And then we ran.
We did this same thing every day for a number of Thursdays.
Sometimes, the shopkeeper caught us, and if so, then Mr. Darcy paid him money and all was well. Sometimes, we evaded him and got away. We would then find various spots—under a bridge on the outskirts of town, walking along a path that took us back to the grounds of Rosings, a copse of trees to the south—were we would eat our ill-gotten gains and talk to each other of this aspect or that aspect of the caper and how we might improve it in the future.
The days began to settle into a familiar pattern.
I would wake, each Thursday, and make my way to the breakfast parlor, where Mr. Collins would tell me that Charlotte and Maria were out buying ribbons. I would eat breakfast and then greet Charlotte and Maria when they came back and then set off for my morning walk.
He’d be waiting for me.
From there we would go off on our adventures.
We stole sweets for a while, and then I said I wished to steal ribbons, and he said he wished to steal ribbons, too, that he thought it would be ever so fun to see people’s faces if he said he wished to have a very pretty bonnet.
It was.
We stole bread and then vegetables and then we descended upon the blacksmith’s shop and took horseshoes and daggers and we had a mock dagger fight in the middle of the grass whilst the townspeople looked on in horror.
We talked of other things in between all of this.
I learned that Mr. Wickham had never been denied some part of his inheritance, that he had willingly denounced the profession the elder Darcy had wished for him, and that he had indeed been given money in lieu of this and that he had squandered it andthencome to go after Miss Darcy.
I was ashamed of myself for ever thinking anything complimentary of Mr. Wickham.
And I wondered at myself for thinking that Mr. Darcy had been such a grim and joyless man, for look at us now. We were like children, gallivanting about each Thursday, the entire world our play area.
We talked of other things.
My mother and her censure of me. My family’s lack of respectability. My own sharp tongue and the way it got me into trouble.
I began to realize that things could be worse here. I declared one day, after leaving the blacksmith’s shop, swinging the dagger we’d taken, “I don’thaveto get married.”
“Mmm?” he said, smiling at me.
“I’m only saying, this life we have now, as much as it seems like a prison sometimes, there are good aspects to it, too. I’ve been freed from the burden of it, you see? I no longer need a husband to survive.”
“Oh, let’s not say the M-word,” he said, wrinkling up his nose.
“The M-word?”
“Marriage,” he said. “Let’s cease to think of that.”
“Yes,” I said, smiling widely, “let’s.”
“But it is true, what you say, Elizabeth,” he said, for somehow in the midst of our gallivanting, we’d quite gotten familiar enough to call each other by our first names, “there is freedom here. It may seem like a prison, but I feel free too.”
“And what are you free of?” I asked.
“Oh, everything,” he said. “All my responsibilities. Every single one. No tenants to see to. No investments to worry over. No servants to be master to. No sister to keep in line. No father’s reputation to live up to.”
“That’s rather a lot of responsibilities,” I said. No wonder he’d been so grim and joyless. He must have felt the weight of the world on him all the time.
“Yes, but I’m well shut of them now. Here with you, Elizabeth, it is always Thursday, and there is nothing I must do.”
So, we continued on.
Once we had tired of having mock dagger fights in front of the blacksmith’s shop, we began chasing livestock out of pens on farmers’ lands, running off with chickens and small piglets, trying to get cows to run—they wouldn’t.
