The Bride's Secret

'But you told me when we first met that your parents had died when you were a child.' Marianne stared at his dark face. 'Didn't you?'

'They did.' He smiled mirthlessly, and again she knew he was feeling far more than he was revealing. How could his mother, how could any woman, walk out on a small boy and wash her hands of him so heartlessly? she asked herself bewilderedly, rage and pain and honor filling her heart. What must it have done to him, to his belief in family values, everything? And then she understood something she had never understood before.

That was part of what drove him, she thought wonderingly. His championship of the helpless, the victims, the abused and hurting, was all linked to the pain he had suffered when he had been small and helpless. That was why his work was so important to him, so vital. It wasn't just a quest for power and a brilliant career, it was part of his soul. It also explained the sheer ruthless control Hudson could bring to play on his feelings when necessary—he'd had a lifetime of practice.

'After a year of living in New Zealand my uncle decided he was having to work too hard at making a living,' Hudson continued cynically. 'My mother had used my grandfather's money to set Claude up in his own business, but it didn't go as well as he expected. So he left my mother and returned to his wife and family. My aunt was a Catholic and had refused to give him a divorce—she welcomed him back with open arms, so I understand. My mother…my mother killed herself when she knew he wasn't coming back,' he finished expressionlessly.

'Oh—oh, Hudson. No… ' The pain was strangling her voice and constricting her breath.

'I couldn't understand why she would choose death when my father had asked her to come home to me and to him.' Hudson shook his head slowly, his voice a million miles away. 'Why oblivion was preferable to being my mother. I'd written to her, a little note along with my father's letter begging her to come home, and in it I told her how much I loved her, that I'd be a good boy if she came home, that she'd never have to tell me off again. It haunted me for a long time after she'd gone—the fact that I might have been naughty and caused her to go. I could be naughty in those days,' he added with an attempt at lightness as his eyes came back to the present and to Marianne.

'Of course I realise now there was far more going on than a small boy could understand, but at the time that was the only way I could see it. And no one talked to me, not really. My father was too devastated—he loved her desperately, you see—and my grandfather had ordered that her name must never be spoken—all the sorts of things you could possibly expect in a situation like that,' he added cryptically.

'Anyway, within a few months my father was dead too. The medical diagnosis was a bad heart, but I think he just stopped wanting to live when the knowledge that she was really gone hit him. Before she died he'd imagined, hoped, he might get her back one day.'

'And you? What happened to you?' Marianne asked softly.

'Me? I went to live with my grandfather and I trained myself not to think of my parents, not to want them, not to need them, and it worked… after a time,' he said grimly.

'And your uncle?'

'Claude only stayed with his wife a couple of years; I think the damage that had been done to the relationship was too great to overcome. My aunt didn't trust him any more, and she had good cause, as it happens, because he went off with his secretary whom he'd apparently been seeing even before he started the affair with my mother. Messy.' His mouth twisted. 'Very messy.'

'Hudson, I'm so sorry.' It was the wrong thing to say and she knew it immediately his expression changed.

'I'm not asking for sympathy, Annie; don't think that,' he said crisply. 'Emotional blackmail isn't my scene.'

'I know, I know that,' she said quickly, the ring of honesty in her voice causing the hardness to disappear.

'There are many people out there facing worse,' he said quietly. 'Who live behind a façade all their lives. I had the privilege of wealth to ease the way; some of them are destitute and utterly alone. But I can understand them, you see, get into their minds,' he said softly. 'I used to go on long walks as a child so I could be by myself; my grandfather was an overbearing guardian, and sometimes I needed a chance just to lie down somewhere and scream and cry and rage for my mother to come back, beg for a chance to see her just one more time, even though I knew it was impossible. People still hope for the impossible even when all chance of it has gone, and occasionally, just occasionally, I can make the impossible happen. The bad guys don't always have it their way.'

She didn't dare breathe in case he stopped the glimpse into his soul that she knew he had never shown anyone else.

'Nothing is black and white, Annie; the shades of grey are infinite,' he continued almost dreamily. 'We all have our own secret nightmares and hurts and mistakes, but someone, somewhere, has to care sometimes. Does that make sense?' he asked suddenly, the softness dying as he realised all he had revealed.

Yes, yes, it does.' Her love for him was so intense it was causing a physical ache.

The agonising revelation about the misery of his childhood, his insight and sensitivity towards human nature and the needs and longings of ordinary folk was dangerous stuff, weakening her resolve and increasing her love and desire to fever pitch. She needed him—and as his head bent to take her lips she didn't resist.

She wanted to lose herself in him, tell him the truth and put the burden of decision on him. She was tired, so very, very tired of living in the world she inhabited, of never feeling real joy or real happiness, only occasionally watered-down facsimiles of the real thing. Without him the sky was greyer, the air heavier, life duller—beauty didn't touch her in the same

way any more and she wanted to be the old Marianne, not this lifeless creature she saw in the mirror each morning.

As her lips opened beneath his she heard the little groan he gave, deep in his throat, at her capitulation, and then it was all pleasure and frenzied delight, her hands moving up to his shoulders and into the virile crispness of his hair as he leant over her.

She realised she was kissing him back with more abandon than she had ever shown, and that they were both shaking with the force of the burning waves of pleasure that were melting and moulding them to each other; her self-control had been discarded along with her reason. She loved him, she wanted him, she needed him… beyond that she couldn't think. Didn't want to think.

'Annie, Annie… ' His lips trailed burning kisses over her face, her eyelids, her throat 'You feel so good, so good… '

His hands and mouth were creating a fire that only his body could quench and she was molten in his arms, her blatant need stimulating his desire still more. Hudson was half kneeling on the bed now, his powerful frame bent over the ridge of pillows as she clung to his neck and his fingers deep in the tangled curls that had worked free of the plaits in the night.

'Say it; say you want me, Annie… ' His voice was deep and husky and she obeyed it blindly, but she got the words wrong, speaking from the depths of her heart rather than her intellect.

'I love you, Hudson… ' She was so lost in the enchantment, she was quite unaware of what she had revealed. 'I love you… '

Hudson raised his head, his eyes searching her abandoned face with its closed eyes, her eyelashes thick and dark on her flushed cheeks, before he said, 'Annie? Annie, look at me.'

She came back from the world of light and sensation slowly, and he gave her a little shake as he said again, 'Open your eyes; look at me. I want you fully compos mentis, damn it.'