It had all been fine until my damned father and sister decided to join me. My dear aunt and uncle were quite happy for me to learn the management of the estate, be involved and make my own judgements, which has been rather fortuitous over the years; but upon my uncle’s passing and in leaving the Hall and estate between Aunt, Father and myself, he caused us to all cluck about like chickens cooped up under the same roof. While my sister had seemed content living at our late mother’s estate in Market Weighton, she too decided to move over and fill up more room in Shibden Hall with her quietness and tutting. While my aunt and uncle always seemed happy with my company and satisfied by my choices of friends and pastimes, my sister seems intent on unnerving me. She asks too many questions and gives too many looks of disapproval which make me, usually so sound in my own judgement, begin to question things and lose strength. Everything is imbued with doubt, from who rents our land and buys our coal, to what I wear and eat.

How do people live like this? Always doubting themselves? I see how they have remained stuck in their ways for so long. Especially my sister: the biggest decision she’s made in her life was coming over to stay at Shibden, and daily she harks on about it, even though done with, as if she is still in the process of deciding if it is a good thing or not; as if she is not here, but somehow floating between the two residences, neither enjoying nor missing either as she has not committed to one or the other.

But never mind them; I’m now spending much of my time in my new Moss House with Miss Walker in my arms and my lips on hers.

They all thought me mad to commission a new building in amongst the trees at the bottom of the slope towards the beck, especially as summer was already leaving us for colder times. I told them it was for sketching and reading, and so I could have some peace, and they eventually agreed for the small amount it would cost. I had my permission. What need they know of my real want of privacy?