Searching For Hope.

Chapter One

It was a peaceful night, the sound of crickets playing their songs could be heard. If you were to sit outside, you could see the countless amount of stars in the night sky as they danced along side the moon. Everyone in that small town of Beaumont-en-Verdunois in France had been peacefully asleep. Dreaming dreams, thinking thoughts. Planning on what they would do the next day, or perhaps even a woman waiting up for her husband to arrive home from work. Everyone was peaceful. Everyone was calm.

That is, until uninvited visitors came to disturb that peace.

They came in the middle of the night as the French slept. They crept in the bushes outside waiting for the right time to strike. When they had felt safe in their houses at night. These men, were soldiers from Germany. German soldiers who had been sent by General Erich Friedrich Withelm Ludendorff to invade France while they slept.

A dark haired woman with the name of Isabella Antoinette, and her husband Levi, got out of the bed as soon as she was woken up by Levi when he shook her shoulders to wake her up. As soon he had told her what was going on, she woke up pretty as quickly as she could and they had hurried towards the panic room and the man who was a pretty average sized for a man of his age in all actuality. He had chocolate brown hair and he had forest green eyes and he had a very handsome face as well. He had instructed her to stay put until he said it would be safe.

Isabella, however, didn't listen to what her husband said, which most of the time was pretty typical of her to do if she was being honest. She snuck out and she saw Levi up against two German soldiers. Her husband was a good man, and they had owned an orphanage in Paris that they had finished about a week ago.

It had been an old eighteen century mansion that had been abandoned, and they had decided that they would turn it into an orphanage since they both had a soft spot for children. Especially Levi, since when he was young he had been a victim of abuse from his father. So Isabella had figured it was his sort of way to give orphaned children the life that his father had neglected to give him. Which, was one of the things about him that Isabella fell in love with in the first place.

Her father didn't approve of them getting married, either. She was a niece of a famous author called Charles Dickens, and her side of the family had a part of his inheritance his fortune from and they wanted to invest in it.

However, Isabella wasn't interested in the inheritance at all. Especially when she met Hugo when she did. Isabella was half English along with her French roots, so one day when she was visiting family in Paris she had met him in a small café that was in town. He had been a book author and was working on a story. Her parents had said that she would be throwing her life away for this man and that she would have no future. So when Hugo asked her father's permission to marry her, he had said no without hesitation even.

But, they had moved away from London, England where Naomi was originally from and they got married in a small town in Marseille France. After they married, they had lived in a small cottage on a wealthy family's estate since Isabella had been a maid for one of the daughter's in the family. That is, until the Great War started.

Isabella had gone outback when she heard a small child crying and she went over to her quickly and she checked any injuries that she might have. Isabella was a trained nurse and she had read many things about different injuries, illnesses and anything of the sort. And since she also had a soft spot for children, especially the small ones, she almost immediately scooped up the little ash blonde haired girl with bright blue eyes in her arms and went off to safety.

She was also trying to stay calm for this child's sake, as well. She was worried for Hugo. What if he didn't make it? What if the Germans had taken him prisoner or killed him? She had been hearing many gunshots so it was hard to tell if her Hugo had survived or not. When she saw the German Soldier uniforms she quickly crouched down with the little girl and she put a finger to her lips signaling her to stay quiet until they left.