HELEN BROOKS - The Bride's Secret

‘Isn’t it?’ he agreed flatly, before pulling off in a great growl of powerfully honed engine.

It was only a few minutes later that Marianne realised they weren’t travelling on the road which led up into the hills to their hotel. She would have noticed it even sooner but for the fact her senses were battling with the close proximity of the big masculine body at the side of her.

She hadn’t dared look at him, but now, as they travelled along a broad avenue lined with modern stores and houses, her eyes flashed to his grim profile. ‘This isn’t the way back to the hotel,’ she challenged hotly. ‘It isn’t, is it?’

‘No?’ His voice was too innocent to be taken seriously.

‘You know it isn’t. Where...where are we going?’ she asked nervously, real fear in her voice as she realised her vulnerability.

‘Relax, Annie.’ The stone-grey eyes flashed over her face for one piercing moment as he caught the panic she couldn’t hide. ‘I’m not into abduction, or rape, or any one of a number of variations on those themes. I see the misery caused by those sorts of abuses of strength too often in my work to indulge personally,’ he said drily. ‘You’re quite safe.’

Safe? With Hudson de Sance? Never, she thought wildly.

‘You said we were going back to the hotel,’ she accused, once she could trust her voice not to shake. He would just love to think she was quivering in her shoes! ‘Didn’t you?’

‘And so we are.’ He paused for a moment, and then added, ‘Eventually,’ his voice full of dark mockery.

‘Eventually?’ She glared at him, her eyes flashing.

‘It means finally, in the end, ultimately,’ he said helpfully.

‘I know what the word means.’

Her voice was too shrill, and she was furiously angry with herself for not matching his cool control, especially when the grey eyes moved over her face in another lightning glance and the black eyebrows lifted in indulgent disapproval. ‘Don’t screech, Annie; it’s most unbecoming,’ he drawled easily.

She mentally counted to ten—slowly—and then said, in as even a tone as she could manage, ‘I just want to know where we are going. I think that is reasonable enough—to any normal person.’

‘Reasonable doesn’t enter into it.’ Now his voice was clipped, and for the first time she saw his knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. His control wasn’t as real as he’d like her to believe, she thought nervously as fear engulfed her again. ‘You, of all people, should know that.’

‘Hudson—’

‘You walked out on me two years ago without so much as a by-your-leave,’ he bit out tightly. ‘You call that reasonable?’

‘I left a letter to explain why,’ she protested quickly.

‘The original “dear John”. Yes, I read it,’ he said icily. ‘And yet the evening before that you had agreed to become my wife.’

‘I explained—’ She stopped abruptly as they turned a corner and almost collided with an aged donkey bearing bales of merchandise on its back, his owner having stopped to carry on a conversation with a vendor selling pomegranates from an old pushcart at the side of the road. It was charming and picturesque, but quite how the accident claim form would have read was another matter.

Hudson swore angrily under his breath, sounded his horn and continued down the dusty road leading away from the modern European section of the city they had been in earlier.

‘I explained about that,’ Marianne said weakly after a moment or two. ‘Our lifestyles were too different—I had only recently finished university and I’d never even been to the States. Everything had happened too quickly. We...we didn’t really know each other.’

‘Rubbish,’ he said with ruthless honesty. ‘That’s rubbish and you know it. If it had just been that, you wouldn’t have dropped off the face of the earth. I came looking for you, but of course you know that. Your aunt and uncle were very shocked by it all, but your stepfather not so much. It was he who told me the truth.’

‘The truth?’ She was losing it, she thought frantically as her mind raced and spun. He had seen Michael? That had been the one thing she’d been trying to prevent by leaving France in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. What had Michael told him? She wouldn’t put anything past her stepfather.

‘What was his name, Annie, this guy from university?’ Hudson asked coldly. ‘And why the hell didn’t you tell me about him yourself instead of getting your stepfather to do your dirty work and tell me you were engaged? You didn’t go back to Scotland, did you? The pair of you simply vanished off the face of the earth.’

‘I...I went to London,’ she admitted through stiff lips.

‘And Harding? Is that your married name?’ he bit out tightly.

‘No, I...I didn’t get married,’ she said flatly. ‘I changed my name from McBride, that’s all. Harding...Harding was more suitable in London.’

‘You didn’t get married?’ She felt the penetrating gaze sweep her face again but forced herself to stare straight ahead, her eyes seeing the hot street outside the car, with its veiled women, energetic little children and robed men, as though she were in a dream. ‘But I thought—’ He paused. ‘Was that anything to do with the car crash?’ he asked softly. ‘Or a separate decision?’

‘You know about the crash?’ She did turn to look at him then, but the dark, tanned profile was giving nothing away. ‘How?’ Scotland was a long way from America.

‘Let’s just say I kept tabs for a while,’ he said smoothly. ‘You didn’t go to the funeral of your mother and stepfather. Why?’

‘Reasons.’ This was becoming too hot to handle. ‘Look, Hudson, the past is the past—can’t we just leave it at that? And where are we going anyway?’ she asked nervously as they joined a road that began to curve upwards. ‘I need to get back—’

‘A friend of mine has invited me to stop by this evening.’ He had known how she would react, and his voice was dry and cool as he said, ‘Don’t look so surprised, Annie. I do have friends, you know. Or is that too difficult for you to believe?’

‘I’m sure you do,’ she said tightly. ‘But won’t they be surprised to see you turn up at the door with a strange woman?’

‘The “strange woman” is your terminology, not mine,’ he mocked softly. ‘I would have said unusual, extraordinary perhaps, but strange is going a little too far.’

‘You know what I meant.’ She’d hit him in a minute—she would!

‘So ...’ The cool voice was thoughtful. ‘Where did you go when you ran away from me, if not to marry your lover?’

‘I’ve told you—London,’ she said shortly.

‘And you changed your name and cut off all contact with your family, even to the extent of not attending your parents’ funeral.’ He was talking as though to himself. ‘What made you contact your aunt in France after two years?’ he asked suddenly, his voice sharpening into cold steel.

‘How did you know—?’ She stopped abruptly, her face going white as reality dawned. ‘You knew I would be here, didn’t you?’ she said dazedly. ‘This is not a coincidence.’ He had known her name earlier at lunch. He had called her Marianne Harding.

‘You haven’t answered my question.’ The cool mockery was back.

‘You haven’t answered mine either,’ she shot back quickly, his cold, faintly drawling voice incredibly irritating when she was as tense as a tightly coiled spring. ‘You knew I’d be here, in this hotel in Tangier, didn’t you? You planned all this.’

‘You really think I would chase across half the world because I’d discovered your whereabouts?’ he asked contemptuously, and at the same moment, with a flash of mortifying and hot humiliation, she remembered the stunning redhead. He was here with her. Of course.

‘I...I didn’t mean that.’ She didn’t really know what she had meant, she admitted to herself painfully. But that wasn’t surprising—Hudson had always had the power to send her senses into overdrive and her mind spinning. She hadn’t looked at another man—hadn’t had the slightest interest in one—since she had left France two years ago. Left him two years ago. How he’d laugh at that.

‘Here we are.’ As the car passed through a great archway covered in traceries so delicate and intricate that they looked like lace, Marianne saw they were in the courtyard of what was obviously a very wealthy family, the low, sprawling white house in front of them decorated in the Moorish style with fine carvings in stone and wood. The air was heavy with the perfume of banana trees, bougainvillea vines and other flowering tropical plants. Several sparkling fountains murmured in the vegetation beyond the courtyard. It was tranquil, serene and very beautiful.

‘My friend’s name is Idris,’ Hudson said quietly as he brought the car to a quiet standstill in the warm, scented air, the sound of droning insects in the vegetation meeting their ears. ‘He and his family are very westernised, but he is a Berber through and through and proud of it We will be expected to eat with them.’

‘But...’ It was as though she had been transported into another world, swept along in the dark aura of this man who had dominated her life since the first moment she had laid eyes on him—the intervening years since she’d last seen him accentuating, rather than diminishing, his fierce appeal. ‘I can’t... They don’t know me. Hudson, you must see I can’t stay; it’s presumptuous—’

‘They expected me to bring a friend.’ The glittering grey gaze fastened on her alarmed green eyes with their deep gold flecks, and then he uncoiled himself from the car, walking with cat-like litheness round to the passenger door.

A friend? The redhead, no doubt, Marianne thought silently as a rapier-sharp stab of jealousy replaced the desperate panic. Why hadn’t she come? Was she ill? Indisposed in some way? But that still didn’t explain why he had appeared on the quayside like that.

‘Come along.’ His deep, smoky voice interrupted her frantic thoughts, and as she slid out of the car his hand on her arm seemed to burn like fire. She didn’t want to obey, but there was nothing else she could do, after all.

This was crazy, surreal—it couldn’t be happening, Marianne told herself as she stood dazedly in the shaded warm air. She should be back at the hotel, getting ready for dinner in an environment that was familiar and safe and controlled. How had she got here anyway? She had only agreed to have a lift with him.

‘Hudson...please—’

“‘Hudson...please”.‘ He mimicked her voice softly and cruelly, his face mocking and his eyes narrowed. ’You used to say that in the old days—“Hudson, oh, Hudson, please...please”—remember? When you were in my arms, when I was kissing you—holding you. Did your young English lover take you into the world we inhabited, Annie? Did he make you feel like I made you feel? Did he?‘

‘You’re hurting me.’ His hand on her arm was vicelike.

‘Am I?’ He released her immediately. ‘I want to hurt you, my inconsistent little siren,’ he said with such matter-of-fact coolness that it took a moment for his words to sink in. ‘I want to see you suffer, like I suffered two years ago. Not in any physical sense—that would be too easy, too simple. But I would like to get inside your head—like you got inside mine—and watch while I slowly drain the very essence of you into my control. Does that shock you?’ he added with a marked lack of expression.

She stared at him, quite unable to speak, her mind frozen.