Spring has come of a new year and the Hall’s first stage of alterations is complete except for the windows in my tower. However, it has all taken too long and there have been so many frustrating setbacks; it has all felt too much. My grand plans for more works will have to wait. If it takes this long to just build two new wings, then the full castle will take a lifetime. I shall settle with just this for now and am impatient that I will not be able to move my books into the tower before we leave again.

For we are leaving. It cannot wait any longer. Our journey to France was too short. I have waited and waited for her to recover, to come back into herself again and to no avail. I have waited and waited for them to finish the damn tower to no avail. I shall leave my steward to manage it. I am done. We are leaving for Russia. I need to go farther, somewhere uncharted by others from this country, somewhere I can write about and publish a book on. Somewhere far enough away that we cannot easily turn back.

Ann is still undecided as to whether to join me or stay behind. She talks of returning to her sister or at least to Crow Nest and having a succession of visitors there to keep her occupied, but she has done nothing to formally arrange either of these options, so it is just talk. In truth she does not want me to leave her; nor does she want to come with me. If only Marian were here to keep her company, then I could leave the two of them and have no pressures on how long I travel for or when I return. In my heart, do I really want to leave them here forever and never return? Or do I want to return when they have both found themselves husbands to whisk them away and out of my responsibility? How awful that my thoughts run to plans to be rid of them. I thought I could care forever, that our love would keep us strong, our bond of marriage, but the years sweep by and she is unchanged. We have not had intimate relations for nearly a year. She spends each night with me, but her body is no longer mine. We occasionally kiss but she stops me or cries or flies off about something I had done a week before that upset her and that I can do nothing about.

My lover has become my tormentor.

Miss Walker