Disclaimer: I don't own any of it.

Notes: Originally published on Tumblr.
This is mediocre and way less shippy than I thought it might turn out to be. But since I wrote these words down with my own hands and then typed them they might as well go here.
It's been ages since I read the novel discussed herein, so please excuse any errors. Furthermore, the opinions of characters regarding that novel are not necessarily the same as mine.

In general Elizabeth tried to discourage questions from students about her personal life, especially when those questions had nothing to do with the lesson at hand—she soon learned to spot a ploy to derail a lesson. Sometimes, though, she found herself answering anyway, when the question seemed harmless, or when it caught her off-guard.

"You have sisters, right, Miss Thatcher?" was one of the harmless ones. Cynthia Davies asked it as Elizabeth was bent over to correct her neighbor's arithmetic.

Elizabeth spared a glance at the eleven-year-old; her slate was filled with what appeared to be the correct answers, though it was difficult to tell when they were nearly upside-down. "Yes, I have two. Now carry the three," she said, turning back and tapping the slate with a finger, and the question was soon forgotten.

"Miss Thatcher, do you like dancing?"

She stood just inside the door as the students filed out to lunch. It had rained the night before and the smell of the town was delicious, the lingering scent of petrichor overlaid with cool stone and damp forest topped with the saloon's tobacco-and-wood polish warmth. The balls and glittering galas of Hamilton seemed a world away now, and the music here was rawer, wilder, but no less deeply felt, nor beautiful for all that. Cynthia had stopped next to her, lunch pail dangling from one hand and the other tucked into the pocket at the front of her dress as she waited patiently for her teacher's answer.

"I do like it," Elizabeth confessed. "Sometimes it feels almost like flying. Do you like it?"

"Not much call for it around here." Cynthia slipped out to join her schoolfellows without, Elizabeth noticed, actually answering the question; she put it down to frontier practicality, the likes of which might strike a city-dweller as brusqueness. With the saloon finally empty of minors Elizabeth followed her class to the threshold and paused there, scarcely aware she was humming a waltz tune. She closed her eyes, breathing in the fresh air and letting her mind wander. Her reverie was not to last, though; it was shaken from her by a hand on her elbow and with a quiet gasp she spun, stepping back at the same time. The move left room in the doorway for Jack to pass.

"Constable!" she scolded, hopeful that she sounded less breathless than she felt. "You startled me."

"My apologies, ma'am." Despite the words his smirk was anything but apologetic. If he noticed her glare he didn't let on; he merely donned his hat and then touched the brim with a nod to her before striding off. The glare faltered as she watched him go, and Elizabeth raised her hand to cradle her elbow, sure she was imagining the tingling there and the new scent in the air.

"Do you reckon you're smarter than everyone else here?"

Her eyes snapped to Cynthia's face but found neither censure nor accusation in the girl's expression; there was only a steady curiosity that no good teacher ought to quell. Yes, of course, which was absolutely the wrong answer, was nonetheless on the tip of Elizabeth's tongue. "It's difficult to say," she answered instead, slowly, and found that the hesitation brought out the truth in the words. She was intelligent, yes, but nowhere near as cunning as Henry Gowen, nor as quick with sums as Mr. Yost, nor as observant (and suspicious) as Jack.

Cynthia's gaze was still fixed on her, so Elizabeth went on, "I've had the benefit of a very fine education." It was meant as an endorsement of her advantages, but from the short nod Cynthia gave Elizabeth feared that it sounded like an indictment of her fellow townsfolks' intelligence.

There were fewer questions from Cynthia after that—or at least fewer questions asked aloud, as Elizabeth caught the girl watching her from time to time. She'd made up her mind to ask if something was wrong, and to apologize if the situation called for it, when the girl approached her at the end of the next school day. She had a book in her hands, one that didn't look immediately familiar to Elizabeth.

"Miss Thatcher, have you ever read this?"

Elizabeth took the offered book and looked at the title stamped on the cover: Pride and Prejudice. "Yes, I have," she answered, smiling. This copy was bound in sun-faded burgundy cloth, nothing like the leather-bound, gilt-edged volume in their library at home—in Hamilton, she corrected herself mentally. "Is this yours?"

"My ma's. It's one of her favorite stories." That explained a lot, and meant that the book in her hands was much more precious than the copy in Hamilton, gold edges or not.

"Have you read it?"

Cynthia nodded. "I just finished it last night. I've been working on it for a while."

"And did you like it?"

Elizabeth's hopes of an enthusiastic conversation about the novel were somewhat dimmed by another nod and a "It was nice."

"But…?"

"Well, I don't know what those Bennet sisters did all day. They never seemed to have any chores to do." She peered at her teacher. "Is that what being a lady is like?"

"I suppose so." Not for the first time Elizabeth felt pierced by guilt at how little she'd had to do growing up. When she left here Cynthia would have plenty to do at home, helping her mother clean and prepare dinner, and likely doing the washing-up afterward before tackling any homework that had been assigned; when Elizabeth had been her age all she'd been tasked with was attending lessons and learning how to behave properly in society.

She wasn't keen on drawing attention to the discrepancy, especially since Cynthia didn't seem bothered it. "Elizabeth Bennet reminds me of you," she said.

Elizabeth Thatcher sat up a bit straighter. Could she be blamed for preening? She'd just been compared to the heroine in a bona fide literary classic. She tried to keep the satisfaction from her tone. "Oh?"

"You're both Elizabeths," Cynthia began, ticking points off on her fingers, "with sisters, and you're smart and you like dancing, and you're good ladies but also…" She paused to search for a word, screwing up her mouth, and Elizabeth would not dare to make any suggestions. She did not expect that word to be… "Stubborn, I guess. And proud," Cynthia added matter-of-factly, waving toward the title.

When it emerged her voice was tiny. "You think I'm proud?" Stubborn was hard enough to swallow; now proud as well? Yet she could not deny the truth in either.

Cynthia shrugged, entirely unperturbed. "Sure. You got a lot to be proud of."

"But pride goeth before a fall."

"Falling ain't so bad, as long as someone's there to catch you."

"'Isn't,' not 'ain't,'" Elizabeth murmured half-heartedly.

"Lucky for you there's no Mr. Darcy around."

Whether this was eleven years of girlhood speaking or a disdain for the character was not clear, but it roused her somewhat. "What? Why?"

Cynthia scoffed. "He's so stand-offish and hoity-toity! Would you really want a husband like that? Even if he did own half the county?"

Put like that, Elizabeth saw her point. She wasn't about to let it go without trying to defend Darcy, though. "But he saved Lydia's reputation! He proved how much he cared for Elizabeth!"

"And look what all it took to show he was good. Why hide it? Why not just be good, and kind to everyone, and honorable, without thinking he's better than anyone else?"

As Cynthia spoke Elizabeth's dreamy, romantic vision of Mr. Darcy fled. Unbidden, her mind supplied another figure, one who fit Miss Davies' description better than Miss Austen's. This one had a ready smile, a fierce sense of duty, and warm, gentle hands, and heaven knew she had never had quite the same thrill while reading about one hero as she felt when meeting the other's eyes.

"You alright, Miss Thatcher?" Cynthia asked solicitously. "You look a little flushed all of a sudden."

Elizabeth shook herself. "I'm fine! Fine, thank you."

She looked unconvinced as she reclaimed the book. "I'd better get home. See you tomorrow, Miss Thatcher."

Elizabeth echoed the greeting and stared, unseeing, at the door long after Cynthia had passed through it. Then she rose, gathered her things, and made her way home, wondering what Jane Austen would have made of mining towns and Mounties.