The Bride's Secret. HELEN BROOKS

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      ‘But we are civilised people, are we not?’ He smiled, but it was a mere twisting of the firm, sensual mouth, and chilled her still further. ‘And civilised people play games, have fun, flit from one partner to another if they get bored—’

      ‘I’m not like that.’ Her words were a trembling whisper, but he heard them. ‘I’ve never played those sorts of games in my life.’

      ‘No?’ The grey eyes flickered briefly. ‘Forgive me, but I’m not convinced. My mother’s father, a tough old Texan with a hide as thick as a rhinoceros—from whom I got my Christian name, incidentally—always used to say that actions speak louder than words. It used to irritate me as a boy as he invariably hammered it home when I was guilty of some fall from grace. But he was dead right, Annie. And your actions to date are somewhat—forgive me—frivolous, to put it mildly,’ he added with deadly sarcasm.

      ‘Hudson—’

      ‘Or do you consider a breach of faith between lovers as par for the course?’ he asked with lethal softness. ‘Part of the fun?’

      ‘No, of course I don’t. I didn’t... It wasn’t like that.’ She didn’t want to cry—she couldn’t cry—it would be the final humiliation, she told herself desperately as tears burnt fiercely at the back of her eyes, and she lowered her gaze quickly in case he saw the betraying sheen that was splintering the sunlight into a thousand glittering fragments. But not quickly enough.

      ‘And that old feminine ploy of tears won’t work either,’ he drawled nastily. ‘I’m too long in the tooth for that For someone to behave like you did takes something the average person hasn’t got, so don’t try the weak, trembling female approach now. There’s steel under that beautiful exterior—I know; I’ve felt it.’

      ‘You know nothing about me,’ she said shakily, keeping her face turned from him and her eyes downcast.

      ‘Oh, I’d agree with that, sweetheart.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Now that is the truth.’

      ‘Then why not just leave me alone?’ she muttered painfully. ‘I didn’t ask to come here with you; I don’t want to be here with you. It was you who instigated this.’

      ‘I’ve no doubt at all you would rather СКАЧАТЬ