The Moss House

Clara Barley

Chapters (22)

The Moss House

A novel by
Clara Barley

As our warm bodies and lips press together,
I finally feel free, content and, dare I say it, in love again.
I pull back to look down into my lover’s eyes and,
hoping to see the same reflected back at me, I see instead
the opposite. I realise that Miss Walker has everything
a woman could ever desire to be happy except the
very power to enjoy it, and there is nothing I can ever
do to change that.

Imprint

First published in 2019 by
Bluemoose Books Ltd
25 Sackville Street
Hebden Bridge
West Yorkshire
HX7 7DJ

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN 978-1-910422-50-2

Paperback 978-1-910422-49-6

Printed and bound in the UK by Short Run Press

Chapter One

Summer, 1832: A chance reunion
at Shibden Hall

Miss Lister

Marry a man? I would rather die.

It is the worst thing I could imagine, both physically and emotionally. It would be the end of every freedom I have worked so hard to achieve. Why would I even dream of handing over my property and liberty to some swine who will drink and gamble it away and make poor investments, whilst I – what, stay at home and sew? Push out mewling babies and let my mind slowly deteriorate through lack of stimulation? Never. Yet women I would call my equals in both mind and ambition have succumbed. Women I have bedded and aroused and pledged love to. Women who would never need a man’s money or power, who could have lived here with me at Shibden Hall and never had want of anything, have succumbed. It must be for some innate desire of theirs that I seem to have been born without, to be – what? Owned? I cannot understand it. It is the cause of my ultimate frustration; I have lost more than one love to it. Is there a lure to becoming a Mrs and losing one’s own name? A lure to being taken, possessed? I do not understand it.