Improperly Wed

His mother tossed a glance back at him, a sour expression on her face. “Now is no time for you to be jesting.”

“Was I?” he mused as he shut the door.

“Tosh! The family name is being besmirched.” His mother put down her Chanel bag and settled herself in a chair in the living room, after giving her coat to the housekeeper who magically materialized for a moment. “I demand answers.”

“Of course,” Colin responded, remaining standing but folding his arms. He acknowledged the housekeeper with a grateful nod.

His mother looked incongruous in the contemporary setting. He was much more used to her in a traditional English sitting room, surrounded by chintz prints and stripes, with old and faded family photos adorning the console table and piano. Certainly she was used to a complete staff of servants.

He and his mother both waited, until his mother raised her eyebrows.

Colin cleared his throat. “What is the rumor precisely?”

“As if you didn’t know!”

When he continued to remain silent, his mother sighed with resignation.

“I’ve heard the most horrible gossip that you disrupted the nuptials of the Wentworth chit. What’s more, you apparently announced you were married to her.” His mother held up her hand. “Naturally, I cut off the horrible harridan who was repeating the vicious rumor. I informed her that you would never have put in an appearance at a Wentworth wedding. Ergo, you could not have stated that—”

“Who was this teller of tall tales?”

His mother stopped, frowned and then waved a hand dismissively. “A reader of Mrs. Jane Hollings, who writes a column for some paper.”

“The New York Intelligencer.”

His mother looked at him in distracted surprise. “Yes, I believe that’s it. She works for the Earl of Melton. Whatever could Melton be thinking to own that rag of a paper?”

“I believe that tabloid turns a healthy profit, particularly online.”

His mother sniffed. “It was the downfall of the aristocracy when even an earl went into trade.”

“No, World War I was the downfall of the aristocracy,” Colin contradicted sardonically.

“You can’t possibly have turned up uninvited to the Wentworth nuptials,” his mother repeated.

“Of course not.”

His mother relaxed.

“When Belinda Wentworth’s nuptials actually took place two years ago, I was very much invited—as her groom.”

His mother stiffened.

“My station as a marquess, attributable to centuries of proper inbreeding,” he continued wryly, “forced me to prevent a crime from being committed when it was within my means to do so once word reached me of Belinda’s intention to marry again.”

His mother sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you saying that I have been succeeded as the Marchioness of Easterbridge by a Wentworth?”

“It is precisely what I’m saying.”

His mother looked as if she were experiencing vertigo. The news seemed to hit her with the force of a stockmarket crash. Naturally, Colin had been counting on it; otherwise she would have been distinctly not amused by his insouciance.

“I don’t suppose she changed her name to Granville in that chapel in Las Vegas?”

Colin shook his head.

His mother shuddered. “Belinda Wentworth, Marchioness of Easterbridge? The mind revolts at the thought.”

“Don’t worry,” he offered, “I don’t believe Belinda has used the title or has any intention of doing so.”

If Belinda did use the title, his mother would be forced to style herself as the Dowager Marchioness of Easterbridge in order to avoid confusion. It would be viewed as adding insult to injury, Colin was sure.

His mother looked exasperated. “What on earth possessed you to marry a Wentworth in the first place?”

Colin shrugged. “I imagine you could find the answer among the multitude of reasons that other people get married.” He was unwilling to divulge too much of his private life to his mother. Like hell was he going to talk about passion. “Why did you and Father marry?”

His mother pressed her lips together.

He’d known his question would end her query. His parents had married at least partly because they were social equals breathing the same rarefied air. As far as he could tell, it hadn’t been a bad marriage until his father’s death five years ago from a stroke, but it had been a proper and suitable one.

“Surely you can’t mean to stay married.”

“Never fear. I wouldn’t be surprised if Belinda was consulting her lawyer as we speak.”

Colin wondered what his mother would say if she knew that Belinda wanted out of their marriage but he didn’t.

At least, not yet—not until his goal was reached.

In fact, he thought, he needed to call his lawyer and find out how the negotiations for his purchase of the property in question were going.

When the deal went through, Belinda would have no choice but to engage him—face matters without running or dodging.

Two

She’d made all the right moves in life…until a night in Las Vegas with Colin Granville.

Belinda tossed a sweater into the suitcase on her bed with more force than necessary.

She’d read history of art at Oxford and then worked at a series of auction houses before landing her current gig as a specialist in impressionist and modern art for posh auction house Lansing’s.

She was usually punctual, quietly ambitious and tastefully dressed. She considered herself to be responsible and levelheaded.

In the process, she’d made her family happy. She’d been the dutiful child—if not always doing what they dictated, then at least not rebelling.

She was never the subject of gossip…until this past weekend. One glaring misstep was now the subject of breathless coverage in Mrs. Hollings’ Pink Pages column in The New York Intelligencer:

It was to be the society wedding of the year.

Except—oh, my!

In case word hasn’t reached your tender ears yet, dear reader, this town is abuzz with the news that the Wentworth-Dillingham wedding was crashed by none other than the Marquess of Easterbridge, who proceeded to make the astonishing claim that his short-lived marriage to the lovely Ms. Wentworth two years ago in Las Vegas—of all places!—had never been legally annulled.

Belinda winced as the words from Mrs. Hollings’ column reverberated through her mind.

Mrs. Hollings had simply fired the first salvo. Damn the social-networking sites. The fiasco at St. Bart’s Church had gone viral in the past three days.

She didn’t even want to think about her family’s continued reaction. She’d avoided calls from her mother and Uncle Hugh in the past few days. She knew she’d have to deal with them eventually, but she wasn’t prepared to yet.

Instead, yesterday she’d commiserated over the phone with her closest girlfriends, Tamara and Pia. They’d both been full of sympathy for Belinda’s situation, and they’d admitted that the would-be wedding had brought them troubles of their own. Tamara had confessed that she avoided one of the groomsmen at the wedding, Sawyer Langsford, Earl of Melton, because their families had long cherished the idea that the two would wed. Meanwhile, Pia had admitted that she’d discovered one of the wedding guests was her former lover, James “Hawk” Carsdale, Duke of Hawkshire, who had left her without so much as a goodbye after one night three years ago, when he’d presented himself as merely Mr. James Fielding.

In short, the aborted wedding had been a disastrous day for her and her two girlfriends.

Fortunately, Belinda thought, she had a ticket out of town. Tomorrow morning, she would be leaving her tidy little Upper West Side one bedroom for a business trip to England. Even before the wedding that wasn’t, she and Tod had decided to postpone a honeymoon for a later date—one that was more convenient for their mutual work schedules. And now she was glad she already had a business trip planned. She couldn’t outrun her problems, but some space and distance from the scene of the crime—namely, New York—would help clear her mind so she could come up with a plan.

Ironically, while her wedding date to Tod was supposed to seal her image as the perfect and dutiful society bride, it had done the exact opposite, thanks to Colin’s appearance. Her wedding was to have been her apogee, but instead it had been her downfall.

Still, an annulment or divorce should be easy enough to obtain. People got them every day, didn’t they? She herself had thought she’d received one.

She paused in the process of packing, sweater in hand, and gazed sightlessly at the clutter on top of her dresser.

She recalled how she’d stared at the annulment papers when they’d arrived for her signature and then pushed aside the quick stab of pain that they had engendered. They were simply a reminder of the blemish on the resume of her life, she’d told herself. But no one needed to know about her appalling mistake.

Belinda dropped the sweater into her suitcase and swallowed against the sudden panicky feeling in the pit of her stomach. She cupped her forehead, as if she could will her proverbial headache away.

But she knew there was no hope of making a six-foot-plus wealthy marquess disappear from her life with a poof!

Even before that fateful night in Vegas, she’d run into Colin at social functions occasionally over the years and had found him, well, compelling. But she was too aware of the history between their two families to ever talk directly to him. On top of it all, he was too masculine, too sternly good-looking, too everything. She, who prided herself on her propriety and self-control, couldn’t risk spending time with someone who made her feel so…unsettled.

But then she’d been sent on assignment to Las Vegas to appraise the private art collection of a multimillionaire real-estate developer. When she’d run into Colin at the developer’s cocktail party, she’d felt compelled for business’ sake to socialize with him. She hadn’t planned on discovering, much to her chagrin, how charming he was and how much she was attracted to him.

He was like a breath of home in a new place—pleasantly familiar—and yet he stirred a response in her like no one ever had. In the process of idle cocktail party chitchat and banter, she discovered they’d both been standout swimmers in school, they were both partial to operatic performances at New York’s Lincoln Center and London’s Royal Opera House and they were both active in the same charities to help the unemployed—though Colin sat on the board, while she was more of a foot soldier volunteering her time.

Belinda had thought their similarities were almost disconcerting.

Toward the end of her stay in Vegas, she’d run into Colin again in the lobby of the Bellagio. She’d been momentarily uncertain what to do, but he’d made the decision for her. The ice had already been broken at the recent cocktail party, and what’s more, it turned out they were both staying at the Bellagio.

Frankly, she’d been in a partying mood—or at least one for a celebratory drink or two. She’d landed a deal with Colin’s real-estate developer friend for a big auction sale of artwork at Lansing’s. She knew she had Colin partially to thank. His smooth mediation of her conversations with the developer at the party had certainly been helpful.

Buoyed by a surge in magnanimity, she’d agreed to have a drink with Colin. Their drinks had naturally progressed to dinner and then time at the gaming tables, where she’d been impressed by Colin’s winnings.

At the end of the evening, it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to continue up in the elevator with him to his luxury suite.

She’d teasingly suggested that she couldn’t sleep with him unless they were married. She’d gambled on her pronouncement being the end of the matter. After all, she’d recently broken up with a boyfriend of more than a year with nothing to show for it.

Colin, however, had shocked her by upping the ante and daring her to go to the Las Vegas Marriage License Bureau with him. They’d turned around and headed back downstairs.

She’d been by turns amused and horrified by their escapade, especially when they’d started hunting for a chapel. She’d never been in an iconic Las Vegas wedding chapel. One had been too easy to find that night.

Later, of course, she’d blame her uncharacteristic actions on having had a drink or two and on the crazy Vegas environment. She’d point the finger at just having turned thirty and losing another boyfriend. She’d place fault on the increasing pressure from her family to marry well and soon, and on the fact that most of her wellborn classmates from Marlborough College were already engaged or married. She’d even blame her surge of goodwill toward Colin, who’d helped her land business at the cocktail party. Basically, she’d found everyone and everything at fault—most of all herself.

In the morning, her cell phone had rung, and she’d blearily identified the call as being from her mother. It had been as if someone had doused her with icy water while she’d still been half-asleep. She’d come back to reality with a shock, and had been truly horrified by what she’d done the night before. She’d insisted on a quick and quiet annulment without anyone being the wiser.

At first, Colin had been amused by her alarm. But soon, when it had become clear that her distress wasn’t temporary, he’d become closed and aloof, thinly masking his anger.

Belinda dropped her hand from her forehead, and in the next moment, she was startled by the ring of her cell phone.

She sighed. She supposed it was a good thing to be jostled out of unhappy memories.

Locating the phone on top of her dresser, she confirmed what the ring tone was telling her—it was Pia calling.

She put a Bluetooth device in her ear for hands-free listening so she could continue packing while she talked.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Atlanta for a wedding?” Belinda asked without preamble once she had her earpiece in place.

“I am,” Pia responded, “but I have until the end of the week before the pace picks up for Saturday’s main event.”

She and Pia and their mutual friend, Tamara, had gotten to know each other through charitable work for the Junior League. All three of them had settled in New York in their twenties, soon after university. Though they’d chosen to live in different Manhattan neighborhoods, and were busy pursuing different careers—Tamara’s being in jewelry design while wedding planning had always been Pia’s dream—they had become fast friends.

Though Tamara was the daughter of a British viscount, Belinda had not met her as part of the aristocratic set in England because Tamara had grown up mostly in the United States, after her American-born mother had divorced her titled husband. Too bad—her free-thinking bohemian friend would have been a breath of fresh air in Belinda’s stilted, structured adolescence. Tamara had never met a trend that she didn’t want to buck—a trait that Belinda couldn’t help but admire. Pia was more like herself, though her friend came from a middle-class background in rural Pennsylvania.

“Don’t worry,” Belinda joked, guessing the reason for Pia’s call, “I’m still alive and kicking. I intend to be granted my freedom from the marquess if it’s the last thing that I do.”

“Oh, B-Belinda, I-I-I wish there was something I could do,” Pia said, her stutter making a rare appearance.

“Colin and I made this mess, and we’ll have to be the ones to clean it up.”

Belinda regretted the repercussions for Pia’s wedding-planning business from the nuptial disaster on Saturday. She’d thought only of helping her friend’s career when she’d asked Pia to be her wedding planner instead of her bridesmaid—despite knowing Pia was a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. Unfortunately, none of her plans for Saturday had worked out well.

Damn, Colin.

Since she’d had a three-way phone conversation with Pia and Tamara only yesterday, and Pia had just arrived in Atlanta for business today, Belinda sensed there might be more reason for her friend’s call than an opportunity to chat.

Because she was not one to skirt an issue, unless it involved her husband—not to be confused with her groom—she went straight to the point. “I know you wouldn’t be calling without a reason.”

“W-well,” Pia said delicately, “I wish this conversation could take place at a later time, but there is the issue of what announcement to send, if any, with regard to Saturday’s, er, interrupted nuptials. And then, of course, the wedding gifts—”

“Send them all back,” Belinda cut in.

She was an optimist but also a realist. She didn’t know for sure how long it would take to bring the marquess to heel at least long enough to grant her an annulment or divorce.

“Okay.” Pia sounded relieved and uncertain at the same time. “Are you sure, because—”

“I’m sure,” Belinda interrupted. “And as far as a statement, I don’t think one is necessary. A wedding announcement would no longer be appropriate obviously, and anything else would be unnecessary. Thanks in part to Mrs. Hollings, I believe everyone is in the know about Saturday’s events.”

“What about you and Tod?” Pia asked. “Will you be able to, ah, patch things up?”

Belinda thought back to the events of Saturday.

Outside the church, Tod had caught up with her, apparently having exited the confrontation with Colin soon after she had. They’d had a short and uncomfortable conversation. While he had tried to maintain a stiff upper lip, Tod had still seemed flabbergasted, annoyed and embarrassed.

She’d handed his engagement ring back to him. It had seemed like the only decent thing to do. She’d just discovered she was still married to another man, after all.

Then she had ducked into the white Rolls Royce at the curb, relieved to have attained privacy at last. She had been quivering with emotion ever since Colin’s voice had rung out at the church.

Belinda sighed. “Tod is perplexed and angry, and under the circumstances, I can hardly blame him.”

She winced when she thought about her glaring omission—not telling him about her elopement. Her only excuse was that she could hardly bear to think about it herself. It was too painful.

She hadn’t been able to live down her uncharacteristic behavior, and then it had come barging in in the form of a tall, imposing aristocrat who aroused passionate reactions in her.

Pia cleared her throat. “So matters between you and Tod are …?”

“On hold. Indefinitely,” Belinda confirmed. “He’s waiting for me to resolve this situation, and then we’ll decide where we’ll go from there.”

Pia said nothing for a moment. “So you don’t want to issue any public statement…for clarification?”

“Are you volunteering to be my publicist?” Belinda joked.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I issued a public statement or a press release for a bride,” Pia responded. “Media relations is part of the job for society wedding planners these days.”

Belinda sighed. “What could I say, besides confirming that I am in fact still married to Easterbridge?”

“I see your point,” Pia conceded, “and I don’t disagree. But I thought I’d give you the opportunity to respond to Mrs. Hollings if you want to.”

“No, thanks.”

The last thing Belinda wanted was for this scandal to play out in the media. After all, a public statement by her might just invite Easterbridge to issue his own clarifications.

She would try to deal with Colin privately and discreetly—even if she had to go beard the lion in his den. She wanted to avoid further scandal, if possible. She knew it was a slippery slope from retaining lawyers to sending threatening letters and ultimately going through an ugly and public divorce.

“What the devil has gotten into you, Belinda?” Uncle Hugh said, coming around his desk as Belinda stepped into the library of his town house in London’s Mayfair neighborhood.

The mark of disapproval was stamped all over her uncle’s face.

She was being called to account. She, Belinda Wentworth, had done what none of her ancestors had—betrayed her heritage by marrying a Granville.

Belinda knew when she’d gone to London on business that she’d be compelled to pay a visit at the Mayfair town house. She had been able to escape in-depth conversations—and explanations—with her relatives directly after the wedding by departing the church forthwith and having Pia run interference for her at the show-must-go-on reception afterward. Her family had also been preoccupied with trying to save face with the assembled guests—to the extent such a thing was possible.

She glanced above the mantel at the Gainsborough painting of Sir Jonas Wentworth. The poor man was probably turning in his grave.

The London house had been in the Wentworth clan for generations. Like many other highborn families, the Wentworths had fought tooth and nail to hang on to a fashionable Mayfair address that carried a certain cache, if no longer necessarily signifying generations of quality breeding due to the growing number of new money.

Though the Wentworths were not titled, they descended from a younger branch of the Dukes of Pelham and had intermarried with many other aristocratic families over the years—save, of course, for the despised Granvilles. Thus, they considered themselves as blue-blooded as anybody.

“This is quite a tangle that you’ve created,” her uncle went on as a servant rolled in a cart bearing the preparations for afternoon tea.

Belinda worried her bottom lip. “I know.”

“It must be resolved forthwith.”

“Of course.”

As the servant left the room, Uncle Hugh gestured for Belinda to sit down.

“Well, what are you going to do to fix this mess?” he asked as they both sat, she on the sofa and he in a nearby armchair.

By force of habit, Belinda leaned forward to fix tea. It gave her something to do—and the illusion of being in control while not meeting Uncle Hugh’s gaze.

“I intend to obtain an annulment or divorce, of course,” she said evenly.

Despite her self-assured attitude, there was nothing of course about it.

She surveyed the tea tray. A proper English tea was more than loose tea and hot water. There were the customary finger sandwiches, buttery biscuits and warm scones.

Really, she could drown herself in scones right now. Crumbly blueberry ones…rich raisin ones…decadent chocolate-chip ones—

No, not decadent. Definitely not decadent. It came too close to mimicking the behavior that had gotten her into her current fix with Colin.

She was decidedly not into decadent behavior, she told herself firmly.

Nevertheless, an image flashed into her mind of lounging on a king-size bed with Colin Granville, sharing champagne and strawberries high above the flashing lights of Las Vegas.

Her face heated.

“… a youthful indiscretion?”

She fumbled in the process of pouring hot water into a cup.

She jerked her head up. “What?”

Her uncle raised his eyebrows. “I was merely inquiring whether this unfortunate situation came about due to a youthful indiscretion?”

She knew she must look guilty. “Can I claim so even though I was thirty at the time?”

Uncle Hugh regarded her with a thoughtful but forbearing expression. “I’m not so old that I don’t remember how much partying and club-hopping can go on in one’s twenties or beyond.”

“Yes,” Belinda said, more than ready to accept the proffered excuse. “That must be it.”

Her uncle accepted a teacup and saucer from her.

“And, yet, I’m surprised at you, Belinda,” he went on as he took a sip of his tea. “You were never one for rebellion. You were sent to a proper boarding school and then to Oxford. No one expected this scenario.”

She should have guessed that she would not be let off the hook so easily.

Belinda stifled a grimace. Marlborough College’s most famous graduate these days was the former Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, who would mostly likely be queen one day. She, by startling contrast, had failed miserably on the matrimonial front. She now had the wreckage of not one but two wedding ceremonies behind her.