DISCLAIMER: These are not my characters, they belong to Charlotte Bronte. Writing style is also Bronte's, I'm just trying to write Jane's thoughts as best I can.
Note: The writing style isn't meant to be pretentious but I can certainly see how it could be viewed as such if I don't explain myself pre-story by assuring that it's nothing more than an attempt to mimic Jane's thoughts as they were written. BTW, sorry if this is kind of boring, I wanted to explore the role of Jane's highly valued independence in her marriage, when there were clear power struggles examined in her and Edward's relationship.
I felt the warmth of Edward's shadow stealthily creep up behind me, then, suddenly and inevitably, found I was enveloped in the heat of his arms.
"Do you have to go?" He whispered, rather pleadingly in my ear. I twisted in his grasp to face him, meeting his eyes which were attempting to stumble a blind gaze into mine. In order to save myself from acquiescing to his request, I took his face comfortingly in my hands and reassured him
"I shan't be gone that long"
Edward frowned and endowed his eyes with a thick layer of mock innocence, a look he coyly knew I found difficult to resist.
"You know the school nearby is running low on art supplies and I can spare more than a paintbrush or two. And you shan't be lonely, Mrs Fairfax and Maria are here"
With that I spread a tender stroke across his cheek and gently retreated from his arms, knotting my woollen shawl around my shoulders, preparing to finally depart until Edward's deep voice came again, this time tinged with a smiling, surrendering sigh.
"You'll come back soon, won't you?"
"Of course I will, darling" I laughed, in an attempt to shoo the pessimism in his demeanour before whispering in his ear "I will always come back to you".
A remark so richly tender sparked a warm smile across his face, muffling the twinge of guilt I had felt at my heart a moment before.
It was a bleak day, indeed. The sky was little more than a spreading ink blot pooling over the horizon, so absent from the merest droplet of a cloud. I leant back in the chaise, hoping to perhaps lapse into a minor sleep before, only to instead drift into retrospective thought, mainly on my marriage.
My worries, so dull written on a page, but so alive in my mind with a feverous curiosity as to how I would maintain my sense of self when it felt so united with Edward, when being in his arms made my heart feel like the sun drifting into the sky. Previously, I had rejoiced at firmly standing my ground when heart and mind were under siege, was this still the case..?
My niggling ponderings were suddenly struck down by the crack of a pistol.
The shrieking neigh of the Horses, a series of grunts from John and, finally, the short, jumping clunk of the Carriage had sent me stumbling out of the door, the sound of the spilt paintbrushes rolling on to the grass echoing in my ears.
I raised myself from the ground, the two figures of John, and another, adorned in black blurred and cleared into my vision. John had a clutched hand around his arm, (thankfully) only grazed by the highwayman's bullet. However, the barrel of it was now glaring its black eye on me.
"What do you want...?" I demanded firmly. The highwayman's grey eyes registered a momentary surprise at the tone of my voice until saying, with a hint of a dry, sneering irony "anything of value are the sorts of objects I usually request". I glanced at John, who was now visibly shaking, panic darting in his eyes.
"And if I refuse?"
He glided his gun toward John again, I quickly replied
"Then will you allow me to withdraw my money from my carriage?"
"Of course…" He said, looming the barrel threateningly on poor John.
I stepped briskly into the carriage, and, as silently as I could, emptied the meagre amount of money I had into my hands. It was a poor amount indeed, not enough to settle a man of his obvious brutishness.
Forbidding panic to overflow me, I filled the money back with my insignificant change, along with two heavy lumps of charcoal I gathered from the corner of the carriage.
Keeping my steady gaze fixed with the masked robber, his cold eyes staring at me from over his face covering, I handed him the money bag. He seemed satisfied at its weight, and slowly withdrew to his horse, sliding his gun over the distance between me and John, and finally galloping off on his horse.
"Are you injured, John?" I asked, hurrying over to him
"Nay, miss, but you dealt with him very well, miss, better than I did, standin' there shiverin' like a lost child"
"If we both had not done as he had asked, we would both be lying here with bullets in our bodies" I reassured him.
The proceeding events, the contribution to the school, the ride home were all fairly mundane, only this time I felt I had viewed the landscape with more optimism than before. The trees had regained their sturdiness, the grass its lush and vigorous green, even the smiles of the schoolchildren had added beam and redness of cheek.
The arrival home was of course, met with welcome, and then quickly a deep and solemn concern from Maria and Mrs Fairfax over John's minor injury and the scenario which was explained to them to provide context for Dr Carter. "A highwayman!" I remember Mrs Fairfax exclaiming "I would never have thought it! On these roads…"
Edward's reaction, of course, differed entirely. He felt "consumed with and worry for his 'little Jane'". In reply, I had taken him in my arms and gently reassured him "I am only your little Jane by endearment"
I feel so awful about this story, I am close to nausea, perhaps you could R&R me and tell me if this reaction is an accurate one or if it's just my silly adolescent self-esteem (or the tune toasty I've just had) that's talking