The Bride's Secret. HELEN BROOKS

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СКАЧАТЬ like if the situation had been reversed and it had been Hudson who had walked out on her after that glorious two months they had shared? She would have wanted to kill him. It had been bad enough for her, knowing she had to go. But him...

      She stared miserably through the dark windscreen as the car flashed swiftly through the black Moroccan night, her eyes blind.

      She had been so happy when Hudson had asked her to marry him that night—ecstatic, wild with joy... She had known, from the first moment of meeting him, that there would never be anyone else for her, but that he’d felt the same had been too wonderful, too glorious to be true. He was an assured, astute man of the world, powerful, commanding, with a reputation that went before him to oil wheels and pave the way in a manner that had left her breathless. People held him in awe—not just for his wealth and formidable influence, but for the razor-sharp, ruthless intelligence that ravaged those foolish enough to try to deceive him.

      He was incorruptible and totally honourable—and that in a profession known for its subtle, and at times doubtful, elucidation of the law. He had his own moral code and he stuck to it—whatever pressure was brought to bear by colleagues or criminals. And he had loved her. It had seemed like a fairy tale, a dream, when he could have had any woman he wanted just by lifting his little finger. Beautiful, sophisticated, experienced women who would know all there was to know about pleasing a man.

      She had mentioned Hudson in her letters home to her mother in Scotland, unable to hide her happiness, but had been less than pleased when her mother and stepfather had popped up in France the day before Hudson had asked her to marry him. Not that she hadn’t been pleased to see her mother, but her stepfather...

      Michael Caxton, an American living and working in Scotland for a big American company, had married her mother after a whirlwind courtship eighteen months before when Marianne had been at university, and from the first moment of meeting him after the marriage she had disliked him. He’d been too handsome, too charming-too much of everything. But her mother had loved him, and, having struggled on her own for five years after the death of Marianne’s father, she had seized the chance of happiness with both hands.

      So Marianne had kept her reservations to herself on her visits home, maintaining a surface civility whilst praying that her distrust and misgivings were unfounded. But they hadn’t been, she reflected flatly.

      Michael had still been up when she had got home on the night of Hudson’s proposal—her mother, aunt and uncle having long since retired—and she had known somehow, as soon as she’d walked through the door, that his guise of being unable to sleep because of toothache was a lie. His eyes had been too sharp, too cunning.

      ‘Nice evening?’ It was deliberately casual.

      ‘Yes, thank you.’ She forced a smile whilst hoping she could escape with the minimum of conversation. He scared her.

      ‘Getting on well with Hudson, are you?’ he asked smoothly.

      ‘Very well.’ She looked straight at Michael then to find the pale blue eyes tight on her face. ‘Do you know him?’ she asked quietly as some sixth sense sent cold trickles down her spine. This was all about Hudson somehow; she felt it in her bones.

      ‘I know of him.‘ Michael smiled but it didn’t reach the unblinking orbs, and she realised then, as a warning bell began to clang stridently in her brain, that his smiles never did. His eyes were the eyes of a shark—empty, cold, dead... ‘Oh. yes, I certainly know of him. He’s a one-man vigilante for law and order in the States, an advocate for the all-American way.’

      ‘Well, that’s good, surely?’ she replied warily, the fierce joy and excitement that had carried her into the house on wings beginning to die. ‘We need order and laws, don’t we?’

      ‘Probably... for the masses,’ Michael drawled slowly. ‘Those content to be led all their lives, who want nothing more than a paltry monthly pay cheque that enables them to scrape through to the next month.’ It was clear he didn’t put himself in that category.

      ‘And you’re not like that?’ She suddenly would have given the world to step back in time an hour and not be there. She was going to hear something she didn’t want to hear; the hairs that were standing up on the back of her neck told her so. ‘You’re different?’

      ‘How do you think I bought the place in Scotland, Marianne?’

      Michael had been living in a hotel when he’d first met her mother, but a few weeks before the wedding he had bought what virtually amounted to a small castle, complete with acres of grounds housing a lake, deer—and had taken great delight in acting the feudal lord.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

      ‘Use your imagination.’ And then as she still stared at him with great, accusing eyes, he snapped, ‘And don’t look at me like that, damn you. You either make it or you don’t in this wodd—there are only two choices—and to make it you take all the help you can get. I’ve...done favours for people, bent the rules a little, oiled wheels,’ he finished softly, his eyes narrowed and hard.

      ‘But you’re an accountant,’ she murmured naively. ‘How—?’

      ‘Hudson is going to get offered a case in the next little while, and if he takes it it could prove...uncomfortable for people who have been very good to me. If the dirt starts to fly it’ll come my way too, and a little bit of dirt contaminates everything it comes into contact with—your mother, you—and if you’re with Hudson...’

      ‘What... what case?’ she asked through numb lips.

      ‘Things have been hotting up for some time, but eighteen months ago certain people decided I’d better leave the States and lie low—subpoenas have a nasty habit of rearing their heads when you least expect them,’ he continued almost matter-of-factly.

      ‘Does my mother know?’ She couldn’t believe the conversation was really taking place, not here, in her aunt’s pretty little sitting room. ‘Does she know why you left the States?’

      ‘Of course not. I never discuss my business with anyone,’ he drawled softly, his voice at odds with the intensity of the chillingly cold eyes. ‘It is...personal.’

      ‘Then why are you telling me?’ she asked bewilderedly.

      ‘Think, girl, think!’ The words were harsh before he collected himself and continued in the same soft tone as before, ‘It is clear from what you’ve told your mother that you have some influence with Hudson de Sance, and that is a bonus we could never have arranged if we had tried for years. If de Sance doesn’t take the case it will come to nothing, end of story.’ He smiled meaningfully.

      ‘You’re asking me to persuade him not to take it?’ she asked numbly. ‘Is that what this is all about? You expect me to do that?’

      ‘Exactly.’ Now the soft voice was persuasive. ‘It will be best for everyone concerned—you see that, surely? Me, your mother, you—even Hudson. It will not do his sterling reputation any good when it comes to light he’s having an affair with the daughter of one of the men he’s prosecuting. And it would come to light...’

      ‘I am not your daughter,’ she shot back bitterly.

      ‘The media won’t see it like that,’ he countered darkly.

      ‘And it’s not an affair, not like you mean. He...he СКАЧАТЬ