer yesterday: Are you in love with Juncker?”
That brought her up short. Why on earth was he asking that now? Apparently her seduction of him last night had only bought her a day. And she was tired of avoiding the issue. “No, I am not. I never was.”
He stared at her. “That’s not what Juncker said.”
“Wait a minute—you talked to Mr. Juncker about this? When?”
He hesitated to answer, and that told her a great deal.
“You talked to him this afternoon, didn’t you?” She stalked across the room toward him. “He was your meeting!”
He scowled. “I had to know, damn it. Since you wouldn’t tell me . . .”
She planted her hands on her hips. “And he said I was in love with him? Why, that . . . that scoundrel! He lied.”
“Did he?” Sheridan said, his expression impossible to read.
“He most certainly did!” She paced around Sheridan. “But why would he lie? What could it possibly gain him? He knows I don’t care about him, so it couldn’t be anything like that. Besides which, he swore to keep my secret. Dirty traitor.”
“What secret?” Sheridan asked in a hard voice.
Oh, dear. She shouldn’t have said that. Sheridan had her so flustered that she didn’t know which way was up.
Well, there was no help for it now. She had to tell him, if only to counter Juncker’s lie. “The secret that . . . I only ever wanted you. That I was never interested in Mr. Juncker. I merely used him to make you jealous.” She tipped up her chin. “And it worked, too, didn’t it? Or at least a little.”
“What made you assume it would work in the first place?” Sheridan asked, again using that voice that told her nothing of what he was thinking.
She swallowed hard, hating that he was making her expose herself. “Because I had the sense that you found me as appealing as I . . . found you. But then I couldn’t ever get you to notice me. You seemed determined to treat me like Grey’s little sister, which made no sense. I couldn’t figure out if you felt the same way as I did. I was a woman, full-grown, wanting you to see me for who I really was.”
“So you decided to use Juncker to make me jealous? Why him, of all people, if you had no feelings for him?”
Good Lord, this was difficult. “I didn’t exactly plan that. I barely even knew who he was. But around the time of your father’s demise, Grey guessed I was interested in someone, and I didn’t dare tell him it was you. I knew he would reveal it to you if I did, and I feared you would find my interest in you suspect. You know—you’d see me as the silly young woman enamored of a duke. That’s why I told Grey it was some poet. I’d been reading Mr. Juncker’s poetry, and it seemed logical.”
She sighed. “Except that the whole thing got terribly out of hand. Mr. Juncker somehow got wind of my interest in a poet and started behaving differently toward me. Until then, I had barely had any association with him, and suddenly he was flirting with me and pretending he knew me. So I gave him womanly advice, knowing it would put him off. But I think he then assumed he could use me to annoy you and Thornstock.”
“He was right,” Sheridan muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Sheridan said. “That’s all it was. A scheme gone terribly awry.”
“I suppose you could call it that.” She turned away from him. “And we both know how much you hate schemes. And schemers.”
“I do, that’s true,” he said softly. “But I could never hate you.”
Her heart hurt, and his words only soothed the hurt a little. “I know you will never believe this, but Mr. Juncker lied about my interest in him. I never told him such a thing.”
“I know.” He
