A Brighter Tomorrow by Maggie Ford (read with me .txt) 📕

her; but she clung as close as possible, wanting so much to express how much she loved him.

He must have gleaned her thoughts, for he slowed to a stop where it was darkest between two of the sparsely spaced street gas lamps. There he took her by the shoulders and turned her gently towards him.

‘I do love you very much, Ellie. I’ve not been able to say this before, not as I’d have liked. I’ve always felt it was a bit too soon, or too dramatic, or I’d take you by surprise and turn you away. But I really, really love you.’

It had taken her by surprise, but pleasurable surprise. ‘I love you too,’ was all she could find to say. It was hardly enough, but she looked up into his grey eyes and read the adoring glow in them.

‘I was never sure if you loved me enough,’ he whispered. ‘You always seem so far away in your thoughts. I would wonder what you were thinking. And you were always so wrapped up in your painting. You seemed excited when you said Doctor Lowe was talking of sending you to some art school or other. You mentioned Milan at one time and my heart nearly stopped. I don’t ever want to lose you, Ellie. Don’t ever go away.’

He sounded so desolate at that moment that Ellie caught his face between her gloved hands and brought his head towards her. Kissing him on the lips and hanging on to the kiss, she felt him pull her to him.

‘Oh, my sweetest!’ she sighed as the kiss finally broke off. ‘I’m so very happy and I’ll never go away. No one can ever make me. I don’t belong to him. I’m not his daughter. He can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to. I’ve always known that, but I’ve stayed with him because—’

She stopped abruptly, not daring to explain. ‘I don’t know why,’ she lied, hating it. But to voice her motives could easily be the death of their love. He might even think that she was using him. Once again she shuddered.

‘You’re cold!’ he said again. ‘Let’s get you home as quick as possible.’

Together they began to hurry. ‘I’ll leave you at the gate to the yard,’ he said, as if their meeting were still in the utmost secrecy. ‘And I shall see you again on Wednesday. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ she gasped.

It was a quick goodnight kiss, considering the passion of the last one, but somehow it seemed that any longer embrace would spoil that earlier one.

As she entered by the back door there came a scurry. She was being watched for. What would they, whoever it was, report to Bertram Lowe? she wondered idly as, with no one about, she quietly mounted the silent stairs to her room on the second floor, the room his daughter had once occupied, the room in which she’d taken that girl’s place. The thought made her feel a little like a usurper, oddly and suddenly sickened by it. Quietly she closed the door on the silent hall, but the impression of listening ears remained.

Her mind changed: the quicker she got away from here the better.

Bertram held his breath the more clearly to hear the footsteps on the stairs, cautious though they were. He had been standing at his study window for around half an hour, waiting for the two young people to appear. When finally they did, the girl was holding the young man’s arm, leaning close to him, as lovers do. They wandered slowly, reluctant, so it seemed, to reach that moment when they must say goodnight.

He watched as they stopped by the wrought-iron back gate. She still crept into the house by the back entrance, even though their secret meetings were secret no longer. Hastily he stepped back from the window as he saw her glance up at it; then, as her gaze returned to the young man, resumed his earlier position in time to see the man enfold the girl in his arms for a lingering kiss, the sight bringing a tight and distressing feeling of suffocation to his breast.

He’d stood here many times since told of these clandestine meetings, knowing that he was causing himself suffering yet unable not to wait and watch. He had tried to do all he could to part these two without being too obvious, but what they felt for each other was stronger than his will.

The girl was opening the gate, the young man walking away, turning to give her a final wave. Hastily Bertram left his study, hurrying along the long passage to his bedroom, hoping Mary wouldn’t hear him from her room.

Carefully he closed his door and, with his flabby cheek to the wood, listened for the light step on the stair, the click of the bedroom door closing. As all fell silent, he slowly prepared for bed, knowing she would be doing the same. And all the time he was aware of the heavy beating of his heart, heavy with the weight of jealousy that lay there.

There had been another listener. Mary Lowe had heard the ungainly tread of her husband, out of breath with the effort. When they had first been married, he had been trim – not slim, but trim. She hadn’t then noticed the promise of fleshiness to come. But then she herself had been slim and shapely.

Mary Lowe smiled mockingly at herself and went back to concentrating on listening. There came the quiet click of his bedroom door closing, then moments later the faint creak of a stair as the girl crept up to the room where she slept, the bedroom she now violated with her presence, occupying the very bed where once had lain her own sweet Millicent.

The girl had no scruples. She’d wormed her way into this house and into her husband’s foolish, vulnerable heart, making full use of his grief to secure a comfortable little niche for herself. Wriggling her