“I don’t wish to chase animals and make farmers angry tomorrow,” I said.
“All right,” he said. “We can do something else that’s fun.”
“Yes, something that doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard to think of some innocent fun,” he said. “There are a number of fun things that don’t involve getting away with something, after all.”
“Just so,” I said. I tried to think of something. There was eating sweets, but that was sort of getting away with something, wasn’t it, because you weren’t to indulge in that all that often, because it wasn’t good for you. There was indulging in leisure, but that was also sort of getting away with something, because you weren’t meant to indulge all the time.
“Dancing,” he said. “Dancing doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Yes!” I said, nodding.
“We need music, I think. We’ll have to convince someone to play for us.” He made a face.
I ate more pie. “Oh, I’d rather not do that.”
Currently, we awoke in the morning and met for our walk and then simply kept clear of everyone else. They were looking for us, obviously. Sometimes, we ran across servants or other members of the household calling for us or searching here or there. But over time, we’d gotten quite good at dodging these people.
So, if we were to go back now, for instance, and attempt to convince someone to play the piano-forte for us to dance toa tune, that likely wouldn’t work. They’d all be angry with us. I would be compromised, of course, and it would be quite a headache.
“We could just… find a ball,” he said. “Someone’s got to be giving a ball somewhere today.”
“Someone in Kent?” I said. “Surely we would have been invited.”
“Maybe we were. Maybe there’s an invitation and no one said anything about it. I know where my aunt keeps letters like that. I shall sort through them before I come to find you tomorrow, all right?”
“All right,” I said.
fitzwilliam
I handed the invitation to her.
“Where is Tiewater Hall?” she said.
“It’s a bit of a hike,” I said. “But we can make it, I think. We simply need to leave early, sometime around two in the afternoon, I believe. We may not wish to do it today, because we may need to figure out how to get ourselves ready for the affair. I have an appropriate suit, of course, but then men’s clothing is much less interesting than women’s, so I could wear the same thing as I wear to dinner. You, however, need a dress.”
“I have dresses,” she said.
“I have seen the sorts of dresses you have,” I said.
She thrust both of her hands on her hips. “Just when I was beginning to like you, Will Darcy. You say something like that.”
“Well, I’m only saying, wouldn’t it be more fun to steal a dress from Rosings?” I gestured in the general direction of the house. “Tell me you don’t wish to go traipsing around through all the wardrobes there, hmm?”
She slowly smiled at me, lowering her hands from her hips. “There can’t be a number of dresses there that are not woefully out of style and not going to fit me.”
“Perhaps not, but we should look, shouldn’t we? Just to make certain? Besides, it might also be very fun to find a number of outfits from years past and try them on together, mightn’t it?”
She giggled, nodding. “Oh, yes, like playing dress-up? We are perpetual children, Will.”
“Is that what we are?” I waggled my eyebrows at her.
“With no responsibilities and with our only task to have fun? How can we be anything else?”
“So, that is what we should do today,” I said. “But we shall need to be quite careful, for roaming about in Rosings itself means we will have ever so many servants to dodge.”
“All of which are looking for us,” she said.
