Hope for Tomorrow Read Online Free PDF Page B

that day and you will never again have the power to wound me as you did then. Let me go, Lucien.”
    “ But I love you!”
    “ And I no longer love you. Go home; you are making a fool of yourself.”
    “ Do you need money?” he asked.
    “ No, I'm not for sale.”
    As the implication of her words hit home, his fingers slipped from her arm. She didn't love him and she thought that he was trying to buy her. He had turned the pure, sweet, kind girl that he had fallen for into a cold and unfeeling shrew. He had lost her forever.
    She walked from the office and he went to the window so that he could watch her for as long as possible. Her back was ramrod straight as she walked out of the mill courtyard, then by the gate she paused briefly and looked back, her eyes quickly focusing on him where he stood. He wondered if she was having second thoughts but her expression was inscrutable. Then she turned away once more and disappeared through the gate.
    Lucien felt winded and staggered over to the desk chair to sit down.
    It was truly over.
    He didn't know how long he sat there but it seemed many hours until he somehow found the strength to stand up and leave.
    The ride home was long as he had no need for haste on the return journey. Indeed he was dreading returning home, to his cold and indifferent parents and his life of duty and responsibility. He would be pressured into finding a good wife, someone respectable, preferably from the nobility, someone he could parade around at dinner parties and balls but who had no real thoughts of her own, for his class trained independent thought out of their daughters and turned them into pretty ornaments. 
    His mother and father never discussed business or politics, they never showed any affection to one another, never smiled when the other entered a room and they even had separate bedrooms. Married but forever alone.
    He didn't want that and he wouldn't have had that with Martha for she knew her own mind. She wasn't afraid to venture opinions or offer advice on subjects that she understood and even though she lacked the expensive education that he had, she was keen to learn and was always asking him to explain things that she didn't understand.
    He had always been happy to teach her, whether it be about estate management or the classics, for her insights were keen and she often gave him a unique perspective, enabling him to see things in a new way.
    That was all gone now and he was a lone vessel again, docking only occasionally and destined to sail through life forever alone.
    What an incredibly cold and miserable life that seemed.
     
    Martha managed to hold her tears at bay until she got back to her room, at which point she broke down and sobbed.
    For a moment today, in between his autocratic proclamations on her future, he had been the man that she had fallen in love with, the man who cared for her more than any other person ever had.
    As she lay on her bed she allowed herself to remember him as he used to be for a while, wallowing in her misery.
    When she had first joined the Beaumont household she had worked below stairs and rarely saw the family. Even if she had worked upstairs, Lucien had been away at school and then away at university for most of the year. As he grew older he returned less and less often, preferring to spend his free time with his friends and so when he returned home, 21 years of age and brimming with confidence, she had been taken aback by the sight of him, for he was quite the most handsome man that she had ever laid eyes on.
    When his grey-blue eyes looked at her, she felt as though she could see into his soul, and he into hers. His jawline was square and strong and his dark hair framed his face beautifully, providing a perfect contrast with his light blue eyes. She was enamoured with him.
    Consequently she did her level best to avoid him but it almost seemed that he sought her out for wherever she worked, he would come upon her. He would ask her questions while