“I knew you’d think so,” she commented drily.
“Yes, yes.” Her uncle looked more animated by the second. “You must stay married to him.”
Belinda bit her lip. Stay married to Colin? She’d avoided dwelling on the possibility since leaving Vegas.
Uncle Hugh sat up straighter. “Tell him that you’ll stay married on condition of his signing over the properties to you.”
“What?” she asked, sliding into a seat because she didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. “What possible motivation would he have for doing so? He’d likely think I’d divorce him as soon as I had the deeds to the properties, and he’d be right!”
“Then negotiate,” her uncle replied, setting his hands on his desk. “Have him turn over the properties one by one.”
Belinda’s stomach felt as if it were a roller coaster. “A postnuptial agreement?”
“Exactly.” Her uncle nodded. “It’s done all the time.”
Belinda worried her lip. Why was it up to her to save the family fortunes?
Colin was right—this was her chance to be the rebel and the dutiful child all at once. But she never would have dreamed that Uncle Hugh would latch on to the idea with such enthusiasm. This is the most her family had ever asked of her. It was all preposterous and outrageous. Yet she found herself considering it.
“Why would Colin want to stay married to me?” she rejoined.
Her uncle looked at her keenly. “Now there’s a question for the marquess. You’re an attractive girl. And perhaps he wants to save face with society. After all, you did almost marry another man while you remained his wife. If you and the marquess live as man and wife for a period of time, it’ll stamp out the taint.”
Belinda felt her shoulders slump. She didn’t believe Colin cared a fig about society—after all, he was the one who had generated a scandal by interrupting her wedding. But soothing the blow to his pride? Yes, that she could believe. She had rejected Colin after their Vegas wedding. She’d fled, fearful of what she’d done, and had beat a hasty retreat down the reckless path she’d traveled in one night.
If she had instigated Colin’s drive for revenge, wasn’t she responsible for rectifying the fallout?
The thought swept through Belinda’s mind. Her world was no longer a neat painting but one streaked with bold and unexpected new colors.
She was no longer faced with the relatively simple matter of dissolving her marriage to Colin. The Wentworth heritage was in Granville hands. And the responsible streak in her wouldn’t let her walk away without making an effort to save it, especially if she’d had a hand in bringing about the current situation.
Still, even if she was responsible, could she play a high-stakes game with a seasoned gambler?
Her cell phone buzzed, interrupting her thoughts, and she fished it out of her handbag to glance down at a text message.
Meet @ Halstead—DH
Belinda’s mind churned. The message could be interpreted as a summons, a request or a question. Halstead Hall was the family seat in Berkshire of the Marquess of Easterbridge. Though Belinda didn’t recognize the phone number, there was no mistaking whom the text was from. Colin had cleverly signed himself as DH—darling husband in text parlance.
There was one way to find out the answer to the question of whether she was up to the task of saving the Wentworth family fortune.
Her campaign would be if not exactly snatching victory from the jaws of disaster then at least surviving to fight another day.
“I’ll remain married to you.”
Belinda felt like a defeated army general being summoned for the signing of a peace treaty, all of whose terms had been dictated by the other side. Her job was to salvage what she could.
In a nod to the nippy March weather, her armor was a cowl-neck sweaterdress and knee-high boots.
Colin stood beside the fireplace in a drawing room of Halstead Hall. He wore a knit pullover over wool trousers—typical English country-gentleman attire.
He raised an eyebrow.
“I have certain conditions, however,” she said from a few feet away, having declined a seat.
She tried not to look around, because she feared she might be daunted. She’d never been inside Halstead Hall before, but of course she was familiar with the house and surrounding estate. Together they formed a Berkshire landmark, and she’d grown up literally next door.
The house was an immense monolith with a beauty all its own. It had been started in the sixteenth century and added onto ever since. There were enough turrets, arched entries and paned windows to impress the most discerning cognoscenti, let alone the typical tourist.