Catherine Wickham had plenty of practice disguising herself as a boy. She would save up bits of money wherever she could: pennies found on the street, shillings earned from running errands for people, coins she found around the house that her parents never missed. With that, she would find clothes, buying them off of urchins or servants who needed a little extra money and had a child at home. The clothes didn't always fit her, but her mother had taught her how to sew so they would appear to be in the latest fashions, even though they could never afford proper clothes. A little adjusting was all that was needed to turn herself into a boy.

Her mother would never let her cut her hair, so Catherine had to pin it to her head and hide it beneath a cap. After that, a little soot on her face and some tight cloth around her breasts was all that was necessary to complete her disguise. The first time she did it, she was afraid that she would somehow damage her body, but afterward she decided that it didn't matter. After all, she never intended to marry. No matter how happy her aunts Jane and Elizabeth were with their husbands, her mother's to George Wickham was the first she had ever known, and it was miserable.

They had been happy at first, or so it was said. They were so in love – in lust, most of her family said, but her mother insisted it was love – that they ran off together weeks before their marriage. That foolish imprudence was why they lived in a horrible, tiny, boring town according to her mother – though Catherine's relatives always said there were many worse places for them to go – and why she had never been allowed to visit her aunts and uncles until she was old enough to be without her mother and father. She was rarely permitted to visit her namesake, Aunt Kitty, and Uncle Darcy almost never spoke to her out of some hatred for her father that no one would ever describe.

Society was banned to her as well. The story of Lydia Bennet and George Wickham had spread throughout the village of Meryton and to some man named Richard Collins who had passed it to an influential woman named Catherine de Bourgh. Since then, the name Wickham was never uttered in high society except as some cautionary tale, and Catherine's name was not exempt from the treatment.

It wasn't until she was fourteen that she truly understood what that would mean. She sat at her mother's feet at the time in their small house, having her hair brushed and petted.

"You're growing so much, Kitty," her mother said, running the brush through Catherine's fair hair. It wasn't quite red, though sometimes it appeared so in sunlight. "Fourteen years old. I was sixteen when I married. Did I tell you?"

"Yes, mamma," Catherine said. She had learned long ago not to give too much of an answer, even if it made her mother think she was sulking or simple. Insisting that her mother didn't need to tell her the story of her elopement again would only result in an angry, half-formed lecture from her mother. Telling her that she didn't like the name Kitty would result in her being told that she shouldn't put on airs. Talking back to her father was even worse, for he had a harsh streak in him that her mother refused to see.

"La! It was so romantic. George and I ran away together from Brighton, and we were so eager to be husband and wife that we nearly forgot to get married!" Her mother laughed and tugged a little too hard on her hair, but Catherine didn't say a word. "After my uncle and father agreed to pay off George's old debts and set us up with enough money to live off of, we went to the church, and I became Mrs. Lydia Wickham." Her voice always became nostalgic at this point in the story, as though she wished she could go back and relive those days, the time before Catherine. "You should have seen the looks on my sisters' faces when I returned home. I thought they would faint from shock!" She laughed again and tied a ribbon through Catherine's hair.

Her mother's laugh was the most beautiful thing about her. She always claimed to have been the beauty Catherine was, but now she looked weary and older. All her aunts looked older, but Aunt Jane still had a sweet smile and Aunt Elizabeth had beautiful eyes and a sparkling wit. Her mother had none of those, and sometimes Catherine wondered why her father had married her.

"Mamma?" Catherine twisted around where she sat to face her mother. "Will I ever have a coming out?" The story of her mother's coming out was her second favorite to tell, especially as it had meant she could be married at the same time as her older sisters.

Her mother looked sad then as she set the brush aside. "No, Kitty dear. Your father and I aren't quite grand enough to present you to court. You'll have to grow up like a common girl."

Common. It was the word everyone used when talking about plain, ordinary girls, and the word that made Catherine shudder when it related to her. She had grown up being told she was beautiful and special, and to hear that she would be with the common girls made her tremble with anger.

That was the night she decided to run away.

Boring as Aunt Mary's lectures were, there was usually some bit of useful advice hidden in them if Catherine worked at them hard enough. One of these useful bits she had learned and remembered was to never act on important decisions rashly. Aunt Mary had probably been talking about marriage, but Catherine decided running away from home was just as important as marrying, so as she lay on her bed, she wondered how long she ought to wait. A day would not be enough time, but she didn't want to stay at home for a whole week longer, especially listening to her parents argue and the people from the nearby town whispering behind her back whenever she passed.

Three days, then. For three days, she would be Kitty Wickham and stay at home. She would mend clothes that her mother might otherwise throw away, and she would make sure the house was kept in some sort of order, and she would not disguise herself as a boy and slip out, even for an hour. For three days she would be the most dutiful and obedient daughter her parents could hope for, and if by the third evening she decided she couldn't stand to live in the house one day longer, she would leave and never look back.

With that decided, she nestled into her blankets and fell asleep.

The first day dawned cool and bright, and Catherine was out of bed shortly after the sun. She washed her face and hands before dressing and heading downstairs into the kitchen. Her mother and father liked to lie in bed until the middle of the morning, and Catherine had learned from an early age that if she wanted to have breakfast as soon as she woke, she would have to fix it herself.

That morning, she prepared some eggs and hash, making enough for three people and leaving the extra by the stove to be heated again when her parents woke. She ate alone in the small dining room and amused herself with one of her mother's books. The house abounded with novels, either borrowed or bought as cheaply as possible, and while Catherine usually thought they were silly little stories, they were very good for early morning reading, when she didn't have the energy to read anything very difficult. Normally, she read books her grandfather and Aunt Elizabeth gave her, which were always very interesting. The books from Aunt Mary were less so, but she made an attempt, if only to please her relations.

With breakfast done, she set about doing chores. Her father would often be away, and when he was at home, he could rarely be bothered to keep the little house in order, and her mother had never learned how to take care of herself. That was the only reason Catherine felt qualms about leaving: with her gone, the house might fall into disrepair, and surely her parents would feel her absence. Her other relations would worry for her as well, and they might think she had done the same thing as her mother in running away.

As she cleaned her breakfast dishes and dusted the mantel, she wondered whether she would be bringing further disgrace upon her family by a rash action. Her grandmother, who was often nerve-wracked, would no doubt panic when given the news of her leaving, and her various aunts and uncles would say that it had only been expected, considering her parents and what their pasts had been like. Her father had no relations that she knew of, but her mother's side of the family would be dismayed.

But then, what had they done for her? Aunt Jane and Uncle Charles were kind, but they were kind to everyone. She could hardly be special in their eyes. Aunt Elizabeth was fond of her, but Uncle Fitzwilliam clearly had no high hopes for her future. Aunt Mary was a lecture book given legs and a voice, and Aunt Kitty, whom she had only seen once, was silly and vapid. Her grandfather seemed amused by her rather than caring, and her grandmother was just as bad as Aunt Kitty.

Her parents didn't notice her silence when they came downstairs, assuming it was nothing more than her normal quiet. They ate the food she had left for them, and as she washed their dishes, she decided that she would certainly leave. She owed her family little kindness, and even if running away would be only what they expected from her, it would make her happy, and right now, she would prefer happiness to propriety.

Less than an hour later, she was hiding outside the house and sobbing into her skirt, cursing herself for a selfish, ungrateful girl.

The second day was little different from the first, and Catherine wondered how her family could not notice the turmoil she was in. One minute she would be determined to leave as soon as the third day had finished, and the next she would feel guilty for her was caught between boldness and self-hatred, and she couldn't predict her emotions from one hour to the next.

She did some mending work, and her mother fretted about what would be in fashion in London and which of her dresses she ought to work with next. Catherine had been toying with one of her skirts and pretending to alter it with darts, but her needle had no thread and merely poked in and out of the fabric, leaving tiny holes.

"I suppose I could add some ribbons along the waist and wrists," her mother said, looking over an old dress. "That would add a bit of color. The question is where to find the ribbon. I wonder if George has enough money for me to go to town. Perhaps I can even take the carriage."

"What does it matter?" Catherine asked. She hadn't meant to be heard; she hadn't even meant to speak, only to think bitterly and glance up with the smallest of frowns. She barely even knew she had muttered her question until her mother's head jerked in her direction.

"Did you say something, Kitty?" she asked, her voice sharp. Her mother was rarely angry enough to sound like that. Most of the time her anger was something fiery and flashy but time, Catherine's fingers tightened around her skirt and she wished she could hide someplace small. Her mother's height had become hers, however, and she was tall for a girl of fourteen.

"No, mamma," Catherine said, trying to sound meek. She was a dutiful and obedient daughter, she told herself, and dutiful and obedient daughters did not talk back to their mothers.

"I think I heard you say something," her mother said. She set the dress on a chair and walked across the room until she stood only a few feet from Catherine. "Would you care to repeat it?"

"I said nothing, mamma," she said, looking up with wide eyes. For an instant, she wished her eyes were blue, so they would look more innocent and believable.

Her mother stood over her, and neither of them spoke. Catherine barely breathed, simply waiting for something to happen. She expected a confrontation, and if one came, she felt sure she would leave that night, no matter what Aunt Mary thought about rash decisions.

"Very well," her mother said, turning away. Catherine looked back to her work, releasing her held breath, cheeks blazing. Her mother resumed her chatter about ribbons and fashions, and Catherine continued pretending to sew.

That night, she went through the dresses in her wardrobe and tore out all the stitching, tears spilling from her eyes as she did so. She didn't know why she was crying except perhaps that she felt so angry there was no other way for her feelings to escape. Bits of thread clung to her fingers and to her clothes, and she made no attempt to brush them aside. The only things she moved were the pieces of fabric, tossing them into a pile beside her wardrobe. After a minute, she barely realized she was still working. The dresses simply appeared in her hands and vanished when she cast them aside. When she finished the last one, she reached for another, but nothing came to her fingertips. Instead of getting up, she fell sideways onto the pile of fabric and cried herself to sleep.

Catherine woke on a pile of muslin, still in the dress she had worn the previous day. She got up slowly, stiff from having slept on the floor, and piled the fabrics into her wardrobe, doing her best to keep them from tumbling out. The only clothes she hadn't touched were the shirt and trousers she had bought off a boy in town. They were large on her, but that would help them conceal her figure.

She had slept later than she had intended, though not as late as her mother and father usually slept. There was still enough time for her to go to the kitchen and prepare breakfast. She made her usual of eggs and hash, though the hash was a good deal less interesting than it might have been, given that they were running out of food. Giving her food a few minutes to cool, Catherine made a note on a scrap of paper torn from one of Aunt Mary's books that her mother ought to run to town and buy some meat. It wasn't as though she was leaving them entirely helpless, she thought as she carried her breakfast to the table.

That thought brought on another surge of guilt, and for a long time she sat in the dining room and stared at her plate. Her stomach felt like a little hollow inside her body, both from the hunger of early morning and from the strange hunger that came after crying. She knew she ought to clear her plate and perhaps go back for more but couldn't bring herself to so much as left her hand to touch her fork. She would be leaving her parents alone, and they would no doubt worry about where she had gone and what she was doing. Heartless as they sometimes seemed, they had to care about her.

Their footsteps on the stairs reminded her that she was not alone in the house, and she ate her breakfast with one of the largest appetites she had ever had. The food was cold, but it settled comfortably in her stomach, and as she carried her plate back to the kitchen to wash it, that sturdy feeling coming from a meal was all that mattered.

"Good morning, mamma," Catherine said, trying to sound pleasant as her mother entered the kitchen. She was determined to be dutiful today, no matter how difficult it was.

"Good morning, Kitty."

Catherine winced slightly at the name. That was one thing she would be escaping, she started to think, but she pushed the idea aside as soon as she could. A name was such a small thing to run away from, even if that small thing had been building up for fourteen years. "I left breakfast for you and Papa next to the stove."

Her mother clucked her tongue even as she served two plates from the pans. "Hash again, dear? Have you no imagination?"

It wasn't cruelty, Catherine told herself, but simple thoughtlessness. "We haven't much food for me to cook," she said. "I can only create from the materials I have ready."

"You sound almost like Lizzy might," her mother said. "La! I could almost think you were her child, if I hadn't carried you for nine months."

Catherine finished washing her plate and hurried to the library.

The library wasn't a proper library, at least not by the standards of the one at Longbourne, and certainly not the one at Pemberley. Both her grandfather's and Aunt Elizabeth's libraries were expansive, and Catherine's was nothing more than a room that held all the books she had been given, along with a few of her mother's more interesting novels. It did have a window that looked out over the lawn surrounding the house, and she could take pride in knowing that she had read every book in the room at least once, even the ones from Aunt Mary.

The books from Aunt Elizabeth were her favorite. She could read them over and over, and often did. Once, when she was nine years old, she had spent a full day in the library, reading her books. She hadn't even noticed the passing time until it was too dark for her to read. Today, she would only stay for one hour, perhaps two, before leaving to see whether her mother needed anything. A dutiful daughter would not shut herself away, she told herself.

If she did leave, she would miss her books.

Catherine read a book about French history and Charlemagne, followed by a copy of The Song of Roland her grandfather had given her. The poem could be tedious in places, especially the endless descriptions of armor and swords, but something about war poetry stirred her. She had already read it several times, and today she merely skimmed over the long descriptions to the parts she liked the best, about Roland valiantly fighting and dying heroically.

Deciding that had been enough time for now, she set her books away and left the room. The house was quiet, but not abnormally so. They had no servants to bustle about through halls or tidy up rooms, and the only noise could come from the three of them. Catherine did her best to keep to herself, so whenever she could hear something from another room, it would be her mother and father arguing. She didn't hear them now, which was a pleasant change from what she had come to expect. Generally, whenever she left them alone together, they would find something to argue over.

Catherine wandered through the house, looking into rooms and peering down halls. She couldn't find any sign of either parent and was beginning to feel a bit lonely. She had been left alone in the house before, sometimes without warning, but it felt different now. There had been no hint that she would leave, but some part of her had expected her parents to treat her differently over the past few days. She hadn't thought she would be showered with adoration, but she had hoped to at least be treated like a beloved daughter.

After several minutes of walking the house and standing by doors, rocking back and forth on her heels and debating whether to break her promise to herself and leave, she returned to the library. Her next book was another history, this time about the Renaissance.

Her mother returned some hours later, just after midday. Catherine had lunched and was debating whether to take some food with her when she left when the door to the kitchen opened and her mother came in. She didn't seem to notice Catherine's guilty jump or her nervously fretting hands. Instead, she fixed herself something to eat and began talking.

"Well, your father's gone off with his regiment again. We'll be alone for the next few weeks. Oh, I'm sure he won't be in any danger." She said this more to console herself than to console Catherine. "It's always other women's husbands who die, even if he goes off to war."

"Is there a war, mamma?"

"There's some turmoil in France, or was a few years back." Her mother had never cared much to read anything from France unless it concerned fashions. Brightening, she added, "Perhaps we shall redo our dresses to surprise him! Does that sound like a lark, Kitty?"

"Yes," Catherine said. She doubted her father would care much what sort of dress she wore or whether she had redone it, but her agreement would make her mother happy. Sure enough, she soon began chattering about what she had seen in town and the new dresses that had been in the shops. Catherine finished cleaning her dishes and thought about the night.

Her father hadn't even said good-bye to her.

That night, Catherine left her dress lying on her bed as she pulled on a baggy shirt and trousers. She chopped off her hair and stuffed it under the bed. Looking in the mirror, she saw that in the dim light she could be mistaken for a boy if no one looked too closely at her neck. Once she got outside, she could rub dirt onto her face to disguise her features.

It took little effort to leave her room and clamber onto the roof. From there, she leapt into a tree and scrambled down through the branches, not caring how many leaves she dislodged. It was late, and her parents would be asleep. No one would see the shaking boughs or the figure dropping to the ground. Her face and hands had tiny scratches on them, but none bled.

Before she could second-guess her decision or feel guilty enough to return, she raced away into the night.