The Bride's Secret

'Careful, Marianne, be very careful,' he warned silkily. 'I can break her and I can break you, and my friends have extensive influence. Just be sensible and all this can be worked out very nicely.'

But she didn't behave according to Michael's definition of sensible. She escaped to her room and sat there for hours, her mind desperately seeking a release from the horror, only to come to the conclusion that there wasn't one. She couldn't put Hudson through the torment that her revelation would involve—whichever course of action he took. Either he compromised everything he had built his life, character and reputation around—and Michael would make sure he kept on compromising, too—or he would have to fight her stepfather and his criminal friends, and in the process, through his relationship with her, mud would stick to him, too. It was a no-win situation whichever way she looked at it.

Unless she left Hudson now. Disappeared out of his life. Disappeared out of everyone's life. Her heart pounded furiously, but it was the only way.

She wrote three letters. One to her mother, explaining everything. One to Michael, informing him she was going where no one would find her and that she was telling Hudson nothing except that their relationship was over. And one—the most difficult—to Hudson. And then she packed, left the house before dawn, and once in England made for London, her mind and emotions shattered.

She couldn't remember much now about the first few months, although she had survived somehow—living in a tiny bedsit and working as a waitress, her mind on automatic most of the time. Later she'd realised she had had some sort of mini-breakdown, but at the time she had just got through each day as it came, the blackness in her soul absolute.

The thing that had shocked her out of the stupor was seeing an old friend from her home village purely by chance, and learning in the middle of a crowded café that her mother and Michael were dead, killed in a car crash the day after they had returned to Scotland. It had been like a blow straight between the eyes.

She had grieved desperately for her mother, hated Michael with a vengeance that had shocked her, longed for Hudson with renewed intensity. But gradually, over the following weeks, she had come to the realisation that she was thinking and feeling and living again—even if the main element to it all was suffering. Agonising suffering.

'Would you like me to hold your hand while you face the music?'

'What?' The dark, silky voice had intruded into the nightmare world with all the softness of cold steel, but as she came out of her reverie she saw her hotel looming up in the distance and a new sort of panic rose. 'Oh, no, I don't; of course I don't,' she snapped testily—hating him, loving him, feeling as though she couldn't take much more without howling like a baby.

'He might wonder why you didn't phone him to tell him where you were,' Hudson suggested quietly. 'I wondered that myself. Why didn't you?' The grey eyes flashed her way for one vital second.

Because it simply hadn't occurred to her, she thought helplessly. She hadn't thought of Keith once, not once, through the evening; all her thoughts and emotions had been tied up with the tall, ruthless man at her side. 'It wasn't necessary,' she said stiffly. 'I don't answer to Keith or anyone else.'

'Hmm, independent, eh?' he drawled easily. 'Funny, I don't remember you as quite so militant when you were with me.'

She wasn't militant, she was melted jelly inside, Marianne thought with painful self-awareness; but the time had long since passed when she could have explained her actions to him. Perhaps if she had known about Michael's death when it had happened—had gone to Hudson then and told him everything—things might have been different now. But then again Michael's untimely death hadn't negated any of her reasons for leaving Hudson. The contact with her would still have been there; the people Michael had been involved with could still have tried to discredit Hudson through her. Whichever way she had looked there had still been no solution.

When she had found out about the car crash she had contacted the

family solicitor, and had been amazed to find Michael and her mother had left everything to her in a will they'd made when they had married. Michael's wealth had been considerable, and she would never forget the absolute shock and amazement on the solicitor's face when she had insisted on giving everything she had inherited to charity. But to her it had been blood money—tainted, unclean—and she had only been able to breathe freely again when every last penny had gone, even though part of it had been from her mother's estate.

'Here we are. And look who's waiting like an anxious mother hen,' Hudson said softly, and nastily, as the sports car growled to a stop outside the hotel and Hudson cut the powerful engine.

Marianne looked, and then felt a pang of deep and mortifying guilt as she saw Keith's worried face—which was made all the worse by the knowledge that Hudson's cruel analogy wasn't far off beam.

'I suppose a goodnight kiss is out of the question?' Hudson drawled with mocking amusement, his good humour apparently restored at the sight of Keith practically dancing in agitation as he raced down the steps towards them.

'You're a rotten swine,' she hissed furiously.

'I know… ' His voice carried a wealth of satisfaction.

As Keith reached them and opened the passenger door Hudson left the driver's seat to stand just outside the car, his brawny arms leaning on the top of the vehicle as he watched Marianne alight.

'Where have you been?' Keith's voice was several octaves higher than normal, his round, boyish face flushed and perspiring. 'I expected you to be here when I got back this afternoon, and then I thought you'd at least be back for dinner.'

'I'm sorry—' Marianne began quickly, but the tirade continued.

'I've been worried to death, and none of the others knew where you were.' He was ignoring Hudson as though the big figure watching them with such obvious satisfaction didn't exist 'Couldn't you have phoned or something? Just a few words to say where you were?'

'It was my fault, I'm afraid.' Hudson's voice was like smooth cream, and even a babe in arms would have been able to tell he was enjoying every minute. 'We… had dinner with some friends.'

How could he make the truth sound so much like a lie? Marianne thought savagely. He'd done that on purpose—that brief pause which had made what followed sound even more unlikely. Oh, she hated him!

'Isn't that so, Annie?' He made the pet name take on soft and unbelievable connotations as he shifted his big body lazily, his eyes glittering in the muted light from the hotel.

'Yes, yes, it is.' Well, it was. 'They… these friends of Hudson's had prepared us a meal,' she continued helplessly as Keith drew back slightly, disbelief written all over his face. 'It—it would have been rude… I—I couldn't really leave,' she stammered.

'And they didn't have a phone?' Keith asked tightly.

Oh, she wished he'd leave this until they were alone and she could explain properly, Marianne thought desperately, vitally aware of the entertainment value the little tableau was affording Hudson. Couldn't Keith see he was playing right into the other man's hands? Apparently he couldn't.