The Bride's Secret. HELEN BROOKS

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘MARIANNE? What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

      Marianne heard Keith speak but she could no more have dredged up a reply at that moment than flown to the moon. That big, lean body—the way he was holding his head—there was only one person in the world who stood with such arrogance and disregard for the rest of the human throng. It had to be Hudson de Sance.

      ‘Marianne?’ Now Keith reached out and turned her face to his, after staring perplexedly in the direction of her fixed gaze for a moment or two. He couldn’t see anything unusual in the well-dressed, cosmopolitan collection of businessmen and holiday-makers enjoying an alfresco lunch in the open-air dining room of the hotel where they were staying—it was exactly the sort of clientele he would expect to see in a first-class hotel such as this one in the middle of Tangier. ‘What is it?’

      ‘What? Oh, nothing... I’m just daydreaming,’ she said quietly.

      It didn’t work, but Marianne hadn’t expected it to. She and Keith had worked together long enough for him to know when she was evading the truth.

      ‘Don’t give me that; you resemble someone who’s just had a hard punch where it hurts,’ Keith said worriedly, his eyes returning to the well-populated tables in front of them. ‘Have you seen someone you know? Someone you’d rather not see?’

      ‘Just leave it, Keith, please.’ Her gaze had briefly swept the area along with his, and she felt weak with relief to find the spectre from the past had vanished.

      It couldn’t have been Hudson, she told herself reassuringly. There were probably dozens—hundreds—of tall, dark, brooding men who inclined their heads in that particular way, and she had only seen the back of the man anyway as he had stood looking down over the roaming city spread out beneath them from the hilltop hotel.

      Nevertheless, her heart continued to thud as the waiter presented them with lunch menus and took their order for drinks, and her stomach churned relentlessly. Hudson de Sance. He still invaded her dreams and encroached on her days as remorselessly as when she had first left him, despite the fact that she had not seen him in the flesh since that night two years ago. Would she ever get over him? She savaged the thought the second it took form. Of course she would—she had. She was autonomous now; she had had to be.

      ‘I thought the shoot went really well—how about you?’ Keith was making an effort at conversation and she blessed him for it, although his face revealed she wasn’t hiding her shock as well as she would have hoped. ‘Of course, the location is second to none.’

      ‘I thought it was good, and you were brilliant as usual.’ She smiled, but it wasn’t flattery—Keith was one of the best photographers in London and she was lucky to be his assistant. All the top models wanted him, knowing he could make them look good even on their worst days, and he could pick and choose his assignments at leisure. She was a good photographer, but that was all, whereas Keith could make his camera talk for him. ‘Those shots you did of Marjorie against the background of the harbour were inspired; I didn’t think we’d get anything out of her today.’

      ‘Too much drinking in the hotel bar last night,’ Keith agreed softly. ‘She phoned that guy she’s been seeing earlier and it was all hassle, apparently.’ Keith was an easygoing individual—except where his work was concerned, and the beautiful model’s dishevelled state that morning had produced a certain amount of artistic despair followed by a rare temper tantrum, only mollified by indulgent obedience of his every suggestion by the lady in question. ‘She’s a fool to herself,’ he continued quietly. ‘Why she doesn’t dump that no-good boyfriend of hers I’ll never know.’

      ‘Love?’ Marianne suggested lightly.

      ‘That sort of slavish obsession isn’t love,’ Keith said flatly. ‘Love isn’t like that. It’s like he’s some sort of drug to her.’

      The waiter returned at that moment with their drinks and Marianne was glad of it. There had been that look in her boss’s eyes again—a mixture of desire and devoted-puppy-dog appeal—that was appearing more and more often of late, despite her tactful intimations that she wasn’t interested.

      ‘Marianne—’ Keith’s voice was urgent as the waiter left them, but whatever he had been about to say was cut short by a deep, cold voice just behind her.

      ‘Marianne Harding, isn’t it? It’s been a long, long time.’

      She froze—all her senses screaming to a halt—and then forced herself to turn and look up at the man who had moved to the side of their table, his grey eyes of glittering stone hard and uncompromising and his mouth unsmiling.

      ‘Hello, Hudson.’ It was all she could manage.

      ‘On holiday?’ She remembered this about him—the refusal to waste words on polite chit-chat—but apart from that the man standing in front of her could have been a stranger. Certainly in the past he had never looked at her the way he was looking at her now—his eyes narrowed and as cold as ice and his handsome face devoid of