Improperly Wed

by Anna DePalo

  Belinda didn’t need to be reminded of the plan, contingent on her marriage to Tod, to update the Wentworths’ main ancestral estate in Berkshire. She knew the family finances were, if not precarious, less than robust.

  Truth be told, neither she nor Tod had been swept away by passion. Instead, their engagement had been based more on practicalities. She and Tod had known each other forever and had always gotten along well enough. She was in the prime of her friends’ matrimonial season, if not toward the end of it, at thirty-two. Likewise, she knew Tod was looking for and expected to marry a suitable woman from his highborn social set.

  Tod had said he would wait for her to resolve the situation. He had not said how long he would wait, however.

  Her mother tilted her head. “I don’t suppose you could lay claim to part of Easterbridge’s estate for being accidentally married for the past two years?”

  Belinda was appalled. “Mother!”

  Her mother widened her eyes. “What? There have been plenty of real marriages that have endured for less time.”

  “I’d have more leverage if Easterbridge were divorcing me!”

  Belinda recalled the marquess’ jesting offer to remain married. It was clear she’d have to be the one to initiate proceedings to dissolve their marriage.

  “You didn’t have time to sign a prenuptial agreement at that wedding chapel in Las Vegas, did you?” her mother persisted and then sniffed—ready to answer her own question. “Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if Easterbridge carried a standard contract in his back pocket.”

  “Mother!”

  Uncle Hugh shook his head. “A man as sharp as Easterbridge would have seen to it that his property was not vulnerable. On the other hand, we wouldn’t want the marquess to make any claim to Wentworth property.”

  Her mother turned back to her. “It’s a good thing that none of the Wentworth estates are in your name.”

  “Yes,” Uncle Hugh acknowledged, “but Belinda is an heiress. She stands to inherit the Wentworth wealth. If she remains Easterbridge’s wife, her property may eventually become his to share, particularly if the assets are not kept separate.”

  “Intolerable,” her mother declared.

  For her part, Belinda didn’t feel like an heiress. In fact, from all of her family’s focus on making a good match, she felt more stifled than liberated by the Wentworth wealth. True, she was the beneficiary of a small trust fund, but those resources only made it bearable for her to live in Manhattan’s high-rent market on her skimpy art specialist’s salary.

  She’d been reminded time and again that her task was to carry the Wentworth standard forward for another generation. She was never unaware of her position as an only child. So far, however, she could not have made a bigger mash of things.

  “I’ll deal with the marquess,” Belinda said grimly, stopping herself from her nervous habit of chewing her lip.

  Somehow, she had to untangle herself from her marriage.

  Three

  “Thank you for meeting me today,” she said, somewhat incongruously, as she stepped into a conference room in Colin’s business offices at the Time Warner Center.

  She was hoping to keep matters on a polite and productive footing. Or at least to start that way.

  Colin gave a quick nod of his head. “You’re welcome.”

  Belinda watched as Colin’s gaze went unerringly to her now ring-free hand.

  Her heart beat loudly in her chest.

  She’d wanted a meeting place that was private but not too private. She knew Colin owned a spectacular penthouse high above them in the same complex—it was one of the unavoidable pieces of information that she’d come across about him in the news in the past couple of years—but she’d shied away from facing him there. And her own apartment farther uptown was too small.

  It would have been hard enough to confront Colin under any circumstances. He was wealthy, titled and imposing—not to mention savvy and calculating. But he was also her former lover and could lay claim to knowing her intimately. Their night together would always be between them. She’d seen what they could do with a hotel room… What they could do in his apartment didn’t bear thinking about. At all. Ever.

  Belinda scanned him warily.

  He wore a business suit and held himself with the easy and self-assured charm of a sleek panther ready to toy with a kitty. He carried the blood of generations of conquerors in his veins, and it showed.

  Belinda felt awareness skate over her skin, a good deal of which was exposed. She was dressed in a V-neck belted dress and strappy sandals, having arranged to have this meeting during her lunch break at Lansing’s.

  Colin gestured to the sideboard. “Coffee or tea?”

  She set down her handbag on the long conference table. “No, thank you.”

  He perused her too thoroughly. “You are rather even-keeled, in sharp contrast to last week.”

  “I’ve chosen to remain the calm in the storm,” she replied. “The rumors have run amok, the groom has decamped for the other side of the Atlantic and the wedding gifts are being returned.”

  “Ah.” He sat on a corner of the conference table.

  “I hope you’re satisfied.”

  “It’s a good start.”

  She quelled her ire and looked at him straight on. “I am here to make you see reason.”

  He was ill-mannered enough to chuckle.

  “I know you’re busy—” too busy to have obtained an annulment, obviously “—so I’ll go straight to the point. How is it possible that we’re still married?”

  Colin shrugged. “The annulment was never finalized with the court.”

  “That’s what you said.” She smelled a rat—or more precisely, a cunning aristocrat. “I hope you fired your lawyer for the matter.”

  She took a steadying breath. The lawyer she had recently consulted had confirmed that, as far as state records showed, she and Colin were still married because there was no record of an annulment or even of papers being filed.

  One way or the other, she had to deal with matters as they unfortunately stood.

  “It’s futile to look back,” Colin remarked, as if reading her mind. “The issue is what do we do now.”

  Belinda widened her eyes. “Now? We obtain an annulment or divorce, of course. New York recently did me the enormous favor of introducing no-fault divorce, so I’ll no longer have to prove that you committed adultery or abandoned me. I know that much from some simple research.”

  Colin looked unperturbed. “Ah, for the good old days when marriage meant coverture and only a husband could own property or prove adultery.”

  She didn’t appreciate his humor. “Yes, how unfortunate for you.”

  He lifted his lips. “There’s only one problem.”

  “Oh? Only one?” She was helpless to stop the sarcasm.

  Colin nodded. “Yes. A no-fault divorce can still be contested, starting with the service of divorce papers.”

  She stared at him dumbly. What was he saying?

  She narrowed her eyes. “So you’re saying…”

  “I’m not granting you an easy divorce, in New York or anywhere else.”

  “You ruined my wedding, and now you’re going to ruin my divorce?” she asked, unable to keep disbelief from her voice.

  “Your wedding was already ruined because we were still married,” Colin countered. “Even if I hadn’t interrupted the ceremony, your marriage to Dillingham would have been considered void ab initio due to bigamy. It would have been as if the marriage ceremony had never occurred.”

  Belinda pressed her lips together.

  Colin raised an eyebrow. “I know. It’s rather inconvenient that your marriage to Dillingham would have been the one to have been declared legally nonexistent.”

  “You ruined my wedding,” she accused. “You chose the precise wrong moment to make your big announcement. Why crash the ceremony?”

  “Shouldn’t you be thanking me for preventing a crime from being committed?”
/>
  She ignored his riposte. “And to top it off, you ruined my marriage by not making sure the annulment was properly finalized.”

  “Your marriage to whom? The one to Tod that never existed? Or ours? Most people would say that not finalizing an annulment is the way to avoid ruining a marriage.”

  She wasn’t amused by his recalcitrance. She’d come here to get him to agree to a quiet dissolution of their union.

  Colin rubbed his chin. “I can’t understand how you managed to keep our Las Vegas wedding a secret. Did Dillingham even know?”

  Belinda reddened. “Tod is standing by me.”

  “That means no.” Colin let his gaze slide over her hand. “Also, you’re not wearing his ring. Just how…closely is he standing by? Or does his support amount to waiting in the wings until this whole messy divorce business is taken care of? But just how long is he willing to wait?”

  “As long as it takes,” she shot back.

  They stared at each other, and Belinda forced herself not to blink. The truth was she had no idea how long or how short Tod would wait. The wedding fiasco had been quite a blow.

  Colin tilted his head and contemplated her. “You didn’t even tell him that you already had one wedding behind you. Were you afraid of what an Old Etonian like Dillingham would think of the quick Vegas elopement in your past?”

  “I’m sure he would have been bothered only by the fact that the groom had been you,” she retorted.

  “Right, competitive,” Colin said, nodding even as he twisted her meaning. “But then there’s the fact that you lied on your marriage license.”

  Belinda’s flush deepened.

  It was true that she had omitted to list the Las Vegas ceremony when applying for a marriage license in New York. Her union with Colin had been a marriage of brief duration that had been contracted in another state and, she believed, had ended in an annulment.

  Didn’t an annulment usually mean that a marriage had never existed?

  Belinda rallied her reserves.

  “You know quite a bit about dissolving a marriage even if you haven’t accomplished it successfully yourself,” she retorted. “Have you talked to a lawyer already?”

  “You have. Why shouldn’t I?” he returned rather cryptically.

  “That’s the difference between you and Tod. He hasn’t spoken with an attorney.” The last thing she needed was for the Dillinghams to resort to legal means to recoup their costs for the wedding fiasco.

  Colin twisted his lips. “Pity. Because if he had, his lawyer would have told him just what my lawyer told me. If I choose to fight your divorce suit, you’ll remain my wife for quite a while longer.”

  “So you plan to fight it?”

  “With everything I’ve got.”

  “I’ll win eventually.”

  “Maybe, but I’m sure the Wentworths won’t appreciate the notoriety.”

  He was right, Belinda thought with a sick feeling. If this scandal deepened, her family would be horrified. And she felt ill just thinking of the Dillinghams’ reaction.

  “You’re the Marchioness of Easterbridge,” Colin said, driving his point home. “You might as well start using the title.”

  Marchioness of Easterbridge. She was glad her ancestors weren’t around to hear this.

  “It’s a good thing you chose to keep your surname on the Nevada marriage license,” Colin continued. “Otherwise, you’d have been erroneously representing yourself as Belinda Wentworth rather than Belinda Granville for more than two years.”

  “I remember choosing to keep my name,” she shot back. “I wasn’t so completely off kilter that I don’t remember that detail.”

  Somehow, it had been acceptable to marry Colin but not to take the Granville name.

  Belinda Granville. It sounded worse than Marchioness of Easterbridge. Easterbridge was simply Colin’s title, whereas Granville had been the surname carried by his devious ancestors.

  “Why are you doing this?” she blurted. “I can’t understand why we shouldn’t have a civilized divorce—or better yet, annulment.”

  He sauntered toward her. “Can’t you? Nothing has been civilized between the Wentworths and the Granvilles for generations. The ending of our…encounter in Las Vegas is further evidence of it.”

  Her eyes widened. “So it all goes back to that, doesn’t it?”

  He stopped before her. “I intend to make a conquest of the Wentworths once and for all—” his gaze slid down her body “—beginning and ending with you, my beautiful wife.”

  Disaster preparedness.

  He’d laid the groundwork, Colin thought. He’d spent two-plus years planning for this moment, making sure he’d anticipated every likely contingency.

  “Excellent,” Colin said into the phone. “Did he ask many questions?”

  “No,” his deputy responded. “Once he knew you were willing to meet his price, he was pleased.”

  And now, he was satisfied himself, Colin thought.

  “I believe he assumed you were a Russian oligarch looking to make a prime purchase.”

  “Even better,” Colin replied.

  If he knew Belinda, in the past few weeks she’d been quietly working to find a way to disengage herself from their union with as little fanfare as possible. But now he held a trump card.

  After ending the call, he looked up at his two friends. When his cell phone had buzzed, and he’d seen who was calling, he’d been too impatient for answers to ignore the call despite the presence of company on a Thursday evening.

  From their seats in upholstered chairs in the sitting room of Colin’s London town house, Sawyer Langsford, Earl of Melton, and James Carsdale, Duke of Hawkshire, exchanged looks. They all happened to be in town at the same time and had met for drinks. Having removed their jackets, they all sat around with loosened ties.

  Like his two fellow aristocrats, Colin had had a more peripatetic existence than most, so his accent was cosmopolitan rather than British. Still, despite all being well-traveled—or maybe, because of it—he, Sawyer and Hawk had become friends. Thus it seemed oddly appropriate that the three of them would become romantically entangled at the same time.

  Sawyer had unexpectedly gotten engaged to Tamara Kincaid, one of Belinda’s bridesmaids. Hawk was intently pursuing Pia Lumley, Belinda’s wedding planner, in an effort to smooth out his bumpy history with her.

  Both of his friends were enjoying rather more success romantically than Colin at the moment—though unsurprisingly, Belinda’s friends had proven challenging to woo, as well. Colin had an advantage in that Belinda was already his wife. Yet the fact that she now refused to communicate with him except through lawyers was a decided obstacle.

  But no matter. He and Belinda were still married, and with his business deal today, she’d have to deal with him sooner rather than later.

  “What game are you playing, Easterbridge?” Hawk inquired.

  “A rather high-stakes one, I’m afraid,” Colin said in a faintly bored tone. “I’m sure you want no part of it.”

  Hawk raised an eyebrow.

  Sawyer shrugged. “You’ve always played your cards close to your chest, Colin.”

  “Simply doing my best to burnish the Granville surname.” And what better way to varnish it than to be responsible for finally vanquishing the family foes, the Wentworths?

  Colin hadn’t given much thought to his fellow Berkshire landowners over the years. This was the twenty-first century, after all, and civility toward one’s neighbors, barring direct provocation, was the norm. Besides, in his rather small aristocratic world, it was considered downmarket to openly not get along.

  He’d been willing to let bygones be bygones for most of his thirty-seven years, not interacting with the Wentworths but not engaging in open feuding, either. He’d been disposed to maintain a status quo of wary distance because not much had been at stake.

  But then he’d unexpectedly come into contact with Belinda in Las Vegas. He was as susceptible as the next man to a leggy
brunette with flashing eyes.

  He’d been intrigued by Belinda Wentworth whenever he’d occasionally chanced to cross her path over the years. It hadn’t happened often. She was a good half-dozen years younger, so their childhoods in Berkshire had not overlapped much. He’d been sent up to Eton at the age of thirteen to continue his studies, and had only rarely returned home. By the time he’d begun to establish his real-estate empire, Belinda had been off at school herself.

  But then, an opportunity had presented itself at a Vegas cocktail party to speak with Belinda and he’d been pleased, not least of all because his curiosity had been stoked.

  Nothing had happened that night but banter and conversation, but it had definitely whetted his appetite for more. When he’d encountered Belinda in the hotel lobby of the Bellagio, a couple of days after the cocktail party, he hadn’t let the opportunity that he’d been hoping for slip by. He’d invited her to have a drink. Drinks had become dinner, and then they’d wound up in the casino, where he’d been able to exhibit his skill at the gaming tables.

  By that time, of course, he’d really wanted Belinda. She’d been a desirable woman who pushed all the right buttons for him. By the end of the night, he’d had a sense of rightness and anticipation.

  She’d followed him into the elevator leading to his luxury suite. But then she jokingly suggested that she’d have to marry him first.

  The gauntlet had been thrown down.

  He’d studied her. She looked relaxed and uninhibited but not as if she’d crossed the line to being intoxicated.

  The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out onto the penthouse floor.

  He turned to her and took a step closer.

  “It doesn’t seem right to marry you when I haven’t even kissed you,” he murmured in a low voice.

  Belinda’s hazel eyes twinkled. “I’m not putting out anymore without a promise. You know, like the song ‘Single Ladies.’”

  Her tone was joking, but he detected an underlying note of seriousness.

  “Someone hurt you.”

  She shrugged. “Not badly.”