Improperly Wed

Now she regretted the decision not to hire a lawyer. Clearly she’d committed another error in judgment. Not only had she not made sure her annulment had been properly finalized—because she’d wanted to forget about the whole sorry episode in Las Vegas as soon as possible—but as a result she’d put her trust in Colin to see the annulment through.

Colin’s gaze swept over her. “Very nice. Certainly a departure from the red sequin ensemble that you wore during our ceremony.”

“Red is an appropriate color when marrying the devil, wouldn’t you agree?” she tossed back.

“You didn’t act as if I were the devil at the time,” he responded silkily, his voice lowering. “In fact, I recall—”

“I wasn’t myself,” she bit out.

I was out of my mind. That’s right, she thought feverishly. Wasn’t insanity a basis for annulment almost everywhere?

“Insane?” Colin queried. “Already trying to create a watertight defense to bigamy?”

“I did not commit bigamy.”

“Only through my timely intervention.”

The man was infuriating. “Timely? We’ve been married two years according to your calculation.”

Colin inclined his head in acknowledgment. “And counting.”

She was incredulous at his audacity. But then she supposed that, as her spouse, Colin felt he took precedence over Tod, an almost husband. And he’d be right, damn him. Even physically, Colin was more imposing. He was the same height as Tod but more muscular and formidable.

She rued her continuing awareness of Colin as a man. Still, it was a situation she intended to rectify forthwith to the extent she could.

“How long have you known we were still married?” she demanded.

Colin shrugged. “Does it matter if I arrived in time?”

She smelled a rat from his evasive response. He’d wanted to create a scene.

Still, he gave nothing away.

“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer,” she stated.

“I look forward to it.”

“We’re getting an annulment.”

“Not today, however. Not even the state of Nevada works that fast.”

He had a point there. Her wedding day was well and truly ruined.

She stared at him in impotent fury. “There are grounds,” she insisted, reassuring herself. “I clearly must have been insane when I married you.”

“We agreed on lack of consent due to intoxication, you’ll recall,” he parried.

“Yes, yours!” she retorted, annoyed by his continued sangfroid.

He inclined his head. “By our mutual agreement, due to a better alternative.”

“Fraud should have sufficed,” she responded tightly. “You completely misrepresented your character to me that night in Las Vegas, and after today, no one would disagree with me. This latest bit of Granville chicanery is for the history books.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Chicanery?”

“Yes,” she insisted. “Delivering the news on my wedding day that you were derelict in filing our annulment papers.”

“No need to impugn my ancestors by association,” he responded calmly.

“Of course, there is,” she contradicted. “Your ancestors are why we’re in this current mess. They’re the reason why—” she gestured in the direction of the church “—the crowd out there was electrified by the news that a Wentworth had married a Granville. What are we going to do?”

“Stay married?” he suggested mockingly.

“Never!”

Belinda turned to exit just as Uncle Hugh and Bishop Newbury barged in.

As she brushed past her uncle, she heard her relative demand, “I hope you have a good explanation, Easterbridge, though I can’t imagine what it is!”

Apparently, all hell had broken loose in the hallowed sanctum.

Revenge.

A sordid word.

Still, revenge hinted at personal animosity. Instead, Colin mused, the Wentworths and Granvilles had been after each other for generations.

Perhaps feud or vendetta would be more appropriate.

His relationship with Belinda was intimately intertwined with the Wentworth-Granville feud. The feud was the reason that his and Belinda’s passion for each other in Las Vegas had been infused with the thrill of the forbidden. It was also why Belinda had run out on him the next morning.

Ever since, he’d been set on a path to make Belinda acknowledge the visceral connection between the two of them—despite the fact that he was a Granville. His plan for doing so involved complicated maneuvers to vanquish the Wentworths, once and for all, and thus end the Wentworth-Granville feud.

Colin gazed at the panoramic view afforded by the floor-to-ceiling windows of his thirtieth-floor duplex condominium, waiting for the visitor who would inevitably arrive. The Time Warner Center, at one end of Columbus Circle, afforded a wealth of privacy as well as luxury to well-heeled foreigners seeking a pied-à-terre in New York City.

He slid his hands into his pockets and contemplated the treetops of Central Park in the distance. Because it was a Sunday, he was in shirtsleeves rather than a business suit. It was a beautiful sunny day, much as yesterday had been.

Yesterday, of course, was what had almost been his wife’s wedding day.

Belinda had appeared divine in her wedding dress, though her expression hadn’t been celestial or angelic when she’d confronted him. Rather, she’d looked as if she was torn between cheerfully throttling him and dying of mortification.

Colin smiled at the image that crossed his mind. She had a passionate nature beneath her prepossessed exterior, and it drew him to her. He wanted to strip away the smooth veneer to the substance of the woman beneath.

If yesterday was any indication, Belinda hadn’t changed much in two years. She had just as much passion—around him, anyway. Her erstwhile fiancé didn’t seem to bring out the same fire. She’d been cool and collected by Dillingham’s side, beautiful but detached. The smooth porcelain-doll facade had been in place—at least until he had interrupted the wedding service.

Her rich dark hair had been swept up and away from a face that was still arrestingly lush. Dark brows arched delicately over hazel eyes, an aquiline nose and lips too full for decency. Her ivory wedding dress had hugged a curvaceous figure. Its short lace sleeves and the lace over the décolleté were the only things that saved it from being immodest.

The moment she’d turned away from the altar and toward him, he’d felt a wave of heat and a tightening of the gut, even with the whisper of her veil between them.