Page 32 of A Quiet Affection

“What if he drowns while returning? Or what if he is shot in some duel in Russia. Don’t they fight even more duels than here?”

“I do not think Fitzwilliam is likely to fight any duels in Russia,” Elizabeth replied with a smile. “Do not borrow trouble that you need not carry.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“I don’t want to leave either,” Elizabeth said. “But I will be right across the park.”

The two of them fell asleep together in the same bed, and Miss Wilson found them that way in the morning.

However, it transpired soon that Georgiana was to leave Pemberley also.

The following morning Georgiana broke into great sobs over her porridge and rolls at breakfast. Elizabeth immediately went to sit with her and embraced her and said, “It is wholly natural to cry. It is. Do not be ashamed.”

Seeing this, Mr. Darcy had two chief thoughts, the first was that Miss Elizabeth was giving his daughter quite the opposite of the instruction that he wished her to have, and second that it would be an unpleasant thing to have a squalling child crying over him at breakfast, dinner, and tea every day until he died.

Since Lady Anne had died, Mr. Darcy had always had the notion that he would send Georgiana off to a school for a few years togain some polish amongst other ladies of her class before she came out, and this was as good a time as any.

That afternoon, among other tasks, he wrote a letter to his man of business to determine which seminary near London would be the best to send Georgiana to. When the reply to this letter came a week later, he immediately called his daughter and Miss Wilson to him and informed them that Miss Wilson’s services would no longer be required at the end of the quarter, as he would send Georgiana away shortly after the wedding.

“No, no, no. You can’t send me away!”

“It is decided, and it is for the best.”

“No, no! Papa, notnow. Will I even see you again?”

“It will do you no good to see me decay and meet my end. I already can perceive that I am weaker and in more pain than I was a week ago. No, I would rather you not watch it. I wish you to remember me as I am now, when I am almost healthy. And if you are here with me, watching me die, worrying when I have a particularly poor day, your education will be horribly disrupted. Time is the one thing that we ought to never waste. No, you shall go to school, and you will stay there until the holidays about Christmas, when we will see each other if I am still alive.” Mr. Darcy felt another stab of pain as he said that.

He did not think he would be.

Miss Wilson kept her lips pressed tight together at hearing this. Though he had a sincere concern for his children, she had long since known that Mr. Darcy was a hard man, with a cold temperament, and a most unusual way of seeing things.

She said what was proper under these circumstances to a man who had employed her for many years. And then she asked, “What about Miss Elizabeth?”

“I cannot imagine there is much of importance that she still needs to know. And she cannot learn to dance or draw, or anything of that sort. I do not think it will injure her to end her education now. Do you think there is any master that she should have contracted for?”

“She has learned the chief points of what she must,” Miss Wilson replied. “Her knowledge of mathematics is much advanced beyond my own, she has a mastery of the piano and many memorized songs. She knows her geography and can speak all the modern languages with a clear accent.”

“And she will turn fifteen in only a week. We may consider her education complete—What do you mean to do?” Mr. Darcy asked Miss Wilson. “I will happily provide every reference I can for you.”

“Thank you, sir, but that is not necessary. I have worked as a governess for many decades now, and I have set aside enough that if I go to live with my niece, I will in no way be a burden. I had already decided not to seek another post when I finished teaching Georgiana.”

“I shall give you wages then for the full year, to add to your savings,” Mr. Darcy said. “And you may leave with my good wishes.”

“Thank you, sir.”

It perhaps does not speak well of Elizabeth’s character that she felt a far stronger clenching at her throat and sense of grief at hearing that Georgiana was to be sent away to a school near London than she had at being informed that Mr. Darcy was dying.

Georgiana was devastated.

The girl felt as though she were being rejected by her father, as though he hated her, and as though that was why he could not bear to have her near him now that he was dying. Georgiana did not know what she had done to make her father exile her from the people she loved, the place she knew, and to send her to a terrifying school where they would teach her things that she had not learned from Miss Wilson, even though she always learned all her lessons as best she could.

Elizabeth was not the sort of person who could assure Georgiana that her father was making the best choices for her, or even that he was trying to make the best choices, when Elizabeth did not believe that herself. Despite not being reassured onthatpoint, Elizabeth’s reaction to the news comforted Georgiana immeasurably more than anything else might have.

Elizabeth sobbed and desperately insisted that she would miss Georgiana very much, and that life in Derbyshire would be immeasurably worse without her. They both cried a great deal.

For Elizabeth this was the least happy time that she had lived through since the weeks recovering at the Phillips’s house after the fire. She made every effort to appear happy for Jane’s marriage, but she was distraught. And she now felt disconnected from Fitzwilliam; since a letter where he told them that he would leave Denmark for Russia the next day, they had heard nothing from him. Not having communication with him at least every other week made Elizabeth feel as though a limb had been hacked off, or as if she’d lost a second sense in addition to her sight.

But Elizabeth and Georgiana were not the only ones unhappy.