She reassures me all the time and protects me from the world. I know she checks the letters, reads the paper before me, meets people elsewhere so they do not come to the Hall. She has not told me, but I know she takes a pistol with her when she ventures out. She takes the carriage with the groom if she must go into town and goes straight to the bank or a shop and retreats again. She is no longer involved in the estate, it is all done through her steward who calls in each day to update her and receive orders. She goes out for her walks, but very early or very late in the day when the tenants will be at rest. She never goes out after dark and never mentions the hotel or visits it, never talks of any more plans for the estate except for the immediate plans for Shibden Hall itself. She only speaks of her library, currently being added to the Hall in the form of a tall tower, where she will be on the top floor, looking out, hidden up a spiral staircase. A library big enough for all her books and a desk, but not big enough for the two of us. It is her library alone; I do not seem to be invited. It is not mine, but probably comes from my money. I do not mind; she is looking after me, why should she not be rewarded with her own library for her precious books and writing her diary?

I finally agree to another trip for fear of losing her. But I only agree to France.

I arrive in Paris in a daydream. I let her take me. I play no part in it but do not refuse to go. I can no longer protest.

Familiar Paris again; it is four years since we were here. We walk the same streets and visit the same places and it feels like déjà vu, only this time we are quieter, our words do not flow, we are slower, more subdued. I write to Elizabeth but no one else. She whisks us on to Brussels where I have not been before and for a short while its novelty encourages us to talk more and enlivens me, but my back begins to ache once more and ever more often she leaves me in the rooms as she goes out without me. I am waited on alone in the hotel and served teapot after teapot; I sit and try to read the same book over and over, but I cannot fall into it, cannot be immersed. I am numb in a foreign town with ill-tasting tea that grows lukewarm before I finish a single cup.