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Back The Moss House Save as PDF
Chapters (22)
  1. The Moss House
  2. Imprint
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Epilogue

At night I hold her close to me and start to kiss her passionately on the mouth and she accepts. Perhaps this is my Christmas present. She allows the kisses but does not push into me, but I continue. I run my hand up her nightdress on the outside of her leg and pull her hips towards me; again she allows me.

We start to clutch at each other and kiss messily, grabbing at each other’s mouths with lips and teeth and I think I have won her over. She allows me to remove her nightgown and I cast mine off and throw it high into the air with a flourish and she giggles again, that beautiful innocent ripple of noise I realise I have not heard for such a long time.

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 Ann 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.

And instead of compassion and understanding, I am repulsed by this. How can she not let me in? Let me love her? Tease me so?

I have given her all my love but it is not enough. We are separate now and the isolation of it crashes down on me and I feel myself turn angry. I take hold of both her wrists in my hand and continue to kiss her all over her body and squeeze firmly her breasts, her thighs, I allow my weight to bear down on her and her face hardens as she starts to squirm and pull her hands free. I push against her harder and pinch her and push my fingers into her, but she pushes me away and I let go as I see a flash of fear in her eyes as if I am a stranger. I sit back on my heels, the connection between us lost. She lies there looking up at me, angry. How could I be so cruel? I have allowed myself to be angry at her. I soften and smile and kiss her mouth again gently and turn her away from me and hold her carefully in my arms as I caress her soft back, shoulders and arms and she lets me. I try to fix her with my hands. I whisper that I love her, but she does not reply to me.

It is New Year’s Eve, 1838. Now it is I who cries, and Ann does not even turn to look at me.

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

1839: A departure from Shibden Hall

Miss Lister