“I know. Grey just handed the whole thing over to me.” Grey, her big brother. The one she loved dearly. No wonder she felt betrayed. “And I stepped in and took care of it myself.”
“While letting me think you wanted to protect me from Mr. Juncker.”
That roused his temper. “I did want to protect you from Juncker. It was clear you were besotted, and he was only interested in dallying with you.”
“It was clear, was it?” she said coldly.
He chose to ignore that odd reaction. “I realize I let the subterfuge go on far too long. My mother says I should have told you in the week before we married, that I should have given you a chance . . .”
“To refuse to marry you?” She took a small sip of her wine. “Perhaps I would have taken that chance, but mostly because I would never wish to wed any man who felt forced into it, either for the money or any other reason.”
He wasn’t sure why, but that angered him. “Let’s get one thing straight. I didn’t marry you for the money. I married you because I had . . . acted on my physical urges and thus put you in a difficult position.” He rose to pace the room. “I know what a gentleman should do when he destroys a woman’s reputation, however unintentionally, and I am a gentleman at heart.” He paused to stare down at her. “Perhaps I should amend that. I’m a gentleman except when I’m around you. Then I lose all reason.”
God, he shouldn’t have admitted that, especially to her. Already her expression had softened. Why, he didn’t know. She was in love with Juncker, wasn’t she?
He was about to ask her when she said, “You don’t need my dowry?”
Vanessa was blunt—he’d give her that. “I didn’t say that. It will help matters, to be sure. Unfortunately, I need a great deal more money than most women’s dowries could probably offer.”
“And certainly not mine.”
“Vanessa, I wasn’t—”
“It’s all right. I understand.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“What isn’t? That you were forced to marry me? That in time you will come to resent that?”
“Absolutely not,” Sheridan said firmly. “My attraction to you is enough for me.”
“Right now.” She sighed. “But who knows if it will be enough for you later? Eventually my looks will fade.”
“You don’t understand. I wasn’t lying when I said I would choose not to marry if I could.”
She took a couple of deep breaths. “Because of Helene?”
He debated whether to admit that. But he’d promised her the truth. And she deserved to hear it. “Yes,” he said softly. “Because of Helene.”
Chapter Eighteen
Vanessa wasn’t sure she should have started this, since every word was a dagger through her heart. But they were married now. They should have no secrets between them. She refused to have a marriage like Mama’s, where Papa did as he pleased while Mama grew increasingly unhappy and bitter. She wasn’t certain which had come first—Mama’s unhappiness, which drove Papa to have mistresses. Or Papa having mistresses, which drove Mama to become unhappy.
It didn’t really matter, since the end result had been the same—her parents were miserable and had been since before she was born. She didn’t want that for herself. Even if she could only have a marriage between friends, it was better than what her parents’ marriage had become—a marriage between enemies.
“Tell me about Helene,” she said, forcing herself not to show her pain. Until yesterday, she had never guessed he might have had another woman in his life. If she’d known that, she might not have tried so hard to gain him as her husband. “Did she end up married to someone else? Or did you have to leave her behind in Prussia?”
He gave a harsh laugh. “You could say that. I left her behind in a Berlin grave.”
Now that she wasn’t expecting. “Oh! Oh, Sheridan, I’m so sorry. Was she . . . Were you . . . married to her?”
“No. Merely engaged.” He walked back to his chair and sat down to pour himself a glass of Madeira. “We met during her debut.”
When he fell silent, she said once more, “Tell me about her.”
He sipped some Madeira. “She was very pretty.”
“You don’t need to fudge the details on my account.” Even if it killed her to hear them.
“All right. Beautiful, then, but in a different way from you. She was tall and thin and had translucent skin. Little did I know that her thinness and skin were because she was in the early stages of consumption.”
“Good Lord.” Vanessa’s heart went out to him. “That must have been awful, I know. Consumption is an ugly, horrible way to die. Anyone who loves a consumptive has to watch as their beloved wastes away before their very eyes.”
He shot her a questioning look. “You sound as if you’re familiar with it.”
“Uncle Noah’s wife died of consumption,” she explained. “I think that’s one reason he’s finally ready to marry again. Being married to a consumptive means losing them bit by bit, until by the end you hardly see the person you knew.”
“That’s an accurate assessment.” He traced the rim of his glass. “Of course, I didn’t realize Helene was ill when I was courting her. I don’t think even her parents knew at that point. She’d always been thin, and she’d grown tall long before I met her.”
“You were in love with her,” she said, tamping down her pain at the thought. She mustn’t let it show. She was not going to be one of those women who pined for a man who didn’t love her, could never love her.
“I was as in love as a man of twenty-three can be.” He cast her a rueful smile. “I didn’t know what love is, to be honest. She was attractive and elegant, the sort of woman who would have been perfect as a diplomat’s wife.”
“Or a duke’s,” she put in.
“I don’t know about that. She wouldn’t have wanted to move here, I imagine, even if she hadn’t become ill. When Uncle Armie died, Father was determined that I return with the family so he could prepare me for inheriting the title and estate from him. If I’d had Helene as my wife, if she’d lived, I might have fought harder against coming here. But without her, there was honestly no point to staying in Prussia.”
And if he’d succeeded in staying there, Vanessa would never have known him. It was horrible and selfish of her, but she couldn’t regret that Helene had died. She only wished the woman hadn’t apparently taken Sheridan’s heart into the grave with her.
Sheridan sighed. “But, as they say, ‘If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,’ and all that. She didn’t become my wife and she didn’t come here with me or live there with me, and that was that.” He met Vanessa’s gaze. “It’s all in the past now.”
“Hardly. I can tell from the way you’re clutching that wineglass that it’s not ‘all in the past.’”
“I suppose you want the details of my ill-fated romance with Helene.” He stared down at the glass in his hand. “You insist on dragging the whole of it out of me.”