Improperly Wed (Aristocratic Grooms #3)(23)
Author: Anna DePalo

Fortunately, she was able to make it through the rest of the ceremony without a hitch.

Later, at the wedding breakfast at Silderly Park, she found Pia and hugged her again.

Tamara walked up to them just as the quick embrace ended.

“I’d join the hug, too,” Tamara quipped, looking down at her stomach, “if I didn’t have a basketball in my way.”

“I’m so very happy for you, Pia,” Belinda said, blinking more rapidly than usual and then casting a glance at Tamara. “And for you, too, though you look ridiculously radiant as a pregnant lady.”

“Only because my morning sickness has stopped.” Tamara turned to Pia with a smile. “I suppose we’ll need to address you as Duchess from now on.”

“No, ma’am will do,” Pia teased.

As a duchess, Pia outranked both Belinda and Tamara, who were marchioness and countess, respectively.

Belinda was sincerely glad that Pia and Tamara had found happiness with Colin’s friends, the Duke of Hawkshire and the Earl of Melton. Still, though to the outside world she might be a marchioness, Belinda knew that, unlike Pia and Tamara, her marriage wasn’t built to last.

Sure, both Pia and Tamara had encountered roadblocks on the way to a happy marriage. Pia had had a fling with Hawkshire years before—when he’d represented himself as simple Mr. James Fielding—that had ended with her feeling discarded until their reunion years later gave him a second chance to earn, and this time, keep her love. Tamara, in contrast, had entered into a marriage of convenience with Melton that had turned into a love match. But Belinda doubted that a similar happy ending was in store for her and Easterbridge.

As if reading her mind, Pia leaned in conspiratorially. “What is happening with you and Easterbridge?”

“It’s your wedding day,” Belinda protested. “Let’s not talk about other matters.”

“I’m already pulling rank as a newly minted duchess,” Pia teased.

Belinda knew Pia meant well, and since Tamara looked on with interest, she reluctantly gave in. “I suppose then that this is as good a time as any to tell you I’m no longer pursuing a way to dissolve my marriage to Easterbridge.”

Pia clasped her hands together. “Oh, Belinda, that’s wonderful news. You and Colin have decided to try to make it work.”

Tamara looked doubtful. “I’m not so sure Belinda regards it as happy news, Pia. In fact, I’m guessing there’s more to the situation than she’s saying.”

Pia widened her eyes. “Is that true?”

Belinda sighed. “I did warn you this wasn’t a fitting discussion for a wedding day.”

Pia touched her arm. “Oh, no.”

“Let’s just say Colin has plenty in common with Sawyer and Hawk in the complicated courtship department.”

Pia looked surprised and Tamara resigned.

“He’s blackmailing you?” Tamara hazarded a guess.

Belinda raised her eyebrows. “Why use an ugly word like blackmail when proposition will do?”

Tamara’s eyes narrowed. “Just what is Easterbridge offering you?”

“Colin is now the proud owner of the Wentworth family town house in Mayfair, as well as the old estate in Berkshire.”

Pia gasped, and Tamara’s expression turned to one of sympathy.

Belinda resisted the urge to rub her temples. “Apparently, my uncle believed that the corporate entity to whom he was selling was a cloak for a wealthy foreigner who preferred anonymity. He didn’t know it was Easterbridge until I broke the news to him recently.”

“Uh-oh.”

Belinda shot Pia a glance that said she agreed with the sentiment. “Of course, this change of ownership is all hush-hush. No one is supposed to know about it, and Uncle Hugh is continuing to reside at the town house in London.”

“Well, don’t worry,” Pia said, “as far as I know, Mrs. Hollings hasn’t gotten wind of this angle to the story.”

Belinda frowned. “What do you mean by angle?”

Pia and Tamara exchanged looks, as if debating who was going to tell her.

“Out with it.”

Pia pasted on a smile. “Mrs. Hollings published news in her gossip column this morning that you had moved into Halstead Hall and that you and Colin have decided to make a go of your marriage.”

Belinda closed her eyes. “Oh, Pia, on your wedding day!”

“It’s all right,” Pia soothed. “My wedding will no doubt feature prominently in tomorrow’s column. Mrs. Hollings’ column is actually what prompted me to ask about you and Colin.”

Belinda sighed. “I didn’t want to trouble you with my news in the days before your wedding, and Tamara is pregnant and has other things on her mind.”

The truth was also that she was still coming to terms with her new status quo with Colin.

Belinda had no idea how Mrs. Hollings got her information. The woman seemed to have sources everywhere. On the other hand, Belinda acknowledged that she herself had not gone to great trouble to conceal her steps, either. She had appeared on Colin’s doorstep last week with weekend bag in hand and had let it slip at work that she’d been at Halstead Hall. For better or worse, she was going to be Colin’s wife for the next two years, and word was bound to get out sooner or later.

She knew her marital status had been a source of speculation and interest at Lansing’s, and elsewhere in New York and London. Everybody was aware of the debacle at St. Bart’s last year—some had even been eyewitnesses.

She supposed that the silver lining to Mrs. Hollings’ gossip column today was that her work colleagues would stop conjecturing about her marital status and see her as settled into married life.

Tamara fished a cell phone out of her small handbag. She scrolled down and then handed her phone to Belinda.

Belinda read the text with unease.

This columnist has it on good authority that a certain marquess and marchioness are nesting in Berkshire near H****. Could it be that a little birdie will hatch next spring?

Belinda mentally winced.

She handed the phone back to Tamara. “Isn’t there something you can do to stop Mrs. Hollings? Doesn’t she work for Sawyer’s media outlets?”

Tamara shrugged as she put away the phone. “Mrs. Hollings is a renegade. Sawyer believes in the separation of the news and business sides of his companies. He won’t interfere to kill an individual story.”

Belinda grimaced at Mrs. Hollings’ words. Hatch a little birdie? She hadn’t even slept with Colin again—yet. She’d arrived back in England from New York just in time for Pia’s wedding.