AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“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.
